Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Interview With Scott Herman on How to Be Successful in the Fitness Industry

Episode Date: December 23, 2014

In this podcast, I interview Scott Herman and we talk about the key lessons he's learned about succeeding in this industry. He started as an ordinary guy pursuing a modeling and actor career and is now a YouTube sensation, BSN sponsored athlete, and successful entrepreneur, so we can all learn something! Scott Herman's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/ScottHermanFitness 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 I just want to say thanks for checking out my podcast. I hope you like what I have to say. And if you do like what I have to say in the podcast, then I guarantee you're going to like my books. 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. I mean, these books, they're basically going to 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 live

in the gym grinding through workouts that you hate. Now, you can find these books everywhere. You can buy them online, you know, Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and so forth. And if you're into audio books like me, you can actually get one of them for free with a 30-day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to www.muscleforlife.com forward slash audio books and you can see how to do that there. I make my living primarily as a writer, so as you can imagine, every book sold helps. So please do check out my books if you haven't already. Now also, if you like my work in general, then I think you're going to really like what I'm doing with my supplement company, Legion. As you may know, I'm really not a fan of the supplement industry. I've wasted who knows how much money over the

years on worthless junk supplements and have always had trouble finding products that I actually liked and felt were worth buying. And that's why I finally decided to just make my own. Now, a few of the things that make my supplements unique are, one, they're 100% naturally sweetened and flavored. Two, all ingredients are backed by peer-reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself because we explain why we've chosen each ingredient and we cite all supporting studies on our website,

which means you can dive in and go validate everything that we say. Three, all ingredients are also included at clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in the studies proving their effectiveness. And four, there are no proprietary blends, which means that you know exactly what you're buying. Our formulations are 100% transparent. So if that sounds interesting to you, then head over to legionathletics.com. That's L-E-G-I-O-N athletics.com. And you can learn a bit more about the supplements that I have as well as my mission for the company, because I want to accomplish more than just sell supplements. I really want to try to make a change for the better in the supplement industry because I think it's long

overdue. And ultimately, if you like what you see and you want to buy something, then you can use the coupon code podcast, P-O-D-C-A-S-T, and you'll save 10% on your first order. So 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 the Muscle for Life probably come across Scott's videos. He's massive on YouTube, has over 500,000 subscribers. He also has his own website, scotthermanfitness.com. He's a BSN sponsored athlete. And now he's doing some more entrepreneurial things. So I thought it'd be a great idea to talk to him about what he has done to succeed in this industry. Because he started as a is, you know, he started as, as, as a guy just living in New York, uh, trying to, you know, modeling acting. And, uh, now, you know,

a few years later, he's this big fitness star. So I wanted to know what were the, what were the big lessons he's learned along the way that can help us succeed either in this industry, if that's your interest, if you know, you're interested in doing something in the fitness industry or just, you know, general lessons that we can apply, you know, in, in whatever, uh, field of work that we do. So hope you enjoyed the interview. Let's get to it. Thanks for coming on the show, Scott. I appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for having me, man. It's a pleasure to finally meet you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, everybody knows you, you don't need an introduction,

even though I'll give you a little. Thanks, man. You're too kind. So tell me, so how did you get started in fitness? Did you play sports in high school or did you play in college or like where did it start for you? Yeah, I've been into sports my whole life. My dad was, you know, really adamant about making sure we were active as kids and learned all about team building. Started off with started off with baseball actually which I kind of grew up to hate same here actually I started playing baseball when I was like nine and then ditched it for hockey oh really I ditched it for soccer oh cool you know it was I just when you're that when you're at that age everyone's still kind of

learning how to throw the ball. Yeah. And, you know, I'm wearing a helmet, but I got hit in the back by so many balls by the pitcher. I was like, you know what? My dad was the coach. I'm like, this is my last year. I hate this game. But anyways, so I actually moved from baseball, and then I started doing soccer. And then in the winter, I started doing wrestling.

Oh, okay. Then I kept up with those all throughout high school. Wrestling was probably your first taste of weightlifting then, huh? Yeah. Actually, one of my teammates, he knew that I was lifting in my basement at home. He worked at a Gold's gym. He was like, hey know i work at this gym for three hours a week on a saturday and the guy gives me a free membership uh would you want to

come do it with me and lift with me i was like sweet you know and that's kind of basically how i got my foot in the door at the gym it was a gold gym at the time so i'm one of the lucky ones i have all those old school like sweet gold gym tank tops that you don't find anymore. You can probably sell them now for like $200 a shirt. Yeah. I got, I got like eight of them. They're all different colors. I remember when I first wore them, you know, they were like dresses now. Yeah. They're still kind of like a dress, but you know, those are more like a blouse. Yeah, exactly. Cool. So, so you did that and then now fast forward a little bit. So how did you get started, uh, in fitness as a career? What's kind of like the origin story?

Uh, well, it basically started when I started working in the gym. I'm very, very detail oriented. And so my job was to clean and I always did a really good job of cleaning the facility. You know, my my boss would basically tell me to go take care of something and he'd leave me alone for four to five hours. Now I was only 14 years old. And he would he would come back and everything would be like pristine, you know, cleaner than it was when he bought it. And so he took a liking to me. And, you know, eventually they started paying when he bought it. And so he took a liking to me and, you know, eventually they started paying me. I started working in the gym full time. I started, you know, fixing all the machines in the gym, started doing things at the front desk, started selling

memberships. And then when I turned 18, I became a personal trainer and basically kept making my way up from there. I, you know, became the general manager of the facility I was working in. I was the head trainer of the facility I was working in. That's great. So my rise pretty much started from the bottom. And when did you start getting on the internet? How did that begin for you? I started doing my YouTube channel when I was living in New York in 2009.

And it basically started because that was the first time in my life where I actually was not a part of any gym. I was living in New York, I was pursuing a career in the entertainment business and just got to a point where I started to really miss the gym. I miss being in the gym every day. I miss seeing people every day. I just miss being around that atmosphere all day long, you know? Yeah. And so I decided that I wanted to make YouTube videos and I'd start talking about different subjects and I'd answer questions from my community members in my apartment room. And then from there, I basically decided that I was going to move home and do this full time instead of staying in New York and, you know, dealing with that whole part of the industry. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So when you made that decision, was that like pretty early on? Was there just where you saw like, hey, this could be something. I'm just going to go for it. Yeah, basically I contacted, you know, my buddy that I had worked for. I mean, I worked for the same guy. His name is Dave. I worked for him for about 10 years. And so when I decided to come back, I got a job at one of his gyms working as a personal trainer while I built my business on the side. That's cool.

And then when I built it up to a point where I could sustain my income to cover my bills and make some money, then I basically stopped working at the gym and I started doing my own business full time. That's great. And along the way, I mean now, because you know i've i've had people i'm sure you get asked a lot right from people they either want to get in the industry or just you know just they they want to learn anything that they can learn from you that might apply to what they're doing maybe it has nothing to do with fitness but it's kind of uh you know if you're on the

outside looking in and you look now at, okay, Scott Herman fitness, you're huge. You have, I mean, a bajillion views on, uh, you know, on YouTube, you have all of these followers and stuff, but it's cool to hear kind of like, you know, it took, this is a process just similar to working out. It took years of work. And you know, when you started it, I'm sure when you put your first YouTube video online, I don't know if, I mean, did you have like this vision of what it could be, or was it just something where you're like, Hey, you know, I can help people out and let me see where I'll just do this and see if anyone cares. Yeah. I mean, pretty much I was, I know it's how it was for me with my

first book. I was like, Hey, I don't know if this stuff works, but I don't know if anybody cares. I'll just see what happens. Yeah. I think at the end of the day, Mike, I mean, if you're getting into fitness because you want to help people, I think things kind of unfold on their own. Yeah. If you're getting into the, if you're getting into it and you're putting videos on YouTube because you want to make, you know, a jackass out of yourself and get a lot of views. Yeah. You know what I mean? There's definitely two different sides to the spectrum. Yeah. I had no idea you could even make money posting videos on YouTube.

I didn't even know it could turn into a business because I did it in 2009. I mean, I would say that I kind of pioneered the trend of building a business on YouTube because when I first started doing it, there wasn't really a lot of people doing it consistently. I noticed that people made like four or five videos and they stopped. But for me, when I put that first video up, I just wanted to find a way to interact with people

to talk about fitness and help them because that's what was missing from my life when I was living in New York. I was not in the gym anymore. I wasn't helping anyone. I wasn't saying keep your core tight, keep your arms straight. I wanted to do those things again. Squat lower.

Stop rounding your back on the deadlift. Stop complaining. Drink some water. Let's go. Two more reps. What are you doing? Stop sleeping. All those fun things. Yeah, yeah. Two more reps. What are you doing? Stop sleeping. You know, all those fun

things. Yeah. Get off your phone. Yeah. Yeah. So for me, it was, it was more of, okay, you know, maybe this will be something fun that I can do and I can kind of get back a taste of what I was missing out on by living in the city. Yeah, that's great. And I totally agree that if you focus and I mean, that really applies not just to fitness, but applies to any just about any type of work, you know, maybe it doesn't apply to like the professional poker player or some like weird type of, you know, career choices. But if you are willing to put in the time and actually want to help people, I mean, that is really what sets apart people like you. And I would also include myself in that. I mean, I take a lot of time answering people's questions.

I answer all emails myself. I mean, I get a couple hundred a day between emails and social media messages and blog comments and stuff. And I have like a very efficient way of going through it. But it's me. I don't have a personal assistant that does it for me. Um, and I don't charge anything for that because I always found that lame. Like that was something when I started working out, I got into it because I just wanted to get girls. I was 17 and you know, I was getting to, I started, it was like at that age, we're like, Oh, okay. So girls like muscles. I realized that. So I'm going to

start working out. I didn't know anything anything I picked up some magazines and started doing shitty workouts and you know and in trying to get help of course online you go on forums and you get all kinds of crazy contradictory advice and you know a lot of coaches or online coaches whatever which is much more popular now than when I'm 29 so that was like 12 years ago there wasn't really anybody that I knew of online, but now you have, you know, online coaches are a dime a dozen. And a lot of them, they won't even answer a single question. Like they won't even, it could be a five second answer, a yes or no, maybe you'll get, but if it takes more than typing a paragraph, they're not going to bother. You know what I mean? Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean, that's, I think what my

community likes best about me is that I always take the time to get in there and answer questions and you know really try to point people in the right direction and you know it does get tough as you get older or as you as you grow your business because there's a lot of your time gets limited yeah you know that's actually why on my website I built a forum section, because at least in my forums, if I'm answering the question or not, I can still kind of read through the comments. Yeah. And if everything looks legit, you know, I can chime in and say, hey, you know, great thread. You know, you guys answered the question really well. You know, this is all great. Yeah. Or if I see like there's maybe some miscommunication or some misinformation or maybe I just want to add my own two cents, I can get in there and have my own two cents. Because at the end of the day, I mean, I'm sure you know as well as I do, Mike, it's,

you know, in the beginning, it's easy to be the one answering all the questions. But as things start to really grow, you got to find a way to kind of bring that community together that you've been teaching for the last five years. know all these people that i've been teaching and helping and guiding you know they now want to give back and so if you can create a platform for them to have a voice they'll be more than happy to use it and help people the way you help them and that's kind of what my website is turning into and And I'm happy about that because I can spend more time on content. Yeah. I hear you. I kind of just leave it at like, I do about two hours a day and I'm able to get through everything I need to get through in those two hours. But I

hear you for sure. I mean, you're you what you have in terms, I'm sure, like even in just, you know, video comments alone, there's a point where you can't do it anymore, where it just is impossible. But I think that's great that you've set up a way for, you know, let like everybody knows they can come on your forum and they can discuss things there and you keep an eye on it and you jump in, you help out. And, you know, people understand you're very busy, but they love to see that. People understand you're very busy, but they love to see that. I mean, as you know, and this is something that I just, whenever people ask me, like, okay, so what are, like, you know, the top three things, like, pieces of advice for getting into the industry? And this is always the first one is you have to actually, like, enjoy helping people. Because if you don't, you're going to hate the type of work that it takes. There are no, like, even if you're, I mean, if you're a very good marketer, you can scam people if that's what you want to do.

Like, yeah, sure. You can go sell, you know, whatever bullshit pills. And, but if you really want to build a long-term business, you have to really actually like helping people because that's going to be a lot of your time. I mean, even what are you doing when you're creating your content? You're just creating helpful stuff when I'm, you know, you're, uh, you do a ton of YouTube stuff. I'm kind of a YouTube, but I, I'm in, I'm in nothing on YouTube. I think I have a couple of thousand. I I'm very random with my YouTube because I, a lot of my time is writing, but that's my, that's really my schedule. And it's the same thing. Like, why do I write these articles week after week and don't charge anything just because it's

interesting. And I like to help people, you know? Yeah, and plus it's a really easy way for us to learn new things. I mean, to be honest, I've learned more about how to better myself as far as fitness from when I started my YouTube channel than I ever learned working in the gym as a trainer because I have to go out there and find new things. If I put out a video that's, you know, complete bullcrap, my community members that are, are that, that are smart are going to say, bro, this is a, this isn't true. This isn't right. Your form's off, you know? So it's kind of like, okay, I gotta be really make sure I'm on my toes. I gotta really make sure I do my homework. And

you know, I would say even the trolling on on YouTube has kind of died down like as far as people picking on specific things about form and whatnot because I feel like just because of YouTube because of all the content that's out there people are getting smarter but because they're getting smarter they're expecting smarter I guess videos they're expecting more information from your videos. For me, that's great because then I can actually put time into a great video and it'll get the views it deserves as opposed

to just filming myself going to the gym, lifting some weights, making some noises, maybe yelling out a few catchphrases. There are some people, I mean, they're not as big as you, but where their videos are just them lifting and people, I don't know, not as big as you, but where their videos are just them lifting. And people, I don't know, I guess people like to watch the same, like, here's me deadlifting 455 one week.

And then here are seven other videos of me doing. Maybe now I'm up to 465 or something. To me, that's like, really? This person has this many followers and this is all they post? Like, why do people even want to watch this? I feel like, well, there is a little bit of inspiration i mean when you see someone lifting and i guess that's true if they're lifting something like i wish i wish my gym had that i work out early in the morning so it's just a bunch of old people and every day i'm like god i wish there was just one person in here that you know it's like lifting real weight i want to feel

inspired no it's so true because that's basically what happens at my gym i mean my girlfriend lifts heavier than some of the dudes in my gym you know and it's like oh gosh you know yeah you look around and all you see are like dudes in in weight belts like curling or something you're like oh God, what is going on right now? The biggest frustration for me at my gym is when I go over and I try to help, especially with like a squat or a bench press. Yeah. And then I see the same people with the trainers in the gym being told not go all the way down or being told not to use full range of motion.

And then, you know. Or even worse that like squats are dangerous or you know dead lifts y'all you're gonna hurt your back if you deadlift or just terrible advice yeah i mean there's there really isn't one trainer in my gym that's teaching deadlifts properly and i i cringe and and it's like my gym is i help build this place you know i have no shame in going over and helping people you're still herman man you do whatever you want yeah well that's the thing is i don't go over there and i don't say i'm a trainer i don't say you know i have hey by the way i have this youtube channel and you should watch it and if they ask i'll definitely ask but usually come over and i'll be like hey excuse me you know i

just want to give you a few tips on your on your deadlift to help you with your proper form or your bench press and yeah you know and then i feel like all that gets washed away by somebody else in the gym saying, no, I want to lift heavier. And they, they add 25, 35,

45, and the range of motion gets shorter and shorter and shorter. Yeah. But that's the gym. That's the gym life. I know. I know. I don't,

I, I really don't even, I mean, I, there are, it's the same crowd. So, you know,

I've said, I've said things nicely, same, same thing, but's the same crowd, so I've said things nicely. Same thing, but I guess sometimes people, they just get set in their ways on, because it would mean dropping 50 pounds off the bar if you're actually going to do it right. Yeah, it has nothing to do with being set in their ways. It's being set with how much weight they're lifting. Yeah, I guess it's that. No dude likes to take weight off yeah or even or even lose a rep let alone take weight off yeah exactly yeah sometimes i'll get i'll get emailed

sometimes people will be like you know my bench press was down one rep this week is something wrong and like oh man i mean it happens like you i don't know maybe you were a little bit maybe you won't rest in 30 seconds less this time like it's not you know don't don't know, maybe you're a little bit, maybe you won't rest in 30 seconds less this time. Like, it's not, you know, don't worry about it. Unless, like, all of a sudden you're 30 pounds off the bar or something, it's okay. Yeah, there's always going to be fluctuations depending on your eating and your sleeping and, you know. There just seems to be natural fluctuations, at least for me, because, I mean, like you, I emphasize heavy, heavy, you know, compound weightlifting. And I've looked at graphs, you know, like the little graphs that the apps generate and stuff. And it really

does seem like my progress on the, if I look at my last six months progress, like on my one rep max and my deadlift, you know, it goes up, but it goes up in a trend of like, it goes up and then a little bit down and then a little bit higher and a little bit down and a little bit higher still and a little bit down, you know, it just seems to little bit down and a little bit higher still and a little bit down. It just seems to be like there's almost a natural – and that's not me trying necessarily to detrain it. It just – that's just how it goes. I don't know. Yeah, I mean for strength gains, you need to really be on it every single week. And for me, my schedule has been so out of control i've kind of just

maintained my strength and i'm fine with that i'm happy with my strength i'm more of an endurance athlete i love doing endurance i'm always pushing myself with my circuits and i kind of like that better to be honest okay i like i like to be you know big and muscular but when it comes down to videos that i put out i love doing just total body circuits and doing them you know with the timer so my viewers at home can do them with me oh cool and then and but add in you know compound a lot of compound movements along with some fancy body weight stuff you know yeah yeah yeah yeah totally i just Yeah, totally. I just put a video out yesterday, and it was actually a bicep and an ab workout. But I started it by deadlifting 315 for 30 reps, you know, in a row, nonstop. Wow, that's pretty impressive.

I don't think I could do that. I'm sure you could. You just got to dig deep and push. That's like, you know, CrossFit style, go until you you die yeah exactly and i and i kind of like that like i said my um i did a gene test uh and with this company called muscle genes and one of the things that came back is it said that my body's built basically for endurance you know it's not and i kind of already knew that this you know if by having the gene test come back and tell me that, that most of my muscles are slow-twitch muscle fibers

and I'm built for endurance. It's like, sweet, because that's what I'm great at. I like that. That's cool. That's interesting, muscle genes. I'm going to check that out. Yeah, musclegenes.com. That's actually where I'm going with my girlfriend.

We're going to the Body Power Expo in the United Kingdom in a couple weeks, and we're going to be with the Muscle Genes team. Oh, nice. Interesting. I'm going to check it out. So let's get back to now on the business side of things. So what would you say, like, what are some of the key lessons you've learned

in building your business and building your brand? You know, helping as a first and foremost thing, that's a great one. What are a couple other things that just kind of stand out as like, you know, the big lessons you've learned over the last, whatever, six years or so? I'd say the biggest lesson

that I've learned is that if you want to be around for a while, you need to make sure that you have a brand that people can relate to and that they can always relate to. You don't want to be

like a Jersey Shore. You know what I mean? Yeah. You don't want to be like a Jersey Shore. You know what I mean? Yeah. I want to be a trend. And unfortunately, a lot of people get into this habit of doing trendy things because it's cool and they might get a lot of hits or they might get a lot of views or a lot of stuff. If I think of like the whole aesthetics lifestyle, that whole thing is a good example of that,

I think. Yeah, exactly. And if you get into it if you everyone's trying to be ziz you know what i mean yeah oh my gosh my girlfriend posted on her instagram something about ziz and a bunch of people got really mad it's kind of funny though well because that lifestyle of taking drugs and drinking you know what does it result and unfortunately for ziz it resulted in him dying yeah you know, what does it result in? Unfortunately for Ziz, it resulted in him dying. Yeah.

You know, he is dead. Allegedly, man. Like, how can you look up to someone who died doing all the wrong things? I would never say, if anyone is listening and they're a fan, like, hey, I'm not trying to say anything bad about someone who's passed away. It's a tragedy and, you know, it sucks that it happened. But, you know, be smart. Why did it happen?

You know why it happened. You know, and if you if you want to try to convince yourself that he wasn't, you know, drinking and partying. I mean, he was open about that. He never I mean, you know, there are pictures of him, his brother shooting him in the ass like and he's joking like, oh, it's a flu shot. He would you know, he just joked about all the clen used to use like he was open about it he wasn't he never pretended like he was oh he was open about all the steroids things oh man no 100 yeah yeah he used to troll like on the

misc forums on bodybuilding.com he there were images like of of his brother whatever chest bra or something injecting him uh you know injecting him in the ass and he's like a flu shot or something you know he didn't care and he ass. And he's like a flu shot or something. You know, he didn't care. And he would be on cam like showing his clan and stuff. He didn't care at all. He never pretended like he was natural. Oh, my.

I didn't even know that. I never really dove into it. Well, on top of that, I mean, yeah, that's ridiculous. So you have that. And then you also, of course, partying, which you talked about. And I think like cocaine use and stuff. So, yeah, you're right. I mean it's just like that is the kind of life that he was living.

Well, most people, they can't afford these drugs, and they want to be natural lifters. And I just put out a video on testosterone. My girlfriend is a chemical engineer, and we spent a lot of time doing a lot of research on tests and test boosters and how to optimize your t levels naturally and it's like what are the basically number number one number two things that you should not be doing if you want to optimize your natural testosterone levels number one you shouldn't be drinking all the time because it's going to kill it and number two you have to get sleep so if you're following somebody who lives a party lifestyle of not sleeping and drinking too much, how do you expect to make the same gains or how do you expect to follow that suit?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. But because you had guys like him that were injecting, so it didn't matter. In terms of how much he was in terms of what he was how much he was sleeping how much he was drinking like yeah i'm sure his test was at like you know 3 000 plus ngdl at all times because he was on drugs so well i mean that's the thing and as part of what i do for my community i mean my community lately have been calling they've been calling me the natty king i've seen a lot of comments on my Instagram, which I think is cool. And I hope it sticks.

I'm not going to tell them to do it. Well, I guess I just kind of did. But I'm not going to tell people to keep saying that. But it makes me feel good because it feels like finally people are starting to understand what it truly means to be a natural athlete. And they're starting to really have a lot more respect for that. Yeah. Because starting to see the differences. And one of the things that I preach on my channel is, you know, to stay natural and,

you know, to always give it your best and try your hardest. And, you know, I don't want to become a trend. And so with my videos, I do like to do a little bit of the vlogging. I do like to do some of the fun stuff. But 90% of the time I'm trying to teach information that's timeless. Yeah. Yeah. Because you know, you might, you know, maybe you're 18 years old and you're watching my videos and you think I'm cool because you know, I go out and I do all this cool stuff and you know, I, I cause trouble or I say weird things and you think I'm cool. Now, when that person turns 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 35, you know what I mean?

Are they still going to think that those videos are cool? Like, would you watch? I mean, you're 29 years old. You're the same age as me. You know, unless it's like Dragon Ball Z or something cool like that, I mean, you're probably not watching all the things you watched when you were 16, 17 years old. You know? Yeah, yeah, I know.

I mean, of course, it's hard to even remember. What was it like? Oh, that's right. Like Billy Madison, for example. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I actually, I mean, I grew up with that. So I still think, you know, Adam Sandler's older movies are funny. But I was in a conversation with my girlfriend who's a little older than i am she's in the car i can't tell

you how old she is anyways so to her you know it was it wasn't her generation like adam sandler that that kind of style of comedy so she doesn't like it and she doesn't like it, and she doesn't like it now. So if you want to appeal to the masses, I mean, right now, YouTube is very popular with the young crowd, let's face it. The majority of people on YouTube are young. What's going to happen when they get older and their mindsets change or they, you know what I mean, they start wanting more quality information as opposed to just someone tooling around. It happens to all those videos that you put up. I mean they still might get hits, but they don't become timeless. They're not something that people will go back to and continuously watch because it's like a TV show.

Unless you want to go back to learn something, maybe you forgot proper form or you forgot how, for example, how testosterone works in your body, you want to make sure you're doing things correctly. And unfortunately, the mainstream media way of building a business takes a little longer, but it definitely will last forever if you do it right. And for me, you know, I'm more about wanting to build a brand that's here forever, as opposed to being around for a few years, getting popular, and then no one cares anymore. Yeah, I totally agree. It is just kind of knowing who are you going after. Who's your target audience? Are you trying to create videos to make 18-year-old dudes laugh or are you trying to create videos that an 18 year old can learn from? And so can a 45 year

old, you know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. And on another note, you know, I have three DVDs coming out this year with Lionsgate. I'm like the official trainer for the B-Fit YouTube channel. And my first DVD is coming out soon. It's a 30 day six pack ab series. And, you know, is coming out soon. It's a 30-day six-pack ab series. Big companies like Lionsgate, they wouldn't come after me if I wasn't keeping my brand very

professional. Because at the end of the day, the mainstream market is always going to be a huge, massive market. It always is. It's a completely different market from YouTube. The YouTube's a completely different market from youtube like the youtube audience is very different from the mainstream audience and obviously there's

there's a line in the middle where they blur and it's people who obviously are on both ends of the spectrum but to be successful on youtube and then bring that to the mainstream and then be able to bring mainstream back to your youtube channel and start to create that circle of, you know, combining your fans, whether they're mainstream or YouTube. I mean, that's, that's the goal for me. And I'm almost at that point where I'm starting to really bring in people in from all aspects of, I guess, the world or, you know, viewership. But that to me is the ultimate goal. And it's to basically do that and to help as many people as possible by providing quality information. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I totally agree. Are there any kind of big mistakes that you kind of made along with it? Things where you just,

well, I learned a lesson there. On the other hand of it that you think people should avoid? a lesson there on the other on the other hand of it that you know you think people should avoid this well besides all the like you know nude videos that i made and posted i took those down that was a big mistake are you serious i didn't know about it no i i'm completely kidding i don't know man there i i hear stories about people all kinds of weird stuff it's the internet i nothing i grew up on the internet nothing surprised me me. I hear anything, I'm like, oh, yeah, that probably happened. Before I get big, just make a sex tape. That's my advice for anyone listening to this podcast. Kardashians showed us in Paris Hilton.

Yeah, that's why I always – every time my girlfriend watches the Kardashians, I'm like, you're famous for having a sex tape. Stop being on TV. I know. I guess the mom's probably smart. Somebody's smart. I mean, there is... No, it's the mom. Me and Erica and I talk about this. She's like, if it wasn't for their mom,

they would have nothing. Yeah. Somebody is smart. Somebody whores them out to the max and so it's probably the mom. Yeah, it is the mom. I mean, I wish she worked for us. She's a mastermind. Look what she did. She can take those idiots and turn that into something. Wow.

Can you imagine her? She's sitting down, and she's like, damn it. My daughter just put out a sex tape. How can I get this into a billion-dollar industry for my family? Yeah, how do I make $300 million from this? Well, as far as – we'll get back on track. So, mistakes. Yeah, any mistakes that kind of stand out?

I would say there's only really one mistake that I made, and it was an opportunity I had a few years ago where I partnered with Sears, and they wanted to build this whole fitness community, and they wanted to do all these great things, and it sounded great at the time, and it seemed like it was going to be a really good opportunity for my business to grow as well. And what ended up happening is they basically hired me

to provide them with social media and videos because that's what I do for a living, and that's what I was great at but then they started telling me how to do it even though they didn't really have a clue and so they started having me make videos for specific things that to be honest they weren't that intense um they wanted me to make every video under four minutes long so there was obviously no time for me to actually do the workouts it was just me demonstrating them and at the end of the day if i make a four minute

video and i say hey you know today's workout you're gonna do um 15 push-ups and 15 air squats and you're gonna complete 10 sets and then the video is over and you're gonna be like go guys all right yeah and as the viewer you know maybe you're going to be like, go guys. All right. Yeah. And as the viewer, you know, maybe you're a viewer, you don't know much about fitness. You might say to yourself, Oh, that seems kind of dumb. That's easy. You know? Yeah. But if you see me say, Hey, this is what you're going to do. And then you watch me do it and you watch me just die. Yeah. You say, Hey, do it with me. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I got to try gotta try this look at this guy he's in he's in decent shape and he's about to die this is gonna be a good workout for me yeah and so you know they

a lot of my content i was with them for about a year you know they wanted me to post on my youtube channel and to be honest i feel like i pushed away a lot of my a lot of my community because my whole thing with my channel was intensity and things were intense and yeah crazy drop sets and all this other stuff and yeah you know you really gotta make sure you know what you're getting into if you're if you have an opportunity to team up with someone or have a good sponsorship you know yeah just because the opportunity's there doesn't mean you need to take it and so i guess that was kind of one of the biggest lessons i learned because at the end of the day –

Yeah, that's good advice. It's also – I mean there's a couple points that – it's one where you knew what you were doing. You knew what your people wanted. Sears didn't know that. And it's like you hear that in Hollywood where a script gets written and then the executive producer, the money guy is like, eh, it doesn't have enough explosions. Put five more explosions in it. And then the writer tries to like, eh, it doesn't have enough explosions. Put five more explosions in it. And then the writer tries to explain, like, but that doesn't work. Like, we don't need five more explosions.

Yeah, yeah, you need an explosion on page 15 and 30 and 45. I read it somewhere. You know, it's one of those rules of thumb kind of thing. And that happens in all kinds of industries where the people that have the money, they get to make decisions. But they don't know what they're doing just because they have the money. Yeah, they want to feel important. They want to feel like it's fair. It's probably in this case where they heard somewhere or it was some quote-unquote known thing that YouTube videos under four minutes are always better, period.

So there you go. That's exactly what it was. And I tried to explain to them. I'm like, listen, my video that has over four million hits is 20 minutes long. Yeah. And it's for a reason, you know? Yeah. And then it's just like, well, no, sorry.

This research from this group says otherwise. So you're wrong. Yeah. That's what it turns into. Yeah. And then there's what it turns into. Yeah, and then there's also the point of knowing, like you were saying, I mean, you had your crowd and you built your crowd just like, you know, producing certain types of content, producing certain types of video. And you definitely don't want to go that route of being where you look like a sellout where it's like, oh, well, someone came along and gave him some money and now he's just doing whatever kind of shitty, you know, he doesn't care. Um, and so, yeah, I think that's definitely a good point of, cause I've had, I mean, it's, it's a similar thing for me. Um, I've built my following much more on my, on, on writing. So, you know, cause I have books

and I write a lot of stuff on my website, which is pretty popular and whatever. So, and I've had companies approach me to, of course, promote all kinds of products and do all kinds of sponsored content where they'll pay me, you know, they want to put together a big guest post and they're going to pay me to do it. And I've turned every single one away because the products are shit. Like, there's just no way I would ever recommend. I would never, if I wouldn't use the product myself, I'm not recommending it. I don't care. Um, yeah, exactly.

And that's what I end up putting in the posts, like the articles. I have a very specific style of how I write. Like I, I cite a lot of scientific, uh, references. I'm not overly like, I, I like to explain things in a way that anyone can understand it, but there's just, uh, you know, where sometimes they would, the type of content they would want to post would be garbage. Like my, I know that my readers

would get nothing from that article. They just be like, what? Oh, it's sponsored. Okay, he just got money. Like that's all it would mean. That's all it would mean. You know what I mean? Yeah, and people definitely take notice of that.

That's for sure. And then on the flip side, they take notice when you, you know, I'm sure when you stop that with the Sears thing and got back to what works. I'm sure people then notice like they're probably like, oh, awesome. Scott's back, you know? Yeah. And that's exactly what happened. And I feel like I'm still even recovering now, you know?

And even though my community is still growing and all these amazing things are happening, I wonder how many viewers have not come back to my channel because they think it's still all about that. But luckily, I've spent the last year putting out really good, intense content and really informational content. So when they do come back and they do stumble… You've made amends. Yeah, exactly. I understand. No, that's definitely a very important point. I think because it applies to any sort of business where you're going to be the face.

And it's a point of integrity, I guess, really. Yeah. Well, at the end of the day, I you you gotta stick with what works yeah and obviously you always want to kind of upgrade and like i guess madonna is a good example like she basically has been in the spotlight forever because she recognizes you know when things change but as long as your core values are always where they need to be, you'll change and you'll make the right decisions and you'll continue to grow without having to drastically change the whole concept of what you do. Yeah, totally. And of course, I mean, you'll make, everybody makes mistakes and as long as you can recognize it and do something about it, that's just part of the process. Yeah, exactly. Or,

you know, you got to spend a lot of money in marketing to get everyone back to see your stuff yeah which you know isn't may or may not may or may not work depending on what you were talking about if you're selling a product that's easier if you're trying to get people to you know follow you that can be harder depending on what the situation is. So what's, are you still there? Is Skype wigging out? No, I'm here. Okay, cool, cool.

So what's next for you? What's on the horizon? Well, one of the- You have your DVDs. Any other cool projects that, you know, the listeners, you want them to know about? Yeah, well, one of the new things is I'm actually them to know about yeah well one of the new things is i'm actually i've joined to become one of the male faces of musclegenes.com which is why i'm actually going out there and so we have a lot of things going on with them but i guess the

biggest thing right now is my website and the app because like we talked about earlier you know especially with social media i mean everything right now is is really changing i mean look at facebook only one percent of your fans actually see your posts now yeah yeah they're killing organic reach oh my they're openly killing it they're just saying we need money so you better boost your posts or no one's gonna see them thanks bye yeah exactly you know it's like hey i spent five years of my life building this huge page with so you better boost your posts or no one's going to see them. Thanks, bye. Yeah, exactly. You know, it's like, hey, I spent five years of my life building this huge page with, you know, all this great stuff and, you know, basically thanks for killing that.

And so what I've done, luckily, is I proactively last year recognized this change and so I turned my website into its own social media where you build your own profile, you add your own photos, you add videos, you make friends. There's friend requests. You can motivate people. You can build a custom avatar. You can post on people's boards on their profile. You can tag people. I basically built the next big thing for fitness.

I took all the best things about MySpace and Facebook and BodySpace, and I turned them into one simplified version that people seem to really be liking. Wow. That's at scotthermanfitness.com, right? Yeah, it's at scotthermanfitness.com. Then over the next month, I'm actually going to be making more changes to the site to make it a little more user-friendly and really geared towards that social media. And then we'll have the app out soon as well. So you can basically just go on your phone, click the app, and be able to log right into your profile.

And then be able to surf through my videos utilizing the app. Or you can chat with your friends. Or you can go on the forums. You can read the articles the recipes i mean there needs the next big thing that i've seen or i've seemed to have discovered is getting everyone to one place but make it where they can still have their own unique you know profile and if facebook is going to say screw you to everyone on there I'm going to make a site where even other

fitness channels can come and host their content and bring their fans and actually not have to worry about not being able to reach them yeah it is interesting with Facebook they need to make money it's pretty affordable

right now, but I was, you know, they had that announcement, I guess it was a couple months ago now, right, where they just openly said organic reach is now shit, so deal with it. I think Facebook knows that it's actually kind of dying down in general, and they're trying to just get as much money as possible before that does. I mean, they say that maybe in the next five years, it might not even be, you know, something that you use. I mean, even my family, like my, a lot of my, my aunts and uncles that used to use it all the time. They're like, Oh, I hate Facebook now, you know? And it's like, wow, if these people in

my close circle of friends and family are already saying they don't like Facebook, I can only imagine how many more people are starting to feel the same way. Yeah, totally. Well, that's cool that you did that. So it's like obviously has a fitness kind of slant to it, right? So with what you're building so you can track your progress and you're saying like motivating people. Well, at the end of the day too, your Facebook friends don't want to know how many times a week you go to the gym. Oh yeah. Yeah. No, I'm talking about yours, not Facebook. No, that's what I'm saying. So at least if you're on my website, you can talk about fitness all you

want. Everyone's going to be like, yeah, that's awesome. And they're going to talk about with you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's all like the funny memes about, uh, posting your workouts to Facebook. funny memes about posting your workouts to Facebook. Yeah, exactly. Where it just jokes about why do people do it, which I agree. I don't do it. I don't use Facebook outside of my work. I don't use it at all. I just don't care. Like it's not the people that I want to stay in touch with. I stay in touch with in person in real life or over the phone or over email. It's just Facebook is just so cluttered. I don't even pay attention to it. Yeah, I mean, and think about that. If that's how you feel, you know, how does the rest of the world feel?

Luckily, people still do use it. Yeah, I mean, we'll see what they can do. They have enough money to like hire the smartest people in the world to try to figure out something. So we'll see. And then you have, you know, Google with G+, if that ever goes anywhere. I mean, I don't know. If I owned Facebook, I would just take my money

and I'd go on vacation and play video games all day. Maybe that's what Zuckerberg does. Who knows? Yeah, he sold it, so he probably does. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if he still holds a position, though, in the company. I don't know if he still holds a position though in the company i don't know i mean it's not sold it's it's a public company so i don't i don't know is he still like involved in the day-to-day probably not probably not i mean he sold it for what like 300 million or billion a few years ago no no facebook facebook is just a public it's

a publicly traded company so he just owns now you know he just owns now a ton of shares and that makes his net worth, whatever it is, $10 billion or I don't know, whatever his net worth is. But he turned down a billion quite some time ago. I forget who it was that wanted to buy him. But then, yeah, so now it's a public company. So he owns shares and I don't know if he's still CEO or whatever. I have no idea. Yeah, well, Facebook is buying everything. They wanted to buy Snapchat, I think, for a couple billion.

And they turned it down. They wanted to buy Snapchat for like seven billion. How do you turn down any? What more do you want? What do you want? There's a point there. That's what I said. You know what?

I was like, you know, i was like you know i hope snapchat dies and these people kick themselves in the butt because i would i'd be like really yeah let's get rid of this thing because it's only gonna be around so long done like there's a point where probably you know if you have a hundred million dollars cash after taxes beyond that like it doesn't matter anymore unless you have unless you're the most extravagant human ever and you need to have like you know a 200 million dollar yacht in seven houses there's just a point where if you had the money like that you have more money than you'll ever know what to do with so what does it matter you know like there isn't that much there isn't that much

of a difference between having what's the difference between having 200 million and a billion. Practically speaking, nothing. You just put it in the bank and live on the interest. Yeah, I mean, even that. Or you invest it at least conservatively and make 8% a year and do the math. All I'm hoping is that by doing this business and doing what I love, I have enough money to rebuild my Camaro.

That's all I'm pretty much banking on. And then Eric wants to go to Paris or something, so I guess I got to take care of her. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to be able to build a house and I don't know, like whatever, have some stuff, I guess. I'm not really a stuff person, but.

What kind of Camaro? I have a 2010, but I also have an 84 that needs to be rebuilt. It's my high school car. Oh, cool. Nostalgia. Yeah, it's been sitting at my friend's shop for about a year, almost two years now, waiting for me. Okay. So that's what motivates me.

Every day you get up and you're like, all right, I'm getting one. Here's one video closer to my Camaro being restored. Yeah, exactly. And then people are like, why would you want a Camaro? I'm like, because I'm a Camaro guy. I don't need a Bentley. I don't need all that stuff. I'm a simple guy.

I like my Camaro. I have my house and the gym. I'm good. Yeah, that's cool. So is there anything else before we wrap up here that you'd like to share with the listeners? I think we already know that so everyone can find you at scotthermanfitness.com. Is there anything else that you'd like to say before we wrap up?

Yeah, I just want to say, you know, I really appreciate the listeners taking the time, you know, to listen to the podcast. And, you know, hopefully they got to get to know me a little bit and see that even though I'm a gym freak, you know, I'm just an average person just like them. And at the end of the day, you know, whether you watch my videos or read mike's articles or

find your own things to watch on youtube you know just make sure you're watching something that's teaching you how to better yourself and also at the end of the day too even if you watch one of my videos you know everything i say maybe you think i'm wrong do your own research yeah you know granted everything i say is always going to be right but in the event that in the event that you think that something you hear isn't correct like don't be afraid to do your own research I think if one of the things I can be most

proud of since I started this business is I've kind of forced people to want to go out and learn more on their own and just because you're teaching people how to learn're teaching people how to learn and teach people how to spot bullshit yeah exactly and just because you teach them something doesn't mean you're not going to come back to learn more you know so you should never be afraid

to try to better your community as a whole you should always try to go for the greater good because at the end of the day that's's going to help everybody. Yeah, I totally agree. Like I try, I try, I give away a ton of free information that I put a lot of time into because I enjoy it like you, it's a learning process. I enjoy writing. I like helping. It just kind of doesn't feel like all work to me. But, um, yeah, I, I agree that give, if you give great stuff away, then what, you know, psychologically when people are seeing that. And then if you have something for sale, there's that like, wow, he gives his free stuff. Is this good? His paid stuff must be awesome.

You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. My website is a free version and is also a paid version for $7 to 99 cents a month. But I mean, for what you get for that low price is, is just nothing compared to other sites that charge like $60 a month or 40. You know what I mean? Yeah. I try to make my site affordable so you can get in there, get the information you need.

And you don't, you actually happy that you're a part of a site and you're actually getting the info. I mean, all my, all my videos that are on my website, my workouts, my exercises, you know, they come with full descriptions. They come with PDF downloads. They come with photos. There's a meal plan system. There's exclusive content. I'm always updating the content. So, you know, my goal is to be able to do what I love. You know, everyone has bills bills obviously I'm building a business to be able to live and survive but at the end of the day I'm not trying to take advantage of anyone if anything I want if I could give it away for free you know I would yeah but I unfortunately I can't

and I'd be living on the streets making YouTube videos in the alley you know which which actually could be creative it could be a social experiment yeah this is the the back the back alley dumpster workout you know hard core chest and triceps the dumpster is like what are those called like prowler sleds or something you know yeah oh like the push sleds yeah like push sl push sleds. You go push dumpsters. There we go. See where, where are you? I'm going to probably have to do that now. Yeah. Can you get shredded homeless? There's the big challenge. Oh man, that would be so wrong. All right, cool. Great. So, um, yeah, definitely, you know, go check Scott out at scotthermanfitness.com. Chances are you already come across his videos. If you search pretty much how to do and then anything related to working out, you're going to find Scott Herman. And I actually, Scott,

I linked to a lot of your videos in articles of mine, you know, for form. Like if I'm posting a back type of workout, I linked to a lot of your stuff because it's great. Oh, thanks, man. And like I said, let your podcast listeners know that hopefully I'll be hosting some of your great content on my site too. Yeah, definitely. I'm going to put together some articles to go up on Scott's website so you'll be seeing me over there too.

Awesome, man. Well, hey, thank you so much for having me I gotta go in and actually do my workout now yeah awesome thanks for taking the time have a good workout and I'll be in touch I'll get your email from Nico and then you know we can

I look forward to seeing what we can do together alright brother sounds great cool man thanks again and have a good workout thank you man talk to you soon. Okay. Bye. 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 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.