Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - How to Build Muscle and Lose Fat at the Same Time

Episode Date: February 19, 2015

In this podcast I talk about who can and can't build muscle and lose fat simultaneously and how to do it and some of my big business lessons I've learned over the last couple of years (32:16). ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS VIDEO: “Muscle Memory” is Real and Here’s How It Works: http://www.muscleforlife.com/muscle-memory/ The Definitive Guide to Effective Meal Planning: http://www.muscleforlife.com/healthy-meal-planning-tips/ Acute energy deprivation affects skeletal muscle protein synthesis: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20164371 The Definitive Guide to Why Low-Carb Dieting Sucks: http://www.muscleforlife.com/low-carb-diet/ How Training Frequency Can Help or Hurt Your Muscle Growth: http://www.muscleforlife.com/training-frequency/ The Definitive Guide on How to Build a Workout Routine: http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-to-build-a-workout-routine/ Which Form of Creatine is Most Effective? http://www.muscleforlife.com/which-form-of-creatine-is-most-effective/ How to Take Workout Supplements for Maximum Results: http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-to-take-workout-supplements/ The Steve Martin Method of Achieving Your Goals: http://www.muscleforlife.com/achieving-your-goals/ Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow: http://amzn.to/1zq7Mm6 Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, it's Mike, and this podcast is brought to you by my books. Seriously, though, it actually is. I make my living as a writer, so as long as I keep selling books, I can keep writing articles over at Muscle for Life and Legion and recording podcasts and videos like this and all that fun stuff. Now, I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger Leaner Stronger if you're a guy and Thinner Leaner Stronger if you're a girl. Now, these books, they basically teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build

muscle, lose fat, and look and feel great without having to give up all the foods you love or grind away in the gym every day doing workouts that you hate. Now you can find my books everywhere. You can buy books online like Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and so forth. And if you're into audiobooks like me, you can actually get one of my books for free, one of my audiobooks for free with a 30-day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks. That's www.muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks. And you can see how to do this. Now also, if you like my work in general, then I really think you're going to like what I'm doing with my supplement company, Legion.

Now, as you probably know, I'm not a fan of the supplement industry. I mean, I've wasted who knows how many thousands of dollars over the years on worthless supplements that really do nothing. And I've always had trouble finding products that I actually thought were worth buying and recommending. And well, basically I had been complaining about this for years and I decided to finally do something about it and start making my own products. And not just any products, but really the exact products that I myself have always wanted. So a few of the things that make my supplements unique are one, they're a hundred percent naturally sweetened and flavored. Two, all ingredients are backed by peer-reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself because on our website, we explain why we've chosen each ingredient and we also cite

all supporting studies so you can go dive in and check it out for yourself. Three, all ingredients are also included at clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in the studies proving their effectiveness. This is important, of course, because while something like creatine is proven to help improve strength and help you build muscle faster, if you don't take enough, then you're not going to see the benefits that are seen in scientific research. And four, there are no proprietary blends, which means that you know exactly what you're buying. All our formulations are 100% transparent, both with the ingredients and the dosages. So you can learn more about my

supplements at www.legionathletics.com. And if you like what you see and you want to buy something, use the coupon code podcast, P-O-D-C-A-S-T, and you'll save 10% on your order. All right. Thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast, and let's get to the show. Hey, this is Mike Matthews from MuscleForLife.com and welcome to another episode of the podcast. In this podcast, I'm going to go over two things. One is something that I have gotten asked frequently for a long time and I've written about it on MuscleForLife and in quite a few articles actually. And I've talked about it in my books and talked about it here and there on, on podcasts and videos, but I haven't really given it an in-depth kind of,

uh, rundown on a podcast. And that is the subject of building muscle and losing fat at the same time. Is it possible? Uh, and if it is, who can do it under what circumstances, how do you do it? And so forth. And, uh, the second thing I want to talk about is something I've been asked, I guess I'm getting asked more and more frequently these days as I kind of, I guess, make my way in this space or in this industry. And that is what were the big lessons that I've learned and the big kind of aha moments as I have gone from a couple years ago. I had published my first book, just self-published it. I didn't have any, any connections in the industry. I didn't have any, any website. I had nothing at the time. It was just kind of a, you know, I wonder if anyone's going to like what I have to say, uh, to fast forwarding to today. Um, you know, my website muscle for life gets over a

million visits a month. Uh, I've sold, uh, well over 300,000 books. Now, um, I've started my own supplement company, which had a very good first year last year. Um, and is going to do at least double that this year and blah, blah, blah. So, um, you know, what, what are the, how, what are, when looking back on it, what are the major things that I would attribute that success to? So let's start with building muscle and losing fat at the same time. So you've, if you've been researching this at all, or if you've been reading or listening to people in the, in the fitness space that at least know something, you've probably heard that you can't build muscle and lose fat at the same time. That's just not possible. That's not exactly true. It

definitely is possible. I mean, it's been shown in, you'll find it in quite a few scientific studies and you'll find it anecdotally. You'll find people, you'll either, I mean, chances are you probably know somebody that, that clearly built muscle and lost fat at the same time, whether it was just by looking at them or, you know, by actual measurement, like if, if, if they're doing a good job calipering, you'd be able to know that. Or if you're, if you're getting DEXA scan, you'd know that. And I've had quite a few people DEXA scanning in particular because they, they were, they didn't quite believe that they actually built muscle and lost fat at the same time. So they wanted to be as accurate as

possible. Um, and there, yes, they did. And the, the, the key factor here is, um, what your, where your body's currently at in terms of, uh, conditioning. Um, if you are like in the scientific research where you'll see building muscle and losing fat happening simultaneously is with untrained individuals, meaning people that they don't, this is their first introduction to weightlifting. If that's you, if you are new to weightlifting, if you're within, let's say, your first three new to weightlifting, if this is, if you're within, let's say your first three months of weightlifting, uh, or if you have done some weightlifting already, but if it is a very inefficient type of weightlifting, which has a natural weightlifter, um, the, the worst way to train is to focus on isolation exercises, which would be exercises that isolate a certain muscle group

versus compound exercises, which are exercises that involve multiple muscle groups. So for instance, you know, if you're going to work out your, your back and you're going to do a isolation type of workout, you might do like, you know, single arm lat pull down like these guys or, or single arm, uh, seated type of, uh, type of rows. Um, and you might then go do some cable work, uh, same type of like pulling on the cables and, you know, back, back workouts, there's going to be a little bit of a compound nature because there are multiple muscle groups. I mean, your biceps are going to be involved no matter what, but compare those types of exercises or even, you know, you could say that even lat pulldowns, a two-arm or close grip pulldowns are a bit more isolation than compound.

And so compare those types of exercises to something like doing a bunch of deadlifts or doing a bunch of barbell rows or even dumbbell rows are going to be more compound just because of the free range of movement which requires more muscles to stabilize. And also you have to use a bit of your body to even stabilize your core. But of course, I mean, the real, in my opinion, the foundation of a good back workout is some sort of deadlift, whether it's a traditional or a sumo or a hex, because you're going to get the most whole body development and strength out of that exercise. So if you're a new weightlifter or if you're a weightlifter that's been doing a bunch of isolation type of work, and then also high rep work, if you don't lift heavy weights

and you just kind of go for the pump and go for the burn. And so if you're doing that kind of stuff and then you switch to heavy compound lifting, uh, and then do what you need to do with your diet, which we'll talk about in a minute, then yes, you can build muscle and lose fat simultaneously. I've seen it, you know, uh, hundreds of times by now. There's just no question. Um, so newbies to weightlifting, you can build muscle and lose fat simultaneously guaranteed, uh, newbies to proper weightlifting. You can also build muscle and lose fat. Even if you've been doing, you know, a nice, if you, even if you've been weightlifting for, I've seen guys that have been doing those, you know, high rep isolation type of workouts for upwards of a year, switch to heavy compound

lifting, go into a calorie deficit and build muscle and lose fat simultaneously. So a bit of your body is going to come into play here. Obviously, genetics are going to come into play. Some people's bodies, you know, if you have naturally high levels of testosterone, for instance, you're going to find it. It's much more likely that you're going to build muscle and lose fat simultaneously than somebody who has very low testosterone. And then there are other genetic factors in play relating to how well your body can repair type 2 muscle fibers, which is what you're – those are the fast twitch muscle fibers that you are training when you're training with heavy weight. They can generate explosive power. They're not good for, they're not good at endurance, but they're good at explosive power. Type one slow fibers would be the ones that are not very strong. They can't generate a lot of force, but they can go for a long time. So like if you're doing a bunch of high rep stuff, like

let's say you're doing on the, on the extreme end of it, like a bunch of body weight stuff. So you're doing a bunch of pull- stuff like let's say you're doing on the on the extreme end of it like a bunch of body weight stuff so you're doing a bunch of pull-ups and push-ups and body weight squats and stuff you're not going to build much size in that way but you're going to build a lot of muscle endurance so you're going to build up the capacity of your type one fibers and you can even there's even evidence that the body will type if you're not using the type two fibers they can in a sense change into type one fibers if you're not using the type two fibers, they can, in a sense, change into type one fibers. If you're doing a bunch of type one type of exercise and vice versa, if you then flipped to a bunch of heavier weightlifting, your body would have a bigger

demand for type two and could change type one fibers into type two. So those are the circumstances, you know, where you definitely can build muscle and lose fat simultaneously. If you are, if you have, let's say a year, I mean, I'm throwing these numbers out here based on people I've worked with. This is an area where I've looked for, I mean, I would not even necessarily conclusive scientific evidence, but at least something where I would feel like, okay, this is relevant enough for me to share. And I haven't really been able to find anything great on this point in particular. And that is if you take someone who let's say has a year or so of proper weightlifting under their belt, which means they've built a fair amount of muscle and strength in your

first year of weightlifting, you as a guy, you should be looking to gain, I would say 15 to 20 pounds of muscle in your first year. If you gain any more than 20, then you're a, you're an outlier. You have very good genetics and perfect. I mean, it's going to, that's going to require perfect compliance. And the guys that I've seen that have been able to do that have started out quite lean. So they were able to, uh, they don't, I didn't have to, they didn't have to lose time in a calorie deficit, which, uh, impairs muscle growth, which is what we'll talk about in a minute. Um, so they were, it started out lean. They were able to start in a slight calorie surplus, which maximizes muscle growth. And they were very good on their diet. They didn't overeat on their bulk, which a lot of guys do. So they didn't pile on fat too quickly, which necessitates switching to cut. So, you know, the guys that I've

seen and been able to gain, I've seen upwards of 25 pounds of muscle in the first year, uh, were in a calorie surplus almost the entire time. So like they may have started around 7% body fat and ended around 15, 16, but that was over a year or over 10, 11 months. And they were just, and you know, no, no, um, time missed and gym really other than like planned deloads or there was no, you know, two months missed or, you know, missing two weeks here because of sickness and there and there, there, whatever. Um, but I would say 15 to 20 pounds of muscle is a good goal for your first year. If you're a guy, half of that. If you're a girl, you know, 7 to 10 pounds is a good year for, good year one for girls.

Pollen, I have pollen allergies and the pollen is coming. So that's why my voice sounds a little weird and I'm going to be sniffling a little bit. Anyway, so you take that person that has been through their first year or say year and a half of lifting. They've gained their first 20-ish pounds of muscle. They have a good foundation of strength. They've been focusing on their compound lifts. Can that person build muscle and lose fat simultaneously? I'm going to say probably.

Like if that's you, probably not. It's possible. Um, but that's where I would say your goal when you want to lose fat should be to preserve your muscle. Um, I wouldn't really shoot for, for gaining muscle cause you're kind of going to be setting yourself up for, for failure in that regard. Um, and you, and you know, if you, if you're thinking that that's normal and maybe you see guys on Instagram that talk about doing that, yeah, it's because of drugs. Like guys that have been training for years and years that lose fat and build muscle simultaneously, drugs every time. Unless it's some weird set of circumstances where they're like, you know, they trained for, like, for instance, take me.

I've been training weightlifting regularly for 12 years now, give or take, 11, 12 years. And if I were to stop weightlifting completely for six months and lose a bunch of muscle and then get fat, eat a bunch of food, and then come back to it and start lifting again and start dieting, then, yes, I would gain some of that muscle back because muscle memory is very real. I've written about it. I'll link an article down in the description down in the description down below, you can read about the science of it. Uh, there's no question you gain muscle back much quicker, uh, than you, you gain it the first time around. Um, I would say in terms of the effects of it, I would say it's almost like you're on steroids in a sense and how quickly you can gain that muscle back. So in with that not being the case,

a guy that, you know, is just training regularly. Like if I were, you know, just doing my thing and, and I were, you know, I'm fairly lean right now. I'm probably about 8% or so, seven or eight. I kind of just, I hover in between there depending on what I'm doing with my food. Um, but if I were, let's say 15% or something like that, or even a little bit lower, like 13, and then I were to start cutting to get to where I'm at now and build muscle, then drugs, there's just, there's no other way to do that. And the reason why is, uh, because when you're in a calorie deficit, which is what is necessary for losing fat. And that's worth me kind of just, uh, talking about briefly, even though you're probably familiar with this, just cause some people, they, they wonder, they have the idea

that you're like shifting fat into muscle or turning fat into muscle, or I'll get asked, like, can you, uh, lose fat in a calorie surplus or things like that? And, or, or that, you know, there's some like people that think they were losing fat while in a calorie surplus type thing. Uh, so I think people ask me about that and have people then argue with me sometimes saying that they were in a calorie surplus and they were losing fat. No, you're not that, that the, the metabolism, how it works is it, it works with, with, uh, you works with energy that you're expending. And there are quite a few variables that determine how much energy you expend. You have your basal expenditure, which is the amount of energy that your body expends

just at rest, just to stay alive, keeping all your organs running, keeping everything, all the cellular activity that needs to happen to keep you alive requires energy. you know, all the cellular activity that needs to happen to keep you alive requires energy. And then you have on top of that, all physical movement ranging from your intense exercise to your fidgeting throughout the day. You know, some people, and this has been shown in research, that some people are much more fidgety than others, and they actually can burn quite a few more calories. Like I think the more extreme, and I remember in one paper, it was like the, the most fidgety type of people were burning an average of like, or on the high was like around a thousand calories more per day than the people that were most sedentary. And, uh,

so there's, there's that. And then there's also the bit of an energy expenditure variable in the food that you eat because it costs energy to process. For instance, carbohydrates cost more energy to process than dietary fat. So there are a variety of factors that determine how much energy your body is burning, but it comes down to a number. There is an amount. There is a quantity. But it comes down to a number. There is an amount. There is a quantity.

Even though you can't ever exactly quantify it, you can come fairly close by – you don't have to even get complicated with it really. I mean I recommend with dieting using a pretty simple – you take your basal metabolic rate. You multiply it by an activity factor, which is really – I mean the majority of your energy burned on a daily basis is going to be in your exercise, unless you're very active, uh, outside of the gym. Like if you're on your feet all day, walking around, if that's the type of work that you do, you're going to burn a lot of energy there. But if you're like most of us, you, we don't move very much throughout the day. We're seated in doing our work and we get up to go to the bathroom and get up to this and that. There's not that much energy that's being burned in it with that type of activity. And so in the end, I mean, I'll link an article down below, which I link all the time because it just lays out everything you need to do

to determine your energy expenditure, determine your intake, and then lay out a meal plan. But I recommend keeping it simple, taking your basal metabolic rate, multiplying it by an activity multiplier, and then seeing how your body responds and adjusting accordingly. I mean, part of this game is kind of learning your body. And you'll find that your body has quote-unquote sweet spots for losing fat, maintaining body composition, and gaining muscle, and also then gaining a little bit of fat. And that changes from person to person. So really, you just want to have a sensible starting point that has a good chance of just working right off the bat.

But if it doesn't work right off the bat or doesn't work as well as it should, it just means that you need to adjust. It doesn't mean that your body's broken or your metabolism's broken or messing with calories isn't going to work for you. It just means that something is off and it just needs to be tweaked. That's all. to work for you. It just means that you're something is off and it just needs to be tweaked. That's all. So with that said, when you're in a calorie surplus, it means that you are feeding your body a bit more energy than it is burning that like that. So if you're in a surplus,

you're going to gain some body fat, even if it's some people gain more than others. And that depends, you know, genetics play a role in that. For instance, in the last podcast, I talked about, I interviewed somebody from DNA fit because I got a genetic test done with them and found out that I have a very low sensitivity to carbohydrate and a low sensitivity to dietary fat. And basically like one of the effects of those things is that when I am eating an excess amount of carbohydrate, well, not even excess. When I eat carbohydrate and dietary fat, my body is, to simplify it, is less likely to store it as body fat as somebody who would have a very high sensitivity to either of those. So in my case, and I've noticed this, that I can overfeed. I can eat a lot of food and not see where I'm in a huge calorie surplus. There's no question.

And for the day at least. If I eat 8,000 calories in a day and I just do my normal thing or I still exercise and whatever, my average day-to-day life, I'm never burning more than probably 3,000, 3,500 calories. So if I only eat 8,000 calories, obviously there's plenty for fat storage, but I could do that and then not really notice a difference, maybe a little bit over the course of the next day or so, but not as much as you might assume given how much food I ate. And also now that I've worked with a ton of people, I know people, and also people I know in real life, that are much more prone to storing fat when they overeat. And genetics definitely play a role there.

I also, in my case, I have a gene that's associated with high levels of testosterone naturally. I've never been blood tested, so I actually don't know what my, what my testosterone, where it is, but that, that makes sense. I mean, if I just look at, um, the, the type of, uh, things that are associated with higher testosterone versus lower than yes, my body would, would align with the higher testosterone where I, I, I tend to stay lean. I build muscle easily. Um, I don't need a lot of sleep. I generally have high levels of energy and motivation. I have a good sex drive, et cetera, et cetera. Um, so there are, uh, some personal factors involved,

uh, in with how your body, uh, handles with the calorie surplus, but I still do gain some fat when I'm in a surplus and everybody gains some fat. You can't just feed your body 500 calories of energy more than it burns every day without storing something. It's programmed to store fat with excess energy. That's just what it's programmed to do. So to lose fat, you have to now do the opposite. You have to feed your body a bit less energy than it's burning. And that's called a calorie deficit. Now, the problem when it comes to building muscle is when you're in a calorie deficit, and this has been proven. I'll link the study down below if you want to check it out, that the body's ability to synthesize proteins is impaired when you're in a calorie deficit, and that applies to muscle proteins. So, long story short, make it simple.

When you're in a calorie deficit, your body is simply not able to repair and synthesize. When you're in the gym pushing weights, you're breaking down muscle proteins. Your body has to replace them with new muscle proteins. It has to repair the damage. If it's not able to do that as efficiently as normal, what happens is you get to a state where you go work out and you need a certain amount of muscle damage to occur to stimulate muscle growth. Because really what muscle growth is, and I've said this before, but in case you haven't heard me say it before, what muscle growth is, is you have your protein breakdown on one side of a scale and you have your protein synthesis on another side of the scale.

Muscle growth is synthesis in excess of breakdown over time. That's it. So you broke down this muscle protein. Your body replaced or built or synthesized this much. You've gained that margin there. Let's say it's like in a week when you're new, especially in the beginning, you can gain upwards of a pound of muscle a week. It slows down.

But that's what muscle growth is. So what happens is when you're in a calorie deficit, the muscle damage is still occurring. And I'm not sure if I've seen research that indicates that there's excess muscle damage in a calorie deficit. Not that I can think of. But for sure, protein synthesis rates are now lower. So basically you're, you're kind of just fighting to keep them balanced when you're in a calorie deficit. What you don't want is protein synthesis rates to go really low because that's muscle loss. If protein, if your body is breaking down this many protein molecule or muscle protein, you know, cells, and you're only replacing this much,

that margin is muscle loss. And that's what you want to be preventing. And you can cause this imbalance by, you know, a lot of mistakes. You could eat too little protein when you're in a calorie deficit. You could be in too large of a calorie deficit, starving yourself. You could be doing too much exercise, especially too much cardio. So there are quite a few different things that, you know, if you're also very, very stressed, if your cortisol levels are very, very high, cortisol is a catabolic hormone, breaks tissues down. So there are big mistakes that you can make that cause that imbalance. But when you have everything dialed in, you can keep a balance. You should be able to, no matter how trained you are, I mean, if you're like me, if you have a decade of training experience and you're pretty much at

the peak of your genetic potential or as far as you want to go, in my case, I'm pretty much as far as I want to go. I don't really want, I don't want to be much bigger than I am right now. I would like to be stronger, but then that's kind of a catch 22 because really to get stronger, if I want to add a hundred pounds to my deadlift, I have to get, there's no way I'm not going to get a little bit bigger. It's going to require a bit more muscle. Um, I, I'm not going to be getting out of the muscle tissue that I have. There's, I'm not going to be gaining a hundred pounds on a lift just in neurological function alone. That's not going to happen. Um, but you should, if you're

in my situation or if you have even five years of, of, you know, solid lifting under your belt, you're going to be a, you're a, you're an advanced lifter at that point. You want it to just balance. And that's, that's what you're looking for when you're in a calorie deficit, you don't want to lose muscle, but you can't, you can't really expect to gain muscle either. Um, so that's kind of the, um, the basic underlying theory of, of building muscle and losing fat simultaneously and who can do it and who can't. And then I, before I move on, um, I just want to quickly touch on how to do it because, because, uh, so let's say you're in a situation, you're new or you're new to proper weightlifting,

you have some fat to lose and lose and so you can lose it and build muscle. How do you actually do that? And it's very simple. You just put yourself in a calorie deficit, a high protein diet. I recommend relatively high carbohydrate intake. And I'll link an article down below on why I don't recommend low carb dieting and moderate to low, lower fat intake enough to sustain health, but no more because it's unnecessary. You don't need excess amounts of fat. The hormonal differences are so minor that it's just not going to matter, and you're going to get a lot more out of those carbs in your training,

unless your body really doesn't do well with carbs. I do run into that rarely where people, guys will find, they'll usually figure it out. It's usually, well, I'd say it's guys, they'll usually find, figure it out. It's usually, well, I'd say it's guys and girls. They'll usually figure it out. I just run into it more with guys because guys run into it when they're bulking and girls don't seem to bulk as much as guys do. Um, but that's usually when people will find out is when they're bulking, they'll hit a certain level of carbohydrate intake where their body just doesn't feel good beyond that. Like I've seen guys, they kind of settle into about a 300 gram a day, which isn't depending on your body weight is okay when you're bulking, but ideally you could go higher. Um, but I have run into guys that once they hit that 300 grams a day, or in some cases,

it's 400. Some cases I've seen as low as two to 50, they don't feel good anymore. And this is not like highly processed junk food either. This is, you know, potatoes and sweet potatoes and grains, whole grains and stuff. This is good food. And there's just a point where their body doesn't want any more carbs and they just don't feel good with more carbs. So we cut it off there. But I recommend that you, and again, you'll see in the article, the meal planning article I linked down below, this lays out how to work your numbers out.

So, you know, if you want to know how many, how much protein exactly, how much carbohydrate, how much fat, just go there and check it out. Um, but I recommend that you start with a high protein, moderate to high carbohydrate, moderate to low fat breakdown and see how your body responds to it. Um, and yeah, so if you want to lose fat and build muscle simultaneously, put yourself in a calorie deficit, lay your macronutrients out correctly, be consistent with it, and then train hard. Heavy lifting, compound lifting should be the emphasis. You have to make sure that your weekly volume is set up properly so you don't overtrain. I'll link an article down below on training frequency because right now it's very popular. High frequency is very popular training, everything in your,

everything two or three times a week. And these types of programs are fine. They can work. I've done them myself, but there are advantages of training everything once a week that I personally prefer. And I explained that I talk about them in the article that I'll link down below. Actually, I'll link two articles. I'll link in a frequency article, and then how to build a workout routine where I go into a bit more of why I prefer training everything once a week as my kind of standard go-to type of routine. And then you can always mix things up. Part of long-term results when it comes to working out, a big part of it is just compliance, just staying consistent. You have the fundamentals that you have to keep in and you have

to apply. But they're like flexible dieting, right? So like the proper dieting is very flexible. There's a bit of flexibility in training too. You can change frequency. You can change, there's certain things you wouldn't want to change. Like you wouldn't want to change your emphasis on the heavy compound weightlifting. You wouldn't want to change that, but you can definitely change frequency. You can change the assistance type of work, the exercises that you do in addition to your big, your squats, your deadlifts, your pressing. So the additional stuff you can change. You can change rep ranges. So you do have some wiggle room, uh, and you know, let's say you're working, let's say if you're on, on my, one of my programs, like bigger,

leaner, stronger, or thinner, leaner, stronger, or beyond bigger, leaner, stronger, and you want to try a full body program. Um, let's say you want to try starting strength or something like that. Uh, I'd say, great. I say, give it a go and see how you like it. Um, I find that with full body programs, uh, or even upper lower programs, as you get stronger and stronger, one of the big things I don't like is the workouts get very, very hard. Just take an upper body type of workout where depending on whether you start with your chest pressing or shoulder pressing first, one of them is going to suffer. You're not going to get maximum performance out of either when you're doing them in the same workout. Same thing goes in a lower body workout. If you're

squatting and deadlifting in the same workout, whichever one comes second is going to be, uh, a bit impaired from what you did first. So that's why I personally like to separate out. Like I like to have each workout start with one major compound for the muscle group, and then move on to some assistance. So then it allows me to give everything I've got basically. So when I'm, when I'm doing my pull or my back, I'm, I'm dead lifting, but I'm not also squatting in the same day. I'm going to save my squatting for my legs day. And that's one of the reasons why I like a more of a single split. And, but you know, again, if I've also found that some people seem to respond better to much higher volume training. This is rare. It's not the average thing that I run into. It's not common. But I have run

into a few guys that I was really surprised how much weekly volume they could get away with. And for them, training everything two or three times a week made sense because they could just do so much. And normally when you see that it's just drugs. I mean, that, that's why guys, um, one of the big benefits of steroids is your body's able to synthesize proteins at a massively higher rate. So basically now, you know, if you're, if you're, your muscle damage is here, but your body's potential proteins is what it can synthesize is up here. Well, you need to bring that up so you can, uh, cause there's a stimulus factor here. You know, this much stimulus isn't enough to produce this much protein synthesis, but you start bringing the stimulus up and then your, if your body can keep up,

you can gain a lot of muscle really quickly. So in those cases, then yes, it absolutely makes sense. If a guy's on drugs, he needs to, if to, if he's going to get the most out of the drugs, he needs to be increasing his weekly volume. And there are like, there's, you could do it by like the Mike Mentzer high intensity training type of method where you're like doing these massive workouts of, you know, super high volume and then you rest for a week and do it again. That's one way of, if you look at it every seven days of getting a huge amount of volume in, or you can take a huge amount of volume and just kind of distribute it among, you know,

six workouts that you do. Like you could do, you know, push, pull legs, rest, push, pull legs, and you can, you can get a lot of volume in on your body. But if you're natural, that type of program, you have to be very careful with your volume. Because if you go too high, you're going to overtrain. I've made that mistake before. Years ago, I was working out with a guy who, at the time, I didn't really know is what I know now, even in terms of drugs and what type of drugs look like with bodies and some of the signs. So I didn't, wasn't sure if the guy was on drugs. Now I know for sure he was no question. Um, especially

given his diet and stuff, but, uh, his workout routine was, uh, we were training everything twice a week. It was, uh, yeah, I think it was years ago. So I'm trying to remember if it was an upper lower, or I think it was a push pull legs, rest, push, pull legs. And, uh, and I did it for a couple months. And at the end of that month, two, two months, two and a half months, I'd never felt that's the most overtrained I've ever felt. I was actually amazed. I remember coming in to try to work out and I had, I go to do a pull-up cause it's back day and I was just gonna do a little warmup. It was like our pull and, uh, and I started doing pull-ups and I can't even, I get to like three and I just feel dead. I feel, I get so tired. I'm just out of it yawning. Like I felt like I had, I was trying to work out in the middle of

a flu or something. You know what I mean? Where I didn't feel, I didn't, I wasn't sick, but I just had nothing left. And it took, I had to take like a good 10 days off the gym just to feel normal again. So that's something you have to watch out for. But it's not that push, pull legs rest, push, pull legs, it doesn't work. It's just, you have to be careful with your volume. So if back to the subject here, calorie deficit plus proper training, you can build muscle and lose fat. That's how you do it. There's no special, I would recommend creatine as well. Take creatine when you're in a calorie deficit, it helps you preserve muscle, preserve strength. If you can build muscle while in a deficit,

creatine is going to help you do it faster. There's no reason not to take it. It's totally safe. You don't have to cycle it. I'll link an article down below that kind of goes into more, more on, on creatine, two articles actually, the different forms that are available, what's the best form, and then how to use it, and then answering some questions regarding cycling and stuff like that. But it's totally safe. And really, if you're weightlifting, you should be taking creatine, period. It's the only supplement that is going to – natural supplement that is going to help you build muscle and strength directly, 100% proven. So that's how you do it. There's no special, you know, you use some cardio.

I recommend high intensity interval cardio and not too much of it. I never do more than about two hours a week when I'm cutting. And that's it. Keep yourself in a calorie deficit and focus on heavy compound weightlifting. Follow a well laid out program and your body will take care of the rest essentially. All right. So that's that. Let's move on to the next thing here, which is, um, how I've come this far, I guess, uh, some of the, some of the lessons I've kind of learned along the way, um, of getting to where I am now. And, uh, like I said, in the beginning of the podcast, uh, I, my story is, is interesting in that, um, I guess it's kind

of an unlikely way, uh, unusual way to get to where I am now in that I didn't go through, uh, I didn't go through, you know, maybe the normal type of process of, um, having to work my way up the ladder of, of getting in with the right people and maybe getting featured on this website and that, and then kind of just working my way up that way. And then eventually maybe getting in with somebody that an editor or a magazine and et cetera, et cetera. Um, my experience was much faster. Um, and I, I haven't been published in, in any magazines. I haven't even really tried to be either. Um, I've been on bodyboy.com a couple of random spots. I don't know. I haven't even really tried to be either. I've been on bodyboy.com, a couple of random spots. I don't know. I don't really do guest posting. I'll probably do a bit more of

it this year, but up until now, I haven't just because I found that things are going so well with just writing for my own website and producing, spending my time producing content like this and that, you know, why bother give, why bother giving content to other people when I can just put it on my own website and Google loves me and gives me a ton of traffic. So I'll just keep on loading it up basically. Um, so kind of made a quick little list things of things here. Um, this is, and this would be more geared toward, I would say like this is directly geared toward people that are interested in coming up in the, making a name for themselves in the fitness space and, you know, getting a following and maybe being recognized as an expert and that type of thing. But it also applies, I think, to really any type of undertaking.

You know, kind of I'll explain things in a way that I think applies to both of those scenarios. So the first thing is you have to get into really, really good shape yourself. I mean, that's like the first, in my opinion, if you really want to have a good shot at success in the industry, you have to be in amazing shape yourself. And, well, I mean, it's kind of funny. My, my standard of amazing has changed so much, even as I've gotten in better shape myself, where, you know, I look at now the things that I don't like about my body are things I can't change. Like my abs genetically are just not, they're not, they're kind of staggered and they're asymmetrical and

they're just like, yeah, they're not terrible, but, uh, they're not Lazar, Angela, Angela, how do you pronounce his name? Whatever that dude, uh, you know, his abs or his abs are ridiculous. They're just perfectly symmetrical. Eight pack looks, you know, like at 10 or 11%, his abs just look awesome because they're just big and symmetrical and whatever, you know, that's, that's not me. Um, so whatever, I'm not actually complaining, but you know, there are, there are things now where I look at my body and I go, well, yeah, I mean I look good. But that would be cool if I had that dude's abs or whatever. But as a guy or let's say as a girl, if you want people to listen to you, you first have to really show that you walk the walk. And you show that by being in awesome shape.

That means having a really good foundation of muscle, being lean as a guy. If you've never been under 10% body fat, don't try to become a fitness expert. Learn, do that first. You know, a big part of why people are drawn to me and my work is they'll see pictures of me and they'll go, I want to look like that. And that's, I mean, of course it makes sense. If you, uh, you know, want to learn, uh, I've been learning golf for instance. And, uh, if I have no interest in learning golf from somebody who has, you know, shoots in the nineties or even in the eighties, like I want to go play with the guys that are scratch golfers. Those are the guys I want to learn from. Same thing here. People don't, there are, you're going to get a lot more people that are going to want to

learn from you if you're in awesome shape. And that means it takes discipline. There's, I mean, I don't mind it. And, you know, there are a lot of things you can do to be very flexible with the foods you eat and, and, and your lifestyle. But if you want to get really lean and stay lean, which is something that I also like to do, I prefer not to go through bulking and cutting cycles at this point. I just like to kind of maintain a certain look. And, you know, I get to eat maybe 26, 27, maybe as high as 2,800 calories.

It kind of depends. Sometimes with meals, like if I'm doing different recipes and stuff, my calories, it'll change a little bit from here to here. Maybe they'll be like 26 one day, 29 the other day. But I'd say they average out to 27, 2800 a day. But that's every day. And, you know, if I'm going to, if I have the holidays, you know, times where there's going to be a lot of eating, then I'm saving up a bunch of calories for those periods and maybe doing a little bit more cardio. So I have to, it's something I have to constantly keep track of. Basically, I can't just go for months at a time, not giving a shit,

just eating whatever, you know, whatever. I'm going to go eat this for lunch and that for dinner and this and that and that and that. Then I would just get fatter is what would happen. So you have to prove that you can do it. That's, that's, that's one of the big things. And one of the big, I mean, it seems obvious, but quite a few guys and girls that contact me's, that's, uh, that's one of the big things. And one of the big, uh, I mean, it seems obvious, but quite a few guys and girls that contact me that, you know, basically say they want to get into this industry and they're, they're asking me like, what are my tips for them? Quite a few of them are just not really in good shape. They're not the type, you wouldn't look at them and be like, wow, I want to look like that. A lot of them are just like, they look like

kind of fit where you're like, okay, I guess that looks all right. That's not what you want to, that's not the reaction you want to have in people. If you're trying to sell them on you as being an expert, you don't want them to be like, yeah, I mean, I guess he lifts, I guess you want them to be like, damn, that dude looks good. That's, that's the reaction you want. Um, so that, that's the first thing. And it also helps if you can, uh, I mean, looks I'd say is the, is the main thing, but also if you're strong in the gym and you see, and people can see that, you know, what you're doing in that regard too. So, you know, if you're, uh, pushing, pulling, squatting, you know, respectable amount of weights, heavyweights, good form people, at least, especially the more informed, uh, people are

going to notice that. But again, when it, in terms of mass appeal, it's, uh, it's going to be looks. Um, so that's one thing. And then another thing now is, uh, and, and again, applying that to other fields, it's yeah, you gotta be really good at something. I mean, I wrote an article on this. So something I came across in a memoir of, uh across in a memoir of Steve Martin, the comedian, where basically his big secret to success, and this is what he tells people, is get so good at something they can't ignore you. That's a great concept because it's perfect. It encapsulates.

It gives you a very clear just focus on that, and you can avoid a lot of other bullshit and a lot of other distractions and trying to take shortcuts and things that are ultimately going to just keep you treading water and wasting your time. But if you just focus on getting so good at something that people just simply can't ignore you, that people, they see, and in terms of fitness, they see your body and they're like, damn, that dude's in, or that girl's in amazing shape. Like how? And you'll find that this is a natural type of thing that'll happen is people will start asking you, like they'll start seeing that and you'll get more and more just from random people. They're going to start asking you,

you know, uh, somebody you just met and you're just kind of talking about random stuff. And then they're going to go to, Hey, so I noticed like you're in pretty good shape. I wanted to lose some fat. How do I do that? And it's a natural progression because people, they see, you know, if, if as a guy, if you're muscular, 7% body fat, people notice that, uh, and you don't have to have your shirt off. People will notice that you just, I mean, look at how you look in clothes versus the average person out there. And it's very clear that you're doing something that they're not doing. Um, so, uh, that concept is, is key. And it's something that I keep in mind in anything that I'm doing. I, I focus on whether it's writing or, you know,

building the supplement business or, um, doing all everything I'm doing with muscle for life or whatever, if I can just get so good at that that people can't ignore me, that I just stand out that much, that alone is going to take care of so much in terms of long-term success. And that now brings us to the next point, which includes you have to be really informed. It takes time. You have to study a lot. And that applies to fitness or anything else. If you want to get so good that other people, you know, can't ignore you, especially in fitness. It's not just looking a certain way because the problem with that is go on Instagram. You can find tons of guys and girls that look great. They're just, they're on

drugs. So many of these people are on drugs and yeah, that sounds cynical. And I get accused of being on drugs as well. And I understand. Even though honestly, I think that accusing me of being on drugs is kind of just ignorant because if you look at – just go look at my pictures going back from when I started this back in 2000 – well, Muscleful Life came around in 2013 and that's when I kind of started posting more on social media because I'm not really that kind of person. Like I don't use social media personally at all. I'm not posting pictures of me or trying to show off anything. I don't care about any of that.

But look at my body, you know, 2013 versus now. I look more or less the same, because, again, I'm at a point where I'm just not going to be able to gain much more muscle naturally, and I'm not really interested either. I kind of want to stay where I'm at a point where I'm just not going to be able to gain much more muscle naturally. And I'm not really interested either. I kind of want to stay where I'm at. And you'll see that I'm lifting a bit more weight now than I was then, but not by that much. Again, that has to do with the fact that I am staying lean, which limits my training because I can't eat a ton of food. And also, I don't have the telltale drug signs, which would be the massive shoulders, the massive traps, the massive,

massive upper chest. I don't have the call, the crazy vascularity that, you know, disgusting squiggle veins everywhere and stuff. So, but I still understand some people, you know, in certain, some pictures, I guess, you know, you can see, I don't, I could see people being like on the fence. Like, I don't know if he's on drugs or not, But anyways, you'll find a lot of guys that look great. And they actually, like on Instagram, they can have quite a few followers just because they look great. But they don't really know anything. And in a lot of cases, they're pretty dumb. Like you just read their, what the things they say.

And there's just not much going on up there. So it's not enough to just look good. You have to also be informed and you have to be able to articulate yourself and you have to come across as intelligent and educated. And there's no way to fake that. Uh, you know, again, a lot of people are into that. They're into trying to shortcut things and fake it till you make it and all that. I'm not, I don't believe in that. I believe in hard work. I believe also that people have a much better intuition and much better instincts than, than, um, other people that try that want to try to shortcut or fake it till you make it or kind of bullshit people, uh, give them credit for sure. There are the Mike chains out there that make a ton of money and they have all

their Muppets that, uh, you know, buy into their stuff. But that's a short lived, like that, that business model sucks. They don't, you know, one, it just sucks to be that person where you're, you know, you're just scamming people and you're, you know, you're not actually really helping them. You're just kind of promising things. So they give you some money and then maybe they'll give you money for a couple months until they realize, until they just are like, all right, this isn't working for me, and they move on to the next thing. That's a very normal business model here in the fitness space

where you figure you're going to hook somebody for a few months and the vast majority of people aren't going to get the results they want and then they're going to move on to something else. Not even necessarily going to blame you. They're going to think, well, it just didn't work for me. They'll move on to something else. I'm not into that. I much, much prefer, I'd much rather help people that, you know, you can't, not everyone's going to make it no matter what, because there's, you know,

people you have, you could have, you could lay out the best type of diet and the best type of exercise program. But if a person doesn't stick to it properly, well, there's nothing you can do about that. And that and that is inevitable. Sometimes people lose motivation or things happen in life that throw them off and they don't get back on. So, you know, it happens but I'm much more into the idea of

lay everything out that I can so people can get the type of results they want and build a long-term relationship there and that, sorry, it's just stupid allergies. Um, that, uh, is, it takes a lot more time, takes a lot more work, but it's also a lot more fulfilling and it has a lot more meaning. And, uh, in the, in, it builds, uh, an actual business that has value, long-term value, as opposed to, you know, something, something that you're always trying to keep, just, you're trying to get new suckers, basically.

That's kind of the standard type of fitness thing. It's just more and more eyeballs, and a certain percentage are going to take, and then you're going to get some money out of them, and they're going to flush out, and you just rinse and repeat. I'm into repeat, not just repeat business, but also relationships. Repeat just hearing from the same people again and getting updates and all that stuff. God, it's so annoying. I'm into not just repeat business, but also like relationships, repeat, just hearing from the same people again and getting updates and all that stuff. So, um, getting very educated is, is very, very key. That's, that's the message really of this point.

Um, and that means that, you know, it's not a, you can look at things in my opinion, in general, you can look at something as, Oh, it's so daunting and it's going to be so much work and build it up in your mind as it's going to be a thousand hours and that means you're going to have to watch a lot less TV and hang out with your friends a lot less and blah, blah, blah. And I think a lot of people psych themselves out when they look at some kind of large undertaking like that. look at, you know, some kind of large undertaking like that. And, you know, I have a bit of experience with large undertakings, I guess, because even from anything from writing a book, which is when you start from scratch, it's quite a process to go from an idea in your head to a completed book that's, you know, up and selling and doing well. Or, you know, launching Legion, that was about close to a year worth of preparatory work. Yeah, give or take a year, basically, of like, it wasn't a year full time, because I also was writing and doing stuff with Muscle for Life. But me and my partner in Legion, his name is Jeremy,

it was about a year that we were working on it before we were able to sell anything to take a single dollar. So you can imagine, and both of us are smart and we work hard and work fast, so there was a lot of stuff that needed to get done before we could really go on that. And a lot of preparatory work, a lot of survey type stuff, and to make, it's like that old, you know, that cliche of, what is it? It's like if you had a certain amount of time, I don't remember a certain amount of time to cut it, to cut a tree down, you'd spend the majority of your time sharpening your ax kind of thing. It was that type of approach where as opposed to just like, um, cause when I was first like,

okay, I want to, let's do Legion. Let's do a supplement company because I was selling a lot of other people's stuff and I'd rather just make my own supplements and make them better and make the stuff I actually really wanted and sell those instead. It was, there were certain people I knew that were of the mindset of like, you know, who cares? Just throw something up there, just get it going. And then you can always change it and fix it and you know, whatever. And yeah, you know, I went into the, I understand the minimal, minimum viable product type of concept and I actually agree with it. But when it came to doing a line of supplements, I kind of was in the beginning. I was like, no, we're not going to go over.

We're not going to spend five years preparing just to make a sale. But if we're going to do it, we're going to do it right. But if we're going to do it, we're going to do it right. And that means that there's going to be quite a bit of work in really laying out the, like, getting the products the way that we want it, getting the right type of formulations, which means a lot of research. And vetting manufacturers because I know that there's a lot of bullshit in the world of manufacturing, making sure that I'm getting a manufacturer that's not just going to give me a good price but it's not going to screw me you know, give me, uh, products that don't have what they say they have or have very low quality ingredients, um, to the branding side of things. Um, I mean, there are so many, uh, I'm a, I'm a big believer in, um, just high quality marketing in general. And that I think that's one of the most important skills you can have as a business person is be a good marketer, which kind of in conjunction with that, be a good salesperson. I mean, the easiest way to get into an industry, any industry, and make money is to identify a niche.

I mean, if it's an industry where there's large amounts of money being spent, you're probably not going to be able to just come in and dominate in the top-tier category. But identify a niche where there is a demand. There are companies selling things and doing well, but their marketing sucks. Just come in and be better marketers, have good products. And that's, that's a standard. Like if you, if you want to have generate goodwill and build a business, you have to have high quality products that meet customers needs. But beyond that, be better at marketing than your competitors and you're going to do well. So in my case, it was identifying that niche, which is growing now. But at the time it was, there weren't very many companies doing it, but I knew that there was a need for it. And that is kind of what I'm doing with Legion. you know, products that are all ingredients backed by good

science that is actually cited and you can go check the studies yourself. And so you're not just taking my word that, you know, this molecule is scientifically proven to do this. You can go see the research and why I'm including it in the products and all ingredients at clinically effective dosages, which everybody says, but when you, what is a clinically effective dosage? That means it's a dosage that was shown to be effective in scientific research. And that means again, that you have to show the scientific research to back up why you have, you know, however many, my pre-workout pulse, for instance, has 4.8 grams of beta alanine per serving. Why 4.8 grams? Because there's a meta-analysis that was done of 20 something studies on beta alanine per serving. Why 4.8 grams? Because there's a meta-analysis that was done of 20

something studies on beta alanine and performance. And it showed that the average effective dosage used was about 4.8 grams. So 4.8 grams, that's clinically effective dosage. If I were to put one gram and say clinically effective dosage, it doesn't mean anything anymore. According to what? Maybe you could find like one study where they used one gram and it did something. But when you start looking at the whole body of research on the molecule and you go, okay, well, if you really want to get its benefits when you review all this, you need to have upwards of five grams or so. Four to five grams is where you want to be to really get benefits. Sure, one gram is going to do something, but five grams is the real deal. So that is what I'm doing with my products.

Every ingredient is like that in every product. So you can go check it out yourself using natural sweeteners, no artificial sweeteners. And I'm actually switching over to natural flavoring too. My next, from now on, all products are going to be naturally flavored, which is in the beginning, we were working on, we on getting naturally flavored products versus artificially flavored products. And trying them and artificially flavored always tasted better, and they weren't really able to get the natural flavored ones to taste right because of the amount of active ingredients that are in my products. Like Pulse, for instance, has 8 grams of citrulline malate per serving, and cit malate tastes really, really bad. It tastes like weird, salty detergent.

It's gross. Very hard to deal with for flavoring. So in doing research on artificial flavors, basically, is there any reason why I should steer away from artificial flavors? There is nothing in terms of scientific research indicating that artificial flavoring is harmful to the body. Whereas artificial sweeteners, there's quite a bit of evidence that regular consumption of these types of chemicals can be harmful and especially to your gut flora, your gut health. So that's why I said, okay, no artificial sweeteners, but I'm fine with artificial flavoring. But now my manufacturer has been, it's actually been about three months, almost four month process going back and forth,

getting these to taste the way I want them to taste, but they've been able to do it with natural flavoring. So I'm going to switch to natural. Like, yeah, there's nothing wrong with artificial flavoring, but I'd rather have all natural flavoring just for the sake of, I don't know, because I'm into all natural things, I guess. So, you know, anyways, that's a quick little rundown of whatever, what I'm doing with Legion. And that was the niche that I saw where there was a need for this. And Legion is doing very, very well. And I think that, of course, there are definitely ways that I can improve Legion's marketing. But all in all, it's pretty, I think, pretty good.

The brand, everything looks nice. The sales copy reads well. It's well put together. And we are doing things, continually improving the look and coming up with new ideas to kind of engage customers more. And I'm going to be doing this golden label thing that I recently announced, which is every run of products is going to include a certain number of them with golden labels. And if you get one of the golden label products, then you win a year's worth of supplements of your choice. So just cool stuff like that. Like, you know, I thought of it randomly and, you know, the Willy Wonka thing. I'm like, that'd be fun, actually. I think I'm going to do that.

And it's not super expensive on my end. And I think it's cool so i'm gonna you know i think customers will like it so coming up with with more and more ideas on how to make uh make legion you know um just to set it even like its products are pretty unique and it sets it apart from up from its competitors but to do more and more to even just make it more unique. Um, and like, I'm going to be, for instance, I'm going to be starting a, a, a, a blog on Legion that I'm going to be writing for. So I'm going to be doing more writing every week, um, to, to kind of like, I want to make Legion, I want to replicate what I've done with MFL over at Legion. I want it to be a trusted resource for not just buying supplements, but for getting training and nutrition advice and make it a place where people can go. Like you've, I want people to say, Oh, you, you want to, you know, build muscle, lose fat, get fit. You need to check out, you

know, go, you need to go check out legion supplements and you know, also muscle for life, but I want legion to be in there too. Not just for the supplements. Um, I'm going to start doing some live Q and A's over at legion. Uh, I'm going to be, I'm going to set doing some live Q&As over at Legion. I'm going to set up a service at Legion, basically, where you can email in any questions that you have, diet, training, supplementation, whatever. And I'm going to have someone that he actually works here with me. And he handles a lot of Legion customer service. And he's into working out. He knows his stuff. He's read everything that I've written and read a lot of other stuff as well. He's just well-informed.

And, you know, he trains people here and there. He doesn't have that much time, but he's going to be basically an online trainer, but it's going to be for free. And I've seen other supplement companies do this where you can send an email, ask at blah. And, but one for one, when I've emailed, asking just a question, Hey, you know, anything, I've just sent random questions like, um, something about losing fat or losing fat and building muscle at the same time or whatever, no reply. And then, uh, or, uh, just an autoresponder reply telling me to buy stuff like that's so stupid. So what I want to do is set up a service where you could email.

Like, because I understand there's a lot that is, you know, you can just, if your question is, how do I lose fat? Sure, you can just go read an article on that. But there are a lot of people that have personal type of circumstances and things that make things tricky. You need some help. I want you to be able to email Legion and get answers. And not, oh, that's a good question. Oh, you want to lose fat? Yeah, here, buy this fat burner.

No. Like, okay, you want to lose fat, but your schedule is all la, la, la. Okay, cool. This is what we would do. Here, check this out and tell me what you think. And doing things like that are going to build goodwill, and it's worth paying someone just to do that because I know it will come back in terms of goodwill, and it will come back, it's, it's worth paying someone just to do that because I know

it'll come back in terms of goodwill and it'll come back in terms of eventually in money, you know, people buying things and whatever. Um, so that's kind of like the, the niche that I identified and then how I want to just really solidify Legion as the, the leader in that niche of actual science-based products, you know, 100% naturally sweet and naturally flavored, um, and, and really here to help, uh, you achieve your goals and even, you know, reach, uh, you know, a point of where you're fulfilling maybe needs you didn't even realize that, uh, your unwanted needs that you didn't realize what, you know, would have, uh, that your unwanted needs that you didn't realize what, you know, would have, uh, that, that you could achieve or that you would want. Um, and, uh, so yeah, that's, that's basically the, my,

my thought process on getting into, to an industry and really putting in the hard work and identifying and, you know, something unique that you can, that you can offer, um, and then out marketing your competition. Um, so I don't want to go on too long on this, but, um, another, another important thing here is, uh, I think that content marketing is super important these days for any business. If you want to do well on the internet, um, especially in the longterm. And if you want to not spend a shitload for your traffic, you have to be good at creating content. I would say that my strength is written content. I do these videos and that's cool. But as you can see, I don't, my focus is not on my YouTube channel. My focus is on my writing right now. And I just have quite a few writing projects that I want to still get through. I want to get through a couple more books and stuff. But in the future, I'll probably be putting a bit more emphasis on YouTube.

However, YouTube is a great source of content. I would question though, I would say, and this isn't to put down anybody on YouTube, but the average quality of a YouTube follower is going to be different than the average quality of a book reader. And I've seen this.

There are a lot of, I mean, I've met a lot of great people through YouTube and there are a lot of, you know, I have a lot of followers on YouTube. But a lot of them also came from reading books or reading stuff where I've looked more at other people's channels that don't really have any written content. And a lot of the YouTube traffic they get, you know, I understand people just, they want to get some tips and they kind of move on, but it's very different when somebody has sat down and spent, let's say 10 hours reading a book of yours or they feel that they've really gotten to know you and they've developed almost like a personal relationship with you. That's different. And yeah, you can achieve that, I guess, if you're sitting and watch 10 hours of YouTube videos from somebody. So, you know, maybe I'm off on that one.

But my focus has been writing, and that's what it will continue to be. So whatever you're going to do, you're going to want to be able to create really good content that people like. And that takes time. It's something you have to learn. I'm sure, like, you know, I've studied a ton on writing, and I've written a ton. So I've gotten pretty good at it. Um, if I were now going to be focusing on creating really good YouTube content, I would do the same thing.

I would study up a lot on that. I'm sure I'm making all kinds of mistakes and doing things that people don't like on YouTube and doing, not doing a lot of things that could be growing my channel faster and so forth. And that's what I'd be focusing on is how to create really good YouTube content, for example. Um, so move on to the next one here, which the note I made is get really good at marketing. I've already covered that.

I think that's probably the most important thing. Once you have a good product and you can create good content, then you have to be good at marketing. And you really, I mean, marketing is one of those subjects you can never know enough in, in my opinion, I've, I've read, I don't even know how many books on marketing I've read, uh, and courses and, you know, articles and stuff. I don't even know hundreds. Um, and I continue to, to study in the field just cause there is so much to know. Um, and that, you know, whenever I, this is just a personal thing. I, I'm sure I got this from someone. I didn't come up with it myself, but when I'm wanting to learn something, uh, like I said, recently I decided to start learning golf. So I apply this to golf or apply this to

marketing or writing or whatever. I, I assume that like the first step is going to be, uh, I outlined about 20 to 25 books in the subject going through finding people. I'm looking for people that have had success in the, in the, in the area. And I prefer to have the, to read stuff from the people, the more of the pioneers that discovered certain principles as opposed to people later that just embroidered on those original discoveries. Not that I wouldn't read the later stuff, but if I'm getting into a certain field, then I'm going to start with the classics in a sense, like in golf, it's like Ben Hogan's stuff and whatever. And then, you know, I'll move into other things after that. But I see that if you lay that out correctly and you have a good diverse list of books, 20 or 25 is a good amount of reading where by the end of that, you're going to have a really thorough understanding of the field.

And along the way, of course, you get into some application. I don't just sit and read and do nothing for 25 books, but I see that as the first milestone of where now I'll have a good idea of how everything works, where I need to be putting my energy and, uh, and so forth. So, uh, you know, that, that's just a little tip. So on marketing, I would, uh, that that's what I'd recommend. And, you know, I, I should recommend. And I should make a note. I could create, it might just be a post that people would like,

25 marketing books that you have to read kind of thing. Anyway, I'll make a note of that. So another thing here is to build your business, one follower and one customer at a time. Big believer in this, treating everybody with importance, being available to answer questions and, you know, don't live in an ivory tower and think that you're better than the great unwashed. You know what I mean? A lot of people do that, especially they get a little bit of

success. Now they think they're better than everybody and they don't respond to any communication anymore or they want to get paid to just answer a question. So stupid. or they want to get paid to just answer a question. So stupid. You know, what comes to mind is Charles Darwin spent hours every day answering letters for his entire life, I think. I mean, his entire professional career, for sure. And this was after he published Origins of the Species. This is when he was Charles Darwin, and he would spend hours just answering people's letters.

Anybody that wrote him, he would answer. And there are quite a few other people. There was a book I read called Daily Rituals that just kind of an interesting book. I wouldn't say gimmicky. I picked up a few little interesting things in there. But it was kind of interesting just to see how a lot of the great artists and inventors and thinkers and whatever of history, what their daily routines were like. And I saw that there was in there, there were a handful of people at least that made time every day to answer letters. And that was handwriting too.

And now I can just hop into my Gmail and with all my keyboard shortcuts and with my whole system, my snippets, all my stuff worked out, I can blow through a hundred emails and, uh, you know, in, I can get through probably about, yeah, an email a minute on average. So hour and a half, two hours, I can get through a lot of emails and, you know, I'm just sitting here typing away and I can answer so many. I can't, I can't complain. I mean, imagine if I had to handwrite, I had to get stacks of letters, imagine if I had to handwrite, I had stacks of letters in here that I had to handwrite responses to.

That would be a pain in the ass. So be genuinely helpful and really focus on meeting each individual's needs in any way that you can. And don't get so focused on just numbers. Just like, well, if I just get in enough people, I'll get enough money. And who cares about all the details? And, you know, some people will stick.

Some people, I'm not into that. I like really trying to gain one person at a time. And that one person, give them good service, help them out. And then know that, like, cool, there's a good chance now that person is going to, you know, check out more of my stuff. And when I publish a new book, there's a good chance that person is going to at least check it out and think about getting it. And that's, you know, and now that I've done that where I've answered, I think my Gmail inbox, because I just leave everything in there. Because it's great for also like I have every conversation I've ever had in there with anybody. I think I have like 35,000 emails in

there now. So, but that's like every time I answer one, that's a little, you know, something that can come back to me. And I look at it that way. And same thing with Legion. We take care of everybody. If people don't like things, we give them refunds. We switch out products, kind of go out of our way to give people good customer service. Because again, I think it's just one person at a time. That's what I'm, that's what I'm looking to do. Um, and last but not least, last but not least is choose the right people to work with you and take good care of them. Um, so I don't do this all alone. Muscle for life is I do all the writing, but, uh, there's a lot of other stuff that happens behind the scenes that makes it all possible that's handled by Nico.

It's handled by Sam, who handles all the meal plans and does a great job on that. And Nico, he's helped me on a ton of things with his upcoming book launch, all the logistics, blah, blah, blah. He does a great job on that. Legion is not just me. blah, blah, blah. He does a great job on that. Legion is not just me. It's Jeremy who handles all the marketing and a few other things, just kind of random type of things as well. And Kareem handles all the shipping. He, and the, when I'm, when I'm looking for to, you know, like I need to hire another person, for instance, and when I'm looking for who to hire, you know, I'm looking for somebody that is going to fit in with our group. We are, all those guys are, you know,

in their early to mid twenties, I'm 30, but maybe mentally I'm, you know, 20. And so, you know, in their early to mid 20s. I'm 30. But maybe mentally, I'm, you know, 20. And so, you know, we all we have internet crude sense of humor. And, you know, so there's like a certain environment here that you have to be okay with. And so they need to fit in. And I'm looking for somebody that is smart, but not overly. I think sometimes people put a bit too much emphasis on the importance of intelligence in success. And me personally, I mean, this has also just been research. This is not even a personal opinion, but just IQ is not nearly as important for success as grit

and just the willingness to work hard. I'll take somebody with a very normal or let's say average IQ, but a very high drive. I'll take that person every day over a high IQ, low drive. High IQ, low drive, those people are so annoying to work with because they constantly need motivation. They constantly need, come on, come on. Like, why aren't you, why don't you want to work? What is wrong with you? And even though they might come up with good ideas, but then like, oh yeah, some, some brilliant idea, but that's going to require a lot of work. And I'm like, no, you suck. I'd much rather take some of that maybe doesn't have the best ideas, but they don't mess things up, but they're driven. They're going to be there ambitious. They're there to work and

they want to get stuff done. That's the type of person that I want to work with. And if somebody is high IQ and high drive, great. I mean, that's the superstar type of person. That's cool too. So all of us here, all the guys I work with are all smart guys. They work hard. And so I kind of like in a sense I'm looking – I've kind of surrounded myself by people that are superstars in their own regard. And we all work together and do a really good job. And in terms of taking good care of them, I mean there's a book I just read recently that I really liked. And I'm kind of like pulling all my notes and highlights out and putting together a little plan how I'm going to put it into play. But it's called Peak and it's from a guy named Chip Conley. Let me make sure I got that right.

Amazon. Peak Conley. Yeah. Peak, how great companies get their mojo from Maslow, Chip Conley. And great book. It's kind of built around Abraham Maslow's pyramid, psychological pyramid, which you've probably heard about where at the bottom you have like base survival needs. And in the middle of this pyramid, you have like self-recognition. And then at the top, you have self-actualization.

And then at the top, you have self-actualization. Anyways, and what I like a lot about this book is in terms of employees is just how important it is to not just pay people well, but also to create an environment where they are recognized for their good work, where they feel appreciated, and where they, and then even above that, where they feel like they are doing what they were really meant to do and their work really aligns with their talents and that it really has meaning and it's making a difference. And so in terms of Muscle for Life and Legion, that's also one of the reasons why I've been able to get people that are willing to work hard and do what needs to happen to make it all go is we actually are helping people. We have so many good success stories, and we get new success stories every week.

And that matters. That makes you feel good. It gives meaning to your work. And in Legion, even in terms of the supplements, ironically, I'm seeing now different little copycats popping up trying to do the exact same thing as Legion, and that's cool. The few that I can think of, their marketing is pretty shitty, so I don't know how they're going to do ultimately. But it's cool to see that other companies are – in one case, it's a pretty big company on Amazon actually that has now been changing over to the same type of marketing as Legion, no artificial sweeteners or flavors and clinically effective dosages, even though their products are bullshit.

So they're kind of just abusing it. But it's kind of cool to see. I would love to see that becoming a trend. I'd love to see in five years where a lot of big supplement companies are now having to actually sell good products and are taking some of the unnecessary chemicals and stuff out of their products. I don't know if it's going to happen. Only the consumers can really force that kind of change.

If people are willing to continue buying exactly what they're buying today and five years from now, then the supplement companies are going to continue selling them exactly that. But I think it's cool to see at least some companies are noticing what Legion's doing and seeing like, hey, that's a good idea. Because even if they're just trying to rip me off, if they are, let's say, producing, you know, just better products, then that's better for everybody in general. So yeah, I guess, I mean, there's more that could be said, obviously, on getting and keeping good people. But I would, for now, recommend's more that could be said obviously on, on, on getting and keeping good people, but I would for now recommend pick up peak. I'll link to it in the description below.

And if you're interested in that, you know, how to, how to build a business that doesn't just make money, but that makes a difference both in the lives of employees and, and customers, I highly recommend that book. All right. This is a longer podcast. and customers. I highly recommend that book. All right. This is a longer podcast. Um, and I'm going to cut it off here. Uh, I hope you liked it and, uh, I will see you next week. Hey, it's Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two, um, where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www.muscleforlife.com, where you'll find not only past episodes of the podcast,

but you'll also find a bunch of different articles that I've written. I release a new one almost every day, actually. I release kind of like four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I'm involved in over at muscleforlife.com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.