Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2067: Seven Huge Business Mistakes Fitness Influencers Make

Episode Date: May 4, 2023

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin discuss the mistakes fitness influences make. Whether you are an influencer or someone who follows influencers find out what to avoid if you want business or fitness success. The misconception of having influence. (1:49) 7 Huge Business Mistakes Fitness Influencers Make. (5:50) #1 - Selling your body as your evidence. (10:24) #2 - Focusing on follower count vs engagement (Following trends over adding value). (15:02) #3 - Jumping to any sponsor that offers money. (23:35) #4 - Being impatient. (30:03) #5 - Using wrong medium for your strengths. (34:54) #6 - Going all in on one platform. (38:30) #7 - Scarcity mindset (afraid to collaborate or promote another fitness person). (42:09) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Seed for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code MINDPUMP at checkout for 25% off your first month’s supply of Seed’s DS-01® Daily Synbiotic** May Promotion: MAPS Prime or MAPS Prime Pro or the Prime Bundle 50% off! **Code MAY50 at checkout** Influencer Nation: 86% of Young Americans Want to Become One Visit Vuori Clothing for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Visit Organifi for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code MINDPUMP at checkout** Dotcom Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Company Online with Sales Funnel – Book by Russell Brunson Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Jeremy L. Buendia (@jeremy_buendia) Instagram Joe Rogan (@joerogan) Instagram Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk (@garyvee) Instagram Jordan Shallow D.C (@the_muscle_doc) Instagram Justin Brink DC (@dr.justinbrink) Instagram Danny Matranga | CSCS | BSc. (@danny.matranga) Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind, hop, mind, hop with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast in the world. This is Mind Pump right today's episode. We talk about how to build a business on the influencer space as a fitness professional or to be more specific, the biggest mistakes fitness influencers make when trying to build a business.

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with your clients. Everybody else that'll help you correct pain issues and movement issues. All of those are 50% off. If you're interested, go to maps fitnessproducts.com and then use the code May 50. That's May 50 no space for that discount. All right, here comes a show. Over the last decade, we've seen the emergence of a new position in the fitness industry a way to make money, the fitness influencer. This really didn't exist more than about 10 years ago, but now it's a potential avenue to build a business

if you love fitness. Here's the problem. Most people do it totally wrong. So in today's episode, we're gonna talk about the biggest most people do it totally wrong. So in today's episode we're gonna talk about the biggest mistakes people make When trying to build a business as a fitness influencer You know what I wish we would have done. I maybe Doug can do this while we're talking I wanted us to find out the stat on because I remember hearing you or reading it in article one of the other on

the like Top like five things that kids are asked in high school, like what do you wanna be? Oh, well not YouTuber or influencers like up there now. Yeah, I mean that didn't exist just say 15 years ago as an even option and it went from being not ever being an option to all of a sudden a top five thing

that a kid, a profession that a kid wants to be when they grow up, I find that really interesting that something like that skyrocketed that fast. I wonder how serious that'll be when they grow. You know, like depending on culture, kids tend to want to do the thing that gets a lot of attention. So like if you asked a bunch of kids,

especially boys in the 1960s, what they wanted to be astronaut would have been like the top. Because we had the space races, so I don't think kids say astronaut at all anymore. Professional athlete, although I think that now kids are starting to realize that that's, or have realized for a while that that's super, super rare. 98% of middle school and high school students

would like to be a soldier. 98%? That's one of mine. I like to be a social year. 98%? That's my guess. I think the perception is that it's just like easy thing to do. Well, I actually know barriers. I mean, there's no barriers. It's relatively inexpensive,

so you don't have to have, and they live on it all the time. So it's like they're constantly just like, paying attention to all these other people doing it. And I would imagine that everybody, or every kid by now probably has, you know, like the Kevin Bacon thing, right? But within six people, they've probably got somebody

who they know who's young in making a lot of money doing it. Wow. Or at least has a lot of followers. You know what I mean? Okay, that's probably what I'm saying. So that's a good point. And I even have a big gap between. I have a buddy who's in his late 40s who I talk to and his wife

and him are in the social media thing. They kind of got into it in the last like 10 years or whatever. And he'll send me people over who he really likes. And even someone who's older, than a serial entrepreneur, I would consider a smarter guy, or a more savvy guy when it comes to business. Still, the his perception on what is a really,

like he's sending me like, oh, you gotta check this. Like, he's so impressed with this guy's business. And I'm like, you know, it's funny because I know more about that person's business than obviously he does. And I'm like, you know, because this guy posts like Lamborghinis and like, you know, he's doing like, he's refined on the private jet

and he's doing videos of his watches and he's got a big following. It's like, this dude's ballin', he's got a killer. And I'm like, yeah, you know, I don't think he's got his killer of businesses you think he does. So there is this misconception around two, and that probably exacerbates this situation, right?

Oh my God, like, if you got 100,000 followers, you got coupcars, you must have a sick business too when that's not necessary. There's a lot of ways to kind of build that perception and to rent things and to make yourself look a lot bigger than you are like in real life. And this is the kind of conundrum with the influencer space. It's just like, you don't really know for sure of their authentic and what they're presenting and this is the conundrum with the influencer space. It's just like, you don't really know

for sure if they're authentic in what they're presenting and this is just something. It's always like very grandiose what they want you to perceive. There's a whole business around that. There's an entire industry built around products and services to make you appear as if you're more successful than you are

because it provides some form of social evidence. So if you're following somebody and you're like, huh, I wonder if they're, you know, they're good to follow. They got good information. I kind of like them. And then you see that they have like a Lamborghini or they're in a private jet. Okay, they must be really good. But the thing with social media is obviously you can present whatever you want. And you're always trying to present an image, which makes it hard to judge whether or not somebody's got good information or whether or not they're actually successful.

Now, to be clear, it's very, very rare to make millions of dollars as a fitness influencer on social media. Extremely rare, very, very rare, but it's very possible if you do a good job and you're diligent and you're diligent and you're consistent and you provide good information and good value to make a living as an influencer. I mean, you can, I could take somebody so long as they're not terrible and they're lazy.

If they're good and consistent and they do a good job and they apply themselves, I would say, you've got pretty good odds at making a good living using, you know, being a fitness influencer. The whole millionaire thing, that's the, forget that. That's like trying to be a pro athlete, but could you support yourself as a fitness influencer through work, effort, providing value, learning,

and growing? Yes, you totally could, it's totally possible. These are the people that make the biggest, biggest mistakes though, or the people who have that potential, make massive mistakes throughout this pursuit, and then they become disenfranchised or they stop altogether. And I think that's what we should focus on. Well, using your pro athlete analogy, what do you think it is? Do you think that they are watching the one percenters that have made millions of it, and seeing how they act and what they do and then trying to

To mirror that and thinking like that's the reason why they've had all this blueprint in the form right So what do you think is that is that like that causes that like you that's got to be part of it right What you think that that person is doing and so you try to copy it, but all you really see is their social media so you're not really sure you just see their presentation and social media. So you're not really sure. You just see their presentation. And unfortunately, the top, top popular people, I should say, with the most followers and fitness, tend to be like models, or they look like models. And so you think that that's the value. And that's what you try to present. In fact, that takes us to the first one, which is a huge mistake that people make in the fitness space is you see the people with all the following

on Instagram or social media and they tend to be these perfect bodies, good looking, super rip, super fit. And so you're like, okay, this is how I'm gonna build a business by trying to be like this, which your odds of success with that are not only small, they're extremely small, but then also if you do succeed this way,

your shelf life is very, very short. You're not gonna have a long-term business. Well, I think that's the part that is most important is that because there is a part of that, a formula that has been proven in our space to work, right? Like the before and after pictures, the look where I was before, now look at me, I'm shredded, like, or I'm dear,

this gorgeous model, and so you get all this attention. And so there is a part of that that actually might be viable enough to grow an audience, right? But to your point, it's really, really stressful to have built your success off that. We've had the opportunity, and I won't name drop on here of people that have been in our space

for a decade or so that have built it around social media that have got millions of followers, and a lot of them battle with depression or feel like they're not being their authentic self because they have created this image that was built around their body and their physique. And even if they love fitness and working out, they're like, man, it's like if I'm not putting that out

there all the time, then I'm not getting the traction. If I'm not getting the traction, I'm not getting the conversions. I'm not getting the conversions. I don't have a viable business. And so they get in this hamster wheel of having to kind of use their body and themselves like to promote that engagement all the time. And it's like even though they made some good money on the way up, it's torture. In fact, I meant to bring this up on a

quaw the other day that I didn't bring it up to you. There's actually the account or movement to all this. There's a girl, I'll look her up, see if I can find her name, but she did a big old article on her. She's a big influencer, had like a million plus followers and she's been doing this for a while and she's now making a business on how to get out of being an influencer. Yeah, because like, and this is what she talks about,

building this all up, all these affiliates that you're tied to, and then being like, I don't wanna do this anymore, and then feeling trapped, because you've made such good money. She's now making a business out of the business. That's hilarious. That's hilarious.

What are, there's a few reasons why this is really a terrible way to build a media business, or an influencer business that fear and fitness, in terms of, in the context of, you know know selling your body as evidence. One, and I'll start with the most obvious one, is to be beautiful enough or attractive enough or have a body that looks good enough

to gain that type of attention puts you at the point 1% of everybody. So right away, if you're watching or listening to this, you're probably not that. Okay, I'll bet that or listening to this, you're probably not that. Okay, I'll bet that almost everybody watching this right now is probably not that. So that's number one. That's just realistic. Now people might have distorted, you know, what do you mean? Yeah, but the truth is, look, the truth is you're not good, you're not that good looking to make that kind of an impression in going on. It's just fat. Okay.

That's just, that's number one. But now let's go down a little bit. So let's say that you are that person, that you do have that 0.1% of appearance or body or whatever, to gain that type of attention. Well, now you've gained that attention. But if that's your, first of all, if that's what people value,

how the hell do you convert that into a business? Because it's free. You're looking at me for free on Instagram. So you see lots of pages like this on Instagram where people follow people because they like to look at them, but that doesn't mean they want to buy something from you. In fact, they're getting the product that they value already for free.

And we've seen this before with the stories of these influencers who have lots of followers because they're booty shots or whatever, then they try and sell a t-shirt and they can sell a single one. So that's the second tier there is now, how do you even convert that? And then here's the third one that I think will appeal to a lot of real fitness enthusiasts

for people who want to do this for a living. This is not the right way to self fitness. If you're a trainer, if you're not just trying to build a business, but you actually have a passion for fitness, selling the appearance and the looks is the worst way to convey the right message for fitness. It's actually a big problem with the fitness industry and you're not helping anybody. It's not going to help anybody to do so. It's one of the reasons why we don't even use before and after here at Mind Pump, even though our marketing team is constantly telling us to do so. It doesn't self fitness the right way

because the way you look is, but one of the values that fitness provides, and if you focus on that, you are never gonna help people develop this long-term relationship with health and fitness. But I know. And then spiring people with how awesome I look.

No, you're not. And here's the last part. Here's the last part I'll say this. This is what Adam's talking about. You can get trapped in this. This is why people like me. This is my value. I'm making money off of it.

I'm getting older. This is getting boring. I feel like I have more value than this, but this is all people want. And I know people listening right now, who've never had a lot of money or probably like, I don't care, just want some money. I think it's exactly how that goes.

I know. It's so it's going in one ear and out the other. I'm gonna tell you right now, tell. We know lots of people like this, where this becomes a personal hell to where people like them for what they're actually not, and they're making money, they don't know how to get out of it, and it sucks. It sucks, I don't like to keep posting this.

What am I doing? You slip, they'll turn on you, too. And they'll turn on you. So, it's just a terrible way to build a business. Don't you think it's a bit of a microcosm of celebrities and pro athletes? Totally. And what they go through, So it's just a terrible way to build a build. Don't you think it's a bit of a microcosm of celebrities and pro athletes? Totally. And what they go through, like everybody wants to be

this celebrity pro athlete or actor actress. And they think it's all glam and lots of money and awesome. But many of those actors, actresses and athletes after their career is over, go into crazy depression, become alcoholics, drug addicts, and a lot of that is because they've identified as this character that they've built up their entire life

and it's not really their authentic self and they're tortured inside. They have all this money and all this fame but they're completely depressed. I think we're seeing that play out at a smaller scale or at smaller scale in terms of probably revenue wise of fame in social media Yeah, no, I think that's a great parallel because even you'll see a lot of these like actors actresses like later on in their careers Like they're so known for their luck, right? Like that's their entire value

And so they have to try and recreate that are at least preserve as much as possible with crazy surgeries and things and those don't always go so well. And it's just like, they just look completely tortured. Yeah, and you have a short shelf life. Like if people value for looking perfect, how long can you look perfect for? And then what? And then you got nothing, right?

Versus your knowledge or the value that you provide people through your coaching or your help, which can last until you decide to stop. your knowledge or the value that you provide people through your coaching or your help, which can last until you decide to stop. And it's much more meaningful. But again, at the very top, your odds of building any kind of business based off of your looks is almost 0% period into story. I'm saying that because there's, again, there's people who are like, I don't care, I just

want to make money. You're not going to make money doing that. So don't make that big mistake. All right, the second one, Adam talks about this all the time whenever he's talking to people about building business on social media, which is like, people focus a lot too much, I would say, on the follow account versus actual engagement. I love it when you go into this, Adam. Yeah, well, I mean, it's no different than if we were talking about like a, you know, brick and mortar or a business that you would start 20 years ago, is getting so hung up on just trying to get so much traffic your way.

But if you don't have a good product, you don't add value. You're not engaging with the customer, the likelihood that all these people are going to purchase or buy anything of you is very low. And I don't know how many times we've had somebody on the show or we've met who has hardly any followers but has this multi, multi million dollar business and extremely successful and vice versa. Somebody comes on and they have millions of followers and they have a terrible business.

So this idea of just having tons of eyes on you is a means that you have a great business is completely false. It's what if I had somebody, right? And by the way, I went through this like, experimenting myself. When we first turned on Instagram and Facebook and all these platforms, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I don't know how to build a business on this and I was trying to figure that out. And I remember using my physique to gain attention and get followers and it's like, oh, the

follower count was going up But then what I realized was Those people were following me for those reasons and if I was trying to sell them a nutrition plan or a personal training or a product Had nothing to do with my half naked body or my abs and so the leap from getting these people that are a bunch of lucky lose to convert is terrible. And so I'd rather have five new people listening to me because I posted something about rehabbing a knee surgery, right? Because I've trained a lot of clients that have had ACL, MCL issues. It's a common thing that's happened. They want to get back in the gym.

What are good stretches? What are good exercises? I'd rather do a post about that. Get hardly any likes, but get two or three people and go, oh wow, this really helped me. I just went through ACL, MCL surgery, thank you. That person, or those two people that engaged in that post are far more valuable than 500,

look you lose, because I showed my abs on a picture before, because one of those is attracting my client. The other one is just getting attention. I'm going to give you, be even more extreme. Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to really illustrate this. You, if, for, from a business standpoint, from building a business, it's far more valuable to have a thousand really hard core disciple followers, people

that really are like, man, this person is the man or the girl. This is the person I'm following. I love what they say. I trust them. It's more valuable to have a thousand of those than it is to have a hundred thousand normal social media followers. Okay.

If you have a thousand people that really follow you, you have no joke, a deep six figure business or maybe even a million dollar of your business. If you have 100,000 people following you on social media, just normal following you, you're lucky if you make 10 grand a year off that. Lucky, if you can make 10 grand a year. So that's the difference.

A thousand people who really find value and what you have to say, it is not hard at all. It's very easy to sell them a $300 or $500 or $1,000 service or product. You have 100,000 people following you on social media just because they like to look at you. Try selling each of them a dollar product. Good luck. You're probably going to sell 20 people and get nothing else. That's the illusion that people have of social media.

They see followers and they think, wow, all those people, no, that means nothing. Now I'm gonna take a step back, Adam, he mentioned brick and mortar. We have become so distorted with followers that we don't even realize that these are potential customers. If I had a brick and mortar business and I had a thousand people walking through my door, oh my God, it'd be ecstatic.

But for some reason, on social media, a thousand is like, oh, that's nothing. I need hundreds of thousands. No, that's not true at all. Engagement is everything. The follower count is almost nothing. Well, on two, big businesses are privy to this now. Like, they're looking for influencers and people

who actually have those kind of comments in their posts where there's back and forth and there's dialogue and they're really interested in what you have to present versus just the robots kind of like you know marketing whatever they're marketing within your your post and I think again this goes back to being popular or just or having that kind of like fervorous type of engagement like big business or paying attention and they want to invest in the smaller influencer that actually has that kind of power in engagement in conversation.

No, that's all 100% right. Like I get the opportunity to talk to a lot of these companies because I handle that side of the business for us with partnerships and there was this kind of like learning curve for them. Most all of them at one point when they had allow them to come funding and so they had capital and they could go, okay, we're going to go spend $100,000 on advertising. So what do they do?

They go to the top of Instagram or top of Twitter. They look for just the most popular people that are related potentially to their product and they go pay them a bunch of money and they had terrible success with that. And then what they found was way more successful was finding these what they call micro-influencers that had maybe five or 10,000 followers. Lots of engagement. But lots of engagement. There are five or 10,000 followers, but hundreds of comments because those people are all

talking to that one person. That person was far more valuable for their business than the person who had a million followers that just gets 10,000 likes, but no comments, no one's asking questions, no one's engaging with that person. And so, to your point, so you are far better off than the original point I made about chasing after those two people who are going to engage with that post that aligns with your business than gaining 10,000 people as attention by a booty pick or an ab pick, or the trends. There's always these trendy videos that are going on TikTok or...

Hit the algorithm, right? Yeah, or we just came out of the dancing pointing to things. You always got somebody who's trying to trend ride and get attention, and there's this feedback, this positive feedback loop of, oh, it's working because I'm getting more views and I'm getting more likes and it's just like, well, yeah, but are these people really the type of people that are potentially gonna buy from you?

All you're really doing is driving your conversion rate down here, getting a bunch more attention, but then the likelihood of that one of those people is going to convert is even lower because they're not coming in there for your information. And to go deeper with that, people are like, well, who cares if your conversion rate goes down, if you have more potential?

It's harder to read your business that way. Yeah, of course. If you have a lot of people and your conversion rate goes down, like it's hard to read the signals in terms of what's working, what's providing value, you want a high conversion rate because you could read the signals, pivot and be very effective with your business. This is just a business fact.

So look, if you want followers, follow trends, if you want a business, you have to add value. It's a big difference between the two. I'll add one more thing to that too. You also, by adding value, you're going in versus just trying to get followers, you also minimize the amount of negative attention that you tend to get followers, you also minimize the amount of negative attention that you tend to get. You know, when you're chasing just followers

and you get lots of eyeballs, so do all the hate. And that's an area that a lot of these influencers struggle with is, you know, it's hard enough to get attention. Then you finally get the attention and you get equally as bad attention as you get good attention. And then you have these influences that go into depression because they're like, oh my God.

Well, you know, why are they turning on me? I mean, I remember even feeling that a little bit, I'm not somebody who even cares about shit like that. But man, you get on your YouTube channel enough and you hear enough negative shit set about you and stuff like that and you keep reading that every day. Boy, it's, I don't care how confident you are and secure you are with yourself.

Boy, that starts to affect you. So, imagine if you're always doing these trendy things, using your body, you're attracting all these people, most of them already, so there's a high percentage that a lot of those people are gonna be the ones that are trolls that are gonna be talking shit about you and that if you're constantly fighting those people, boy, that becomes really depressing

to be managing a business like that. So, by adding value and going that direction and only trying to pick up three or five people through value versus getting thousands of people through attention, you also minimize the amount of negative attention that you get. Awesome. All right. So this next one, Adam used to talk about this a lot was just people jumping to any sponsor that offers them money because they get excited.

Well, this person's gonna offer me, you know, a dollar per, you know, supplement or 10%, you know, affiliate fee or whatever. And, you know, you always made a really, really big deal about not doing this. So I'd love for you to go in this. Yeah, we were very slow to add sponsorship to the podcast. We didn't, we agreed early on that we didn't need it.

When we do decide to do it, we're going to pick partners that we really love and we want to work with. And because of that, we had to turn down money for a long time because really quick, the sharks come out. They see that you have a micro influencer what we were back then and they want to utilize you or use you to get your following and sell the product. And it's tempting because you're trying to build a business

and you're not making any money and you finally get a little bit of attention, you finally can now you have your first opportunity to make some money. But then what you do is it's like a marriage, a partnership like us that we have is like a marriage. So is an affiliate or a brand I decide to work with. So you're not gonna go around and just sleep with everybody

or marry everybody, like you should be very slow to that because it's now attached to your brand. I did a post the other day or I shared a post of Jeremy Buendilla who's, you know, got, I don't know, I think he's up to four million followers. I've now seen this guy in like the last five, six years, he's on his fifth protein shake, fifth company. And like, man, you, you, these companies,

they love to come and take advantage of someone like that and poach his audience because they're gonna make a bunch of money and get attention because of his following. And all they care about is brand awareness, eyeballs. Now, four million people have seen their brand by whatever they're paying him to do that. And they, you know And they eventually will probably happen

after a six month or one year contract, his revenue will start to decline. He won't be giving the ROI that they're paying them anymore. And then they cut his ties. And they already got what they wanted from him. And then the next supplement comes along. And so people are privy to this. We're not stupid.

You're following that as paying attention to you and see that they see you just brand hopping. And then you then they sort of question like, does this guy really care about what he's providing us or is he just hopping from brand to brand, whoever's willing to pay him more? And the reason why we convert so high for our brands is because we talked about this on the show beforehand. We said, we're not going to take these partnerships.

And when we do, you guys are going to know that these are brands that we love, we use that are aligned with our message. And so when you do it that way, then you get way more loyalty. You get a lot more people that are going to convert from it. And so this is a major mistake that you see a lot of influence. One of the reasons why micro influencers,

companies are finding our great ways to advertise is because they're following trust what they have to say. You, there is no faster way to lose the trust of your audience than switching from company to company to company to company that provides the same product. This is the best protein powder that's on the market. You're like, no, this is the best protein powder.

I believe it's this one. Oh, this protein powder is breaking off. After a while market. You're like, no, this is the best protein powder. I believe this one. Oh, this protein powder is breaking up. After a while, your audience is like, yeah, you're just making money and you're really not that true. And what sucks is now you're the boy that cried wolf. So then when you actually have real product that is maybe life changing for you comes along and you finally get to partner up with them

and then you talk about it, people are like, okay, yeah, buddy, sure. So it kills your personal brand and your ability to actually truly influence and actually do well. And now on the flip side, a sponsor can actually hurt your business, which is what we're talking about. But a sponsor can also, if you do the right job or do a good job, help build your business. So I'll use an example of a company that we started working with that actually How's now helped our business? So we there's a long process of working with us We don't work with just anybody. We're very picky and as a result our audience tends to trust us

We have the highest conversion rates almost anybody in our space as a result and it's and we take that very seriously But I'll give you an example. We started working with a company called Viori a while ago before they were massive, before they were as big as they are now. We started working with them. We love the owner. We love the concept of people are amazing. And Viori has since exploded. Now, I'd like to think it's because of us, but I don't think so. I think they're just an awesome company. But nonetheless, now we're affiliated with this company that's exploding. So now it brings us as much brand as awareness, as almost as much as we bring them. We also look good because we've picked

a great company to work with. You don't want to work with a company that then has a bad reputation, but it's also amazing to work with a company that grows and develops this incredible reputation. But it's also reflection on you. It's like, wow, look at that person working with that company And that company is really taking off and they've started working with them before they were that big and they continue to work with them

Like that looks pretty damn by the way to that point south and if you're listening and you are aspiring to be an influencer already You already wore our one you will come across a point where you you have to make this decision where I Could partner with a brand that I love that I think is going to be huge or great one day, but I might not make hardly any money or any money at first to build this relationship where I have this other competitor who's like a no-name brand really, but they're willing to spend money on me right away and do that. And so a lot of times you will have to sacrifice potentially money to build that relationship first with the brand that you really like in order to show that you have value

to add to their company to work on that partnership and relationship opposed to taking the quick money. And so there's gonna be a point where that happens and if you make the right decision, you may not make it more money initially, but in the long run, you will to the points that you're making. We did that. I'm not gonna say names,

I don't wanna call anybody out, but we were working with, I think, organified at the time. We've been with them for a long time. And then another supplement company, and I'm not gonna say who they are, but let's just say they're one of the top, or they were at the time, one of the top,

bodybuilding brands that was out there. And just to get their attention was actually quite humbling. Like, wow, they want to work with us, but it's a no, right at the gates because we don't like the products, we don't like the practices, they stand for a lot of things that we speak against. They would offer us a lot more money

than at the time, organized I did, but we said no because we looked down towards the future, not just right now, which I think takes us to the next point, which is being impatient. This is a big mistake. I think part of jumping with sponsors right away is being impatient, wanting to make money.

But then the other part of being impatient is people tend to look at building a business through social media or becoming influencer. As if it's this business, it's like it doesn't follow the same rules of business. Like I'm gonna get into this, and within a few months I should have this like flourishing business.

In no other business space to people think this way. Nobody says, I'm gonna open a brick and mortar anything, in three months I'm gonna be profitable. Everybody expects I'm gonna lose money for the first year or two or five, before I really start to make a lot of money. For some reason, the influencer space, people have this weird perception that if it's not working after 90 days or six months or a year, well then it's just not going to work.

All business rules still apply, still takes a long time due diligence and consistency to build a business and the social media game is really no different. This is the advantage, the four of us dorks had, I think, when we first got into this space, was that we understood building a business really well before we got into the social media space and we applied that same philosophy of what makes a business successful. And we knew we embraced the failure. We embraced the slow grind. We embraced not making money for a long time.

You have to. I mean, that's just part of the process. If you think it's gonna turn overnight, like you're in for a rude awakening because very few people get the overnight success. And I do think because there's these anomalies that are out there where somebody, it was mentioned on Joe Rogan,

and so also when they get viral overnight, or they come out with some product, or they do some gimmicky thing that goes viral, and they make a bunch of money off of that one viral post. I think because we have these anomalies, people think that that's a viable way to try and build your business. That's the norm.

Sure, but even then, a lot of times, they don't have the infrastructure in place, they don't have a lot of that added value already built into their business. So once they get that virality, it's like they'll consume it all. And then they're left with nothing. And then that huge surge is just gonna go away.

What a great point you make Justin, when we first started and we were starting to build some attraction, and I would put us in the category of a micro-influencer back then. People would always be like, oh man, if you guys got on Joe Rogan, oh man, if you guys, and I used to say like,

I hope we don't get on Joe Rogan because at that point in the business, we hadn't built the infrastructure and this is a year, two years down, right? So we're a year, two years in, we're getting good traction, businesses doing all right, we're not crushing them. We're like, having a shot glass and someone's like,

here let me give you this pool full of water. Yes, all the water's on the pool. Yes, and you're like, You got a shot glass on the pool. Great, I got a full glass of shot glass, but then I missed all this other thing. And so there was a part of me that I didn't want that attention. I didn't want that traction yet.

It takes time to build an infrastructure. It takes time to build a good back end and have all the systems in place to support the traffic of thousands of people all of a sudden coming to your website. Like, that would be the best and worst thing happening all at once because if a customer comes in

and they have a bad experience of first time, the likelihood they're gonna come back is extremely low. And then it's almost, it's definitely they're not gonna go tell anybody positive. There's a good likelihood. They're gonna say negative stuff, which could kill your business. I'd much rather go slow, very slow, slowly build it and be ready. Learn from helping one or two people reiterate, help a couple more people reiterate,

keep improving, keep getting better. Yeah, keep trying to get those two or three people to have such a good experience that they go and tell five other people, then once you have proven that model, well, okay, now maybe we can handle this, but man, I don't think it was, it was, do you remember when I finally said, okay, I feel like,

try, it was like four or five years later. Way later, way later. Way later. Then I would say, I don't want Joe Rogan, that would be terrible if we got on there. We're not ready yet, we're not ready. It barely feel like the business is ready to where it could support that kind of trial.

Yeah, I mean, just to give people an example, use ourselves as an example, we had normal jobs, we had families, and we would meet up every single week multiple times and record in the beginning three episodes and then five episodes a week for a full year before we made a dollar. Consistently, every single week we'd show up with content, record an episode, we'd had

no media experience so it was definitely took a lot longer than it does now. Edit the whole thing, put it out there for 12 months without making a single dollar. People have a tough time doing this for two months on Instagram where they could just type something out and post a picture. So just to give an example, we're definitely practicing what we preach, like any business that's gonna take time.

That's just the bottom line. All right, the next one, I think this one's really important because people don't realize that if they pick the right medium for their strengths, it could have a profound impact on their business or if they pick the right medium for their strengths, it could have a profound impact on their business, or if they pick the wrong medium for their strengths, then it could also have a profound impact on their business.

So in the fitness space or in any business space, I think what people tend to do is they tend to look at social media and they look at the platform that tends to sell that space the best, and they disregard their own strength. So to give an example, if I say fitness, most people look at Instagram because it's visual. Oh, fitness Instagram, that's the place to go

because of people posting pictures of their workouts and of their muscles and whatever, and that's where the biggest fitness influencer pages are. That's true, but if you second posting pictures, if you do a good job communicating through text or video, then it's terrible medium for you. You're better off using another medium where you can really utilize your skills.

I know people who built a tremendous fitness business through blogs because they were great at communicating in that style and Instagram just wasn't their strength at all. So there's a lot of different ways to build this business. Think of yourself, think of what you would do best using, think of how you communicate. That's where you should probably focus most your time because that's where you're going to want to spend your time. That's also where you're going to get the most impact. Yeah, I think if you're a if you're you're great at writing, I think things like medium, I think blob posts, yeah, substack, things like that to great, get attention.

If you're really good at communicating in long form, I think things like podcast are really good. If you're, if you're really animated and comfortable speaking to the camera, I think you're really good for YouTube. YouTube is really good for you. If you are good with taking photos and you know visually can do things with that and you can write good captions to obviously, I think Instagram is good for you. If you are good with taking photos and visually can do things with that and you can write good captions to obviously I think Instagram is

good for you. If you're really good at doing very controversial short weedy type posts like Twitter, actually you have the ability to say something that is like controversial and then be able to defend it within your within your post this why I think Sal was always made like to argue. I mean I remember talking to Sal for the long time like you got to get on Twitter I think Sal was always made for you. You like to argue? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I remember talking to him. Sal, for the long time, like, you've got to get on Twitter. I think it was made for you because Sal is great at this, is saying something that I think gets a lot of attention from people and then he can go back and forth

and explain and articulate his point really well. So I think that type of medium does well. And the idea is that, and I remember hearing, I think it was Gary Vee talk about, like, viewing all of it as types of real estate. And at one point when you build a big enough business, it's smart to have acquired property and all these categories and allow that to build equity in your business over time. So I do think it's smart to eventually dabble in all of these and have a presence in all

of them. But initially when you're trying to build and get traction, it makes the most sense to find the medium, not that's necessarily best for that business you want to Salis Point, but that you speak the best to. Highlights you should raise. That you like, that you're most comfortable with, that you use well, lean into that, get good at that,

learn how to get traction there, and then you can start to learn the other things. Versus trying to do all of it at once, which I see a lot when someone starts. Yeah, out the gates, they've got a Twitter, they've got an Instagram, they've got fake, because they're told you need to have all these platforms. And it's like, yeah, eventually you can get there,

but let's first prove that using the one your best at and that you enjoy the most, that you can gain traction and attention there, because if you can't even do it there for free, why would you waste your time and energy and equity everywhere else trying to make it? To that point, Adam, the next point is a mistake, which is always going in, all in on one platform, right? You started your business, you found the platform

that works with your strengths, now it's growing, and then you just stay there. That's the only place you're at and you build everything there. Now for me, the obvious mistake with that, and again, I'd love your input on this atom, but the obvious mistake there is you don't really own your business when you're on one of these platforms. Like if you're on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook or YouTube, they hold the keys, they really do. And they can take it away at any moment. And I'm known a lot of people

where they've lost their entire businesses because they were completely concentrated in one place. So to me, that seems like the most obvious one, but. So the way I help somebody with this, that's starting their business, the very first thing, I don't care which platform you've chose to go all in is to build an email list to compliment it right away. So, if you're becoming famous or building a lot of traction on, say, Instagram, and you're

not capturing those leads in getting them over to an email list simultaneously, you're in a huge risk category. Because if something changes on Instagram, algorithm-wise, or like what happened to Sal, completely kicked off, imagine if our entire business revolved around your Instagram. When you went down for almost a year, that would be crazy.

Like that would have just totally destroyed our business. Now, if you have an email list that you have, and I know it's on Google's platform, but the email has been never touched, it's been left the same for the long long. It's probably one of the safest places as far as a platform that you can get people off. Because then you have this list that you own. And if for some reason, one of those platforms either shuts you down or changes algorithm, you can reach your people and hopefully direct them to another potential medium. So I think one of the best ways to hedge

when you're building on a social media platform is to also compliment that with an email list first. So that's like the easy, like, okay, I'm gonna go. Step one. I'm gonna go all in on the platform I believe that I communicate the best on simultaneously. I'm going to build an email list that and what does that look like, okay?

Offer something, either be a newsletter. And it doesn't, by the way, people over there's a great book, Doug, it's slipping my mind right now that I cannot think of right now for that you and I both read. He's one of your favorite markets. Oh, I'll just read it. It's, you're one of your favorite marketing guys that we've, Russell Brunson. They have Russell Brunson. Russell Brunson's two books that I really like that it's slipping the names from me right now. That's dot com secrets. Thank you. Thank you.

Dot com secrets, expert secrets. He goes into how simple the emailing can be. It doesn't need to be this like formal business email. It's just communicating with your people, adding value to them, whatever it is that you're doing. So run that simultaneously as you're also growing your whatever medium is, that is one of the ways to hedge. And then eventually when you get an attraction

enough of a business, you can start to acquire all the other platforms and build those out. But to protect yourself, do not just go all in on one platform and not own your people or list of your people because of the fear of what could potentially happen. Yeah, it's a terrible fate. I've known a few people where they had great businesses

and they got kicked off or lost. Like overnight. Oh, or even just got hacked and then they can't get it back for like a week and they lost tens of thousands of dollars in that entire week. Terrible, terrible position position to be in and it makes you very very vulnerable All right, lastly This one's interesting because this has always been a challenge for people in the fitness space

I saw this before social media was even a thing in the gyms and to me this is a Huge mistake because number one, it's wrong and number two, not only is it wrong, it's the opposite of what's right. And that is the scare city mindset. So here's what used to happen in gyms. When I would run gyms or own gyms and I'd have, let's say, trainers working for me, you have that trainer, they're trying to build their business and they're afraid to refer potential clients to other trainers or other health practitioners

for fear of losing that person. So it's like, well, they're buying 10 sessions for me, but if I send them to that chiropractor that might help them with their low back or that nutrition person or that therapist or whatever, then their funds will get spread thin. They're not gonna afford working with me anymore, and I'm gonna lose that customer or if I referred to

that trainer who's better at, let's say, athletic performance than I am, they're gonna wanna hire that trainer and not me. So I'm just gonna not refer this person anyone. I'm not even gonna quote other fitness professionals for fear that this person's gonna end up leaving me. This is not just the wrong way. It actually will kill and hurt your business.

The most successful trainers that I had in gyms and one thing that I did that really built my business was I built a network of people that I refer to and what it did is it made my value go through the roof as a trainer. It made my value go through the roof to where my clients. Anytime they had an issue, they came to me and said, hey, Sal, do you have somebody that works with an atropathic medicine or do you know a good chiropractor or Sal, what do you think about acupuncture? I became the go to person and my value went through the roof. So this is not just the wrong way. Literally, you'll kill your business if you have this mentality. Yeah, I remember this mentality was

something that I always had, like just, you know, like if I'm not the best person for the job and I know somebody for that, like I'm going to, I'm going to send them their way. And it's, it's, it's a tough thing for a lot of people in the space to understand that, you know, what, what's going to happen is as a result of that. I'm going to lose this client potentially. And, you know, when you're first starting off with your business, that's a really hard pill to swallow because, you know, you need every client you could potentially get. And this is all very like short-term thinking of, you know, I need this money,

and so therefore I need to do this. And, you know, I was tempting a lot of times, like I could take somebody through the process of like preparing them to get on stage and do a show, but I'm like, I'm not that guy, I'm not that trainer, this is not my strength. I know somebody that's amazing at this, I'm gonna send them their way, and I just started doing that, especially when I was like, I'm not that guy, I'm not that trainer, this is not my strength. I know somebody that's amazing at this, I'm gonna send him their way,

and I just started doing that, especially when I was like an independent trainer on my own, and what did that do? That created an opportunity for that trainer to now look at what I do really well, start referring people to me, we start having this like just natural network that we create, and it was a powerful thing

that just started to funnel more clients my way. And then I had also like that kind of value established where I could send, you know, I would keep going out and find other people like you said, like for chiropractors, for physical therapists, and start thinking like even bigger than that of, you know, being able to support even a client that I have, I could send them to get even better service. It's all about building trust and adding value. Of all the points, this is the one I'm probably most passionate about because I was wildly successful as a trainer

and have been my entire career. And I don't think I've ever been the smartest person in the room the most educated or the most experienced. Most handsome though you would or the most experienced. Most handsome though, you would. Probably most handsome. I was, okay, I was well liked. I was well liked by my clients, by my peers, and it was for these reasons.

I was never afraid to say that I got this from somebody else. Oh man, I was, Sal told me this the other day, and then I, and then I, I've never, because the people that you're communicating this information to, they just want the right answers. They just want the best information. And they want to trust you.

They just want to help, and so when you build that trust that you can be that maven who goes out and finds that information for them and provides them that great value, they don't give a shit that it didn't come from you first. They know that you're willing to do that. You're humble enough to go, hey, Sal told me this or Justin taught me this

or Doug gave me this information and then you and then you're now relaying it to them. But there's this weird thing that trainers get and this happens in other businesses but it's extremely high in the fitness space where they think like, oh my God, if I tell them that Justin told me, they're not gonna hire me anymore,

and they're gonna go work with Justin, and I'm no longer gonna have him as a client. It is the scarcity mindset, and it's prevalent in gyms, and it's even more so in the influencer in fitness space. It's why every once in a while, you hear me on this show where I throw these kind of subtle jabs at other fitness people.

A lot of the times, the reason why I do shit like that is because I've already tried to reach out and help them out or do something for them or invite them on our show. And they have the scarcity mindset. And they have the scarcity mindset that they don't want to come on our show or they don't want to communicate because they're afraid we're going to poach their business or maybe that they think that that's my desired outcome. That's our goal now. So if you listen to this show consistently and you hear me sometimes do that and you just think maybe I'm a dick or whatever it is, it's like, no, those are people, whenever I throw a little jabs like that, these are people that I know have that scarcity mindset. And it's a way to essentially prod because it's such a terrible way to build a business and people will reward you

for being that maven who shares other people's advice. It's okay to do that. They create a ceiling for themselves. They create a box for themselves. So you want to do all of it all the time, only, you know, your way, then you're going to be limited in your growth. And that's just the end of the story. Not to mention, when you lead with this,

I just had a conversation with somebody, we'll have her on the show in the future. She reached out to me and she was like, we've known each other for a long time. We were on her podcast a long time ago. And she wrote me this long old, and she started it with, hey, shooting my shot, wants to come on the show. And I really like her content. So do you we, you guys know who I'm talking about.

She puts out really good at business information related to fitness, fitness people and stuff. And you could tell she was like nervous to ask me to come on the show. And that, you know, it's okay, you can say no, this and that, all these things that, you know, I know that you're affiliated with this other company. And it's like, I said, no, listen, I like the stuff you put out, come on the show, and we'll do this, and I said, I think guys don't want anything in return. We're not, you don't need to give me something

to get on there, like, I think you put out good information. We're a friend, therefore, we would do that. And you could tell she was just blown away by that response, but it's like, when you do stuff like that, that's when those things end up coming back around. Now, maybe nine out of 10 don't, but that one person that you do solids

or you help out without any sort of conditions or transaction, I have to get something in return to help your business out or do something for you. Boy, man, you keep, if you lead a business life like that for a long enough period of time, those things really come back around and eventually, boy, does it really pay off? Yeah, now that we've closed you

on why scarcity mindset is terrible for your business because we have to sell you on it. Here's the other part of it that's actually quite true. If you avoid the scarcity mindset and you try to refer and talk about other people that taught you, because you want that return, because you want people to give back to your snuck on a work, it actually has to be done in a way to where it's actually selfless. The person who does something with the intention of getting something back, it doesn't last very long, very easy to tell.

So big picture, okay, so we first we had to sell you on it, but now here's the big picture. If you're in the fitness space because you really want to help people, the best way you could help people is by collaborating with other experts and professionals because you don't know everything. So if you look at it from big picture, which we've done many times, we have trainers, we just had Braden come on the show, there's zero in it for us, all for him. Actually, for us's just for audience the guys got great information He's the person you can follow in the fitness space. That's got good information We did this with Jordan shallow before he became massive. We loved his information

Provided value that we weren't necessarily providing in a way that we didn't provide we put them on our show We had zero potential growth from that it was like doctor bring Dr. Brink, Dan and Triega. Right, so big picture, it's like, okay, I'm here to help people. This is the best way to help people. And then of course, we already sold you on why it's gonna help you build your business. And again, if you go into it thinking, I'm gonna get something in return, it's not gonna work.

It has to be because you see this as being the best way to bring value to your life. It has to be unconditional love. That's it, 100%. Look, if you like Mind Pump, head over to MindPumpFree.com and check out some of our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal.

You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump Justin. I'm on Instagram at Mind Pump, DeStefano and Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pump Media dot com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a

ballac, maps for 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. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and

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