Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - My Interview with Lacey Dunn on Starting a Business, Book Publishing, and More

Episode Date: June 8, 2018

Personal trainer, blogger, and soon-to-become Registered Dietitian Lacey Dunn was kind enough to have me on her podcast to talk about how I got started in the fitness industry, the story behind my books, how I came to start Legion Athletics, and more. This interview is different from my normal routine of drilling deep down into one topic, because Lacey wanted to cover a lot of different topics more related to the hard lessons I’ve learned growing multiple businesses while raising a family, the ins and outs of the supplement industry, and the most important rule I’ve learned about success along the way. I hope you enjoy it. 4:15 - Who are you and what do you do? 5:10 - What are some of the biggest hoops you had to jump through to start your businesses? 29:44 - How was the transition like from writing books to writing your business’ content? 38:35 - How do you balance family, life, and work? 47:30 - What’s your biggest piece of advice for success? 53:55 - Where can people find you and follow your work? 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/

Thank you. Hello, meine Freunde, Mike Matthews here, Muscle for Life podcast, welcome, welcome. This episode is a change of pace because it's an interview that I did with a personal trainer, blogger, and soon to become a registered dietitian, Lacey Dunn, who was kind enough to have me on her show to talk about how I got started in the fitness industry and the story behind my books and Legion Athletics and more. And the reason why I thought you might like this is I am often asked to talk about these things. And so when I go on other podcasts and talk about things that I haven't already talked about and posted on my own podcast, I figure it is worth putting it out there.

So instead of drilling deep down into one topic, Lacey and I cover a number of different topics related to the hard lessons I've learned growing multiple businesses while also raising a family, learned growing multiple businesses while also raising a family, what I've learned about the ins and outs of the supplement industry, and also the most important rule that I've learned about success along the way. My number one tip for getting extraordinary results in any area of your life. So I hope you enjoy the interview. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead, I'm just going to 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 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.

Hey guys, I'm super excited. I have Mike Matthews on board. He is the owner of Muscle for Life. He has written two amazing books. He also has his own podcast, and he's done a bunch of different things in life. So I'm super excited to have him here. Mike, why don't you introduce yourself, tell my listeners who you are, what you do, and we can dive into the topics from there. Sure, sure. Well, thanks first for having me on. I really appreciate it. And yeah, so I'm Mike. And I mean, the long story short, so when people ask me, what do I do? I'm like, I do health and fitness things. Like I have some books and some websites and supplements and stuff like, oh, that's cool. I'm like, yeah, that's basically it. No, but yeah, I'd say first and

foremost, I'm primarily a writer. So I've written a number of books. I've sold over a million books now over the last five or six years. And also I've done a lot of books. I've sold over a million books now over the last five or six years. And also I've done a lot of writing on my blogs at Muscle for Life and then Legion Athletics. I've, I think at this point published over a million words. Yeah. Between two of those blogs, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of articles. And then in addition to that, sure. I have a podcast and run a couple of businesses and I don't know, things. Yeah, that's me. I'll just pass the ball back to you and ask you where do you want to go specifically? Yeah. So I would love to talk about the biggest hoops that you had to jump through in order to start your business, to get going in

regards to your supplements. I mean, the supplement business was pretty straightforward in terms of starting. It was just a pain in the ass. So I remember I have a partner. His name's Jeremy. And we've known each other for a long time. So we're also very good friends. Jeremy came on early. I had written, published Bigger Than You're Stronger. That was the first thing that I had done in the health and fitness space period was write and publish that book.

book. Um, and I self published it cause I was like, yeah, it's not worth trying to get a traditional book deal because I know that traditional publishers are very uninterested in people who aren't proven quantities. They want to know that now, now they're interested in talking, but years ago they wouldn't have been. And even if I would have gotten a deal, it would have been a shit deal. So I was like, I'll just self publish it. So that was the first thing that I did. And then, um, that was in 2012 And I had another business and another life at that time. And it was kind of a nights and weekends thing. I didn't even know if anybody would care. I think bigger than you're stronger sold like 20 copies in the first month. And I was like, Oh, that's cool. Somebody bought my book. And but but people liked it. And just through word of mouth, because I didn't have when I first started, I mean, I had no following. I had no network. I had no allies in the space. I had nobody promoting my stuff. I literally just wrote a book, published it on Amazon, and I just wanted to see if anybody would give a shit.

Just through word of mouth and through Amazon's internal promotional algorithms and so forth, but nothing really in terms of marketing or advertising on my end. really in terms of marketing or advertising on my end within, let's say by the end of the year, by the end of 2012, it was selling several thousand copies per month. I had also at that point received a lot of emails from readers who really liked it, had questions, suggestions, and I had been keeping notes. Like people brought up good points. I didn't think of that. Oh, I should clarify that. Yeah, I probably should add information on that. I also had put up a couple other smaller books kind of as trial balloons to see what people would think. At that point, I saw there was a real opportunity to build a business. And it's something that interested me more than what I was doing previously. And so I recruited Jeremy to work with me. And actually, initially,

we wanted to do a publishing company. I wanted to take what I had learned about selling books and particularly I would be strong, even stronger now, but I knew even at that time I'd be strong in an editorial role just because over the years I've always been a good student. I've always been into reading things and I know, and I'm even better in this regard now, but I know what's good and what's not. And I know in terms of content, like my own personal standard on the stuff that I read is very high. So basically if somebody can impress me with their writing, they're really fucking good. And that was the case back then. It's even more the case now. So we actually wanted to do a publishing company specifically because I did not want to get into the fitness space.

I remember telling Jeremy, I was like, dude, I don't want to be a fitness expert guru guy. I don't like this space. I don't like these people. I don't like this culture. I don't like this community. So let's just do that. And he was like, sure. So we were going to do that. And then in looking at it in terms of opportunity, I was like, OK, well, that's true. There are a lot of things I don't like about health and fitness, honestly, more collectively. I like it personally, individually. I like what it can do for people. And I like that I've been able to establish a relationship individually with a lot of people and help a lot of people directly. But that was kind of my conditions going in where I was like, OK, I actually I could do the fitness thing if I'm if I can do it my way in my way is going to be.

I mean, we focused on content because that's something I'm good at, but I want to produce not just products, but I want to produce things that I can give directly to the consumers, directly to the people that are going to use them and i don't want to have to go through the the normal kind of rigmarole of sucking up to random people neurotic narcissistic weird people that i i not only not only do i not want to like have to suck up to them i don't even care to know them like i'm not i'm still to this day not very networked i've i've picked and chosen my people that I've met along the way who I like, who are actually normal, cool people. So then we kind of pivoted away from the,

the publishing company and toward back into fitness. And so, uh, that was at the end of, that was basically 2013 and we decided, okay, let's start with a website and let's just start getting more content going up. At the time, I'd say the content, particularly in the article writing space, the competition was really weak. Now it's a lot stiffer, especially for well-written, well-researched, long-form content. There really wasn't that much going up at that time. And that's still kind of the case now, but definitely there are a number of other websites, just me and my stuff but number other people out there that are putting in the time and work to to do that and so we started there with muscle for life and that's muscleforlife.com

and it took off very quickly i think because it was just good timing at that time book sales were skyrocketing and youtube came after so it wasn wasn't even that. Yeah, it was just there definitely was was a bit of if I'm going to chalk anything up to luck, it was good timing. It just happened. Yeah, sure, sure. But, you know, there's always like it's kind of trendy also in the in the entrepreneur space in particular, just to to downplay any sort of the downplay causation and just be like, oh, you know, I just got really lucky, like, nah, not really. But I definitely got I'd say where the luck was is on is on the timing. If I were starting over know, I just got really lucky. Like, nah, not really. But I definitely got, I'd say where the luck was is on the timing. If I were starting over today, I could still do it, certainly,

but it would just be more difficult. It would take not necessarily even more time. It would take more effort, not just personal effort, but it would require ultimately more money because I'd have to come into it with a team of content writers. Like if I were going to grow another health and fitness website as quickly as, or if it was going to follow the same trajectory as Muscleful Life, I probably would have to come out of the gates, probably publishing one long form. That means 2000 plus word article per day, seven articles a week, and would have to know really what I'm doing and have

a budget for link building. Yeah. So it's just more difficult. Like again, we came into it at a good time and I put a lot of time into it and then I continued to write more books. Supplements were an obvious extension of, Hey, what else could we do? But again, it was like, eh, if we're going to do supplements though, I don't want to do it the standard way, which is just create bullshit products, spend nothing on them and pay a bunch of drugged up idiots to pretend like these pills and powders actually do anything, which is about half of the industry. Uh, nah, more like 90% plus, but the majority, the vast majority of supplement companies and supplements out there are utter bullshit. They just don't even waste your money. And that was actually in the beginning, like people would ask me, Hey, what supplements do you take? What

do you use? And I would tell them, I was like, you know, here are a few things I use. Here's a pre-workout. At the time, I didn't even like coffee. So I was like, if I liked coffee, I would just drink coffee instead because I know that this pre-workout doesn't really do anything other than give me a caffeine kick. Like the little pixie dust dosages of beta-alanine and citrulline and whatever are not going to do anything. And I was like, eh, here's a multivitamin. I take it just to cover my bases, even though my diet is good. It's not a very good multivitamin in the scheme of things. Like if I were making a multivitamin, mine would be a lot better.

That's basically how it came about where people come on asking about supplements and no, you don't need supplements. And by, by definition they are supplementary. But if you are going to spend money on them, if you have the budget or the inclination, yeah, sure. There are a few things. There are some like muscle building and fat burning. You're obviously limited. There aren't really that many things that are going to make a difference. There are a few. Um, but when you start expanding out into general health or even get a bit, just take, take, uh, from a top down kind of approach, take general health and then get more specific to like joint health, for example, or skin health. There are things that actually, if you can get

them in the right dosages, that can make a difference. So when we looked at supplementation, that was kind of our vision was, okay, so one, let's spend real money on these products. Like, for example, my greens product cost me almost $20 a bottle to make. Wow. My multivitamin cost me almost $15 a bottle to make. And so what that means is because it's a direct-to-consumer e-commerce business, our margins are fine for running a business. You know, in the end, what you want with a business, right, is you want something – you want at least 40% gross profit. And you should be able to work that down to at least 10% EBITDA. And if you can get up to 15%, you have a very good business. All right, fine. If you have those fundamentals in place, you can, you can make the financials work. And so that's really kind of,

we worked it back in that way saying what's the most we can spend on products and still have a business that isn't shit because top love line revenue, like revenue is great. People throw around revenue numbers. Like I don't talk about legionsline revenue, like revenue is great. People throw around revenue numbers. Like I don't talk about Legion's specific revenues, but it's an eight-figure. So it does eight figures in sales per year. All right, that sounds cool. Let's just say the number is $20 million a year. That sounds great. But what's the net? What's the EBIT on that? If that business was netting 2%, who cares? It's not a good business and it's not sustainable. It can't grow. It can't fund its own growth. If you have deep VC pockets that are willing to just continue to pour money into your

business until the end of time, then sure, fuck net. Who cares? Just put up numbers and track your cash burn, which is actually what they do. So we were like, what's the most we can spend on these products? Okay. So that turns out to be a lot more than a lot of these other companies are spending. That's a good beginning. And then who are we going to work with on the formulations? I'm knowledgeable when it comes to supplementation, but I'm not nearly as knowledgeable as the person that I found who is, his name is Curtis Frank and he's actually the co-founder of examine.com, which is a website. Oh, wow. That's amazing.

Yeah. So this dude knows supplements better than anybody I will ever meet again in my life. I mean, he's essentially a pharma D in terms of his understanding of supplementation and also nutrition, too. It's not just supplementation, but he really knows. He really knows the body as far as nutrition goes as well. And so earlier that was right early on. I got Curtis to work at the time. He was nutrition goes as well. And so earlier, that was right early on, I got Curtis to work. At the time, he was working exclusively with Examine. And so it was okay for him to do it. It

was just I was under NDA that I couldn't say it was Curtis working on these products because of because of Examine's, you know, they're non-biased, they're not affiliated. So Curtis wasn't going to tell anybody that he was working on formulations. And I wasn't allowed to tell anybody, people would ask, Hey, who comes up with these formulations? Because anybody that like, if you pull up the multivitamin, pull up the greens product, pull up any of our products, and you'll see that not only do we spend a lot of money on them, we spend the money intelligently. Like the money is put into good ingredients that have good science and good dosages, which of course just goes hand in hand with the end result of an effective product. And so we recruited Curtis early on, and now he just works with me full time actually. So

he continues the formulation work along with the other people who are on my scientific advisory board, have some other really smart people like Menno Henselman, Eric Helms, James Krieger, some other really smart people like Menno Henselman, Eric Helms, James Krieger, Spencer Nadolsky, Brad Dieter, Danny Lennon. I may be forgetting one or two others. I'm sorry. They all work together. And there's pretty interesting conversations like there was a whole long email thread about the is there any reason at all to have a BCAA or EAA product at all? Because so many people want it. many people buy it that's not a reason to make one is there an actual physiological reason for one and in the end it was like nah those supplements are always shit under all we under all circumstances and the only potential

use might be like if someone's you know really into fasting basically but even then they're better off just having like five grams of whey and skipping the BCAAs. And EAAs are even more worthless than BCAAs. So anyway, so I have a lot of smart people now. And when you take people like that and you're like, hey, so working on a stim free pre-workout because a lot of people want that and that's actually a worthwhile product. It's great to have someone like Curtis plus all these other people have this brain trust where we can go, hey, we have X dollars to spend on this, which is more than enough to make a great product. How do we make this product as good as possible? And so that that's kind of like the culmination of the original vision was like, get really smart, actual. I want

people that are that are scientists and that could care less about the marketing side of things, care less about the business side of things. I want to be able to go to somebody and say, hey, I want to make a green supplement. Make me the best green supplement you can possibly make me. And ironically, so when Curtis did that, the original formulation was going to cost me $70 a bottle. And obviously, that doesn't work. No.

Unless people are going to spend $200 a bottle or something on greens, but that doesn't work unless people, unless people are going to spend $200 a bottle or something on greens, but I don't think that's going to happen. So, so, so what happens then is like, we look at it and go, okay, so what's driving the costs on this product? And it turns out, for example, he wanted, uh, anthocyanins, which is like the pigment in fruits, um, which is great, but that alone, I think it was, we needed 500 mgs per serving. That alone was going to be $30 a bottle. Yeah, that's an expensive extract to have to get. Yes.

So that gets cut. We go, okay, well, we're not, because we will not pixie dust any of our products, and we're not doing it just to say something's on the label, it's a clinically effective dosage or it's nothing. In that case, it was nothing. But in other cases, we've been able to go, OK, ideally, I believe with our nootropic that we recently launched, I believe with alpha GPC, he was like, ideally, we would have this much. But considering these other things, we could have less. We could go down to this and I still would stand by it as in anybody that would want to

challenge me on that dosage. Like Curtis would, would explain, this is why he believes this is really a legitimate dosage. And in that case, okay, that's all right. But anywhere where it's like, nah, we just get too low. And that's unfortunate because we've had to nix a number of ingredients from products that it would have been great for us to be able to include. But unfortunately, as of right now, they're just too expensive too expensive so so that's kind of the story of how legion came about and then fast forwarding a little bit to today in terms of our usp and what makes us different and so in the beginning honestly it was just the logistics it's like anything it was just a pain in the ass and i was telling jeremy in the beginning i was like if we're

going to do it this is how i think we should do it and it's going to be a pain in the fucking ass it's going to be even just the administrative side of like, okay, going from nothing, going from an idea to just having our first four products to launch. And, but from there, um, it's really, there's no secret to it. It's, uh, you have to be, I mean, if you're gonna do anything like that, right, you have to be willing. It's not even that you have to be great at planning because planning really isn't that hard. You just have to be willing to It's not even that you have to be great at planning because planning really isn't that hard. You just have to be willing to confront planning because a lot of people, for some reason, and I find this not just in business, but in life, don't really have much plans in the way of anything at all. Like and that doesn't work. If you're going to go into something as intricate as building a business, you need to be able to sit down and really think about,

OK, you have to estimate what are all the moving pieces here. And kind of like there's a book called The Checklist Manifesto, which actually I don't recommend. Just just read the article that he wrote. I think it was in The New Yorker or The Atlantic or something like that that got him that book deal because the book was simply like him endlessly expounding on that article. But the philosophy is make sure that you get all the key things that need to be done. You don't necessarily have to break it down into every little micro task and get so OCD that you, you know, it's like the paralysis by analysis, but you have to be, you have to be able to take something big and break it down into a bunch of smaller, actionable chunks. And again, milestones, the key things that need to get done.

And you break it down more and more until you have a very clear roadmap of how you go from where you are to where you want to be. And then I'd say if it's something new, you could just get going on it. But, you know, what I'm getting at is, now we go a bit further and really need to make an estimation of effort on things. Because in the beginning, when you don't have anything, you have nothing to lose other than your time and your energy and your effort. Who cares about that? That shit's not worth anything anyway, when you don't even have anything. So you're really like, Ooh, I'm, you know, if I, if even if you put a bunch of time into something that goes nowhere, one, you're going to have learned things to you're going to have, you know, at least conditioned yourself to work hard on something. And three, what would you have done with that time anyway?

Just fucking hung out and like watch Netflix. Yeah, who cares? So that's worthless. That's worthless. But when you have something there, now there's an opportunity cost associated with time, where if we're going to put time into one thing, that's time that we cannot be putting into other things. So I'd say, you know, from there, it's a lesson we've had to learn is really estimating the amount of effort that it's going to take to do things and weigh that against the potential reward or outcome and then think with alternative uses for that for those resources as well you know so yeah again back to the the beginning i'd say really wasn't that difficult it was just kind of laying out what are all the obvious things they need to get done to put this company there and see how it can do and we just did that you know and it did very well i mean legion did i want to say if i I remember correctly, $1.1 million in sales in its

first year. Wow, that's incredible. Yeah, I mean, in the sports nutrition space, what we're doing is pretty unique in the supplement space. And, you know, I know, I just met people now that have put up absurd numbers come from nothing. Now, again, these people started with very big platforms, I started with a decent platform, whatever it was, four years ago. But, you know, I know some people that have started with platforms that are probably legitimately 10 times the size of my current, maybe not that big, like five times the size of my current platform. And in the same time frame have gone to like have gone from zero to 100 million a year in sales. So I hear stuff like that. I'm like, damn.

And then I look what I'm doing. I'm like, womp, womp, womp. But no, it's cool. Yeah, I really can't compare, especially like it's all about in the long run, like not who's going to just like spike up and then just disappear out of nowhere. Yes. Yes, that's true. And you see that in the sports nutrition space, especially like like like company like shreds. Are they still even around today? Because, you know, they had that big spike with with social media when they were like probably the company really to first use influencer marketing as their sole source of revenue and really well for a while, of course, or at least for a year or two.

But I haven't seen much. I haven't seen much about them. There's certain companies I saw at the Arnold that I was like, wow, they're still alive, like pro subs and VPX sports. I was like, what are you guys doing here? I thought you died. That's true. I mean, maybe maybe they have retail and also international can be like, you know, but it can. Yeah, not necessarily like retail. You'd be surprised some of these companies that are around that do very well because of their retail and especially their international. There's some things that are kind of like, I probably shouldn't say, cause I don't know if I'm supposed to know some of this stuff, but there's some big brands that you wouldn't necessarily know. You'd hear

their big revenue number. You'd be like, wow, well, you don't realize is like almost half of that is international. For example, big, big supplement companies can do tens of millions of dollars a year, just in international sales alone. And that's just working through distributors. I mean, that's theoretically a very easy. I mean, once it's all established and running, it's easier to just fulfill orders for distributors who then take care of everything else than it is to like build an e-commerce business, for example. The e-commerce business is a much stronger business. Like an e-commerce supplement company doing $50 million a year is worth a lot more than a traditional retail dependent supplement company doing $50 million a year. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Wow, that's crazy. 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. Hands down, planning is the key to anything in life. I am one of those planners. I have my planner out. If I'm going to start something, there's going to be an exact science to it. So no doubt for you, that's what had to be done. And that's amazing that you have trustworthy, dependable people helping to formulate your products because that is the key to success there. Yeah. You know what the funny thing is with supplements is I think it's actually probably a bit more of it's just like a point of integrity because you can make plenty of money selling bullshit products. I mean, a lot of people do it. And it's really like people, a lot of the people that get in, especially the supplement game, these aren't people that are going to be winning Nobel prizes in their lifetimes. These

are people that a lot of people that are like staggeringly stupid and who just want money. Like that, that's it. That's all I care about. And so it's whatever it takes to get there. And then, you know, so you see a lot of these people that have done that have had some success and they're obsessed with showing it off and you know, their cars like my cars and you know, my bling and all that shit. So again, I really don't like, I really don't like the fitness space. I'll see sometimes videos. I'm like this, it makes me feel worse about myself. I'm like, this is the industry that this is my industry. Like this, these, these are my peers. Like this is who people correlate me with. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's like when people, Oh, you're one of those guys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. These are my peeps. You

know what I mean? And that might sound arrogant, but it's just, I've had so many odd experiences in this industry that I'm extremely jaded and cynical at this point. What I like, again, it's come back to I like my crowd is great because my crowd is not necessarily those people. My crowd actually primarily is just everyday people that want to get into good shape. And that I like. And I've met a lot of very cool people that have just read, like read my books or read articles or watch videos and just went, Hey, I'll do that. I'll try that and got good results. And so that's, that's what keeps me going in terms of the, I guess the social side of it is

more, I like to hear from the people that, um, and it's not because they like my work, but it's because I actually honestly can relate more to like a dad or a mom who works long hours and has kids and has let themselves go out since college because they've just been, life's been crazy. And now they just want to get into really good shape. Like that person makes more sense to me than some of the other people. Oh yeah. And I'm in the same exact boat. I'm all about those lifestyle clients and I can relate so much to the college students, not necessarily the parents, cause I don't have any kids, have a cat, but that type of person, customer client is the person that's typically going to be 100% loyal to a product or a brand or a service.

That's very true. I mean, my best customers have come from the books. Like there there's no question, even though we've, we've acquired a lot of customers from a lot of avenues but books have been number one and it's exactly that point where like they found something that works and they stick to it and they then have found everything else they're like oh i really like this stuff and it them, it just gives them everything that they need because they're not trying to become bodybuilders per se. And they're not even necessarily concerned with squeezing every last ounce of their, uh, potential, you know, muscle building or, uh, of their potential physique out of their bodies. They just want to be in really good shape. They want to be healthy. They want to look good.

And they want to be able to do that with, you know, they need to be able to do that in three to five hours a week. Oh yeah. You can't expect people like that to be in the gym for like three hours a day. That's ridiculous. Or even two hours a day. Yeah. I mean, I used to do back in the day when I had nothing better to do. I used to do back in the day when I had nothing better to do. How was your transition from writing books to now and being on top of a variety of content? Prefer to be in the writing, the writing world? Yeah, for sure.

Like the work that I enjoy the most is the researching and writing. Podcasting is cool, although I like the researching and writing more. Recording YouTube videos is annoying because for some reason I'm just not very good at it. I don't like it takes, maybe it's just cause I'm too OCD about wanting to make sure that I say everything the way exactly I want it to be said. Whereas with writing, it's, it's, that's just the nature of writing. You know, if you say something, if you write something that doesn't sound right, you just fix it. It's really easy. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, so, you know, I, I enjoy the researching and writing the most and I'm happy to get back to a lot of it this year, actually. So I have a number of, so I have three shorter books that I'm going to be self-publishing. I'm going to be doing

my first traditional book deal, which, um, I'm excited about. And so I'm going to have to write that manuscript. Like I put in the proposal that I'll deliver the manuscript within six months. So I'm assuming we'll probably have a deal done by the end of the month. And that'll give me basically till the end of the year to deliver that manuscript. And I'm still writing on my blogs, although I have a few people now that help, which is great. And it has been very hard to find people up to the standards that I want for, because I feel like I have established a certain bar in terms of quality of content for those websites. Cause I've had, you know, I have a lot of people that have been following me really since the beginning. And if not from the beginning for one, two,

three plus years now, and I can't just like turn muscle for life into, um, like a breaking muscle, which just where the content is all over the place and some of it's okay. And some of it's terrible. And I just, I just don't want to do that, but I've put in a lot of work to find a few people that, um, are not only very knowledgeable in terms of health and fitness, but also good writers. And then of course I'm, I'm in an editorial role. So that's, I've, I've come back to the work that I enjoy the most, even though it's funny because like previously for the last year and a half, I've been focused. I've just, I just got bogged down in a lot of logistical and administrative things related to running the businesses and hiring people and shit just has to get done. There's, and I couldn't

justify taking time away from that to just like write more articles or write another book when again, I had to weigh like what's the opportunity cost of if I neglect this other stuff? What is how is that likely to play out over the next few years? Like because I have very, I guess, ambitious goals for myself over the next three to five years. And how do I best get there? Okay. That means that something, you know, I only have so much time and I, I, I work a fair amount now. I worked even more previously. I have two kids now. Um, but I still, I don't know, my average work week is probably 55 or 60 hours and sure. I can work more. I don't give a shit. I'm someone that, I don't know. I've just, I've just been like that, I guess, for a while where I, I can work more, but then my family, that would be what I'd

sacrifice. I'd be essentially, am I willing to sacrifice my relationship with my wife and basically my kids and kind of never see them. And I don't think that's smart. Like I know quite a few people that have done that and have achieved a lot of financial success, a lot of professional success, but I've also spoken with them now on the other side of it. And that's one of the most common regrets that some of these people, at least that I've known, had is like, yeah, I mean, it's cool. It's fulfilling that they really achieved something they wanted to achieve, but they wish they didn't lose their families in the process of it. So anyways, that was the last year and a half or so. I was still working on content, but not nearly as much as I would have liked to have been.

And it's nice to get back to that now, again, and get back to writing books and get back to writing articles and not feel like it's a guilty pleasure. Like, like, I'm just like, I'm taking time away from the real work I should be doing, because I feel like writing articles. Again, the transition has been away from it was, was annoying, but understandable. Like I did it willingly. It was my own choice and I thought it was the right choice. It's nice to come back to it. And it's also nice to come back to it now with a few people I can really rely on who write really good content. Curtis being one of them, Curtis writes over at the Legion blog and his, uh, he's great. Like he's a good writer.

He's also a quirky guy and he has a funny sense of humor. Like he's one of these. Yeah, he grew up on the Internet. So he just he just has that Internet edge to him that you can't you either have it or you don't. You know what I mean? And and so that that comes through in his writing and his jokes and stuff. So he makes it I think in some ways he's better than I am in that regard where he makes, you know, his articles are not only informative and accurate and factual. They're also fun to read just because, you know, he'll say things you just have to laugh like who the fuck says that?

Who thinks of that? Who is this guy? And that's what makes a good article. That's something I struggle with is like, you know, creating that that connection, that humor connection. I'm very factual in my writing, like straightforward, that humor connection. I'm very factual in my writing, like straightforward scientific. Honestly, I, I, I'm the same. Okay. You understand. Yeah. I mean, I can do like, I can do it. I think decently it doesn't come second nature. Yeah. When I'm writing that, like I go into that how to kind of mode, you know what I mean? And where I've

also just kind of ingrained it into myself to always strive for clarity, like brevity and clarity. Those are the two things that matter the most. And I focused a lot on that in my writing and really focused to try to improve on those things as a writer at the expense of style or personality, which you can get away with with this type of writing, because ultimately people just want to know what the fuck do I do? Like, hey, I'm searching for how to lose weight and I'm going to read your article on how to lose weight. It better be clear and it better make sense. And if I do what you say, it better work. And so if you can check those boxes, then you're, I think, honestly, 80 percent there. If you can also make them laugh or just, just make them feel good

along or along the way, then that's that additional just kind of puts it over the top where people can just read something and immediately just feel a connection and be like, I really like this person. I get a sense of their personality and they know what they're talking about and they're helping me like I'm going to get on this person's email list or I'm going to buy this person's book or something. So I know what you mean. I think it's, it's, it's a matter of also giving it, giving yourself the time. Cause I've, I've run into that where I'm kind of time crunched on, like, I need to make sure this article is done by tonight. Cause I have other shit I have to do

tomorrow. If it doesn't come naturally in the flow of writing it, then you have to insert it and you can do that. You just have to give yourself the time. Like you have to really, when you're done writing it and when you're editing, kind of look through it and be like, okay, get into that more creative kind of mindset, I guess. Get yourself, I don't know, maybe watch some standup routines or something. Just get out of the, get out of the analytical left-brained OCD mindset and more just into the creative, like I'm just going to have fun with this and see, can I, can I make this more fun or more funny? And so, I mean, that's, that's worked for me. I don't always do it though, honestly. Cause again, still sometimes, you know, like I published a, it was like a 5,000 word article on supersets last week. And by the time I was done

with it, I'm like, fuck this article. Like I need to do other things. I hate it. Go away. That's the, that's the, that's like everything that, right. Who was it. Go away. Yeah, that's that's the that's like everything there. Who is it? Picasso said that art's never finished. It's only abandoned or whatever. And same thing with books like this book that I'm getting ready to publish. It's going to be June probably. And, you know, you're getting to that point when you're like, I don't want to see I can't do another edit. I just I just think this needs to go away at this point. Oh, that's how I feel. I have to write these like 30 page papers on different disease States. And by the time I am done, I never want to hear about that disease state ever again in my life. Exactly. That's good though.

That means you're doing good work. It does make you totally understand the disease, how to treat it, the, um, pathology, but it definitely does make you want to die slowly. Yeah, that's I mean, that's that's the writing process, though. It never changes, even even as some like, no, that's not just me saying that, but go just read, read stuff from enough writers and you'll see that it's very much like and I'm glad that I can at least say that I enjoy writing. A lot of writers don't even enjoy it. They just enjoy having written. And I understand that.

Like there's some things where you, you kind of plod through something and it's a pain in the ass and then it's done. And you're like, all right, well, I actually like feel satisfied now. That was a pain in the ass, but I did it. So at least I can be thankful that for the most part, and that's not always the case, but I enjoy the process of writing. I enjoy the process of putting things together and making them sound good. So at least there's that.

Yeah, that's super important. Now, I think I don't want to take too much of your time. So I just want to ask you two more questions. So I just want to ask you two more questions. One, I want to ask you, how do you attempt to balance your family and your life and your business? So we'll start with that question. Sure. I would say I'm like, I'm actually just kind of recorded a podcast on this.

I don't I'm not a big believer in kind of work life balance because you can't have everything in balance, even if you're like, oh, what is it? The four burners theory, you have your health and your work and your family and your friends, right? And you can't have all those burners on, on max all the time. And fine. It's like a silly little analogy, but I think there's actually some validity to it. Um, even though I would say there's more to life than even just those things. What about your society? What about things that are going on outside of the sphere of your immediate influence that if someone has to give a shit about or not, I guess. But even if you start there, you can't keep all those things in balance without having

a very mediocre life, without having a mediocre work, mediocre friendships, mediocre love relationships, mediocre health, because we only have so much time. Like, yeah, if we didn't have to sleep, you probably actually could just go hard as fuck. And, you know, take even if we just said those four areas, if you give each of those areas six hours a day of like intense effort and you need no sleep and you needed, you never had energy lulls and you never needed it. Yeah. A lot of people get caught. Totally. And you didn't need any downtime. Yeah. Then maybe you could actually have the all cylinders firing, but I just don't, I mean, that's obviously that's just reducing it to the absurd. Um, but, but bring it back down to reality. I think that you have to choose if you want extraordinary results. And by extraordinary, I just mean the dictionary definition of something beyond the average or the

ordinary. You're going it's going to require some sort of imbalance in your life. You're going to have to sacrifice a lot more than you probably think going into it in the way of time and energy and effort and also just fun and maybe not fun as fun is maybe not the word, but spontaneity and just doing, you know, whatever it is that you want to do, whatever some part of us, the lizard brain tells us to do at any given point of any day, right? Because there's definitely a part of us that just wants to, it's just a tumbleweed. It doesn't really want to think, and maybe it's an evolutionary thing because not too long ago, we couldn't even conceive of working for a carrot that takes,

you know, uh, 10 years to, to achieve or something like that. Cause we were so preoccupied with like, how am I going to get food to survive to tomorrow? And then tomorrow, how am I going to get food and shelter to serve? So I don't get to don't die in you know, I make it another day. And so there's a part of us that resists that, uh, more analytical, what, what do they call it? The system to type of thinking, the, the, the slow down and reasoning type of thinking, whereas the more intuitive side of us leads us astray, I think a lot. And so coming back to, to, to your point or to your question. yeah, I mean, I don't my life is imbalanced for the most part. And I don't see that changing. And so, again, what I've what I've chosen to sacrifice are my I haven't sacrificed my health. I didn't want to do that. So I still make time to work out, even though I go early in the morning and I don't spend more than an hour or so in the gym five days per week. And that's enough though. That plus proper dieting. I do a little, a little bit of cardio on the weekends is enough to, to stay in great shape and in great health, which, which I've

even recently had to measure objectively because I got life insurance. So, so I haven't sacrificed there, but where I've sacrificed his friends, I don't have a social life at all. And I don't care like at all, actually, because I can always do that if I want to. And right now I'm focused on primarily my work and my family. So I've made mistakes and like moving too far in the direction of sacrificing my my family and my my relationship with my wife. And she's very good in that she's very understanding of what I'm doing, why I'm doing it. She knows also just my personality and I like to work and I don't like just doing random shit that has no purpose. I just don't like it. I was a little bit more maybe laissez faire when I was younger. And, but I was also a bit more deliberate about that because I knew I hadn't

started on my, in my life yet. Like my, my wife's German. And, uh, so she's from Germany. And so we did long distance for like two and a half years. And I used to travel, travel over there every so often. And she would come and visit me sometimes, but I would go over there more often because it's more fun going to Europe at that time. Yeah. I wasn't as driven as I am now, or I wasn't as focused as I am now, but I also, I would say that I, that was intentional. And I knew that like, I'm going to enjoy this am now, or I wasn't as focused as I am now. But I also, I would say that I, that was intentional. And I knew that like, I'm going to enjoy this for now, but this is not life. This is, this is going to end and I'm going to have to get serious, so to speak about doing something with my life. I am, I'm not just going to, whatever I could have, my dad is a successful

business person, entrepreneur. And I could have, I could have just kind of dirtled around for a while basically, and not really had to do anything. And so I was a different person in some ways at that, in that time of my life. But then once it was like, okay, it's time to really work and figure out my life and make something of myself. That side of me is gone basically, because I just like, it doesn't, it just doesn't fit anymore. I can't have vibrant relationships, friendships that take time. I mean, you have to like invest time and work into a friendship. It doesn't, it doesn't just magic. Absolutely. It doesn't just magically create itself. And so I intentionally was like, well, that's done now, you know, to go back five years, like by the time I'm 40, this is how I want to,

this is how I want myself to be set up in terms of my life. And what am I going to sacrifice? I don't want to sacrifice my health. A lot of people do that, like where they'll they don't want to sacrifice, let's say, much in the way of their social lives. So they will not exercise like that's an hour a day. Cool. They don't need that. They'll just work instead.

And they'll intentionally like sleep deprive themselves so they'll go okay maybe i can save like two hours a day just by not sleeping enough which i've played with not to the point of being reckless but like i generally don't need if i get six to seven hours of sleep six six and a half something like that that's totally fine like i naturally will wake up after i've tried to work that down and it just doesn't work. I've tried it. But, you know, again, I know people that know like they do not feel good on five hours of sleep a night. Oh, I would die. I die on like six. Yeah. I mean, I understand. I needed more sleep when I was younger. Maybe it's just because I'm old now. So maybe that's why that's they go, OK, well,

I'll just sleep five hours a night and I'm just going to pound stimulants. And then, you know, at some point then that turns into like, oh shit, now I need drugs also to fall asleep. And so those are the, again, sacrifices that people make. And I didn't want to make those sacrifices. So I don't have a social life really to speak of. Maybe I'll see a friend once a week. I mean, also I do work with my friends, so there is that, but we also are very much, we're here to work. Like we're all cool and we have fun, but we're not here to just hang out. There's really not much hanging out going on. It's, it's working. And, um, so outside of work, maybe I'll see somebody once a week or something. And, uh, it's the weather's getting nicer. So I'm going to golf probably on, I liked the old,

the old white man sport, a buddy of mine will play once a week or something. So yeah, I mean, I just don't, I think that you have to be okay with your life becoming imbalanced. And then you just have to be aware of where the imbalances are and how extreme they are and what it takes to bring things back into balance before they all fall apart. And again, I've experienced that more with my relationship with my wife, where I've gone for days with just work, work, work, work, work, and not had very much in the way of interactions with her. Like, sure, I had some conversations, but you only can do that so much and so often before the relationship just starts to feel kind of like almost like a like a like a like, yeah, yeah, exactly. I never had a roommate. I was

thinking, what's the word? Like not a partner, but yeah, exactly. A roommate who happens to raise, at the time, it was just our son, who happens to raise my kid. So I've learned that lesson, though, and now I'm better in that regard. It's a decision that you've made deliberately and you're aware of it and you are aware of the downsides and the consequences and you have worked out how are you going to prevent catastrophe, I guess. Yeah, as long as you know where you're going, you're putting effort into what's a priority for you and that you're happy and you're stepping towards where you're going to be happy, not stepping towards, you know, a downward spiral. So thank you so much for that. And one last question. What is your biggest piece of advice for success in life? This is good timing because this book that I'm wrapping up is I'm calling it the little black book of workout motivation. Hopefully, I'm trying to do something that is going to be interesting and not just the same old tired cliches that we read in like Instagram captions. And I'm trying to do something that has at least a little bit more, I don't know, weight or substance to it.

And I also hope that people are not only find it motivating for, you know, their health and fitness goals, but also all their other goals and areas of their lives where they want to improve. And I would say the number one tip, and this is kind of taking from even from this book and the thing that this is, and this is me being totally selfish, me just sharing what resonates most with me period. And this maybe is just a, a consequence of my personality, which tends to be kind of brusque. And I don't know, I'm an acquired taste, I think. But it's basically the ability to suffer, to be able to do things that you really don't want to do, regardless of how you feel about them, and to be able to just take more pain and more discomfort than the other guy or the other girl that in the end, I think is really what sets apart great performance and

great achievement from mediocrity. I think you don't need to be able to take all that much to get okay at something or to produce okay results, but to really do well in anything. And of course, fitness is a simple analogy or a simple metaphor for this. Um, I mean, you know, as someone who has, who competes, uh, I'm assuming I've seen your pictures. I don't know if you still people you have. Yeah. Like that's, that's a game of suffering. That's all that is. It take endurance sports. I mean, this is, there have been a bunch of quotes from like endurance cyclists and stuff that, and runners, long distance runners who are saying that, yeah, there's a, there's a certain level of physical capability that gets you in the door.

That's your ticket of, that's the price of admission. But in the end, the people that win are the people that can just suffer the most. And I know that sounds kind of morbid, I guess, but honestly, I mean, that's something that I would say one of the things that I've gotten good at is doing the stuff that needs to be done regardless of whether I like it or not or regardless of whether I want to do it or not or how I feel about it. And that has quality to have. Sure, sure. But I mean, it's not necessarily if you can learn to like that, that's like superpower. Basically, if you can learn to enjoy doing things that otherwise, like you really, you actually don't really enjoy it, but you can find some joy in it because you

have a purpose and because it serves, uh, it's going to help you get to where you want to be. Then that's, uh, I think a fundamental prerequisite to success really in any area of life. Again, because no matter what it is, matter how into it you might be going into something where you're like oh i really enjoy blah and when you get to that point though where it's no longer you're no longer looking to dabble or be a dilettante you want to become a true professional at something which is when you're saying achieve success that's the implication right is reaching that professional level of success. I mean, look at it in the same context of, okay, someone wants to become, they want to reach the professional level of success in business and entrepreneurship. So what is that? That's,

I guess, becoming a millionaire, right? Or at least, you know, some certain level of income that is very impressive or a certain amount of revenue for a business or market share, however you want to measure it. It's more quantitative in that regard. But that's the equivalent of, you know, a professional athlete who gets signed. That's why they get paid that money. There's there's there's definitely some a likeness there in that. What does it take to become a professional athlete? These are the people who are always so good at their sports. They were just always the best. Like that's the story of most pro athletes.

From the first time they ever kicked a soccer ball, someone was like, wow, you're pretty good at that. And then they quickly became the absolute best player on the team. And they were the best player on the team for the rest of their lives. And now they play professionally. And a lot of them still don't even make it. And so similarly, though, in other areas of life, when somebody says, I want to be a millionaire, that's what you're saying. You're saying, I want to be the professional basketball player. Now, of course,

yeah, sure. There's some physicality that, that applies in sports that doesn't apply elsewhere. But my point with that is, is what you're saying is you, you've set a very high bar for yourself. is you, you've set a very high bar for yourself and, and even, even with competing and fit in, in fitness, I've never competed. Uh, but I have worked with a number of people who have, and I've also spoken with a number of people who had said they wanted to compete, but didn't really realize what that meant. Like, you know what I mean? And that's something you have to, you have to know before you get into it. I agree. I agree. But if you don't, you go into it thinking, Oh, essentially that it's going to be a lot easier than it, than it really is going to be. And so getting into something and saying, I want to be really successful in this,

honestly, coming back to get ready to suffer. Then that's, that's an, and if you don't suffer, it's, it's, there are going to be points where it's going to be very uncomfortable. It's going to be very difficult. You're going to have to keep showing up, even though you don't want to, you're going to have to keep pushing and working on things you don't want to work on and do things you don't want to do. If it doesn't get to the point of suffering where you wouldn't say, if it gets, if it never gets to that point where you're like, this sucks really, really, I really do not feel good at all. This is, this is painful. This is psychologically and spiritually painful. If it doesn't get to that, count yourself lucky. But, you know, if again, if you really want to go far, figure going into it, that's going to go there.

You know, I don't know, maybe read Marcus Aurelius's meditations or something. Get ready for it. If you can maybe steal yourself with some pop stoicism or something, I don't know, but it's coming. stoicism or something. I don't know, but it's coming. And so, you know, that I'd say is, is maybe not a very palatable tip for success, but it's at least one I think is real. But that's your thoughts. And I, I definitely, I'm going to pull some faith in here. God tells us not to be idle. We're not meant to live easy lives. So we can just embrace the hard parts and embrace the struggle because that is what's truly going to bring us success and happiness and going to get us to our purpose in life. So thank you for that. If you could tell my listeners where they can find you, your social media handles, your website, of course, Muscle for Life, that would be great. And then we are good to go. Thank you so much for your time, Mike.

Yeah, absolutely. And just to that last point, I completely agree. And I would say that life is going to come with problems and struggles and pain one way or another. And if you can choose those problems and those struggles and pain, that's great. And if because if you don't choose them, somebody is going to choose them for you. Oh, yes. You might not like the choices that are made. So you might as well make your own choices and find something that's worth struggling for. So so anyways, to finish with the plug. Yeah.

So muscle for life dot com just spelled out. That's kind of like the hub where you can find all my stuff. Legion athletics dot com is the supplement, the sports nutrition, whatever the supplement company. And again, check out the blogs on both of those websites. If, if you like, um, long form, well-researched and hopefully I would say well-written and informative and also entertaining content. And, uh, so on social media, honestly, I'm on social media. I spend very little time on it because I don't like it. But Instagram is Muscle for Life Fitness. Twitter, I think, is Muscle for Life.

And I think Facebook is Muscle for Life. I'd say 80% of the time I spend on social media is just answering DMs. I don't really spend much time posting or I don't do anything to try to grow my following. But I do respond to people that communicate to me because I figure that's at least a productive use of it. So if people want to follow me on social media, I appreciate it. And you're not going to see very many things, but if you want to reach out, if you have questions or anything, I'm happy to help. Okay. At least you're honest. So I just want to say thank you. I just want to say thank you for having me as well. I appreciate the opportunity and I appreciate you taking your time.

Oh, no, you're so welcome. I hope you have a fabulous rest of your day. Yeah, just thank you so much again. And I will hopefully meet you one time or speak with you later. But I hope you have a great day. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness

podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on 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 muscle forlife.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 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.