Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - My Unlikely Origin Story and How the Mike Matthews Sausage Is Made

Episode Date: September 7, 2020

If you’re not familiar with my story, the truth is I didn’t always want to have a career in the fitness industry. But after I decided to write a book to help people learn from my own mistakes in the gym, things started snowballing. Not only have I sold nearly 2 million books, but I started my own sports nutrition company, Legion, which has since become an 8 figure business with over 250,000 customers worldwide. If you’re interested in hearing more about my backstory and the beginnings and founding of Legion, you’re going to love this podcast, which is actually an interview from The More Than Fitness Podcast with Matt McLeod. In his podcast, Matt interviews some of the brightest stars in the fields of fitness, business, and self-development, with the goal of maximizing life both in and outside of the gym. So, I was happy to oblige when Matt asked to have a conversation with me. In this episode, Matt asks me all about the history of Legion and my background as a do-er of “fitness things,” including . . . How I got into the fitness industry and why I started writing The origins of Bigger Leaner Stronger Why I started making supplements How I make business decisions How and why I continue to learn And more . . . So, if you’re interested in hearing how it all started, and maybe pick up some “inside baseball” tips, tune in and let me know what you think! 5:03 - When you meet someone for the first time what do you tell them you do for work? 6:10 - When you first started, how intentional was all of this? Did it slowly evolve or did you have a big master plan? 32:00 - How do you decide what is and isn’t worth doing? 54:14 - What drives you to keep learning? --- Mentioned on The Show: Books by Mike Matthews: legionathletics.com/products/books/ The More Than Fitness Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-more-than-fitness-podcast-with-matt-mcleod/id1454414707 Matt McLeod’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/mattmcleod6/ --- 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.legionathletics.com/signup/

Hello friend, welcome to another episode of MFL with MM. Thank you for joining me today and giving me the opportunity to penetrate your skull with some sound waves. Now, why should you grant me such a privilege and such an honor? Well, in today's episode, I talk about my absolute favorite topic, myself. No, I'm kidding. I actually do talk about myself and my origin story, so to speak, but not because I want you to know how cool I am, more so because I am often asked about how I got into the fitness industry and what has worked, what has not worked, what hard lessons have I learned along the way, what things do I wish I would have known back when I started that I know now. And in case you are not familiar with what I've done, again, not to brag,

but just to give you some context here, when I got into the fitness industry back in 2012, I had no connections. I had no obvious advantages or opportunities. I self-published a book called Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, and it was a minimum viable product. The simple book I wish somebody would have just given me back when I was 17 or 18. And fast forward to today, I've now written several best-selling books, fitness books, and I've sold nearly 2 million of those books as a self-published author. And I started a sports nutrition company called Legion back in 2014 that now is doing eight figures a year in sales. And I've built a bit of a following and a name for myself in the industry.

And so I am often asked about the story. How did that happen? Especially with an eye to practical takeaways and things that people who want to maybe follow in my footsteps in some regard can use to get ahead faster. And that's why I'm sharing this interview because in it, I talk about the story, which many of you probably know, at least the outline of, I basically just gave it to you. But we also, we being me and the host, his name is Matt and he had me on his podcast, the More Than Fitness podcast.

And so Matt and I get into not just the background, but also some of the valuable teachings I have picked up along the way and how they have informed how I go about things now, how I go about making business decisions, how I go about continuing to learn and why I do it the way I do it, and how I go about weighing the opportunity cost of personally getting involved in projects and pursuing things versus other things. And so if you are interested in hearing some of the inside baseball of how Mike Matthews does Mike Matthews and how Legion does Legion,

then I think you're going to like this episode. Also, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my health and fitness books, including the number one bestselling weightlifting books for men and women in the world, Bigger Leaner Stronger and Thinner Leaner Stronger, as well as the leading flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best body ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes & Noble stores. And I should also mention that you can get any of the audiobooks 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account.

And this is a great way to make those pockets of downtime, like commuting, meal prepping and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. And so if you want to take Audible up on this offer, and if you want to get one of my audio books for free, just go to www.buylegion.com slash Audible and sign up for your account. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, and if you want to learn time-proven and evidence-based strategies for losing fat, building muscle and getting healthy and strategies that work for anyone and everyone, regardless of age or circumstances, please do consider picking up one of my best-selling books, Bigger Leaner Stronger for Men, Thinner Leaner Stronger

for Women, and The Shredded Chef for my favorite fitness-friendly recipes. How are you doing, man? You doing good? Yeah. Yeah. Just staying busy, you know? Yeah, of course. I appreciate you doing this. I know you're super busy. I know you have no idea who the hell I am. And to take an hour out of your day to come and do this, it means a lot. And I think a lot of my listeners and things, they look up to you as well, just as I do. So yeah, thank you, man, for doing it. I appreciate it. Absolutely, man. I'm flattered. Thanks for the opportunity. For sure. For sure. Whenever someone has a laundry list of achievements and things like you do, so you have multiple books, you've got your podcast going, you've had the blog for

a long time. And then of course, you're the founder of Legion Athletics, the supplement company. Whenever you meet someone for the first time, whether time. And then, of course, you're the founder of Legion Athletics, the supplement company. Whenever you meet someone for the first time, whether it's at a bar or wherever, what is your answer? What do you tell them that you do? That's a funny question. I have an answer for this. It is, I just say I do fitness things. I'm like, eh, I'm primarily an author, I guess.

I have some books that are popular and I have a supplement company and an app and other things. So fitness stuff. And they're like, oh, okay, cool. And so sometimes you'll be like, oh, so is that like your full-time thing? Like, yeah, yeah, that's a full-time job. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's funny because I always have some people that give, it depends on if they want to continue the conversation with people. So they either give one answer or the other. So yeah, that's funny. Fitness things that takes care of about everything that you do. Yeah. Yeah. I don't give a shit. I'm not trying to impress anybody. And it actually, if somebody is less interested in talking to me because it sounds like, oh, I'm not doing that

fitness things. Oh, he's like a trainer or something, right? Oh, so you're a personal trainer as if that's a job to look down on. Like I probably don't want to talk to that person anyway. So I think it works out. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. And I think the question to go from there is, I'm always curious on, because obviously you've done so many things, how intentional was this from the beginning? Did this evolve over time or was this like in the beginning? Because I know you're a fan of planning three to five-year plans, things like that. Take it back to the beginning. Was this all part of your own master plan or something? Initially, no. I just got a wild hair, wanted to write a book. And at that time, Amazon's Kindle publishing platform, their

self-publishing platform was getting a lot of media attention because there was a guy named John Locke. He was the first guy to sell a million eBooks on their platform. And he had kind of a cool story. It made for good publicity. He had made a bunch of money in insurance. I think he built up two companies and then sold them. So he built up an insurance company selling insurance. Then he sold that and he did it again and sold that. And then he had enough money where he didn't have to work for money anymore. And what he had always wanted to do was write... I haven't read any of his stuff, ironically, but I know they're... It's just fun sex violence novels geared toward women. And that's just what he wanted to do. So he starts writing these books.

And because he didn't care about making money, he put them up for sale for 99 cents, which at the time was novel. You didn't really see that. It's a novel way to sell novels. Ebooks at that time were, if I remember correctly, were even more expensive on average than they are now. And that's still a point of contention. A lot of people don't want to pay $15 for an ebook. They will gladly pay $25 for the hard copy, but $15 for the ebook, the perceived value is just so much lower that they just don't want to do it. So at the time, again, if I remember, because there was a legal battle over this with Amazon, and I think they even excluded some big publishers, all of their stuff for a bit.

Anyway, so this Locke guy was like, I'll just use that as my irresistible offer, so to speak. It's $0.99. And also, I mean, Kindle, I think you have two weeks to refund a Kindle book if you don't like it. So there's actually no risk anyway. A lot of people don't know that though. So however, he puts his books up for 99 cents. And I believe, I think I looked into this data recently, almost certain that women read a lot more than men on average, right? And so that was a smart marketing angle too. I mean, in general, I would say business advice, if you have the option of doing something for women or for men, women, every time. Women drive like 70% of consumer spending. It is so much easier to sell stuff to women and not because they're easier to manipulate or anything like that. It's just women are the consumers of our society. And it's not a criticism, it's just a fact, right? So he writes these books and blows up and turns into this whole thing. And at that time, so I had gotten into pretty good shape for the first time, right? So I had a bit of muscle

from working out, not knowing what I was doing for like six or seven years. Then I had learned more of what I should be doing. I got pretty lean. And a buddy of mine was like, you should just take your shirt off, go on YouTube and just sell stuff. And I was just like, I can't do that. I have some dignity. I can't do that. What age is this? Sorry to cut you off. What age is this? Yeah. This was 2012. So nine years ago, eight years ago or so. And I'm 36. So yeah. Got it. Late twenties. And I was like, I can't do that. But then I heard about this Kindle thing and I'm 36. So yeah, got it. Late twenties. And I was like, I can't do that. But then I heard about this Kindle thing and I was like, okay, that's something I'm interested in. I am interested in

writing. I, at that time was, I guess you could say it was almost like a specialty publishing business. So I was creating employee training programs for companies. I worked in a different number of different industries toward the end was focusing on healthcare. So creating employee training programs for like dentists and their offices, not just not how to do dentistry, but like, okay, you've hired a receptionist. How do you train her to do a good job? Got it. Got it. Was this kind of your first career? Like after, did you go to college and things and then go, okay, you didn't go to college. So this was kind of your first major career. Yeah. And there's a story as to why I didn't go to college and how I got there. But anyway,

so at that time, I already was used to writing how-to stuff and practical stuff, right? And I liked writing and I liked reading. So I was like, all right, that's something that interests me. I'm going to write a simple book on training and diet, something I wish that someone would have just given me back when I was like 18. And it would have just saved me a bunch of time. And I would have gotten a lot further, a lot faster. And that was bigger than you're stronger, right? And so the first edition of it was a minimum viable product. It was, I don't know, maybe, I don't even think it was 80,000 words. It was probably, I would guess, 60,000 words or so, which is on the short end for a book. There wasn't much marketing sizzle there. It was mostly just steak. It was mostly just, this is how it works. And it doesn't, I'm not asking you to make

a big leap of faith, just do it. And within a month you'll know it works. So it's literally that simple. And this was just a hobby for you. You were just, I'm going to write a book on candle. Yeah. Amazing. So I published that January, 2012, and I was not in the fitness industry. So I had no, I didn't bother going through an agent and trying to get a book deal because I know that that's even more the case now than then, that it's very, very hard to get a book deal if you aren't established in some way, if you don't at least have a following for something. At that time, I was just some dude who wrote a fitness book. Yeah, cool. Whatever. So I just self-published it. And I think in the first month it sold like 20 copies. And I thought that was

pretty cool. Actually. I thought it was like a coin toss between zero copies sold and any copies sold. Right. Yeah. And so 20, I was like, shit, 20 people bought my book. That's neat. People liked it. And the key to selling a lot of books is word of mouth. No matter how good you are with your marketing, you can have a great title, you can have a great cover, you can have a great copy. But ultimately, if the book is going to do very well, it has to be a book that generates word of mouth. And so Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, it is a great title. Just fact Yeah. I'm biased, but it is because that summarizes why any of us guys go to the gym right there. Anyway, so the original cover was actually ugly and bad. I think it's okay now.

But the book then by the end of 2012 was selling several thousand copies per month. And that was with me doing nothing. And that was really, I was mostly just working on my other stuff. You know what I mean? I was answering some emails every day because I put an email address in there and I was like, hey, if you have any questions, shoot me an email. And so I was getting more and more emails. People telling me they liked the book. It was getting reviews, whatever. So by the end of 2012, I saw there was an opportunity to do more with fitness, but I wasn't sure I actually wanted to because although I liked reading and

I liked writing and I liked fitness personally, and I liked what it could do for other people, there was a lot that I didn't like about the fitness industry. And also, I think it's unhealthy to become too, well, this is not I think, it just factually is unhealthy to become too obsessed with your body, with how you look, especially how you look, right? But even your health, if you get too neurotic about preserving your health, that actually can turn into real problems, eating disorders and other things. So obviously the fitness space has a lot of that. And that's a complete turnoff to me as an individual. So I was conflicted. And initially, I was thinking, all right, what I would rather do actually is just take what I've

learned about how to sell books and start a publishing company. And I'll publish, I'll write myself, and I'll probably write some more fitness stuff, but I also will write about other things that I'm interested in. And I would just use pen names to make sure that it's like, from a marketing perspective Okay, if mike matthews is fitness It'd be a bit random if mike matthews is also like I have a book on the bill of rights like that's very random You know, so all right I'll just make a pen name for that and put my other stuff over here and obviously I don't hide that from people

But that's just a simple It's just a marketing Tactic that makes it clear to the consumer. What is this Mike Matthews guy about? Oh, it's all fitness. Oh, and I have a pen name, Sean Patrick, where there are a couple of names in my extended family. Just grab them, whatever. Didn't put that much thought into it, to be fair. And that's the other stuff. And so I actually started going in that direction because I'm not an extremely money-motivated person. Yeah, I like to make money as much as the next person.

And money is great. And not having financial problems is great. And ultimately, getting to financial independence is a great goal just for utilitarian reasons. But money is not the number one factor in a lot of my lifestyle and business decisions. And so I was pursuing the publishing thing and came up with a name for the company and started to put the plan together and even a website and stuff and what I wanted to do. And then I just, in thinking about it, talked myself out of that and into fitness because it was a bigger opportunity. And I knew I could make a big

impact in people's lives very directly. Not that I couldn't with the publishing company, but it remained to be seen. I don't know. It depended on what type of stuff I was going to be publishing and how it was going to go. I already had something over here that was gaining a lot of momentum. And I know exactly the impact that I can have in people's lives if I just help get them in better shape. And then it is a much bigger game in terms of the financial upside. So that is a factor as well. And so I went in the other direction and wrote more books. So I wrote a book for women because a lot of women were reading Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. And then they were correctly

recognizing like, it sounds like a lot of this is applicable to me. Like the principles are applicable to me. I don't want to be bigger, but how you explain dieting and energy balance or macronutrients. So it sounds like that is exactly the same for me, at least in terms of like the underlying machinery as guys. And then on the training side of things, they would often ask about the programming. So like basically saying it has a lot of upper body volume has, could I flip this around? Could we have less upper body and more lower body, basically? And so I took the book then and modified it for women as much as I could, pulled out a lot of examples that were specifically with men, turned them into female examples, put some other female-only information in the book, changed the training program to more align with your average woman's goals, And then did that and did a cookbook. And so started doing more books. And then I launched a website in, I want to say March of 2013 called Muscle for Life. So that was muscleforlife.com. It was really just a glorified blog. I just

started writing articles and I linked to my books and like, here's my stuff. Right. But at that time there was nothing else for sale. What I did do though, is I put up a section on the website that I think I just called recommendations because I would, I was starting to get asked for recommendations for all kinds of things like supplements, of course, and things related to fitness, but also just random things. Like I would talk about books that I've read and that I like. So people would start asking me for book recommendations, would ask me for workout, like gear recommendations, would ask me even for just jeans. They'd see a picture on Instagram, what jeans are those, whatever. And so I started putting

up just stuff I like. And I would link out to Amazon and I was participating in their affiliate program, not because I cared about the money. It never made that much money. But I was just curious if people cared enough about my recommendations to buy something. And so I saw that people were buying a lot of supplements through my recommendations. And my recommendations were super lukewarm. I remember for a pre-workout I was using at the time, I think it was On's pre-workout. And my recommendation was along the lines of, this isn't a very good product. I just don't like coffee.

I do now, but at the time, I didn't like coffee. And I was like, sometimes I'll use a caffeine pill, sometimes this, because it does have a little bit of citrulline, about half of the amount you want, about half the bit of alanine that you want, but maybe it's better than nothing. That's why I use it. But you could also just use a caffeine pill probably. And that's most of what you're going to get out of it anyway. Or you could just drink some coffee, right? Protein powder. I remember I was like, on again, it's cheap and it has been independently verified many times. They're not minospiking. They're not cutting corners. It kind of tastes like shit, but whatever. Basically, I was like, that's it. That's why I use it. It's convenient. And so with endorsements like those, which are hardly even recommendations, it's like the antithesis of selling. I still was

generating a lot of sales. People were buying a lot of protein powder through my links. They were clicking and Amazon's cookies only last for 24 hours. So it's like a click and a buy. That's it. So after seeing a lot of that, I was like, that's interesting. So then what if I just made the products I like? What if I just made stuff that kind of just scratched my own itch, similar to Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, right? Write the book that I wanted back when I was 18 or whatever. And what if I just made the supplements I really want? And if somebody else at that time would have been making them, I probably wouldn't have done it.

I probably would have just went to them. Because something to consider with, and this is more along the lines of, I guess, entrepreneurialism and business running is to make $100,000 a year with a business, how much revenue do you have to generate? Now, your average business is depending on if it's a service-based business, the profit margins can be a bit higher. It could be, I don't know, maybe anywhere from like 20% to even 40%. But if you're selling a thing and you're running your business at 10% to 15% profitability, meaning that at the end of the day, 10% to 15% of the money is left over for you, the owner, or reinvesting or whatever, then you're doing a pretty good job, actually. And if you're up around 20%, you're doing a fantastic job if we're just looking at profitability.

How you're getting there, you might be doing unethical things to get there, like just lying to people about the actual quality of your products, for example. But as far as profitability goes, you're doing a pretty good job. And so to make $100,000 a year, I think it's fair to say if you're going to sell something, you're probably going to have to have a business generating at least a million dollars a year in sales. Probably more because you can't, as an owner, take every dollar of profit out of your business and continue to grow it, usually. And so maybe it's more like a million and a half or a million two or something like that. All right. Now, how many businesses get there? Very, very, very few. Like just go look at the SBA numbers, right? Most businesses are gone within their first five years. So it's a small percentage of businesses that ever even

get to a million, maybe a million five a year in sales. And that's to make $100,000 a year, which is good money for sure. But there are much easier ways to make $100,000 a year, which is good money for sure. But there are much easier ways to make $100,000 a year than owning a business. Yeah. Less headaches for sure. Absolutely. Right. Especially if you have a commercially viable skill, like for example, to make it in business, and this is almost going to be always the case, you have to be good at selling. It could be one-to-one selling. It could be one-to-masses selling. That's marketing, advertising, copywriting, direct marketing. And if you're good at that, if you're truly good at that, if you're good enough to build a seven-figure business, then you could probably just go get paid

more money, more than $100,000 a year doing it for somebody else. So my point with saying all that is there's some calculus to consider before starting a supplement business, for example. It's something I get asked a lot about. And you see a lot of influencers just launching their own supplement lines. And I know details of several of these businesses, and they don't do it nearly as well as you might think when it's all said and done. And there's a lot of extra headache that comes with owning a business. when it's all said and done. And there's a lot of extra headache that comes with owning a business. And what I would say to these people, I mean, I'd say once you have a line, it's a bit random to no longer have a line and promote something else. But something they should have considered initially is

how much money could they get paid to just promote somebody else's stuff? For example, I won't say who. I know one guy who's one of the key players in a brand. He's one of their big promoters, makes him a lot of money. I know as of a couple of years ago, he was getting paid $100,000 a month to promote those supplements. $100,000 a month, no expenses, that's net, that's bottom line. You know what I mean? And so to make $100,000 a month as an individual, as a business owner, now you need an established business. You need a business that's doing, I would say, probably $15 million a year in sales and at least, let's say, $10 to $15 million a year in sales. And okay, now look at what does it take to get to that. Yeah, good luck. Exactly. Now, it can be done. Of course.

Yeah, good luck. Exactly. Now, it can be done. Of course. Legion is much bigger than that, but the likelihood of it happening is very low. And so you better have a very good strategy and a very good reason to believe that you can get there. If you could also, if you could just skip that and be like, no, I'll just go over here and I'm guaranteed to get the money. And I don't have to worry about anything. Like what's payroll? I don't know. I just get paid. The checks don't bounce. That's it. So anyways, that's just kind of a tangent for anybody that, cause I do get asked fairly often about starting a supplement business or get people who are influencers and who are in

a position where they know they can, if they go this way, they can just get paid to promote, but it feels more prestigious and it's more of an ego driven thing to go the other way and have your own business. Yes. In many cases, I would say the smarter decision is fuck the business. Just promote stuff you believe in and you like. Of course, you don't have to just shill anything. You don't have to sell out.

Find stuff you like that you can make good money with, and it's much easier. And then you're able to focus on what you are good at, which is what got you to the position in the first place. And so in my case, however, the reason why I didn't do that is it just didn't exist. There was no company creating stuff that I really could get behind. And so that was more the driving factor for me as far as master plans go and so forth. Of course, I saw the potential. And at this point, there was exponential growth in books. And so even Muscle for Life, I think March 2013, by the end of the year, we were already close to a million visits a month. And this is when that was mostly organic. That was when it was very easy to rank.

And it's much more difficult now to do anything related to anything content. If it's written, at least, YouTube is a lot softer. But written content in the health and fitness space is extremely difficult to get anywhere now. I'm not saying it's not worth doing, but it's not like it was. At one time, you just had to write like pretty good articles, make them long enough, and you're going to rank and you're going to rank quickly. Not the case. First off, thank you for all that. Because I think people can apply that to multiple different areas of life other than just business, influencers, fitness. Do you think that that's going to open up

somewhat of a space because so many people are shying away from blogging? If you are a good blogger, if you put out a good content and you can attract enough of a tribe of people and you're niched enough around a certain area, do you think that that could be some type of, what is it called, a blue sea opportunity, something like that? I would say not if we're talking about, again, the health and fitness space and we're talking about the SEO game. If you're trying to rank first page or top three, top five for big terms that get a lot of traffic, absolutely not. At this point, you not only have to be able to produce really good content, you also need to know the SEO game. You're not going to get there just reading blogs on SEO. There's a whole on what you could call link building activities, for example. And that is a crucial, crucial element to SEO without any sort of link building happening.

Now, it will happen to some degree organically, but if you cannot stimulate it with money... And let's say that if you don't have at least $10,000 a month to spend on that, don't even bother. $1,000 a month will literally do nothing. Then it's in the health and fitness space. You're very unlikely to get anywhere. Now, there are a couple of exceptions, of course, proving any rule, right? And there are a couple of people I've seen who they were very big on YouTube or big enough or whatever on YouTube. And then they started a website and Google recognized that. So they were able to use the success that they've had on YouTube to kind of funnel that into, yeah, I think that's the SEO juice, right? Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm saying naturally organic rankings, right?

Because Google recognizes, oh yeah, this is a fitness expert, big guy on YouTube. This is his website. We're going to give this more weight than we would otherwise. But of course, okay, then yeah, sure. If you can go build a high six-figure or seven-figure sub-base on YouTube, then good. Go start a website too. But if you don't have that, then I would say no. However, where blogging can certainly make sense is if you can do what you're talking about. And this really just means being a part of a community. So you have a niche and you're really actually a part of it and you understand it and you can speak in the terms that these people think and speak in.

And I would say it really probably should come from at least partially from a place of passion, like you're into it. And then you can become a thought leader within that community. And this has nothing to do now with SEO tactics or even marketing tactics. This is just like human nature and psychology and persuasion. Then yes, absolutely. If you can communicate persuasively, if people tend to listen to you when you say things, then you can leverage that. But don't think that means that Google gives a shit because there's a lot of content that still outranks my stuff that is, it's worse content in every way. It's shorter. It's poorly written. In some cases, there are no scientific citations whatsoever. And that's actually mostly because I'm not spending a bunch of money on link building. That's actually the primary reason why some of the content that's out there is like, there are big websites that have spent millions and millions and millions of dollars building links over the course of many, many years. And that allows them to produce inferior content and outrake mine. Now, all of my content lives on Legion's website,

right? Muscle for Life, I eventually merged it into Legion, which I should have done some time ago. So it's still though, I mean, I'd have to look at the latest analytics, but Legion is around eight to 900,000 visits a month right now. So it's pretty significant. And that's without AMP. We're going to be turning on AMP, which it might even double it just because of how much weight Google gives to AMP in terms of SERP rankings. But I mean, it's a very involved process if you want to play the SEO game. So for somebody who can communicate effectively, I would say do what you said is build an actual following and focus more on, think less about the quantity of the traffic and more about the quality and what you're doing with

it. And if you're talking about making money from it, which is what we're talking about, then okay, how are you converting blog visitors and readers into buyers? And if you're good at that, you don't need 9,800, 900,000 visits a month, 80 to 90,000 visits a month might be more than enough to produce all the income you need to make this your full-time thing. Yeah. Yeah. I'm thinking more along the lines of like Kevin Kelly's thousand true fans. Right. Right. And more so just, yeah, just for a one person, small giant type of business, one-to-one consulting. And then you have whatever courses, products, other things like that. I think if you can tap into that, like you said, be an effective communicator and things,

that was more so a selfish question for myself because I do enjoy, I don't know if you remember Nate Green at all, but he wrote for Men's Health. He does a lot of work with Precision Nutrition now. He's been a big mentor of mine, but he kind of did this and I'm still a big fan of his, but I plan on somewhat following along his course on things and he was really successful with it. One other thing I should mention with blog, because I said one of two, the second was it is acceptable and commonplace to blog your way to a book. So if you want to write a book,

for example, and you have, maybe you don't publish everything on the blog, although some people do. And again, it's not considered even bad form because take Legion's blog. We have over a thousand articles now on the blog, long form, well-written, researched. So if I were to repurpose a bunch of that content into a book, which means I am curating it, I'm selecting what content, why, what order am I going to be presenting this in? And then of course, there's a little bit of extra work. It's not just copying. Some people are, they are that lazy about it. They copy and paste blog articles into a book and it just kind of reads like a bunch of essays. And that is still even considered acceptable. Maybe it's maybe considered a little bit lazy, but still acceptable.

But it's certainly acceptable to take bits and pieces of things that you've already published on your blog and flesh them out and add some connective tissue and turn it into a coherent book and sell it. So that's also a useful... I do that. A lot of the articles that I write now for Legion are with future book projects in mind. And maybe I'm not going to get to it for a year or two years, but I am going to come back to that. I already know how this article is going to fit into a book that I'm going to be releasing at some point in the next couple of years. It's kind of the seed that will eventually hopefully turn into that tree of the book and things. Yeah, I really like that. I like that a lot. If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my health

and fitness books, including the number one bestselling weightlifting books for men and women in the world, Bigger Leaner Stronger and Thinner Leaner Stronger, as well as the leading flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef. To get a little bit broader here, so this could turn into a consulting call just for me to be honest, and I'll make sure that we hit enough. But sometimes people like that inside baseball stuff. They like hearing about different things. How the sausage is made, right? Yeah, dude. Exactly. I'm serious. I think so a lot. But one of the questions I definitely wanted to ask is, because clearly you've thought things through and your decision-making process is

effective, clearly. And how do you decide what is worth doing and what is like not worth doing? And especially in the beginning, but then also now, do you seek out from mentors? Do you literally just email them? Do you have books? I know you're a big book guy. What is the main source of inspiration or decision-making process that you go through? So I don't have any mentors. I never have had any. I do have, I've had access to successful business people and I've gone to them with some questions here and there, but not a regular thing. And the instances I can think of, it was more just reinforcing what I already knew. Not that that was my intention, but- It's usually confirmation on what you're thinking.

Yeah. That's how it has played out at least, right? However, now given where Legion's at, it makes sense to get a bit more serious about that. Now, I don't particularly like the word mentor because it's associated with masterminds and that whole sleazy space where people just get ripped off for shit they could just read in books. Don't pay $1,000 a month. Pay $20 and read this book. There you go. And however, I guess you could say what I'm setting up now is a bit more along the lines of a board of directors. I'm picking a few people I know who are very successful and very good at very specific things, but they're going to get paid for this. Again, this is a real... We're not going to do it as a board because if a board were to meet every month, that would be a lot. Boards usually meet once every quarter. But for us to do what we want, we're going to have to be in closer communication than that.

So I don't know. I guess you could say they're advisors. And I've chosen them though. One guy is... He's one of the top, if not the top digital marketer period out there. He's made more money than he knows what to do with. And he just really knows how to build e-commerce businesses, businesses online. Another guy, he's, I guess you could say, works in finance. He made a bunch of money in his hedge fund career 20 years ago. And then since then, he's gotten to a lot of other investments and been involved in many different businesses and sits on the board of many businesses. And so he's a very smart strategic business guy. And so I know that good things will come of that. But up until now, I didn't have that. Again, I had a few people I'd ask some questions of here and there.

So for me, then to answer your question, it's been reading books. That is the number one source of good information. And maybe second to that would be articles. But I prefer books because often, and not always, but often, a lot more work has gone into crafting a book. Articles would probably be second to that. And I actually don't listen to podcasts. podcasts. I don't spend much time on... No time, basically, on YouTube because I find that many discussions that I've listened to, let's say, on podcasts, yeah, sometimes there's some good information, but I had to wade through like 80% of nothing to get there. And that's fine. If you get one idea, especially if you have a going concern, a business that's doing millions

and millions of dollars in sales, one good idea can be worth a lot. And so, yeah, you spend an hour of your time, you get one idea, it might make you millions of dollars next year. You don't know. But I found that reading books is just more efficient. And I also enjoy reading more because listening, even on one and a half or two X speed, as fast as I can make it and still understand, I'll still get impatient. I'm like, get to the fucking point. I've listened for 20 minutes now, and I haven't made a single mental note. What am I doing? Whereas with books, I can control the speed that I'm going through it. And again, because there often is more work that goes into curating the information that's being presented and also presenting it in a logical way,

that has been a lot more productive for me. So most of my self-education comes from books. And I often get asked for book recommendations for business and marketing. And so I have a copy-paste that I send people like, here's where I would start, depending on... It depends on where you're at in your business. But a lot of people asking that are either very early on in their business, or they haven't even started yet. And so as far as making decisions goes, my primary criterion is how does this relate to the overarching strategy? So I have three to five-year strategic plans. Going further than that, I don't think is very

useful, at least not in my case. I'm not big enough. I could see if I were running a very big company with a lot of resources. And if now we're talking about acquisitions and growing, I could see that why you might need to go further out. But for my purposes, I don't think it's very useful. So that's the furthest time horizon. And then I also have the next year plan. And then of course, that's broken down into quarterly sprints, so to speak. So when I'm looking at whether it's decisions regarding my time, which really is then now, okay, so how do I fit into this? What's the highest and best use of my time?

Should I be doing this right now? Or should this be delegated? Or should nobody be doing this? Does this not even matter? And in most cases, it should be delegated or just shouldn't be done. Not in most. In many cases, there are many things that seem to be urgent, but actually are just not important. They just don't really matter. And a lot of things that are truly important actually aren't urgent. And so it's a paradox that messes with people and leads a lot of people. And this doesn't just

apply to business, but applies to life, leads people to pursue immediate, there's gratification, but then there's also immediate urgencies and neglect the far reaching stuff that's actually very important, but you're not going to really see much from it in the short term because there's a longer runway. It is in many ways more comforting to deal with the fires that surround you than it is to look over the flame and go, oh, well, maybe I should clear out all of this underbrush over here so it doesn't burn everything down kind of thing. You know what I mean? Or on the flip side, see the opportunities. Maybe I should start planting trees now. So I'll keep the fires as low as I can, but I really can't forget to plant the

trees kind of mentality. And so whether it's a business decision, again, it comes down to what are the key metrics that we are driving? How does this relate to the overall strategy? What am I trying to achieve even with the business? So for example, am I trying to maximize the value of the company for the purposes of recapitalization or maybe selling one day? Or am I trying to just achieve maximum personal income? Those are very different strategies. You can't have both because maximum personal income means, okay, maximize profitability, sacrifice revenue growth, and take all of that profit out of the business, essentially reinvest as little as possible. Okay. If you want to do that, why? What's the purpose? Is it to buy

knickknacks and shred up on Instagram and go on extravagant vacations? Is that why? And why do you really need that? Is that if yes, you feel like you really need that, maybe you should address that instead. Or is it to take money out of the business and invest it elsewhere? Okay. Why? Why would you do that? Is it your business is no longer growing? You don't know what else to do to grow it. Your business has a shelf life that is about to expire for market reasons. So, and I couldn't think with. So that's how I tend to think about business and just life in general. One of my pet peeves, and it's almost to a fault, is I really don't like doing things that don't have a clear purpose.

Why am I doing this? What am I getting out of this, essentially? And it doesn't even have to necessarily be all about me. Let's say I were spending my time at the local soup kitchen. Okay. Yeah. Like, let's say I were spending my time at the local soup kitchen. Okay, yeah, I'm not personally benefiting from it in a material way.

But I do believe in being a contributing member of society beyond just paying taxes and providing value through my work. And so there is some satisfaction that comes with that, obviously. And what I don't like, though, is like, I watch basically no TV. There's no, I'm like, why am I doing this? I don't care about these fake stories and fake people. Like I don't give a shit at all. I don't feel emotionally invested in this, especially with the general quality of TV shows and movies. I just, it doesn't resonate with me as a person at all. Ironically, fiction was my original interest in writing. And so I've read, I don't

know, maybe 30 books on storytelling and fiction. And that has kind of, it makes it hard for me now to watch a lot of this stuff that is current because all I see is what was wrong and how it should be done better and why that doesn't make sense. And so that's an activity. I just don't get anything out of it. So I just don't do it. And if I do do it within 15 minutes or so, I just, I'm bored. And I'm like, why am I doing this? So I'm very much like that in my work. And so for example, doing a podcast like this, why am I taking time to do this? I like talking with people and maybe I like hearing my voice to some degree, but really the reason why I'm doing it is because the highest and best use of my time is stuff like this, is creating my own content, writing articles, writing books,

recording podcasts, do a little bit of video stuff, might do more in the future, not so much right now. And then any other publicity outward-reaching activity like this. And so when I'm looking at doing a podcast, so I get a fair amount of invites to podcasts, I have to look at, is this an established podcast at all? Is anyone even going to hear this? And it's not because I think I'm special and I'm like too good to talk to somebody who has a new podcast, not at all. It's just, there's an opportunity cost now that is much higher on my time than it was years ago when, yeah, if it took an hour out of my day, was I going to do anything that valuable? Well, in the end, yes. But at the time that wasn't clear,

like maybe, I don't know, I could write another article. Is it going to matter? I don't know. At least over here, 500 people will probably hear me speak. You know what I mean? If I write the article, maybe fucking 50 people see it. I don't know. Yeah, I think that's a long-winded answer, but I guess it provides some insight into how I go about making decisions not just in business, but in life. No, absolutely. I think that that's... I enjoyed that 100%.

I think I tend to struggle with balancing out, okay, is this going to be an activity that's going to give me a maximum ROI with also with something like the blogging is a good example. Like I just, I genuinely love writing and I love the creative side of things. That's why I'm going all in on blogging. So writing and the podcasting, it's my two things that give me the ultimate fulfillment. And so what I'm curious to do is how do you balance between like, I just fucking enjoy doing this, you know, on a regular basis? Sure. It may not give me the most ROI positive, but I enjoy doing this on a regular basis. I'm okay with taking a little bit of the efficiency or effectiveness out.

Do you have certain things that you do like that on a daily basis or weekly basis? You're not going to like my answer on that because it's mostly no. I figured based off of everything else. because it's mostly no. I figured based off of everything else. I've numbed myself to the pain of doing things that I don't instinctively want to do. And you have to be able to do that, I think, to achieve success in anything. I don't care what it is. I don't care if you're trying to become a musician and you love playing the piano recreationally and you're like, all right, I want to get good enough so I can make money with this. There's a point where it's going to feel... I don't even like saying work because I don't

think work is a negative thing. It doesn't have a negative connotation, but it's not always going to be fun. It's just not. There are going to be times when you're just going to have to do it and you don't like doing it, but you do it because you have a purpose. And that would apply to the activity of playing piano, but it would also apply to the sub activities that would be required to get to the point where you could make money. Like maybe there's going to be a little bit of a business side of things. There's going to be a little bit of a marketing side of things. Even if you're just trying to sell yourself to, I don't know if orchestras have pianos, but I don't think so. Your guess is as good as mine. I don't know. I'm sure.

Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Yeah. If you're going to try to go that direction, you have to at least sell yourself, right? Right. Sure. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Yeah. If you're going to try to go that direction, you have to at least sell yourself, right? Right. And so many artistically inclined people hate that side of their work and they avoid it altogether. And then there's also, if you're going to make money with something like that, you're going to have to be very good. Not just better than the average idiot on the internet. No, no. You're going to have to be very, very good. And what does it take to get very,

idiot on the internet. No, no. You're going to have to be very, very good. And what does it take to get very, very good at a lot of deliberate practice? Is deliberate practice fun? Eh, not really. For the most part, it's not. Think about writing, for example. Okay, it's fun to write. I agree. What is less fun, but something I do every day? Are you familiar with SRS flashcards? Spaced repetition? No. So basically, it's flashcards, but they run on a system based on research. I forget his name. Some time ago, a guy is like his life's work to study how memory works. And what he found is that like when we're first exposed to a new piece of information, the drop-off in memory occurs, I think at about 24 hours or so. But if we re-expose ourselves to

it around hour 20, give or take, then we will remember it for a little bit longer. I don't remember the exact numbers. Let's say it's 36 hours, right? Is where now that starts to drop off. If you re-expose yourself to it before that or right around that period, and if you remember it, right, you have to take the time and the effort to remember it. It's not just like, oh, look at the cards. It's a key point is you have to work mentally to remember. But if you do that and you remember it, now you are likely to retain it for a longer period. And the purpose of this system is to get to the point where you have committed things to long-term memory where you just don't forget

them anymore, basically. And so what's cool about the flashcard system is you put something new in it, it exposes you to it the first time you go, yep, got it. Depending on, you can answer like easy, moderate, and then wrong. Basically there are different apps, but the app I'm using is you can say, nope, didn't remember it. Right. And then it's going to serve it to you again. You can say, I got it. Sorry, actually it has four settings. So one is I got it wrong. I just couldn't remember. The second is I got it, but I had to work at it. It was hard, right? The third is I got it. It was just couldn't remember. The second is I got it, but I had to work at it. It was hard. The third is I had to think about it a little bit, but it came. And then the final setting is I got it immediately. I didn't even have to think. you are going to be reserved it. Let's just say, you know, X number of days, or in some cases,

you know, it might be tomorrow, depending on where you're at in the sequence of things. It might be a week from now, it might be a month from now, if you got it, but you had to work at it, right, it's gonna be pushed out a little bit further, right? If you got it very quickly, pushed out even further. So what it does, it's just a very effective way to commit information to your long term memory, where what ends up happening it's just a very effective way to commit information to your long-term memory, where what ends up happening is you just end up spending more time on the things that are harder to remember. And the things that just click for whatever reason get quickly just pushed out, pushed out, pushed out. And I have cards that I'm not going to see again for a year. And I'll have cards that will come up that are a year old and still immediately

remember them. At that point, you know that thing. You're just not going to forget it, right? And so I've used that for many things. But one thing I do every day is I have a deck of, I don't know, it's thousands now, of words that I've come across in my reading that I like, right? So if I come across a word I like, it's usually... So I have them separated into nouns, word I like. It's usually, so I have them separated into nouns, modifiers, verbs, and idioms and phrases. And the cards, like my nouns are all caps. So I immediately can recognize it's a noun. My verbs are first cap, my modifiers are lowercase and my idioms and phrases are first cap, but there are multiple words. So, you know, if I have a word like compass, which I have as a noun, not the instrument used in that, not the thing you use to navigate, but other definition, right?

So I have compass as a noun, compass as a verb. The noun will be all caps. I'll immediately know like, oh, okay, that's the noun. And then the verb would be first caps. And so these are words, again, that I just like, that strike me as interesting, that I would like to remember, or I would like to use in my writing. And so Anki is the app.

I use A-N-K-I. And this is an Android app. It's free on iOS. It's like $25. I have no idea why that is, but that's how it is. Interesting. Fuck you to Apple, I guess. I guess. I have no idea. So I go through that every day and I have probably, I don't know, anywhere from like 40 to 70 cards a day to go through. And I don't mind it. It's not fun. I'm kind of, again, I'm just numb to it, but that's, that's just an example of something that I know for a fact makes a difference in my writing and my ability to just communicate persuasively and eloquently because I mean, I'll experience it. I'll be speaking or I'll be writing and I will quickly be able to access some of these words. Sometimes I do still have to go looking for them. But that's something

that after 20 years of doing that, it's going to have made a major difference in my ability to communicate. And that's one of those things that I like because that's the type of work that nobody wants to do. And it's based on good first principles. It's just a slog. So nobody wants to do it. Practicing is another thing that many people don't want to do. If you's based on good first principles. It's just a slog. So nobody wants to do it. Practicing is another thing that many people don't want to do. If you want to be a good writer, for example, yes, you need to understand, we'll go back to the ancient, to Aristotle's principles of persuasion, right? So you have pathos, ethos, and logos. Well, pathos, we can say is appealing to emotion, right? And one of the effective ways to do that is to use vivid words to paint vivid pictures and figures of speech are very good for this, especially metaphors and

similes. It's not easy though, to think metaphorically for most people. It doesn't come necessarily easily to me. It's something I work on. I have to practice. And so that's part of my routine of this is just writing drudgery. This is not as fun as writing, but it makes for better writing where every week I will practice. Although last weekend, I didn't do it. I have tasks on the weekend that depending on what other things, if I do have some urgent things I have to get done, then I might not get to some of these kind of housekeeping things, but I generally keep it in. And that is to practice just coming up with metaphors, just making up my own, right? Because yeah, I have a massive swipe file of all kinds of stuff that I like that I've come across in

my writing, but it's important to be able to do it yourself. And it's important to be able to think creatively, think laterally, and it just takes practice, right? And then again, there are 30 plus different figures of speech, and maybe some of them are a bit esoteric and obscure. You wouldn't use them in your writing, but many of them do make for better writing. It makes for more pathos, right? Ethos appeal to authority. That's not something that you are going to practice per se. That is, you have bona fides, you have credentials, but you also have character, and that's an element of ethos you can't fake. Well, it's not true. You can fake it, but many people will see through it. Unless you're a very good liar, a very good

hypocrite. And some people are. There are plenty of influencers out there who I know for a fact are complete degenerate losers. But if you were to look at their Instagram, you'd think that they're uber-mention. But if you want to be honest about it, it is develop a good character, be worth listening to and worth following. And ethos almost takes care of itself, in my opinion. And then you have logos, you have logical thinking, and that can be studied as well. A lot of it used to be taught, you go back far enough, that used to be something that kids, they would, that was like one of the beginning foundations of education was how to think logically. And they would be taught it formally, right? They would learn about logical fallacies.

They would learn about syllogisms and how they work and how to craft arguments like, okay, you have premise A and B and C and D and how they all need to interrelate. And then you have your conclusion and that's based on all the premises. That's not really taught anymore. So you have a lot of people who don't, they just don't know how to do it. It's not that they're too stupid to do it. They just don't, never learned it. And it is something that it is inborn to some degree, I do think, but it can be twisted and subverted through twisted and subversive education. And it also can be sharpened and enhanced by studying and practice, right? So there are different figures of speech

that allow you to tap into those things. And so by practicing them, they just become more a part of you and a part of your inherent, like when you do sit down to write what comes out and it makes for better first drafts and better successive drafts, because there is a point where if you've done enough of this type of work, there's no copy bookingbooking is another thing any writer who wants to do anything should be doing by hand as well. And that is a, it's not necessarily like, well, there actually is a little bit of science that shows that reading, I know reading books for most people, though, they're going to retain a bit more reading a hard copy versus a digital, definitely versus an audio book. There may be some research actually on retention for writing by hand versus

digitally, but anecdotally, copybooking has been a thing forever. By the way, this is where you have writing you like, like who are the best writers? Who are the people you wish you could write like? Copy their shit out by hand and word for word, right? And I've done it on the computer and I've done it by hand. And what I've noticed, and this is my explanation for why many writers have said that by hand just works better for them, is by hand does force you to focus a little bit more because of, I don't know what my words per minute is, maybe 140 or something. It's very easy to just drone through it. Whereas my handwriting is disgustingly bad and slow. It's actually kind of upsetting when I look at my handwriting. Likewise. I look

like a serial killer. One day when I'm being charged with thought crimes, that's going to be some of the evidence that's going to be presented. It's my child's work, I promise. Yeah, exactly. Look at this dude's writing. He's obviously a psycho. Anyway, so doing that by hand, right? So I spend some time on that. So those are just some examples of things that if we could apply that to, let's say, playing the piano, like I was saying, I don't know how to play the piano, but I am certain to get good enough to make a career of it. It requires a lot of that type of stuff as well. It's not just playing the songs you like and playing them beautifully. Sure. Yeah. I love that. That type of deliberate practice is not necessarily just putting in the

rep. Yeah. That efficient type of learning is of deliberate practice is not necessarily just putting in the rep. Yeah. That efficient type of learning is very interesting. And I want to be cognizant of your time and you can answer this kind of as long or as short as you can. But the question that came up in my mind after you were going through all that is like, what drives you to keep learning like this and to keep, because by so many people's definition, you would have success. You know, you have a beautiful family, you've got this company, you this company, you've got everything that a guy, you look, you're super handsome. You know what I'm saying? Keep going, keep going. Right? No, I'll do it all day. I don't have a private jet.

Okay. There you go. See, we're still phasing out different things here. But yeah, what drives you on a regular basis to keep learning, to keep bettering yourself in all facets of life? My answer to that, I feel like is just not that compelling in that it's fun to me. It's actually enjoyable to me. And remaining stagnant as an individual is very uncomfortable to me. So in some ways, I'm just kind of following my instincts. That said, there is an element of self-discipline and willpower. I don't always want to do these things. I'm not waking up pumped every day to do these things I'm talking about. Or some of the work that I have to do in the day-to-day running Legion, for example, some

of the stuff I probably shouldn't be doing. And there are always things that need to be better. I probably shouldn't be doing. And there are always things that need to be better. And so there is that element of like, well, I'm doing it again for this higher purpose. And that comes back to, I guess, what I was talking about earlier, right? How I like to spend my time in alignment with bigger goals. And so as for business, I would say that there is the very human element of it's cool that in my line of work and in our line of work, we get to see very firsthand the effects that we're having in the world. And we know that we're having positive effects. I can say with certainty, I am a net positive

in society. I'm not a parasite. I give more than I take for sure. The world is better for you being here. Yeah. Yeah. And that is much more satisfying than money, for example. The world is better for you being here. Yeah. Yeah. And that is much more satisfying than money, for example. And then there's also, there's the very personal element of it's cool to hear people's individual stories as well. You know what I mean? There's a touching element of that. And I still, and that never goes away that the enjoyment of that, it's like one of the few things that you just never get enough of that. And maybe sex, I don't know. Like there aren't very many things that you can keep coming back to

and you can derive just as much enjoyment from the first time as the 5,000th time. There's just not much, right? That is words of wisdom right there. I love that. And so there's that. And then there are at this point, some financial related goals, but it's more about, again, reaching financial independence. And what that means to me is not a business that makes me money or even books that make me money per se. Although books, you could say that's very resilient and that's unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon. And at this point, that flywheel is spinning so quickly that it would take a lot for me to slow it down, even let alone stop it. However, for me, financial independence would be where your money makes you enough money to not have to work for money. And so I would personally consider that investments outside of businesses I have, even though that's, of course,

the businesses make me enough money, but it's a different level of security, I guess. And so there is that element. And it's not, again, it's not driven by a burning desire for a private jet or fancy things at all, other than maybe I like living in a nice home. I don't care about cars. I'll drive a nice car or nice-ish or whatever, but it's just not really a thing. I don't own very many things. And I've tried a little bit. I'm like, oh, maybe I would like to buy some nice watches. So I buy a couple of nice watches and don't even wear them. Don't care. Doesn't do it. No, it just doesn't. So I've tried it a couple of times, ironically. So I'd say my biggest expense in the last couple of years has been board games. That's it. That's my biggest expense.

All right. Amazing. That's my personal, personal, right? I mean, I have a family. I have to pay for them. But I'm just saying, I just don't buy many things. I also do like to buy historically significant things that are just interesting to me via auctions, right? And not super expensive stuff. I've bought some recruiting posters, old military, like World War II recruiting posters. Oh, cool. And I like World War II. I like that period and that history.

I mean, it was obviously a terrible thing, but I am genuinely, maybe like is the wrong word. I'm just very interested in it. I like reading about it. I like watching documentaries on it and whatever. So I've bought little trinkets and little things that are not too expensive, though, just because I think it's cool. You know what I mean?

Like, oh, I have a, it's a, I'm guessing it was probably an envelope or something. And it said war department and it was signed by a patent. I like that. It's not that that's super expensive. I just like it. No, it's meaningful. Exactly. Exactly. So, but it's more financial independence to me. There's just a certain level of additional, again, security because I do have two kids and I have a wife. So I have to think with that, but also maybe it's just peace of mind or freedom. Although I am doing what I want to do anyway. So it's not a huge thing. However, in the future, I definitely will scale back on my fitness work to write fiction. I will have to make the time for it as a thing.

Like currently I work as much as I possibly can and I only work on fitness stuff. I will have to make the time for it as a thing. Like currently I work as much as I possibly can. And I only work on fitness stuff. And at some point I would like to, maybe I still, let's say I still put, I don't know, 20 to 40 hours a week into fitness, but then that frees up the time I know that it would take to actually make a go of fiction. And it would be nice to not have to care about the financial aspect of that and just do it because I want to do it. And if it goes well, ironically, I mean, the fiction market is so much bigger than... Dude, you're going to be right back at the evolution of where you started with the Kindle book about the money of it, but it's more just the, I did it of it. You know what I mean? Is I've sold a million and a half fitness books, right? And since, since 2012 and the fiction, I mean, I don't even know what the order of magnitude is, how much bigger it is a hundred times bigger, maybe. Oh, I'm sure. Just look at the top 100

books on Amazon and 80% of them are going to be fiction. And then you'll have a few history related biography, probably some diet stuff in there from like big celebrities and whatever. And so I have that that's on the back burner. What age real quick, just what age do you think? Oh, that's a good question. I would say I would be happy if I could start doing that by 40. Okay. I think there's a chance that, well, I mean, again, this is up to, it's just my decision, but where I would feel like it's appropriate again, coming back to the point of how does this align with strategic objectives? And right now it would be very random for me to start putting time into writing fiction. I would find it fun and it would be satisfying. I don't consider myself an artist per se, but I definitely,

I like creating stuff. So it would be satisfying in that regard, but it would be strategically random. It would actually just work against the strategic objectives that I've already decided upon. And okay, if I'm going to do that, why? And if I can't give myself a logical reason, if it's just like my dick, basically, that's it. You know what I mean? That's not good enough reason for me.

So if I could, I'll start with short stories, but if I could publish my first short story by 40, I'd be happy with that. I think then, and then see where it goes. My plan is very simple is just publish. I have a bunch of ideas. I'll pick the best, the ideas that I think would be the most fun to work on and also have the most potential. And I'll publish short stories. I'll probably, I don't know how many exactly, maybe minimally it'd probably be three to five different ideas, publish short stories, 30 to 50 pages. It's really, you're just presenting the premise, right? And you're just trying to get people interested in what could become something more and then see out of those three to five, what does the marketplace say? What does well, right? And I'll pick the one that does the marketplace say? What does well? And I'll

pick the one that does the best because if they're all more or less the same to me in terms of enjoyment, pick the one that does the best and then flesh that out. Okay, write a novel with the probably the smart way to do it is with a series in mind. So at least a trilogy, that's kind of the sweet spot is to write a three book series. And again, just for fun, talk about board games. I could have a lot of fun in the board game industry. I mean, I like games. I don't play any video games. I just get to be such a pointless waste of time, but I grew up playing a lot of sports and I played some video games when I was young, but I like games. And I also like game theory. I know that if I

were to get into that space, there are people out there who are game designers who do freelance work. They work for publishers. And so if I brought some money to it, I know that I could put together probably a decent team of people who know, of course, they know way more than I do. So I could have the pleasure of taking a concept similar to storytelling, right? Where like premise is the most powerful thing in storytelling. The classics are the best example of that where many classic books are actually kind of shitty. Like the writing is not very good.

The plot is not very good, but the premise is so compelling that the book still remains in currency, right? Similar to board games. If you have a strong idea and you have something, some unique spin on a familiar type of game mechanism, and then you put good marketing, good branding, and you bring in good game designers,

that is a winning formula. So that could be fun as well. But again, it's something that I'm not going to pursue at the moment. Listen, I can't wait to buy all the short stories, the board games, the video games, everything. It's going to be the second tier of your life. Or by Sean Patrick. I don't know. I think Mike is, he just has to be fitness now. You're leaving him behind. It would be a mistake to execute him, but I'll have to put him in a cage and just bring him out every now and then. That would be amazing. Kind of like the gimp in Pulp Fiction. Yeah, there you go. That's beautiful.

Well, Mike, thank you so much. You've been more than generous with your time. You've been more than generous with all the information and everything like that. I think the last question is just where can people find more about you? Sure. Yeah. My online hub is legionathletics.com. And so again, I had that Muscle for Life website, but that merged into Legion. So it just made more sense to put everything at Legion also, because that's my strategic focus is growing Legion, for example. And so you can find, again, over a thousand articles, of course, free over at the blog. You can find my podcast, Muscle for Life, which if you like any of the things I'm saying, and if you like podcasts, then you might like it. And of course, anywhere you listen to podcasts, but we put it all up on the website over at Legion

as well. And my books are in the store there. Of course, you can buy them anywhere else online that you buy books. And some of the books are also in Barnes and Noble stores, not all, but a lot of Barnes and Noble stores. And yeah, that's it. That's the elevator pitch, I guess. There it is. Short stories coming soon. Sean Patrick. Yeah. It's amazing. You know what's funny? It was the close of this. So that Bill of Rights book that I wrote some time ago, really just for fun. It's something that I'm personally interested in. I wanted to do some studying on it. And then I figured, all right, I might as well just distill

this down into a shorter book that just traces my own process of just educating myself. And I don't consider myself an expert on the constitution or bill of rights. I know more than the average person. And I studied it to a point where I satisfied my own initial curiosity and figured, eh, this is enough to turn into a small book. I think other people will find that helpful. And especially if it doesn't port to be anything more than what it is, which is kind of like a crash course. And that now is my bestselling book in the United States. Wow. Because of what's going on here. Yeah. It's selling thousands and thousands of copies a month. That's wild. That's wild, man. No, well, good. Hey, if anyone wants to check it out,

that is the Know Your Bill of Rights book. That's how on the nose it is by Sean Patrick, AKA Mike Matthews. Oh my gosh. I will 100% put everything you just said in the show links. Yeah, man. Mike, thank you so much for doing this. I want to say goodbye off air for like two minutes. Thank you so much for doing this, man. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. Thank you. All right. Well, that's it for today's episode. I hope you found it interesting and helpful. And if you did and you don't mind doing me a favor, could you please leave a quick review for the podcast on iTunes or wherever you are listening from?

Because those reviews not only convince people that they should check out the show, they also increase the search visibility and help more people find their way to me and to the podcast and learn how to build their best body ever as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and whatever app you're using to listen, and you will not miss out on any of the new stuff that I have coming. And last, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts. Let me know how you think I could do this better. I read every email myself and I'm

always looking for constructive feedback. All right. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.