Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Motivation Monday: 3 Strategies for Failing in Business and Life

Episode Date: February 19, 2018

This episode is part of a weekly series that I have dubbed “Motivation Monday.” (Yes, I know, very creative of me. What can I say, I’m a genius…) Seriously though, the idea here is simple: Every Monday morning, I’m going to post a short and punchy episode that I hope gets you fired up to tackle the workouts, work, and everything else that you have planned for the week ahead. As we all know, it’s one thing to know what you want to do, but it’s something else altogether to actually make yourself do it, and I hope that this series gives you a jolt of inspiration, energy, and encouragement to get at it. So, if you like what you hear, then make sure to check back every Monday morning for the latest and greatest installment. 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: www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

You want to be smart with your time and money, but you also don't want to instinctively withdraw from anything that carries a bit of risk or from anything that feels out of place or unusual or just different, something that you're not used to because many times that's what great opportunities feel like. This episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my fitness book for women, thinner,, Leaner, Stronger. Now, this book has sold over 150,000 copies in the last several years, and it has helped thousands of women build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 1,200 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average. So if you want to know the biggest lies and myths that keep women from ever achieving the lean,

sexy, strong, and healthy bodies they truly desire, and if you want to learn the simple science of building the ultimate female body, then you want to read Thinner, Leaner, Stronger today, which you can find on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play. Now, speaking of Audible, I should also mention that you can actually get the audio book 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which I highly recommend that you do if you're not currently listening to audio books. I myself love them because they let me make the time that I spend doing things like commuting, prepping food, walking my dog, and so forth into more valuable and productive activities. So if you want to take Audible up

on this offer and get my book for free, simply go to www.bitly.com slash free TLS book. And that will take you to Audible. And then you just have to click the sign up today and save button, create your account. And voila, you get to listen to thinner, leaner, stronger for free. Alrighty, that is enough shameless plugging for now, at least let's get to the show. Okay. So it's Monday and that means it's time for some motivation, starting with a quote. This one comes from John Burroughs, and he said that the lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Now, a couple of years ago, I read a book called The Ten Commandments for Business Failure. It was written by a guy named Don Keow, and he was formerly the president

of Coca-Cola. And there were three points in that book that really resonated with me in particular. And I wanted to share them with you on the podcast here, because I think that you might get something out of them as well. And as you'll see, I think that these three points apply to not just business, but life in general. Now, of course, the book's premise is tongue in risks. Now, risk aversion has been really the prevailing mood for humankind. That's the word now, right? Mankind, you can't say humankind. Personkind, as Justin Trudeau said, yeah, personkind's not a word, my friend. Let's go with an actual word, humankind. So that's the prevailing mood in humankind throughout history. You had hunters and gatherers of the olden times that would roam far and wide

in order to survive. But then the agricultural revolution allowed us to kind of settle down. And of course, most people did. Most people chose to live as their fathers and their grandfathers before them, really never venturing far from the village. And of course, that made sense. The world was dangerous. I mean, if you just look at old maps, you'll see that there are vast areas that were just labeled terra incognita, which just meant unknown lands. And you'd have drawings of serpents and monsters. And so it's understandable why many people decided to just stick to what they know. They have their little village. It has a river that supplies water, and you can use the water to grow plants, eat the plants for food. You have shelter and no serpents and no monsters.

Now, the problem here, of course, is you're not going to achieve very much. You're not going to make much of an impact in the world if you just isolate yourself inside of a village and you don't go venture out into the great unknown. Many of history's achievements, of course, started with great risk. So, for example, look at the formation of America. So for example, look at the formation of America. It was all about huge monumental risk-taking from the beginning, from Columbus to Jamestown to the Second Continental Congress to the, of course, Seminole Declaration of Independence. This country was built on taking one massive risk after another. Now, how does this apply to work and life? Well, many people are prone to achieving something, sometimes a very little something, and then just quit taking risks

altogether. It's probably just a bit of human nature, you know, just to think, well, I've got something. I've got this thing. It may not even be that great, but it's mine. So why risk it? Who knows what's on the other side of that mountain? Not only might there be no reward, we may actually end up losing what we have and just be worse off for it. As the old saying goes, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, right? Now, for me, my career as an author and entrepreneur started with a risk. Before I got into the fitness space, I had a comfortable job making a comfortable income. I had job security. I could provide for my wife. And I guess actually when I started, I had Lennox too. So I could save for my family. Lennox was just a baby. But I really just wasn't content with my situation. I knew that the only way for me

to really achieve the level of success that I wanted to, and to be willing to sacrifice what it was going to take to get there, is I really had to have my own business. And I needed to do something different than what I was doing previously. So previously, I was creating employee training programs for companies, which again, was good business. We had niched into healthcare. So we worked with a lot of doctors and dentists and physical therapists and I was good at it, but it wasn't that inspiring to me as far as work goes. Now I enjoy working just for its own sake. And you know, a part of me, maybe it's a masochistic part, would enjoy just digging ditches every day because I really actually do enjoy exerting effort regardless of what I'm

exerting that effort toward. But if I'm going to exert a lot of effort, if I'm going to spend a lot of time and energy and attention, then I would prefer to spend it on something that means a bit more to me, is a bit more aligned, I guess I could say, with my personality and my talents and my inclinations and also just my interests and also on something that has a greater potential for financial reward and especially per unit of work worked, so to speak. So what I mean is that I will be able to achieve the level of financial success that I want a lot faster in the health and fitness space than in the employee training space. That's just the fact of the matter. Now it's easy to say in hindsight that that's an

obvious decision, straightforward. Yeah, but not so much. You go back five years again, I have something going. I can grow it. I was doing well. And yeah, sure. A side of me was thinking that maybe it's not worth the risk to just kind of go off and do this fitness thing when I don't have any network. I don't have anything established whatsoever. Again, I started with just a book. I'm just going to write a book and publish it. That was step one. And previously, things were nice. I didn't really need that many more things.

So why risk losing that? Why risk losing that business? Why risk losing that source of income? But then there was the other side of me that was saying, hey, look, you have what it takes to do your own thing, to build your own business, to go into a highly competitive marketplace and do well. You are a good marketer. You're able to learn things. You're able to work hard. You can probably figure it out. And that's the part of me that also was saying that in my previous life, I really wasn't achieving my full potential. I wasn't

using my abilities to their highest and best use. So my transition into fitness wasn't simply about just acquiring more money or more stuff. It was more about self-actualization. And so ultimately, I went with my gut and eventually quit that job and pursued writing full-time, you know, I figured that the worst case scenario is, okay, the fitness endeavor fails. And maybe even, I don't, I can't go back to the other business for one reason or another. I still had skills and I had a resume and I could find another good job. So when you look at it that way, which is a good exercise to do, because often whenever there are risks involved in something, we tend to blow them out of proportion in our minds. So boiling it down to the worst case scenario, what is the worst that you think could happen? And then if that's not that bad, well, then you don't really have to worry about

much else, right? And so when I did that, when I viewed the risks of leaving my previous life behind in light of worst case scenario, I mean, okay, fine. It wasn't really that bad. The prospects of failure then were more just uncomfortable than anything else. They would be, let's say, very inconvenient, but not catastrophic. And again, that was five years ago. And really, it's been kind of a rocket ride ever since. Muscle for Life has blown up into a very popular website that gets a couple million visits a month. Legion, my supplement company, did seven figures in sales in its first year and did eight figures in sales last year and is growing very quickly. I've sold over a million books now. So the moral of the story here is don't be so afraid of taking risks that you miss any and all opportunities.

Of course, you don't want to squander your time, money, energy. You don't want to squander your resources chasing every glimmering promise or even just possibility of success. You want to be smart with your time and money, but you also don't want to instinctively withdraw from anything that carries a bit of risk or from anything that feels out of place or unusual or just different, something that you're not used to because many times that's what great opportunities feel like. Many times, that's what great opportunities feel like. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might

enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. Twitter at Muscle for Life and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. Okay, so the second strategy for failure here is be inflexible. Now, not taking risks and being inflexible are close relatives, but they're not quite the same. Inflexible people aren't necessarily avoiding risks, but they are just so set in their ways. They're so sure that they have it all figured out. They have their formula for life down that they simply can't see any other possible way of doing anything. Machiavelli once said, for this is the strategy

of man. Circumstances change, but he doesn't. So flexibility, as I'm referring to it here, means the ability to quickly adapt to changing circumstances. I saw this in my dad's business many, many years ago. He had to rapidly evolve it to save it from dying a slow death. He has a business that sells natural gas and electricity, mostly to businesses. It's mostly B2B. And when the Do Not Call Registry was instituted, this was many years ago, I think this was like 2003, his business was severely impacted because at that time he had specialized in residential sales. And then all of a sudden, his lead pools were cut by as much as 70% in certain markets, which of course meant that sales in his company crashed to an all-time low, the lowest they had

been, I think ever since starting the business, because he had come out of a similar business previously that he had sold. And so he knew the game and he started a new one. And of course, it just, it got off to a good start. And so my dad had, you know, he had to make a choice. He could either severely downsize the company and try to play that drastically reduced, you know, residential sales game, which is what many of his competitors did. his ship, his company, and go into the terra incognita of his world at that time, which was commercial sales. And that may not sound all that daunting, but it's a very different game. And he and his team knew very little about building a successful commercial sales team. Even in his previous business, it was residential. And that's really where he specialized. My dad is a very good salesperson and he knew the residential sales side of the game. But just like when he started his first business, which he went out on a limb to start his very

first business. Again, he quit a very good job to go and do it himself. And I remember the story of the first day. So he leaves his job, his know, he has a six figure income, starts his business. And there's supposed to be like 10 people that are supposed to show up and start, you know, day one and nobody shows up. He was there with his business partner, just the two of them. They were supposed to have 10 people starting and they all backed out. Nobody showed up. And so of course my dad was like, wow, I am fucked. But you know,

he figured it out. And later in his life and within his second business, when he ran into this do not call problem, he had been through these types of things. And he knows that sometimes you just got to take a risk. That's just the way it is. So he formulated a plan to transition his entire company, which had about 130 salespeople or so at the time, into commercial sales. And that transition was rough and it required a complete revamp of their training. And that's actually how I started on the path of creating employee training programs for other companies. I started with my dad's company. And that was a lot of work. It was probably six months of hard work to put a training program in place that could take people from not knowing anything about the energy industry to being able to sell commercial energy.

To make the long story short, that whole evolution actually ended up kind of unlocking the real potential of that company. And it's now doing better than ever before. It has hundreds of employees and is doing more sales now than it was even at its peak before the do not call fiasco. Now, if my dad would have been a very inflexible person and if he would have been highly averse to risk, that of course would have prevented him from making that transition. It would have led him to do the safe thing, which was what he had always done, stick to what he knows, do what everyone else is doing, which probably would have just killed the company in the end. And if it wouldn't have killed it, it would have stuck it in a plateau that it would

not have been able to break out of. Okay, strategy number three for failure is be afraid of the future. Now, I think this one is especially relevant in these rather tumultuous times. These days, it seems like everywhere we look, there is turmoil. And this can lead to a very debilitating malady, which is fear. Nothing will shut a business or an economy or even us as individuals. Nothing shuts us down faster than just having an overriding fear of what might happen. And a lot of this is thanks to the pessimism industry, which has grown exponentially as time has gone on.

And you can really track this back hundreds of years, back to the end of the 1700s with Thomas Malthus' essay on the principle of population. Because in that treatise, Thomas predicted that all of mankind was doomed because population would inevitably outrun food supply. He thought that it would actually happen sometime within a hundred years of his lifetime. So he thought that by the late 1800s, early 1900s, the world would be ravaged by famines and epidemics because nature would be correcting itself, that overpopulation would finally reach the tipping point. And many of his followers, the Malthusians, as they were known, they actually wanted this. They were saying that it was necessary, it was inevitable, it was natural. And some even argued that we should get ahead of the problem and start reducing population right away through various means like war, genocide, famine, sterilization, and other fun stuff. And to this day, Malthus is the foundation and really the

inspiration for much of the contemporary pessimism industry, which is dominated, of course, by the big mainstream media outlets who are making more money now and getting more attention now than they have in a very long time. I can't say ever, but in a very long time due to, for example, just the Trump phenomenon and how much negativity that has generated, but also then how much attention that has generated. In one of Project Veritas' videos, someone from the New York Times was basically saying Trump is amazing for their business. Their digital subscriptions are out the roof. And so they know that if they just keep on saying bad things about Trump, they will keep on making more money. And if you apply that then to just bad news in general, bad news gets people's attention,

especially if it's sensationalized. So whatever is going on, whatever's wrong in the world, blow it up and put it out there and you will get a lot of people latching onto it. Anyway, Malthus wasn't the only guy to use the population scaremongering tactic to his advantage. There was a guy named Paul Ehrlich who wrote a book called The Population Bomb back in 1968. And he predicted that in the 1970s, that right around the corner, and he predicted that in the 1970s that right around the corner hundreds of millions of people would die of starvation as food runs out and that life expectancy was going to plummet in the 1980s and of course those things didn't happen there's an infamous club of rome report that was published in 1972 that said we would run out of all the most important raw materials on this planet by the

1990s and that we were going to be absolutely fucked. And of course, the solution is depopulation, depopulation, depopulation. And all of these people, many of them who were pretty smart people who had extensive educational backgrounds, who had a lot of acronyms in front of their and after their names, they all got it wrong. They were all wrong. They all were assuming that human beings were basically like sheep and that we were out here grazing on the grass and eventually it's all just going to be gone. And it's just not the case. Of course, we're a little bit smarter than sheep. At least most of us, right? Most of us are not just sheep grazing on grass until it's gone.

Yet another example of this is an author named Chris Goodall, who wrote a book called How to Live a Low-Carbon Life. And he's a prominent member of the Green Party over in England, or at least he was when he wrote the book. And in the book, he informs us that if we walk to the store, we actually create more CO2 than if we drive because we have to eat a fair amount of food to generate the energy that it takes to walk to the store. And also raising that food consumes a ton of energy, consumes so much more energy and produces so much more carbon emissions

than driving. And so then what? I guess the solution is that we're all supposed to just sit in our dark rooms with everything unplugged and the air conditioning off, doing nothing, eating nothing, breathing as shallowly as possible until we just expire, right? iTunes, or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com

and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. So please do reach out. All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to

you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my fitness book for women, thinner, leaner, stronger. Now this book has sold over 150,000 copies in the last several years, and it has helped thousands of women build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 1,200 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average. So if you want to know the biggest lies and myths that keep women from ever achieving the lean, sexy, strong, and healthy bodies they truly desire. And if you want to learn the simple science of building the ultimate

female body, then you want to read Thinner, Leaner, Stronger today, which you can find on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play. Now, speaking of Audible, I should also mention that you can actually get the audiobook 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which I highly recommend that you do if you're not currently listening to audiobooks. I myself love them because they let me make the time that I spend doing things like commuting, prepping food, walking my dog, and so forth into more valuable and productive activities. So if you want to take Audible up on this offer and get my book for free,

simply go to www.bitly.com slash free TLS book. And that will take you to Audible. And then you just have to click the sign up today and save button, create your account. And voila, you get to listen to Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for free.