Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1755: Insider Secrets of the Supplement Industry With Mike Matthews

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin speak with Mike Matthews about the realities of the supplement industry and his new book Muscle For Life. How did the supply-chain shortage affect Legion? (2:42) Why Facebook ads are NOT what they used to be. (5:42) The value of the brand factor. (10:38) The importance of timing. (12:46) The dirty tricks behind how the supplement industries sell products. (16:27) Is the market getting better or worse with weeding out the bad actors? (24:54) The common marketing ploy of taking research and using it to build profits. (34:50) The standards that Legion holds to. (37:38) His predictions on creatine. (45:35) How does Mike structure and scale his Limited Liability Companies (LLCs)? (57:27) The details behind Mike’s latest book and who it is for. (1:05:42) How a good coach will meet someone where they are at. (1:11:45) Mike’s process of analyzing data and distributing it to the masses. (1:13:28) Related Links/Products Mentioned February Promotion: MAPS Performance and MAPS Aesthetic 50% off!! **Promo code “FEB50” at checkout** Visit Blinkist for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Books by Michael Matthews - Legion Muscle for Life | Book by Michael Matthews Watch The Social Dilemma | Netflix Official Site Arsenic, Lead Found in Popular Protein Supplements Redcon1 Founder Aaron Singerman Sentenced to 4.5 Years In Federal Jail in The Blackstone Labs Case 'Craze' Sports Supplement Contains Meth-Like Substance: Report REDCON1 Completes Strategic Investment From Trivest Partners Pros and Cons of Creatine – Mind Pump Blog Creatine — Health Benefits, Dosage, Side Effects | Examine.com Effect of different frequencies of creatine supplementation on muscle size and strength in young adults Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources Featured Guest/People Mentioned Mike Matthews (@muscleforlifefitness)  Instagram Darren Candow | KHS, University of Regina

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind, pop, mind, pop with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, right? In today's episode, we talked to Mike Matthews

and we talked about secrets of the supplement industry. So he talks about dirty tricks that people play in the supplement industry, talks about profit margins, how much products actually costs, talks about supplements that actually work and studies, how to decipher which ones you should actually consider and which ones you shouldn't, insider secrets into this industry, really good episode.

One of our favorite people. He also just wrote a book, Muscle for Life. You can find this where they sell anywhere they sell books. He's also the author of Bigger Leaner Stronger and thinner leaner stronger, very popular fitness books. Again, one of our favorite people, lots of integrity, knows his stuff. If you wanna learn about building muscle burning body fat,

go check out his books. Now, this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Blinkist. If you like to learn things, but don't have a lot of time, okay? You want to read a book, but you don't have a week or two to go through it. You'd like to take 15 minutes, get a good synopsis of the book, get the meat of it, try Blinkist. You can actually listen to a 15-minute synopsis of any book or read a short synopsis and get a good idea of what the book contains. I love this, right? I do this when I work out, when I'm going on a walk,

it allows me to digest lots and lots of really good information. And mind-pump listeners, you can actually get a seven-day trial and 25% off a blinkest premium membership. So head over to blinkist.com, that's B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T.com forward slash MindPump to go check it out. Also, all month long, we are having a sale on two very popular maps workout programs. Maps performance, this is an athlete-inspired workout program. So train like an athlete, perform like an athlete, look like an athlete.

And we also have a sale on our body builder inspired workout program Maps aesthetic, which helps you with balance and symmetry, body building, body sculpting, right? So both programs, 50% off, here's how you can get either one or both. For Maps performance, go to mapsgreen.com and for maps aesthetic go to maps black.com And the 50% off code for both of them is F E B 50. Once again, that's F E B 50 with no space for the 50% off again, either maps performance or maps aesthetic.

I don't know this about supplement companies, though I met you. You see a company, you see, oh my gosh, there's, you know, $10 million of revenue, $50 million of revenue. But you have no idea that I had no idea that the margins on supplements could be so small, especially if you have a quality product. So, you know, 10, you, like you told me, I remember when I talked to you at first, you said, if you have a 15% profit margin with supplements, you are crushing. I said when I talked to you at first, you said, if you have a 15% profit margin with supplements, you are crushing. And I remember, I said, that's very good. That's very good in supplements.

Yeah, I got blown away by that. So how did you get affected by the supply chain stuff with supplements? I was working with, there's a company that I was, I don't wanna say who they are, but I was working with and they were asking me my advice on what, like a new product. And so I was giving them, you know, like ingredients and stuff.

And they said, well, we'll see if we can get our hands on stuff because it's really hard to get certain things right now. And the supply chain's really weird and whatever. And they weren't able to sell certain products. Do you guys get affected? Do you have to change, like who you were working with? Like how did you navigate all that? Fortunately, we got ahead of the supply chain snafu

by placing huge orders early, well, middle of last year is when we started to place big, big orders. You know, I had to get a, I had to get nearly a $2 million SBA loan just for that because it required a lot more money than an end. I've been pretty conservative in managing Legion's finances in terms of cash reserves and whatever, but I only have so much cash. And to make sure that I was going to get what I need this year, I had to come up with a lot of money

in the middle or so of last year. And that's with lead times being all wacky. I mean, there were some, so I worked with several manufacturers. One, they were giving me 40, 50 week lead times. I knew that. 40, 40 week. You can't run a business like that. Now, what are you talking about? 40 to 50 week lead times. Give me a break, right?

What does your percentage look like as far as what you spend the most on advertising between like Google retargeting Facebook ads and let's say probably Amazon. I would guess for those your three major ones you probably mess with What's the percentage look like good question you guys will probably find this interesting so Facebook What do you think my Facebook spend is that right well? I bet you so you know we just shut ours down. We've shut ours down for the last three So I'm bet you've either reduced it significantly or you're probably like us to where it's really low where you at I'm at zero Dollars a day. Yeah, so are we so are we we've been it's now I want to say six or seven months. Would you say Doug?

You have a six or seven months now and no impact to revenue right? Oh good no We're going the other door. It's going the Google retargeting is doing phenomenal. And the Facebook ads was looked like now, looking back was contributing very little to the business. So really interesting because that was just what two years ago. It was a good deal. Yeah, everybody was talking about how amazing Facebook was as far as a place for advertising.

So that's interesting. You do. Why do you think that is, Mike? Why do you think Facebook is not as effective as it used to be? Well, I mean that iOS update was devastating. It totally messed up attribution and also messed up targeting and that's where I know in my business and in other other businesses

that's where it all started to go wrong. You just could not get the results that you were getting previously. Now, I even questioned at this point the quote unquote results that I was getting previously because again, we go from, we never spent that much on Facebook. I'm gonna guess we peaked at maybe 100 K a month. I think it was a little bit less than that, maybe 70 or 80 K a month.

And according to the numbers that we were getting from Facebook, there was a good ROI. But again, we go from that pretty quickly. Like we went not overnight to zero, but within a month or so to go from that to zero and see no appreciable change and rather makes me wonder what was going on. Now, the problem for people who are in the know on this, of course, is attribution where Facebook's pixel is taking credit for sales

that were happening, they were going to happen otherwise, what they were not actually driven by that advertising. And so in my experience, I've worked with several ad agencies, a few big ones that have been really bad. If you were to look at their websites and their portfolios, you'd be like, oh, they're going to do great. No. The agency game, let's get off on a tangent, but I hate this that the agency game is, here's how it normally goes. You have a core of people who are good, and let's say it's marketing, they're good marketers, they're good advertisers, they know how to make stuff work, they know how to sell, and they get clients and they get results and they get more clients. They get the idea of starting an agency.

Then they start making more money and they want to scale the agency. And it's basically impossible to find people who are as good as they are. So they get people, maybe they find, for out of every 100 hires, there's one person who really stands out. So then they have now themselves, they have another layer of effective people who they give their biggest and best accounts to. And what they wanna keep growing,

they wanna keep scaling, they don't want to limit their growth to their ability to actually deliver results. So they just fill their organization with low skilled people and then give all of their less important, less profitable accounts to those people and the MO is due as little work as you can get the bare minimum results to just keep the client and then eventually you know you'll lose them, but you doesn't matter with with your own marketing being good. You know, you know, you know you'll lose them, but you doesn't matter with your own marketing being good.

You'll, you know, you'll backfill three for the... You will, yeah, exactly. You will get wins with your biggest clients and you just use those to sell. And so I've worked with agencies and Facebook. What I've concluded is that it's not hard to do well with remarketing, with retargeting, for example, on Facebook. And that's something that I would recommend you guys look into. I'm going to bring that back because I think that's easy money, where it goes to the

question about the viral, the funny ad. That ad has done quite well with people who are familiar with us. So on a remarketing basis, on a retargeting basis, it's done well. It has outperformed with the agency that we've been working with outperformed. I think most everything that they've tried up until now. That's with cold traffic. I think you do, though. Okay.

Exactly. With people who have at least heard of us, they're familiar with us. They've been to our website. Maybe they've read an article. There is there is at least a slight us, they're familiar with us, they've been to our website, maybe they've read an article, there is at least a slight positive association there, but with cold people who, if they have heard about us, we don't have any way to know that, and a lot of these people have not, it did okay, not well enough to really roll out at scale. And that's not surprising when I look back at how that ad was put together and that it was mostly entertainment and it wasn't strong in terms of actually selling you on Legion. But it also wasn't expensive. It only cost me, I think my all-in cost was like 35 or 40K.

me, I think my all-in-cost was like 35 or 40K. And I'm able to still use it, I might be able to use it indefinitely on a retargeting, remarketing basis. So anyways, Adam, to finish answering your question, that's where Facebook is at. Google has been doing quite well for us. Google shopping has been doing quite well for us so we continue to scale that. Amazon is in an awesome place in that revenue is almost at high. It's like, well, actually is. I mean, I look at it on a monthly basis, I'm thinking daily numbers. But so we're doing the best we've ever done on Amazon in terms of revenue, but our spend is very, very low. We have cut our spend from, I mean, it probably peaked at 100 to 130 K a month. We've cut it to like, I don't know, 30 to 40 K a month. Now, is that, is, do you, do you attribute that to like a compounding effect of you just being on Amazon for so long and the reviews coming up? And now you have lots of books

on there now. And so because of that, you're going wider. And so, and we'll probably ranking higher organically that you don't need to pump so much. What is that? Why? Yeah. So I would say it's two factors. One is this is this brand factor that that Legion is becoming a bigger brand. We're getting the most traffic to our website.

We've ever gotten. We're getting the most brand queries, you know We've ever gotten, we're getting the most brand queries, you know, on search engines that we've ever gotten. We are working with the most influencers that we've ever worked with, like everything is as big as it has been. And so of course, then some of that trickles over to Amazon because we really try, I'm always trying to come up with more reasons

for people to buy from my website because LTV on my website is almost lifetime value for anyone listening is almost $300, at two, two 80 or so right now. And LTV on Amazon, you can't get it as exactly as you can in your website, but it's about one third of that probably. It's $80 to $90.

And if someone buys for my website, I now have somebody I can communicate to. I have an address, I have an email address, I have a phone number, Amazon shares none of that. So yes, I think that there's just the organic growth of the company, and then there are some interesting new strategies that we're using on a paid side of things to mitigate some of the inflation of costs. I mean, it is so expensive to advertise on Amazon.

Now, Amazon has really changed. I mean, this is a good example of an interesting principle in business. When you think of a successful business or successful businesses, or even books, or really anything that has done well in a marketplace, and you try to answer the question, like, what's the primary factor?

What are the primary factors that really made this work? Was it funding? Was it the quality of the idea? Was it the team and how well they executed? How high was the GIL you are? Was it the timing? I think you can make a really strong argument for the importance of timing. And doing the right thing at the right time.

And you could argue that an idea isn't a good, like you have timing and idea as two different things, you could argue that a good idea is something that has at least a little bit of good timing to it, but I think it is helpful to break that out. And when I started on Amazon, whatever that was, seven years ago or so, that was good timing. It was way easier to gain traction. Amazon advertising was way cheaper. It was way less competitive. And you look at, you compare

And you look at, you compare the situation then to now. And if you are, I can say with certainty in sports nutrition, if you are not already fairly entrenched, meaning you are seeded all throughout the websites, also bots, you have thousands and thousands of reviews on your product. You have, and you have at least a four star average, ideally a four and a half star average. And if you also have, it helps to have attained high rankings in the past, that matters. The history of the Asin matters. An Asin that has performed really well over a long period of time, gets a lot more love from Amazon and their algorithms than an Asin, which like a skew that's brand new. Even if it, even if you come in and you pour tons of money into it and you spike sales and you lose

money on every sale, you're like, I'm going to burn through $5 million just to establish this product. It still might not work. When you finally turn that spigot off, you better be able to sustain those sales in other ways, or you're gonna lose traction in a very competitive space like sports nutrition. That's where the advertising is at, and I think for me going forward, what's clear is, I do know that Facebook, and I'm sure for you guys, Facebook acquisition can work, but my current hypothesis, so to speak,

is that it requires really good advertising. It requires, you're not gonna be able to just, the days are gone when you could just put together something that's okay and just get it out there and make good money and get a good return from that. It seems like with cold acquisition, the people who still make that work have outstanding advertising and none of my advertising has ever been outstanding. Yeah, it's just much more competitive. You know, a while ago, Mike, when we talked to you

a long time ago, we talked about some of the dirty tricks that supplement companies will make. Like I remember learning about amino acid spiking to make approaching still goes on. Well, I was just going to ask you it, you know, what are some of the things that you're seeing or is there anything new? Like, what are the things that consumers should look out for when buying supplements? Because it is a, and I'm very supportive of open markets. It is an unregulated market, but that does place a lot of responsibility on the consumer much more than if it was a very regulated market. What are some of the dirty tricks and things they need to look out for? They're still playing games with negative reviews on Amazon and all that as well.

Oh yeah, that's fortunately. I actually, where's this wood? Yeah, it's wood. Knock on wood. Because it's funny, I was just talking with my CEO yesterday. I was like, you know, we've had a good run here. We haven't had anybody really messing with us. And it's probably not because they're not trying.

It seems like Amazon has better systems internally because it's not in their interest, of course. If you take a really hot, ace, and really hot product, and then it gets taken down because of shenanigans, and it takes a month to get it back up, that's bad for Amazon too. They take 15% off the top of every sale, and they get their advertising not too. So they get a whole lot of money out of every sale. And so there has been certainly less of the guerrilla warfare, which is nice to see, but that has been certainly less of the guerrilla warfare,

which is nice to see, but that has been replaced by the soaring costs of advertising, which fortunately again, I mean, my revenue split now is about 70% website, 30% Amazon, where when I first met you guys, it was the other way around. Amazon was 70% of my revenue and I've focused all of my personal efforts on growing the website and the people who work directly with me.

Basically, we've worked on nothing but growing website revenue and letting Amazon grow at a slower pace, even though Amazon, we're still going to grow at 10 to 15% this year, but I'm much more interested in what I can do with the website. So, anyway, so what still goes on in Amazon, of course, is the review nonsense in terms of gaming reviews. And I don't know how Amazon's going to stop that. It's not in their interest to stop that. It's in their interest to pretend like they want to stop it.

And it's in their interest to have the occasional news story out there that they deleted 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 fake reviews. And they're, you know, policing this and watching it closely. Because of course, that inspires confidence in consumers. But when you know that there are probably 30,000 fake reviews posted every 10 minutes on the website. I mean, maybe it's every hour. I might be sensationalizing a little bit, but when you understand the scale of the marketplace and what goes on, you understand that. How are they doing that?

Are they having like real people in these like, you know, review farms in India and China or whatever that are just leaving reviews? There's that. There, I mean, so there are services still, there are fewer of them because Amazon has gone after them and shut a number of them down, just by threatening saying, we're Amazon, and we're gonna bankrupt you in court

if you just don't go away, basically. But there still are services that are more underground now. You have to be in Amazon selling groups. They don't have a website. You can go to and sign up on basically. You can buy reviews and they're expensive. That's risky because So the argument for doing it is that Quote and quote everyone else is doing it. That's one argument. That's where it usually starts, right?

So it's like well, it's like if you're a professional football player is using PEDs cheating. Of course not because everyone is like if you're not using them you had better be the most disciplined, super, freak of super freaks because you're not going to be able to keep up, or you're going to barely keep up with the people who are like you, but also on drugs, right? So, similarly, on Amazon, the argument is like, well, basically everyone's doing it. And also, if you're buying reviews, and if you're doing it in a kind of an anonymized

way, even if Amazon, quote unquote, catches you, how do they know that was you and not a competitor buying reviews try to get you banned? Yeah. Because you could do that then, right? If I were a shady person, I could then just start buying reviews for a competitive product and then get caught, oops. Right? And so that's an argument for doing it.

Are you an against? I learned about this on about social media too. I don't remember what I watched, but it was like a document or an Instagram and talked about how many fake followers they were. And they said, well, yeah, Instagram, once the fake followers too, because it makes people feel like they have more followers, there's more people on there.

So I could see how Amazon would kind of not mind if there's a lot of reviews that are fake, because it adds credence to the product, probably sells more, you know, it adds value to the platform so long as people think those are real Yeah, that's the key Right, right. It's like controlling anabolic steroids in sports like you said exactly. It's optics. It's optics, right?

It's it's almost like politics and and so so so so you can you can make some arguments for doing it The argument against doing it though is in my case for example I've been on Amazon again for what it is seven years now. We do quite well. It's growing. And I just, I don't want to run the risk of getting banned because if they do, you can get banned for that stuff. Just arguing, well, it wasn't me. I don't know who was doing that. I wouldn't bet millions and millions of dollars of revenue on something like that. And I think that there's an argument for generally playing by the rules and not doing things that are just blatantly detrimental to the marketplace. So there is still a lot of that that goes on. It's not, it's not as easy. I mean,

there was a time when there were websites, and this was actually, there was a time when Amazon, they didn't have a clear position on this. What you could do is you could go to a website and you could say, hey, I'm selling this thing on Amazon. I'm willing to give it to free for people if they leave me a review. And I'm not going to incentivize a good review versus a bad review. They're going to get the thing for free and they're going to leave a review. And theoretically, that's okay. Actually, Amazon, again, they didn't come out and say, we are explicitly okay with these services, but that was not actually really a break in their TOS because

Amazon is okay with you giving away things for people to check out. And then if they want to leave a review, they can leave a review and if they wanna leave a good, right? So, but of course, I remember this one website, what they did is they allowed you to see the each reviewers history and then you see like that. So you could pick the people you wanna send it to? Exactly, and those people, but then it became, but because it was transparent like that, the incentive as a reviewer was to always leave

a five star review, because if you ever left a one, two, or three star review, you're going to get passed up. So you're not going to get free stuff. Exactly. So what you had is you just had a bunch of people who would always leave five star reviews. Wow.

So, you know, it's just, it's not surprising when you see things like that and you see how these little marketplaces pan out and how human nature works. But it just goes to show how hard it is to your point about free markets. How hard is to try to centrally control everything? You know, you're being kind of like, people are resourceful when there's something in it for them, people can get pretty creative in figuring out how to get it. Is the supplement industry trending better or worse

or the same in the sense that in the context of like, having what they say on the bottle is in the bottle or not having impurities. I remember there were a couple investigative reports, I haven't seen one in a while, but maybe a few years ago, where they went and tested, I remember 15 supplements and found that 12 of them had little teeth.

You didn't have anything that they claimed. Yeah, you're taking a capsule of metals. Yeah, like wheat, you know, and it says it's got so many metals. I remember, dude, I remember it sticks in my mind because it's so absurd. House plant, that was one. It was just, it was powdered house plant.

In the house plant. That was actually like in the report, powdered asparagus. That was another one. Man, this, yeah, this, this crate team's not working. What the hell? So would you say it's getting better or worse? Is is the markets like weeding these these crappy products out or is it still a bit of a wild west? So so what I've seen is that you have different

levels of sophistication and consumers right this? This is true of any market. And this isn't, this doesn't imply intelligence, right? A low sophistication buyer is not necessarily an unintelligent buyer. It's just somebody who's new to this and is not very informed. We were all low sophistication buyer. I used to go to GNC once a month and load up with like hundreds of dollars of stuff, you know, go, what's in the,

what's the newest awesome testosterone booster? What's in the, what's behind the lock and the key in the back of the, in the back of the store, right? So I was once that person. I like to think I'm not stupid at least. I just was uninformed. And so what we still have is,

we have a lot of low quality products, low quality ingredients, small amounts of ingredients, even some of the label games where it doesn't even have to have any of the ingredients. Actually, if you're working with a shady manufacturer, and those types of products tend to be sold to the lower sophistication buyers. Those are, for example, fat burners that are claiming you can lose 20 pounds in your first month just popping these pills, or they are testosterone boosters. Those are very big right now. Testosterone is a very hot topic,

particularly among middle aged and golden aged people, right? And so you have products that are being sold more on, you have some internet marketing, but you don't reach that crowd primarily through the internet. So you have like infomercials and radio commercials, right? And so you have a lot of those types of products that are minimally just their ineffective ingredients, tiny doses, but those are also obviously the people

who are willing to cut all corners. Like if you're willing to sell to blatantly just lie to people to get their money, then why not just lie a little bit more and get even more money, right? Right? Yeah, at that point. You know what I feel for a penny, you're in for a pound.

You know what I feel like, Mike? I feel like there's these people that own, I don't know this for sure, but that's what it feels like to me, that they'll start a shady supplement company, sell a bunch of products. Uh oh, they're kind of getting found out, stop and then re- Let's go legit now. Yeah, we're going to rebrand and start another supplement company. Yeah. And it's almost like the same hustle.

It's like the snake oil salesman that went from town to town selling their crap and by the time people found out in the town, they went to the next town type of deal. Kind of reminds me of that. Do you, does that happen, or am I just imagining things? I mean, you're dead. What's his name, Aaron Singerman,

is he's in prison now, right? I mean, there's a perfect example of that. And PJ Braun is probably next. Oh, is he getting in trouble? The black stone labs? Oh, yeah, RedCon 1. Singerman is gone. He's, he's going, Oh, he's going to prison.

He's in prison right now. Didn't they just didn't they just to prison? Didn't they just get acquired recently? Or do they acquire somebody really big? They were in the news. I was the deal. I don't know the whole story here. What's the deal with that? Why is he in prison? For for selling steroids in supplements? Yeah, I mean, so damn, I just, I just, it was, it was, it was, it was blackstone labs, I believe. It was him and PJ Braun.

I don't want to get details wrong because just, you know, on principle, but there's no question that he is that singerman is either in prison or going to prison. Wow. Or for selling illegal drugs, steroids, and that was not a red con one thing. That was a blackstone labs thing, but what you just described is the story of singermen and brawn. It was blackstone labs selling steroids.

Then, red con one, to quote unquote go legit. I don't know if Braun was ever associated with Redcon 1, but Stingerman definitely. I mean, he is, he's out or maybe co founder X CEO, but yeah, if it looks like you guys are looking up right now. And so yeah, that's pulling him up. Doug, see if there's you can find a new article. Yeah, for the article. Okay.

So I just read, I wish I remember what the article said, but I brought a big red con news to the podcast about seven or eight months ago, and I can't remember what the news was. I thought they either were acquired or they made a big acquisition and made big headlines. And I actually, I thought you and I talked about it. I thought I, I thought I, I know. Didn't you and I talked about it. I thought I it's not I know I didn't you and I text about it. I could have sworn I sent it over to you or you sent it to me and we were talking about oh shit Did you see this big move and

Day job here. Here's here's a PR news wire. So red con one. This was April 2021 complete strategic investment Well, it says here former Blackstone Labs co-founder, Aaron Seagerman, sentenced four and a half years behind bars. But, but what was it for? You're saying, Stereoids, was it? Because I know I've seen this before where people will buy like a boner pill. And in there is actual Viagra or an actual pharmaceutical or. Or were they just using their big platform of people to backdoor and so yeah or were they actually selling steroids or they selling

Supplements that said they were test boosters, but actually contain like you know Superdrawl and it or something like that like that's that's what I know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I'm not sure because I just read reading it. Yeah ready for that. Here's the quote open that up a little bit Doug So I can read this so it says that dietary supplement. Yeah. Here's the quote, open that up a little bit, Doug, so I can read this. So it says, So it says, Yeah, selling products labeled as, hold on a second, selling products labeled as dietary supplements that actually contain controlled substances and unapproved drugs is illegal and potentially dangerous.

So that's the deal that happens. So apparently people were buying, That's the old shell game that that's been going on for a long time. Dude, and you know, it's funny. I bet the reviews on those supplements are great. Holy shit. Remember craze. Remember craze. You guys had to have had people reaching out to you about craze when that was. What was that? So that was that pre workout that had meth basically. I missed it. I used to get emails a handful a week every week. I agree. People would would reach out to me saying, have you ever tried this stuff craze? It's,

I've never felt a pre-workout like this. It's amazing. And so when I first heard about I wouldn't look at the label. And I was like, I don't get it. I mean, have these people just never had caffeine? It has some caffeine. it has some creatine, and like nothing else. There's just nothing in this. Well, they're actually, it was met. It turns out that met, it turns out that met makes a pretty good pre-workout if you guys ever know. Yeah, that's next level right there.

Yeah, it was pre-workout's grave, but you know, it was the next thing I knew, it was grinding my teeth. I was giving my workout partner a hand job, and I sold my kids, I don't know what happened. For more, for more craze. For more craze. This is a craze. This is wild. So now, okay, oh wow, I did see, you know what's funny.

We talked about this, I remember. Yeah, we did. I remember we brought it up. I don't see. This is what I miss out on by not trying a lot of supplements. Look, Doug, could you look up either, you know, Redcon, Redcon, one acquisition or acquired and see what you get?

Because I know Mike, you and I talked about this a while back and I did not know that they were in this mix. I didn't know that they got because PJ, PJ Braun and the singerman guy, they're all black stone labs. So what does Redcon have to do with that? Are they? So, singerman was it was part of Blackstone and then looks like he went off to start Redcon. I don't think Braun is associated with Redcon. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay.

And, and to, to, to what you were saying, Adam, if I remember correctly, it was, was it, was it a PE group that invested in it? That's right. We were looking at it right now, just as redcon1 completes strategic investment from TriVest partners. So somebody, that's what it was. It got a big money infusion. Which means they made $135 million in capital.

Well, no, remember, because I remember Adam Texty with you and we were like, that company is worth 435. That was the size of the fund. That was the size of the fund. They didn't say how much. Now it's all coming back. That's exactly what I remember. I think I synched it to you

because I was blown away at what I taught them. And both of us were like, what kind of revenue are they? We were like, to get a valuation like that, I mean, you're talking like $300, $250 million in revenue. No way. No, that was the size. That was the size of a fund. We don't know how much.

Now, Mike, what about this? What about when a study comes out that says, you know, new compound found in whatever increases fat oxidation in, you know, in vitro or whatever, by 15% then a company takes it and turns it into a fat burner. You see, you still see a lot of that, well, they'll take a compound with one silly study that it really doesn't mean anything

and then just blow it out of proportion and sell it as the next greatest thing. That's just a common marketing ploy is to take mechanistic research, take animal research, take in vitro research, and just assume that people are not going to really look into it, or even if they did try to look into it, they're not scientifically versed enough to understand that this doesn't mean that it's going to actually do anything for you. And there are a lot of ingredients over the years that have shown promise, not even in

vitro, have shown promise in, let's say, rat research, which some people wonder why rats. Well, we actually share, it's like 99% of our DNA with rats and certain elements of rat physiology are similar to human physiology, like metabolism, for example, even though rat metabolism has run a lot faster. And so that's why animal research will often start with that to see if there's any reason to believe that this could be effective in humans. But then when we get to the human research, it's a flop. Raspberry ketones are a good example of that. Showed promise and rats seem to work great,

but then completely flopped in humans, tribulus terrestris, showed promise and rats for testosterone boosting. And you still see that product, or that ingredient in so many testosterone-related. Now I'm gonna defend- You should be less forrelated. Now I'm gonna defend it for a second. I'm gonna defend it for a second. It won't raise your testosterone,

but it can boost your libido. I do notice when I take it, if I take a good quality one, I do get a bit hornear, but I know there's no raising testosterone, but that's probably gonna confuse a guy, right? He'll take it and be like, it must be raising my test,

but really you're just a little extra horny. Yeah. What is it? Mike, what is it that you can help women? It can help women in that department too. Yeah. It's actually, that is in my multivitamin for women for that reason, but not in the well. Do they know you put it in there? Is that a sneaky? No, it's in your tummy. Hey, I've actually had people, I mean, it's on the sales page. I explain what the ingredient is. I cite the research, but I have had people reach out, confused like wait, it's in the women's product. Bro, I'm buying another bottle for my wife. Right, multi-vitamin.

Exactly. So what is it that you, what do you wait for before you decide you're going to experiment with something or add it to your line. What are you waiting for? I'm just your standards. Yeah, what does it look like? Good question.

So one, there has to be good human evidence. There have been a couple of ingredients over the years that we've used that only had animal evidence. But my asterisk with that is I made that clear. I never would base a formulation because the thinking behind the formulations is, all right, we need to have a foundation of ingredients that have a lot of high quality human evidence of not just efficacy, but also meaningful effect size, meaning that if something were to increase your testosterone by some tiny amount, it is insignificant.

10%. Yeah, if you only, if you only, if you play a little bit of a numbers game, you can present that in a way that actually sounds kind of interesting. But if people understood that going from 600 to 660 NGGL means absolutely nothing, then they wouldn't buy the product. So I look for not just efficacy, but also something meaningful is happening that actually is going to help people get to whatever goal is associated with this product. It could be, it doesn't have to be an essay muscle growth or fat loss. Like, you know, it could be a joint product that meaningfully reduces joint inflammation,

meaningfully reduces joint pain, meaningfully improves joint health, for example. And so, in the couple of cases where we've used like root of carping is an ingredient that we used in our sleep product because there is interesting animal research that indicates that it might help the body clear caffeine out faster. You told me this a while ago and it's legit. Oh, it's interesting. Yeah, it's legit. I, if I take it, because if I have caffeine too late and I take that, I do, I do, I, I, I, I, it's like the caffeine is out of my system faster, just like what you said.

And, and so, so the reason that that's an example of a specific ingredient that we were okay with using, because although there was only animal research, and, and, you know, I work with people who know a lot more about formulations than I do, and so I can't even take the credit for this stuff, But one, we're open about it saying, hey, this is a speculative ingredient. You could even say it's a hail Mary if you want to be very skeptical, but it's not very expensive, so we're not asking you to pay a premium to have it. And even though it is just animal research, there is a good reason to believe that if anybody, if there ever is human research,

which something like that, there may or may not be, like where's the money and it come from, for example, but if there is human research, there's a fair chance that it will work because, for example, here's what it does in rats. Now, we have other examples of things that do similar things, and then we've seen those things do similar does in rats. Now we have other examples of things that do similar things, and then we've seen those things do similar things in humans.

So again, this is extrapolation, and it's speculative, but that's why we have felt confident enough to include it. But generally, generally, we're looking for not just one study showing effectiveness or efficacy in humans, but multiple studies, ideally multiple trials plus at least one, if not more meta-analyses, ideally research reviews, ideally there's enough clinical data to do some studies of studies. And also, who was the research done with that matters? Because if something is shown to do great things in someone, I mean, if we look something like

intermittent fasting, something that I'm sure you guys, I get asked about all the time, I have to comment on it like every quarter or so, just because it's a never-ending topic. Right. And so there's some interesting research out there that if you just took it at face value, maybe if you just read the abstracts of those papers, you might be impressed with what it could purportedly do for body composition and for insulin sensitivity and for certain biomarkers related to aging.

But what is missed is that when you look at a lot of that research, it was conducted with sedentary obese people. And we are, and a lot of people listening, are not sedentary obese people. And so it is an extrapolation. It is a jump to assume that because somebody who is sedentary in obese saw a market increase in insulin sensitivity, following an intermittent fasting diet,

that we would experience the same thing when we are active, we have a healthy body composition and so forth. Yeah, I'll give you another example of that, Mike, like DHA, in older populations, you'll see increases in strength and muscle and bone mass. It does, it does, even in testosterone. Yeah, actually.

It doesn't do that for younger people. And that's because when you're over 60 or whatever, your D-H-A is low, and you can see that. So, in to take it even a step further, there are certain supplements that have been shown in studies to raise testosterone effectively, but only in men with really low testosterone. So like if you're like really low, like 150, then you may see it, you know, go up to 350. But if you're anywhere in the normal range, you see almost no bump one, so ever. And then another thing I wanted to comment on,

when you mentioned the 10% increase in testosterone from 600 to 660, it's not much, it's not gonna do anything. But what supplement companies will often do, and I remember years ago when I picked up on this, they'll show a graph on the ad, and they'll be like, before and after, like, holy shit, that's huge. But wouldn't you be,

and you're like, wait a minute, that's not even 10%. That's just 50%. You'll look at the graph and you'll notice that the bottom number 600 and the top number is, you know, 670. So it went from here to here. Holy shit, that's a big yeah. But what they did is they just changed the,

yeah, they changed X and Y access and now the graph looks super dramatic. And circling back to your fasting comment, I believe was it, was it Valtteri Longo that did the research on basically if you were to eat a low calorie diet for a week or so, you're getting all those benefits that the fasting community is touting about.

Yeah, all the benefits, physical, physiological benefits really come from the calorie deficit. You can argue the potential spiritual benefits, but that's also depending on the individual because it can also go in the opposite direction, fasting can be done. Yeah, that's a great point, especially when weight loss is involved, as we know, if somebody loses weight, especially if they're going from very overweight to not very overweight, their insulin sensitivity is going to improve. Everything did.

Yeah, it's all the same. Calur restriction versus fasting, you'll see the same stuff. But there's some spiritual benefits for some people, but another people, it's the opposite. You'll get the opposite of spiritual benefits. You'll get this dysfunctional eating pattern, which we see in our space all the time. The people we recommended to are the complete opposite

of what you would think, right? So the people that we are tend to be like your competitors or somebody who has this attachment to food. They have to eat every other hour. Yeah, they're so attached to eating every two hours and they haven't broke that cycle for years and it's like interrupting that and say, hey, you know what, you're gonna be fine

if we don't eat for 24 hours. There's tremendous benefit to somebody who has a relationship with food like that and breaking that kind of addiction to having to eat that way. Whereas the people that are using it are typically the people that are seeking out the fat loss benefits and those are the people that don't it are typically the people that are seeking out the fat lost benefits. And those are the people that don't see very much benefit from it.

If anything, it ends up worsening their relationship with food. Yeah, I wish to just say that you're just not eating enough for your skipping meals. You know, Mike, I want to ask you, because I know you give a lot of credit to your research team, but truth be told, I'm going to, I'm going to, you're horn a little bit. You're very, very, one of the most knowledgeable people I know about supplements. I'm also a massive supplement nerd, and you and I sometimes go off together on stuff like this.

For the last seven years on the podcast, I've been talking about a creatine and how it's going to be, probably going to be one of the number one used health supplements. Forget muscle building, forget strength. We know it does that, but just for general health, cognitive health, heart health,

organ health, mitochondrial functional stuff, what are you seeing with creatine? Are you seeing some of this stuff that's coming out with some of its health benefits? I just read some studies on arthritis on helping with dementia. I mean, it's pretty incredible. And have you thought about actually marketing it

that way yourself instead of just as a performance, just maybe purely towards like a health? Yeah, great, great questions. And your prediction was spot on with creatine. At this point, I guess my prediction is that over the next several years, I would not be surprised if creatine becomes a supplement that is considered useful for everyone, not just people who want to get jacked.

Every one of all ages, especially people who don't eat enough protein, especially people who are older. I know Sally, you've been talking some time about the emerging research in cognitive benefits. And since I at last heard you talk about that, more research has come out. And it appears that you might need to take a bit more than the standard three to five grams per day

if you want to get the biggest brain benefits, so to speak, it appears that up to 10 grams a day actually might be significantly better in that regard because it's hard to get, it can get through the blood brain barrier, but it's hard to get certain things through that. And it takes a bit more to get enough into the brain

to make a difference. But we see it how it can impact bone health and we see how it can impact retaining lean mass, especially in people who, now of course, we would always want people to do some sort of resistance training. But as much as we would love that, not everyone is going to do what we want them to do. So, creatine is interesting that it's been around for so long that it might have another

whole new kind of breakthrough in popularity. I saw a study on pregnant animals and they gave the animals creatine and the the offspring were healthier, more fit, stronger. And if you understand how creatine works, obviously it supplies more of the fundamental fuel that all cells use. It makes perfect sense. I think they're going to give it to kids. That's what I think. I was just going to say that, you know, cells use, it makes perfect sense. I think they're gonna give it to kids. That's what I think.

I think it's gonna be good. I was just gonna say that, I had a professor on my podcast, Darren Kandow is his name, professor at the University of Regina, which yes, that is the way that you pronounce it. That's the way that you pronounce it. Regina.

And, and, and, and, University. University. He has, he has about, I think, 90 peer-reviewed papers on on creatine. A lot of it is regarding body comp, but he's a deep, deep expert on it. And I asked some of these questions to him because like kids, for example, I get asked all of the time. And his position is absolutely kids can take

creatine. And there are there are good reasons why we might want to start including some creatine in children's multivitamins, for example, which I believe I believe in giving I give my kids a well formulated. I would love to make my own actually line of children's products. I have, you know, a hard, it is the line of multivitamin, right? A really good multivitamin that has, again, just the same approach that I've taken with Legion. Like, all right, I'm gonna sell, I just did an analysis and I'm gonna see,

I can integrate this into my marketing, but we looked at our primary competitors, and I got quotes from my manufacturers on their products at similar scales that they're running at right how much would it cost me to make what they're making versus mine and when you compare my multivitamin to My average competitors. I'm spending almost 80% more like multivitamins the the name of the game with a multivitamin generally and with capsules in general is you make that a profit center You want to spend no more than four four or five dollars a bottle on

A multivitamin if you're really generous you might go to six or seven dollars a bottle and and that that drives profit Whereas a protein powder there's not as much profit a pre workout is can be profitable But not as much you use A pre-workout can be profitable, but not as much. You use those to get your customers, then you sell them pills. Because pills you don't have to flavor, for example, it's just cheaper, it's easier. So in the case of a multivitamin, right? So mine is costing me almost $15 a bottle to make, and then I also have to get it to people. It's expensive. And I suspect that if I did the same thing with a children's multivitamin, I could make something pretty outstanding if I was just willing to spend more than the average.

I would love that. I've been looking for my kids and it's complete garbage that's out there. Now, Mike's circling back to the creatine talk. I believe I saw you were going to do a hair loss study on creatine. Did you follow through on that? Did you do anything? Yeah. So we started that and then COVID paused that. And then it was, we don't know when we can get it restarted.

And so we ended up repurposing that money in that lab into other research. But that's something that I would like to come back to. And I just, the problem with, and now we might have enough prediction to be able to run the paper is at the time or run the trial at the time, it was like, we don't actually know when we can even restart. And then if we can restart, we don't know how long we can go. And if we can't go long enough, like if we're just collecting data, key smell in small amounts over the course of who knows how long it might just not work out.

And so that's why I was like, okay, well, can we maybe do something else? Can we get some research done on a shorter, something else? And I would like to come back to that though, because unfortunately that's still an open question, even though... I'll make a prediction. I'll make a prediction that, because I'm sure someone will do the study if it's not you, and I'm going to predict they're not going to show any effect on hair loss. The speculation comes from the slight increase in DHT, which still was

in the realm of normal. Yes. Okay. So it's not like it's not DHT out the roof to super-physiological. No, no, no. So you have testosterone. We all know what that does. And there's a hormone called DHT, which is related to testosterone, but it's very

androgenic, right? So it gives you the masculineizing effects and high DHT can potentially cause your prostate to enlarge. And if you have a lot of DHT receptors in your scalp, then you're more likely to go bald. This is why men tend to go bald, and women don't, and why some men go bald, and other men don't. It has nothing to do with who's got more testosterone and more DHT, but rather who has more receptors in those areas, especially in the scalp. And the rise in DHT from creatine is inconsequential from what I've seen. I don't think it's going to do anything for hair loss except for maybe the most hypersensitive

individual in the world is probably going to go bald by 22 anyway. Otherwise, I don't see. Also mechanistically ambiguous. Like there were a couple of hypotheses about how this possibly couldn't even work, but the researchers in that paper with the rugby players, they were also a little bit like, how could this even happen? I'll guess, here's another guess.

I bet because it increases ATP, cells do a better job at what they're supposed to do. So you probably have your lighting cells producing a little bit more testosterone, maybe a little bit more de-accel. But remember, there was no change, there was no such effect seen in testosterone and free testosterone,

only dihydrotestosterone. But it was so small. Yeah, I don't know. It's gonna come back and show nothing. That's what I think from it. I was excited to be, again, if I can restart it, I will, because it would be nice to get that out there. That's probably the number one question.

I know that's the number one question I get asked about. It's a big fear, right? But no, but I will say this, the segment of the population that I think should be using creatine the most consistently, or it maybe even should be marketed to the most towards our vegans. If you look at the, I mean, I'm sure you're familiar with these studies on their cognitive function. It's a big boost.

Now it's not because, you know, the Crate team makes that big of a boost. You'll see a little bit and almost anybody, but it's because vegans don't eat a lot of Crate team. They don't eat and you get Crate team from animal products. So they get the second, almost like they're deficient and you see this but they won't do it though because they're vegan.

Right. You can get Crate team from vegan sources. Let's see. The last time I looked into it, I'm pretty sure you could take what it was a no, but what are the two amino acids that make creating it's a thionine and something else? Can't you just make it? Or might serve a good question. Something I'd have to I actually let's see, I haven't I did I did look into this. Look at vegan creating does I thought you said we talked about that. Yeah, I did look into this. Look at vegan creatine, Doug. I thought you said, we talked about that a while ago.

Yeah, I think you can do vegan creati- I don't know, I haven't been wrong. I haven't been wrong in 15 years old. Yeah, I haven't been wrong in 15 years old. Yeah, this is never, these wrong right there. Yeah. Oh, they were like it there, vegan friendly. The creatine in most supplements is synthesized

from sarcosine and what? And cyanamide and does not contain any animal byproducts. There's there for vegan friendly. There you go. Okay. Those are like chemical compounds. What is that? Well, they're coming from.

No, they're just making it. It's still coming from an animal product. No, it's from amino acids. Yes, it's friendly, but just because they like rebranded it. Yes. So it's not. It's still comes from animal. They might have gotten those from plants and then.

Yes. It's very, it's very quote unquote unnatural. not that that makes it bad, but you know, it's, it's, it's probably taking stuff from plants. And I know that I know that the creatine in my product is not that. It comes from animal sources and because his vegan set the bad. Yours comes from, from, from animal sources, because vegans have to that. Yours comes from baby seals, right? Yes, from their genitalia. That's from creating sounds. And it's from infant and they also,

they need to die of an excruciating death. You know how it's kind of like a dream. A dream of a chrome, it's kind of like a dream. A dream of Chrome. It's similar. It's similar in the field. You should you should you should clip this as an ad for you. It's for sure. It's from black black.

Well, on Facebook. Yeah, some some tiger. Some tiger will. Oh, God. Yeah, so that's a little okay. No, he's joking. We're all joking.

From from from Dodo bird beat. Nice. I fly on the black market. I want to ask you, so okay, when we are very beginning this conversation, we are talking about the business and you're sharing financials with us. So when you talk about the financials and the profit margins and things with the business, you do not include the book. So how do you have your business say, and is that include your coaching,

or do you have, like tell me how you have the LLC set up. What are they, how they structured? Yeah, yeah, so I have S-corp's. Okay. So I have a publishing company and that handles all of the books. Okay. And then I have Legion that handles all the supplements

and the coaching because we are obviously a sports nutrition company. We are our primary source of revenue. And really the brand is built around, if we're talking about products, just the products, it's the supplements. But the coaching does quite well. It still does seven figures in revenue. But it's something that we offer simply because a lot of people

want it, and we are able to do a good job with it, but it's not the focus of the business. Yeah, I never see you market it really. I really don't ever see it. Which is a mistake. I mean, so. Yes, and no. I think there's some integrity to how you do it, so. Yeah. And and I'm also setting real expectations like, you know, know, this person worked with us for three months

and here's what they accomplished. And I'm not showing 12 months of results and saying it's three months. And some people that, you know, it can be a big difference in three months or it can be a big visual difference or maybe a less big visual difference even though they did quite well.

Like if somebody starts very overweight, three months, they could lose a lot of weight and you could see a difference, but it's not as striking necessarily as somebody who starts kind of overweight. And then they get, then they have abs and you see that and, you know. Right.

And so, so that's how I have them split out and just just to run with that for a second with the marketing as far as challenges, it's interesting. I'm now learning so I mentioned earlier this point of timing and how important it is to do the right thing at the right time. That explains a lot of my success as an author, Bigeliner Stronger when I published it back in 2012. That was just the right book at the right time. I had no connections. Their Amazon advertising didn't even exist at the time.

I just wrote the book. I was a dude. I had abs and muscles. And I said I knew some things. And- I don't give yourself enough credit. You put out good information, Mike. Let's be honest.

I mean, I appreciate that and I do try. And that's what I've always done from the beginning is, is I, I really do try to make things clear and I try to make things practical. And I do try to with that book. I was writing the book I wished that somebody would have just given me when I was 17 or 18 and said, Hey, don't bother with all the stuff you're about to do.

Just do this and you'll get a lot further. Um, but, but still if you look at the market, that was the right time for that book. Something like that did not exist, right? And so now, if I look at where Legion's at and just businesses, the biggest bottleneck is execution. It's more on the team and that's not to put down anybody I'm working with. It's more that there's only like 50 or 55 of us. Well, this is my point, what I meant by integrity,

not by the integrity of you being able to market it in an ethical way, but as you scale a business, it's the reason why I've stayed away from this. It's very, real quickly it gets out of control. I'll send your 50 guys, or is now servicing 1,000 people, and let's be like how, how well can they stay on top, especially talking about nutrition and exercise, coach some, you know, a thousand people. Like I know as a coach for so many years that once I start getting beyond about 20 or 30 people, you know, my, my coaching

dramatically drops the value of you because I'm not able to reach you, to touch you, to be able to pay attention of what you're doing. So that's what I meant by your integrity is, I know the challenge is of scaling that and you know, you could throttle it down and make more money and you could advertise in an ethical way, but your probably your service

would probably diminish as my guess. Great point, yep. And so that is coming back to this point of, you can only find and recruit great people so quickly. Even people I know with much bigger businesses than I have who have several people in HR, that's all they do is read resumes all day and set up interviews all day and try to screen all day.

And even those companies, I've heard from owners of companies that in one case, the market cap, they recently went public. It's a multi-billion dollar company. He, the founder CEO, was telling me the same thing that in marketing in particular, he's just frustrated that he's still too involved in the marketing. Now, that was probably about a year ago, maybe that's not the case anymore, but... And so to your point, yeah, that if you're going to run a coaching service and you're

going to really provide a good service, then you're going to have to accept probably slower growth than you would like if you are an ambitious person, I guess, or if you're a greedy person because there's finding good people and then there's onboarding them into your system and making sure that your quality control is in. And so I'm much more interested, especially with the coaching is we just we provide really good service. We provide we get really good results. Our money back guarantee applies just like with our products where it's very simple if you buy anything of ours and you don't like it just let us know we'll give you your money back or if you want something else will pay restocking fees, you don't have to return the product by carrier pigeon to the PO box in the goby desert. You just tell us you didn't like it.

If we can't make it right for you, we'll just give you your money back. Similarly on coaching, if at any point somebody is not happy, if they're like this did not work for me, we just give them all their money back. And we rarely ever have to do that because it also, I like that from an organizational perspective because it puts a certain standard internally. It makes it clear that in coaching or anything else, we need to meet these expectations that we are promising. And if we don't, then we're going to know because we're going to have people who are taking us up on this money back guarantee.

And so I like it. I like it from a obviously from a marketing perspective. And it gives people peace of mind. They understand that it's basically a no-risk transaction at this point. But then internally, it puts the pressure on my people to make sure that the quality is always there. Now, when you talk about the 10 to 12% profit margins and the coaching is within Legion, are you separating that out? That's the coaching is more profitable than that, or are you including the coaching in that number?

Yeah, so coaching is more profitable than that, but it's a small, it's not in the scheme of things. Right, when we're talking about 20, 30 million dollars, we're not talking about a bulk of that is coming from the coaching. But here's a thing though, it's brilliant because if you're servicing those people, even if the margins were terrible, but you are somewhat profitable, I guarantee every one of your clients that are coaching are probably on every damn supplement you guys use.

So if you go above and beyond and taking care of them on the nutrition and exercise coaching, they probably end up being lifelong consumers of legions. So, we learn on the gym industry, with personal training. That's right. Speaking of books, I know you're coming out with a new book.

It's actually one of the reasons why we have you on this podcast right now. Yeah, let's talk about that for a second. So what is this new book? Who's it for and what's it about? Yeah, so it's actually already out. It's been out for about a month or so and it's called Muscle for Life. And it is, so over the years, so I started with this big, I mean, a stronger book, right? And then I had a lot of women reading it. And,

and then they were reaching out to me saying, Hey, a lot of this makes sense, but I don't want to be bigger per se. Should I be doing this? And, and so then I decided to take that book and rewrite it for women and change the workout programming and just make it as applicable to women as I possibly can. And I wrote other books and did other things. And something though that I've always heard from the beginning is somebody who's, I've heard from the 40 year old, the 50 year old the 60-year-old often not in good shape, very new to all of this, or maybe they were once in shape and now they're not, so they're getting

back into it. They would breed bigger leaners stronger, or my thinner leaners stronger, which is for women. I actually liked the title fitter leaner stronger, better than thinner, but in surveying it with a bunch of women who were a good cross-section of my target market, thinner leaner, stronger, one by a huge margin. Sure. Okay. All right.

The market is spoken. But regardless, so I would hear from these people, and they would read one of those books, and they would like it, and they would learn a lot, but they weren't sure if the program made sense for them. Like, you know, I'm asking you to squat, deadlift, bench press. Now we're going to do it appropriately and you're going to start with low weights and you're going to learn proper form. But still, if you guys know this, having coached so many people, if you have somebody who's 55 years old and has a lot of weight to lose. Let's say more than 20 or 25%

of their body weight. And they've never touched a weight before. You're not going to take them into your garage and load up the squat rack and tell them to go have at it, right? You might start with like going for daily walks. Maybe we just start there. And on the diet side of things, you're not necessarily going to make them this all-in, let's overhaul your entire diet, let's get you the measuring cups, let's get you the scale, and let's do this. You might ask them to write down what they tend to eat, and maybe you're going to pick one thing. Instead of the fried chicken multiple times or every day or whatever, can we do some air fried chicken or instead of the thousand calorie frappuccino, can we scale that down to like a latte or even a cappuccino make?

Can we get that down to like 150 calories? And so I kept on hearing from these people. And of course, that is the biggest addressable market really for all of us, right? Is 40 plus out of shape wanting to get into shape. And those are the people who need the most help actually. I mean, it's nice to help a guy go from Jack to a little bit more Jack. And we all know that's cool.

And it's like fun personally. But there's more maybe satisfaction in helping somebody lose 100 pounds and come off all their medications and completely change their everything, really, at that point, right? And so I had for a long time kind of a standard canned response that explained to people, basically like, here's

how to modify this for you. Here's the all the principles that you learned, they apply to you, of course, you have the same fundamental physiology, like the machinery is still the same, but we're going to work it differently. Maybe we will get to doing what's literally in the book, but we're gonna work it differently. Maybe we will get to doing what's literally in the book, but we're not gonna start there. And so that's why I wrote this book, Muscle for Life. It is for those people.

It is also for people if we take age out of the equation, take anybody who just has to lose a lot of weight. Like let's say again, more than 20 or 25% body weight, that is a different set of circumstances than somebody who just has maybe 20 pounds to lose and they already do a little bit of fitness, maybe even a little bit of resistance training. Maybe it's just like yoga here and there, whatever. Like that person, you can just throw them into the gym actually and get them going, and they'll do quite well. And so that's why I wrote the book. And it also made sense for me to do this book. So this is the first traditionally published book. All of my books previously

have been self-published. And one of the reasons I wanted to do that is for distribution, because to do that is for distribution, because a lot of 40 plus people, if you've been to a bookstore recently, like look around, so a lot of 40 plus people, a lot of them still buy books in physical locations, whereas a lot of younger people, they'll buy the ebook on, they'll, you know, the 25 year old guy

is probably gonna buy the Kindle ebook and read it. So it's very hard to get offline distribution to any degree even if you're a relatively successful self published author. So that's the gist of the book. Yeah. Well, you're acting. What you're doing with this book is you're, it sounds like you're targeting the bulk of the obesity, chronic health epidemic. Because that's really what you're dealing with. I mean, although we see childhood obesity and health issues and people in their 20s and 30s, it's the, it's once you get over 40, where you really start to see, for the most part,

you're really bad. That's when you can reach terminal velocity. And that's like, absolutely. It's always so impressive to me talking to you that you understand this with as minimal coaching experience. What a good point. I have fun. You talk like someone who trains. You train people for a long time. I mean, what you're literally saying right now

is how we knew mind pump was gonna do as well as it did. Because when we looked at the landscape, there was so many fitness professionals that were literally speaking to other fitness professionals or the teenage boy who wants to get jacked Like it literally all the marketing all the books all the programs online like that and there's such a small percentage and We would all talk before mine pump existed. We would all talk off air and go, man, when I look at the hundreds and collectively thousands of people that we have trained, none of them look like that avatar. In fact, they look like who you're talking about right now.

And what I'm so impressed is that even the people that do get that there's a big market there, they still go about the advice wrong. And the advice you just gave is absolutely spot on and brilliant. And I think where so many people miss the mark on the is that they just think that like, well, this works for this group of people. So it should work for everybody else. And the reality is as a good coach knows how to meet somebody where they're at.

And somebody who's extremely deconditioned, who has terrible eating habits, thinking that getting them to, you know, log into their fit scale and get their way out they're at and somebody who's extremely deconditioned who has terrible eating habits, thinking that getting them to log into their fit scale and get their way out everything and hit deads and squats, three to five times. I mean, it's just, it ain't happening. And if you really want them to see lifelong results, you've got to find things that they can slowly start to build as far as good habits in their lifestyle. And then you build upon it.

And I just, it always impresses me when I talk to you, and you get that. Yeah, actually, I have a question along those lines, Mike. You do a very good job of looking at and analyzing data. But there's a lot of people that do that pretty well. But here's the difference. You have the ability to take data. Because here's where I see a lot of people get trapped.

And this is our, we have a, this is a bit of a pet peeve that we have, because we look at data, we break it down also, but our experience is working with people. So we communicate it very differently. We know what to communicate, what not to communicate, and we also know, okay, well, real life had as a supply. People who look at data tend to not consider that at all. So they just tell you the science, but they don't consider behaviors, they don't consider real life or whatever. You do a very good job of both and you don't have a ton of experience training people. Where does that come from?

Do you just listen to every MindPup episode? How do you know? How do you communicate this? That's the real story. I mean, all right, you got me. There's no one admitted, dude. It's the best. No, I'm just good at stealing stuff from smart people.

That's it. That's it. That's it. I'm getting a marketing. That's all marketing it. That's a at stealing stuff from smart people. That's it. That's it. All joking and marketing. That's all marketing. That's a skill in itself. No, all joking aside, actually. All joking aside, how do you do that? Because data is important, but how it applies to people and considering behaviors, that's

when it gets really effective. What's your process like when you look at studies and you're saying, okay, should I communicate this or should I not or should I communicate it in this way? What's your process? That's a good question. And I suppose that that's something that maybe is, it's just a personal preference.

It's like, I'm just generally a pragmatic person. I'm interested in what works in any field, really. And in some ways, I mean, this is not to go off on like a metaphysical or epistemological tangent, but in some ways, I would say to me, what's true ultimately is what works, or at least that's enough for me. So I've always kind of had that bent as an individual true ultimately is what works, or at least that's enough for me.

And so I've always kind of had that bent as an individual. When I'm learning things, for example, I have always tended to like to learn things that I'm gonna do something with. Just collecting random facts is, it can be gratifying, but in a sense, it's almost like intellectual junk food. It's better than been watching Netflix, but I would much rather learn something that I can do something with. That's definitely true in the case of fitness and any other hobby that I've gotten into

that I've studied. I would say there are some topics that have always just been interested in and I don't have any use for the information. I just like learning about it for whatever reason. Like ancient history, I've always just liked, I don't know why, I can just read that stuff and I have no use for it.

And I don't, also maybe when I was younger, I had the idea of, well, if I knew a bunch of things, I could make people, I could impress people, or I could sound smart. I could make for interesting, I could stand out in a crowd or stand out at a party or something like that. And as I've gotten older, I've moved away from that consciously because I actually just don't want to be like that. And so with fitness, I myself, it also held quite similarly to you guys,

is it started with me scratching my own it, right? I was already doing this stuff and I wasn't getting great results from it. And I wanted to know how to get better results, first and foremost. And I wanted to know the theory and the techniques that were going to get me better results. And I didn't really wanted to know the theory and the techniques that were going to get me better results. And I didn't really want to know all of the things that were not going to get me better results.

And so that's how I approached Vigorilineer's Stronger in the beginning. It was very much like, it was a minimum viable product kind of deal. It was maybe 50,000 words that manuscript, whereas fast forward to today, I'm actually getting ready to release a new fourth edition of I've rewritten it from scratch again. It's a little bit autistic. I'll get all this in there.

But I still stand by it. I think it's gonna be bare and even better. But regardless, I mean, now it's probably 130,000 words. So initially it really was like, all right, I don't know everything, but I've parsed through a lot of stuff and I can tell you that here are the most important things if your goal bigger than you're stronger.

If you're a guy and you have yet to gain your first 25 to 30 maybe maybe 35, let's just say 25 to 30 or sorry 20 to 25 pounds of muscle, this is it. This will do it for you. Now, if you are trying to gain every last ounce of muscle and strength available to genetically, for most guys, that's probably 35 or 40, maybe a little bit more than that, pounds, then you're probably going to have to know some other things and do some other things, but that's not most people. So, you know, I've always just come at this topic and my work with that, I've always kind of looked through that lens of what can I do with this. And some people, they're not, they just don't really think like that.

Like they just, they are more interested in, for example, nerding out on the details and speaking to their peers, other nerds. And also, there does seem to be a lot of, I don't know, show them one upmanship and wanting to appear educated and wanting to try to impress peers, like not just communicate with them, but show how maybe you even know more than they do, or be accepted by people who have a bunch of acronyms after their names. And that's fine. That just has never been interesting to me. So, you know, if I like in it to

to maybe something relevant like the American Revolution, right? You had Thomas Payne, his approach was communicate to the people in words they can understand, in ways they can understand. Whereas the founding fathers actually were intellectuals, and they were communicating to their peers. And I would say if you look at all of the obscure references and the complicated structures of their writing, that they were probably not very interested

in even trying to communicate to the average person. And so, different thing, but without Thomas Payne, there might never have been the revolution because the average person wouldn't have known what the hell Jefferson and his friends were even talking about, they couldn't understand it. I mean, people just weren't literate enough. You know, it was a different time.

No, I tell you, we always say this on the show, you've got good stuff, you know what you're talking about. You're one of the few people in the space that we tell people you can trust. You can trust his advice, a lot of integrity, and then you have the unique ability of communicating science the way an experienced trainer would, and you're not, but you do, and it's very rare. of communicating science the way an experienced trainer would,

and you're not, but you do, and it's very rare. In fact, I think you're the only person I know who can communicate like an experienced trainer and you've never really trained lots of people for long periods of time, so it's a compliment. So yeah, you seem to remain skeptical, that's what I think. I think that even you have the ability, like not very many do, to be able to read a study

and actually unpack it. I'm gonna be like, what does this mean? And then even when it points in a direction that may be favorable to something you're selling or you're doing, you still remain skeptical until you see the proof or feel the proof, I'm not gonna double and triple down it, which is not like most people.

Most people, if something confirms their bias, even in the slightest way, they are quick to market as fast as they can. Or quick to their friends so they can sound smart. And I just think you remain skeptical. And ignore, just hunker down. If there's ever even a peep of criticism or a shred of evidence that maybe something is otherwise. And I get that.

We all have that tendency. And I think though, we have to try to, yeah, for sure. I mean, we have to try to consciously work against it. I think if, and try not to get too emotionally invested, I mean, we see this in science a lot, not just sports science or nutrition science, just science in general. You have a lot of researchers. I mean, you can, we can understand where imagine the amount of time that somebody spends to get

their PhD in something and then the amount of time they spend in creating a model of some kind. I mean, you're looking at thousands of hours of work, right? And they've built their own personal brand in their own circles. And credentialism seems to be particularly strong in those crowds where there seems to be a strong desire to be accepted to be in the in group, right? And some of that is financially driven.

And but regardless, so you have somebody who has invested a huge amount of their time and their energy and their emotions into something. And it would be pretty jarring to come to a point where you just realize that you were wrong. That's it. All of that was for nothing. And at least that's how it feels, right? It'd be hard to go all jaco and be like, good, I just wasted six thousand hours. Now I can learn

new things. I would say that one of the very important skill, especially today, is to learn how to read and understand studies and also look at the studies and say, how does this actually mean anything? And can I replicate or duplicate it? I mean, I remember reading a statistic, especially in the mental sciences, that something like a vast majority of studies that show an effect can not have never been duplicated. Oh yeah. Is that the anybody listening look up the replication crisis? Awful. It's a real thing.

In other words, zero. It didn't mean anything because you can't duplicate it. And that's very, very, it's a big number, especially in the psychology and in mental sciences, but it's still a big number even in the physiological sciences. So it's, that skill is very important to have because we're in an age now where a study makes a headline and that headline means science is almost weaponized at this point.

Totally. I was just gonna say that because yeah, let's not go down that route. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't anger the lizard people. I'm gonna get you out here. Hey, they already kicked me off Instagram. I don't want the lizard people. I'm kicking me off everything else too. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com.

The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballac, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com.

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