Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - What I Learned About the Supplement Business While Scaling My Startup to 8 Figures in Annual Sales

Episode Date: November 8, 2019

As you might know, I’m the founder of a supplement company called Legion, and it has gone pretty well so far. In just six years, Legion has grown into an Inc 5000 company with 8 figures in annual sales and close to 200,000 customers served and much more to come. Thus, I’m often asked about how it all started, what the supplement industry is like “on the inside,” and what advice I can share to others wanting to follow in my footsteps. I was invited to go on another podcast—the Supplement Engineer Podcast—to discuss these things and more, and as I don’t talk much business here on the podcast, I thought you might find the discussion interesting. And so I’m sharing the interview here. Tune in and let me know what you think! 3:24 - Why did you step into the supplement business? 10:29 - Did any of your previous experience with building Muscle For Life help you with Legion? 12:36 - What challenges did you face with manufacturing? 17:34 - Is there any recourse for you as a brand owner when a manufacturer screws you over? 19:06 - What drives you to make a new supplement? 32:52 - What do you think separates Leigon’s proteins bars from the rest of the market? 38:09 - What has kept you level headed and allow you to keep pushing forward? 46:24 - Do you think the way your parents raised you had a key determining factor on how you built your business? 48:54 - How do you manage to run a business while still being a family man? Mentioned on The Show: Shop Legion Supplements Here: https://legionathletics.com/shop/   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.legionathletics.com/signup/

Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Head over to www.LegionAthletics.com now to check it out. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will

save 10% on your entire order and it'll ship free if you are anywhere in the United States. And if you're not, it'll ship free if your order is over $100. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. Hey, Mike here and welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. Now, as you probably know, if you've been following me around for any time now, I am the founder of a supplement company called Legion, and things have gone pretty well so far. In just six years, Legion has grown into an Inc. 5000 company with eight figures in annual sales and close to 200,000 customers served now, and lots more still to come. And therefore, I am often asked about

how it all started. How did I get the idea for Legion? How did I go about starting the company and getting it off the ground and what the supplement industry has been like as someone on the inside, as well as what advice I can share to other people who might want to follow in my footsteps and compete with me, which is okay. Competition is not a sin, despite what John Rockefeller once said. And so I was invited to go on another podcast to talk about these things, a podcast called the Supplement Engineer Podcast. And as I don't talk much business here on my podcast, I thought you might find the discussion interesting. And so I am sharing it with you. So if you are interested in a bit of the background of Legion

and in some of the key lessons that I've learned along the way, as well as some of the ridiculous shenanigans that I've witnessed being in the supplement racket, then I think you're going to like this interview. Here it is. Welcome to the Supplement Engineer Podcast. My name is Robert Shnetsky. Today, we have a very special guest joining the show. He's a well-respected health and fitness coach, a bestselling author, and the founder of Legion Athletics and Muscle for Life, Mr. Mike Matthews. Welcome to the show, Mike. Thanks, Robert. Appreciate you having me on. Now, I know you've recanted the history of Muscle for Life and you've been around the industry for a long time. Can you briefly recap why you decided to start Legion in the first place? Because obviously you were already successful with

your writings and with the content you were producing on Muscle for Life. So why step into the chaotic frenzy that is the supplement industry? You know, Lamborghinis and Rolexes, duh. Living the lifestyle. The four-hour work week, you know what I mean? No, it really actually, it's actually kind of annoying because what I'm going to tell you now is what everybody says. And when I started Legion, this is year six. And so when I started Legion, it was a bit unique in that this is not what everybody was saying. And even then, it also applies to the terminology that I use or just the phraseology, I guess, on Legion's website and how I have pitched the brand and positioned the brand. And I understand. I mean, that's how markets work. People see something

works and they go, I'll just copy and paste that. And so I'm going through and we can get into that after if you want to know more about I'm getting into a whole rebranding and redesigning everything. I'm not doing it myself. I'm working with a firm and also going to be raising the bar as to what it really means to be a science-based supplement company. But to answer your question, so back, again, this is year six. So year one was 2014. So in 2013, I had a few books that were selling well. I had a website called Muscle for Life, which was very popular. I want to say at this point, it was probably close to 700,000 or 800,000 visits a month. And I was getting asked a lot about supplements, what supplements are good, what supplements are bad,

what supplements do I personally use. And I had some recommendations up at Muscle for Life of the stuff I was using at the time. And my recommendations were really lukewarm because I wasn't particularly excited about any of them, right? So I was using at the time Optin Nutrition's Gold Standard Whey. And I was like, you know, this stuff has passed a lot of third-party analyses. And I trust that it has the protein that they say it has. And it's not amino spiked. And it doesn't taste very good. But hey, whatever. It's cheap and it's reliable. And for a pre-workout, I was using ons pre-workout at the time. I was like, you know, I don't like coffee at the time. I didn't like coffee. And sometimes I just do like a caffeine

pill instead of this, but it does. I think at the time it had four grams of citrulline and maybe two grams of beta alanine per serving. And I was like, yeah, it's not very good, but maybe it's better than nothing. And if I liked coffee, I probably would just drink coffee and not even waste the caffeine on a pre-workout like this. And there were a couple other supplements I was using with the same type of, you know, hey, this isn't very good, but this is the best I could find. Still, a lot of people though, were buying those products based on my recommendations i knew that because i was linking out to amazon and i was participating in their affiliate program not so much to it never made a ton of money but it was just more curious like if people were

actually going to buy things based on what i was recommending in what quantity like how many purchases were there coming off of these recommendations? So with those recommendations living on the website and also living in the bonus material that came with the books, which many people downloaded and checked out, I saw that quite a few people were actually buying these products. And so then I, of course, had the idea, what if I were to make my own products, make the stuff that I wish someone else were making? And if they were making, I would just reach out to them. Like if Legion would have already existed back in 2013, I may not have even done it. I may just have reached out to that company and been like, Hey, you're basically doing

exactly what I want. And I would love to promote you. And here's how I can promote you. I can promote you in my books. I can promote you to my email lists. I can promote you on social media, on my website, blah, blah, blah, and put together a deal. And in some ways, it would have been preferable, especially starting out, because I had a lot to offer. So let's just say that I could have made a deal that would be worth, I don't know, $50,000 a month, let's say. And that wouldn't be out of the question, actually, even at that time. And I go, okay, that's what it would be worth. That's what I could make if I just went and worked with this other company. What would it take though to create a business that could make me $50,000 a month? What many people who, if they haven't been in business for themselves, what they don't

know to ask about is they'll hear big sales numbers, you know, hear about big revenue numbers, but really what matters is the bottom line is the the but is the profit, how much is left at the end of the day. And so in order to make $50,000, so for example, if your business is turning a 10% profit, which is okay, that's not great, but that's not bad, then that's $500,000 a month in sales. You actually have to sell a lot of stuff to even create $50,000 in profit. And you can't just as an owner take all of the profit out of your business. You have to also reinvest to continue to grow it.

So let's now bump it up. Let's say it's probably more like 70 to 80,000 a month, or sorry, 700 to 800,000 a month in sales to create $50,000 of profit left over for the owner and still be able to reinvest in the business, launch new products, try new marketing, advertising things, whatever. Right. So, you know, I've had this talk with a number of people in the industry who have, who have a following who are in maybe a similar position as I was when I started Legion and thinking about getting into supplements. I, you know, I, this is just something that I've laid

out for a number of people and they're like, yeah, I never thought about it like that. So I'm not saying don't get into supplements. But think about what – because now you also have a business that you have to run too. And a business that's a pain in the ass. And it is. And you have inventory to manage. You're going to have employees to manage. There's a lot of extra work and just headaches that come with that. Whereas being

sponsored by a company is very simple anyway. So that company didn't exist though at the time. So I was like, all right, I'm going to do it myself. I didn't know where it was going to go ultimately, but I knew that I wouldn't get stuck with the initial run. I think we ordered like 80 to a hundred thousand dollars of stuff. That was our first order. And I knew just based on what I had seen through Amazon affiliate links, basically, that I wasn't going to have any problems selling that initial run. I didn't know if it was going to become a really viable and thriving business, but it seemed like a pretty low-risk proposition, all things considered. And so I did it and it went quite well. We sold out of all that

stuff fairly quickly and didn't place reorders soon enough. So just sat there out of stock for a bit and did that. We were in and out of stock for the first year, but we still did 1.1 million in sales that first year. Yeah. So if we would have done a better job managing inventory, we probably could have done two or three times that, honestly. Now, fast forward to today, Legion will do about 20 million in sales this year. Knowing what I know now, if I could have went back to that year two and just made some key changes, some personnel changes, mostly, actually, I think the business would be double its current size just because there still is a lot of low-hanging fruit. So yeah, that's how I got into it and that's why

I got into it. Did any of your previous experience with building up Muscle for Life translate and help you get Legion running off the ground or was it two completely different animals that you were trying to tame? It was very different because Muscle for Life at that time was really just a glorified blog. It was just something that I posted a couple articles to every week and collected emails and emailed the articles out and just stayed in touch with people. And it grew through SEO and word of mouth. And in social media at the time, it was a lot easier to, for example, get a bunch of traffic from Facebook. That's very hard now, whereas back then it was, you got a lot more organic reach back then. Now it's much more pay to play. So the only carryover was I started a blog and just took articles from Muscle for Life on topics,

took the articles that did the best and then created new articles on those topics for Legion, just because I knew that if Muscle for Life could rank, we're talking about one of the top three, like number one, two, or three for something like stubborn fat, then Legion probably could too. And so I just kind of repeated the process over at Legion that helped get Muscle for Life to where it was at the time. And so beyond that, no, it was a, it was completely different business. It was just kind of like, you know, we'll figure it out along the way kind of thing. There's no books you can read on how do you start a supplement business. You can read plenty of books on how to start a business. And I have done that over the years. And so I guess maybe I had a leg

up in that regard, but I didn't have any specific experience from most of my life where I could just say, yeah, now, for example, next year, I'm going to be launching another supplement company. It's going to be another line. It's going to be similar to Legion in terms of its USP, in terms of its unique selling proposition, but it's going to be cheaper. It's going to be about half the price. Now, that means the products aren't going to be as good as Legion, but they're going to be good and they're going to be much better than anything else at that price point. And so now that's a very straightforward process. I've already done it with Legion.

It's copy and paste in a sense. We know exactly what we need to do to get it off the ground, but that wasn't the case in the beginning with Legion. Did you have like an Obi-Wan guiding you along the way when you were trying to vet out manufacturers? Like an Obi-Wan guiding you along the way when you were trying to vet out manufacturers? Because to the average consumer, the whole manufacturing side of the industry is a very mysterious, it's the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain kind of thing. Nobody understands what in the hell is going on in the supplement manufacturing from the consumer's point of view. So how did you become acquainted with that?

And what challenges did you experience with vetting different manufacturers in the early stages of Legion? with vetting different manufacturers in the early stages of Legion? Yeah, you know, that was just a process of hitting Google and start reaching out to companies and start speaking with people who run these companies. Let's see, we started with a company we didn't like. They were called Florida Supplements, I think. They just were disorganized and they weren't good at flavoring. They were just not very good all around. And then from there, we found someone who we did like. I got a good feeling. His name's Peter. Still friends with him today. His company was, I think it was Integrity. He ended up selling it and now it's all under the umbrella of Capstone Nutrition now is one of my manufacturers who work with several. But again, it was just a matter of like, okay, stepping back for a second and informing ourselves about CGMP practices and NSF certification, what those things mean. Okay, what are some criteria

that we want to judge these potential manufacturers by? And what do those things mean? We got third-party testing done and we told manufacturers in the beginning we were going to get third-party testing done with, who do we work with? Not Covance. We've used Covance. I'm trying to remember the name. Eurofin, that's what it was. So we've worked with Eurofin a number of times and Eurofin's big international lab as well as Covance, because one of the problems, one of the many problems you can run into with manufacturers is you're trying to make a good product. They are telling you they're delivering what you are ordering and they're not. They just leave out ingredients. Like it wasn't any of the manufacturers that I named, but there was one who

we were wanting to use as just a backup because that's also anyone who's getting in the supplement industry. You're going to want, once things are up and running, make sure you have backup, at least one backup manufacturer who can produce ideally anything and everything in case your main manufacturer runs into problems. We ran into that issue along the way, didn't have backups, lost a bunch of money, blah, blah, blah. So there was one company that we were considering for a backup. They ran Triumph. And I told them I was going to send it off to Eurofins before even paying for it. It needed to be verified that it had exactly what it's supposed to have. They said, yeah, sure, no problem. And this company had all the certifications and their price was really good. So I was skeptical, but I was like,

okay, I mean, they know the terms of the agreement. They run, it was a minimum order, obviously, but they run a couple thousand bottles or whatever. Send three. We also did in-triplicate testing just to make extra sure. Send three off to Eurofins and it comes back mostly just vitamin C. What are you guys doing? I told you exactly what I'm going to do. Why waste your time and money and waste time? They were just trying to say that Eurofins is wrong. It's like, no, they tested three bottles. No, just, I don't know. Here are the COAs. Here's exactly what we did. No, that's not exactly what you did. And so moved on. And so we've gone through that a couple of times, but fortunately we found our way to big reputable companies that we actually pay a premium to be with. We could be

paying less for our stuff and we could use that considering how high our cost of goods is because it requires a high COGS. If you're going to make good products, if you're going to make, if you're trying to keep your cost of goods at, let's say, 30% or so, which would probably be good by general business standards, you're going to make shit products. You can't have great margins and great products. Pick one. And so we pay a premium on our premium expensive formulations to work with some of the best and biggest manufacturers in the world, actually. It's just worth it. Because I know now that even though we still get testing done, we're actually going to be

doing a whole thing with Labdoor. And we're going to be incorporating that into the website. I know now that I'm not getting screwed. I'm getting exactly what I am ordering, which of course means that my customers are getting exactly what they're ordering. I understand. I've had a number of people reach out to me over the years asking, like, how do I find a good manufacturer? And my honest answer to that, though, is when people ask me that, I tell them, you probably shouldn't get into this game. You probably shouldn't start a supplement company if you are saying you don't even know how to find a good manufacturer. Because you really can just start on Google and start thinking about it and start working on it. And you're going to run into, this is a speed bump compared to all the obstacles you're going to run into anyway. So yeah, that's a question I've been asked over the years a number

of times. Is there any recourse for you as the brand owner when a manufacturer screws you over? Can you take them to court? Do they refund your money? You know, if they're confronted with the knowledge that they've screwed you over and you've got the proof to back it up, do you have to threaten them with legal action in order to get your money back? Or is it a sunk cost at that point and you're just SOL? I'm not sure. Fortunately, I had an agreement with that company who did that. Basically, it was just clear. I didn't have to pay for it. I was like, no, it's yours now. Whatever, guys. I told, I didn't need the product. I was trying to set up a, another manufacturer just in case. Cause then what you do is you just split your orders between your main manufacturers and your

backups. Or if you only have one main and one backup, you might give 80% of your business to the main and 20% of the backup just to keep the account active in case things go wonky with your main. And then you, you're not just sitting there without product. In this case, it was, again, we were just prospecting for a backup. So I didn't have to do anything there because that was the agreement and they didn't try to fight it themselves legally because they would have lost, it would have went anywhere. But if one of my current manufacturers, which again, I know is not happening because I get testing done, but if it did happen, they probably would be legally liable. I mean, they, yeah, they are agreeing to deliver exactly what is on the spec sheet.

So there has to be a legal liability there. Just fortunately, I haven't had to go down that road. Now, when you started the brand, obviously you're going to deliver the products that most people are going for. So we're talking pre-workouts, protein powders, post-workouts, things like that. Stepping forward now, what drives you to release a new's a higher demand, higher competition category, then we're more interested in it. And then also, how well do I feel I understand the people who are buying it and how good of a fit is it for our existing customers and the stuff that they want to buy? Like, for example, we were toying with the idea of doing an endurance supplement, an intro workout, but specifically for endurance. Unfortunately, there's nothing. We can't figure anything special or interesting to do with an intro workout for weightlifters because often those are just BCAA products and BCAA products are worthless.

And even though we're asked every week to create a BCAA product from people who even know that they're worthless, people will say, I know that BCAAs don't do anything. I just like to drink tasty water. If you had a BCAA, I would give you the money instead of this other company. But that's not a good enough reason to make a product, right? And so we were looking at doing an intro workout for endurance athletes in particular because there are some things you can do there. But I decided not to because that's kind of a world unto itself and it's a market that I don't really understand. I haven't been a part of it personally. I've been in the body composition space since the beginning.

And so I understand that market well. I understand the people well. I understand the people well. I understand their needs and their problems. Endurance is different. I look at it almost like, I mean, not in the same way, but if you want to get into the vegan market, it's not as simple as just making a vegan product and saying, hey, I have a vegan product, buy it. And I know that a lot of my customers and my best customers are more body composition people. They're not hardcore endurance athletes. And so they wouldn't spend extra money. Maybe for them, quote unquote, endurance training is cardio, right? So yeah, they might do some cardio even regularly. They might go ride their

bike or run or whatever, but they just kind of view it as cardio and they're not going to be spending 30 or $40 a month so they can be a little bit faster in their cardio sessions. They just don't care. So that's an example of something where I know there's demand and there's very, very high competition, but I've intentionally stayed away from it. That might be to our detriment, but so far the products that we've made I guess also have been pretty obvious where there were just obvious things that if you're going to have a very well-rounded offering of sports nutrition supplements, then you should have a fish oil, you should have a joint supplement, you should have a pre-workout, post-workout, you should have at least a couple different options for protein, a whey protein, a casein protein. We have a plant protein as well. What we don't have is an egg protein, a casein protein. We have a plant protein as well. What we don't have is an egg protein,

which we may do. So I would say up until now, it's been pretty easy. It's just been doing the obvious things. But going forward, it's going to get trickier. We have an immunity boosting supplement that's coming out soon. And I'm curious to see how that does. I don't expect it to do tremendously well, but I know there's definitely a demand for it. And it is a great product and the formulation is pretty unique. And so I'm personally excited for it. Again, a lot of this is scratching my own itch anyway. Going forward, we are going to do an energy drink, for example, very crowded market, very competitive. But I do know that at least a lot of my customers, again, a lot of my best customers, which means also a lot of customers in the future, a lot of other people like them.

So they might have some pre-workout caffeine and then they want to have a little bit more later in the day. And maybe they want coffee, maybe they want an energy drink. They like to have that option. And again, we can do something cool with an energy drink, a bit unique, spend a bit more money than our competitors basically, and come up with a formulation that is better than Bang's fake super creatine and BCAAs, basically, you know? But hey, it's got a study behind it. I mean, surely that study wasn't in any way influenced or biased or anything, could it be? Here's how stuff like that works. If you fund it, they will find it. That's how that works. I'm glad you brought up the energy drink category for a couple of reasons. So there is a friend of ours that they know that I do some stuff in the

supplement industry. And so I get fielded questions and I'm sure you get the same thing. People know that you do stuff in health and fitness and so you get bombarded with questions. And so this individual is buying some fat loss supplements from an MLM company. And he also said that he's been using bang energy drinks throughout the day. He said, man, my dinner last night was a protein bar and a bang. And I know these BCAAs and the CoQ10 and that thing. My initial reaction was, you know, bang, 300 milligrams of caffeine, that's going to help suppress your appetite and give you energy. But no, it's more than that.

It's got BCAAs and CoQ10 and super creatine. And he's down 15 pounds. So, you know, you walk more than that. It's got BCAAs and CoQ10 and super creatine and he's down 15 pounds. So, you know, you walk that fine line. Do you want to crush his hopes and dreams and the excitement he's got of losing the 15 pounds to tell him that energy? Well, no, you can, you can just save him. Yeah. You can just save him the money because you're like, well, the reason you're losing the weight is the calorie deficit, my friend. And caffeine might be helping a little bit with that, but not much. Once you become sensitized to it, its fat burning effects more or less disappear. So yeah, it still can reduce appetite. But if you like expensive and tasty caffeine, then you can keep doing the bang.

Or if you want to save some money, you could just do caffeine pills. But you may want to also rethink that altogether because getting good sleep is more important than the, again, negligible benefits that a little bit of caffeine, well, I guess it's a fair amount of caffeine, is going to provide in terms of fat burning. Correct. Now, with the energy drink, I would say the vast majority of all energy drinks on the markets are prop blends. I know Legion has a history of doing everything transparently dosed. Are you all going to make the energy drink transparently labeled as well with all those flavorings and all that?

We'll never use prop blends. Yeah, I just don't see why we ever would. Yeah, naturally sweetened with stevia and maybe some sugar alcohols like the other products. Yeah, exactly. And we can look at there are some other natural alternatives that we haven't been able to use in products, mainly because they're not sweet enough and they're too expensive. There are some interesting things out there, allulose, monk fruit, but stevia and erythritol are very sweet and more cost efficient. So, you know, we stick to those, but even speaking to that point, naturally sweetening products is very expensive in some cases. And with some of my products, I'm spending up to $5 a bottle just for the flavor system, which of course includes, it's mostly driven by the sweetener. Whereas if I were to go artificial, I mean, literally that $5 flavor system would drop to like 50 cents.

Yeah, it's absurd how much even in natural colors are the same way, too. If you want to use like beetroot powder or turmeric for coloring and stuff, it's absurdly expensive to do it the natural way. But, you know, I would prefer to see the industry head more that way. I'd say it's it's happening. It's happening slowly, but surely it's definitely moving in that direction. And I talk about this over on the website. I'm not one for alarmism about artificial sweeteners. And I'm not one to say that having a couple servings of artificial sweeteners per day is going to screw up your gut and screw up your health. But if you take the average person who's,

let's say they're into working out and they have a few scoops of protein per day, they have a couple scoops, maybe a serving of pre-workout and post-workout. Then also they like their BCAAs, so they drink those too. That might even be several servings a day. Let's say one to three servings of BCAAs a day. You're getting up there actually in terms of those were all artificially sweetened, you could easily be putting down seven to 10 servings of artificial sweeteners per day or more because some people also take, they chew artificially sweetened gum as well and they get it through other food products or other supplements. Doing that consistently over time is almost certainly not good for your health. Not that it's going to wreck your health, but it's not good for your health

and probably is having some negative effects on your gut, which then can ripple out into your body in many different ways. So that's why I personally just, I don't go out of my way to never have artificial sweeteners. Like if somebody has some gum in the office, usually I'll take some and chew a little bit.

I don't really, it's not that big of a deal, but I do generally keep my intake very low or really at zero because I don't really care to have a bunch of highly sweetened things that beyond just my supplements, which I'd say are fairly sweet. It's hard to get to the sickening level of sweetness that you get with many supplements if you go natural. I think it's a smart decision. I don't think it's that big of a deal because, especially in the case of Legion, as we've graduated to better and better flavor labs over the years, and we have some really good people that we work with now, I think our stuff tastes pretty good. You're never going to get to the deliciousness of at least with some flavors that you can get to with artificial flavors and artificial sweeteners. But I think we do a pretty

good job for being a hundred percent natural where a lot of the stuff we get a lot of good feedback, people enjoy drinking it. And maybe they would, as far as palatability goes, enjoy artificially sweetened and artificially flavored stuff a little bit more. But so long as you enjoy drinking something, is it really that big of a deal? Like we're talking about, you know, eight ounces of water, you drink it down, you're like, oh, that tasted good and you're done, right? Correct. I haven't tried the current iteration of Pulse, but I did the previous iteration, all six flavors. And it's at the time, it was still ahead of the pack as far as stevia sweetened products.

I'm not a huge fan of Stevia sweetened products in general just because they usually have that kind of little tang or after bite to it. But that one was noticeably less. And I'm sure that the new flavor is even better than that now. Yeah, we have improved on what you had quite a bit, again, because we found a new lab that does really really good work they have a lot of experience with natural sweeteners and natural flavoring in particular and that's what you need because a lot of this stuff is it's like a mystical art it's not a science you can't just go to school for food flavoring or supplement flavoring you are really mentored by if you get to work under somebody who's really good and they teach you the

ways, then you're now really good. And so it can be very hit and miss. There isn't a clear standardized expectation that you can have when you're working with flavor labs. So much so that there was a story, there's a guy who apparently he's like the grand wizard of flavoring. He came up with the country. He did all the flavoring for the country time lemonade. And so this dude is a multimillionaire from, cause he gets royalties apparently on, on all of that stuff that's sold. And he's that good that he can demand royalties and he really doesn't work with anybody anymore. He doesn't care. He's made so much money from country time lemonade. And I guess that was like his final grand slam. But he hit some home runs along the way as well. I forget which ones. But that's just an example of he's the guy. And probably it's similar to some genetic advantages that some physical physiological advantages of being able to like i this these random stories coming back to me so that guy

was working on something i don't remember some drink of some kind and he would just apparently he could even just smell something and know like something's off like you'd smell whatever they gave him he'd be like no it needs more banana yeah. So what is that dude? That's next level. Uh, yeah. You can't learn that. I'm sorry. Hey, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements,

fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Every ingredient and every dose in every product is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent. There are no proprietary blends and everything is naturally sweetened and flavored. To check everything out, just head over to legionathletics.com. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout, and you will save 20% on your entire order if it is your first purchase with us. And if it is not your first purchase with us,

you will get double reward points on your entire order. That's essentially 10% cash back in rewards points. So again, the URL is legionathletics.com. And if you appreciate my work and want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. So you just mentioned that y'all are getting ready to enter the energy drink market. Another incredibly competitive market that we're seeing a lot of brands enter into is the protein bar market. And Legion recently released their own take on it. What do you think separates yours from the other ones on the market? And why did you decide to enter that in the first place?

I'd say what sets us apart is similar to what sets us apart in any category, really. And that comes down to the amount of money that we spend on our products. I mean, my cost of goods hovers around 50 to 60% of revenue. And part of that is because we do a lot of sales on Amazon. But part of that is just because my products are very expensive. The margins are by business standards, not good. Like on average, my markup is only, I'm only doubling whatever it costs me. So like my protein, my whey protein, my whey plus costs me $19 a bottle to make. And I sell it for 40 to people who are maybe not initiated in business. They go, that's really good. No, it's not. By business standards, good is, I'd say five times markup from the cost of manufacturing to the MSRP is considered okay. That's like, if you're just

selling widgets for profit, you maybe shouldn't even bother with that. You want to look for eight times, that's good. Eight times is considered solid. 10 times plus is very good. Now, that's one of the reasons why that is because there are wholesalers, right, for example, that they need their cut. And so we don't work with wholesalers. We're just direct consumer. So in the case of the protein bars, we sell them for $30 a box, I think.

And they cost about half that. That's what they cost me. And so what that means though, is I am able to use high quality protein. So whey protein isolate, whey concentrate, whey hydrolysis, and there's also some pea protein as well. And it's mostly whey. It's about, I want to say 18, 19 grams of whey protein and a few grams of pea, mostly just because it adds a nice texture to it. And that was, you know, in working with the manufacturer, it's kind of interesting actually, because like they consider, so they call it a recipe, right? And I had to go back and forth with them just to make sure that, because they want it to be proprietary to them is what they

want. They don't want me to be able to go elsewhere and work with anybody else. And so what they were used to is they were used to companies coming to them and actually not caring and just being like, yeah, whatever, just make me a bar that tastes good. And I just want to be able to claim

20 grams of protein per bar. I actually don't care what type of protein it is. I don't care what quality of protein it is. Do your thing, right? Yikes. Oh yeah, that's the normal. That's the normal with any product. You don't know how many, in so many cases, supplement companies, they just go to a manufacturer and say, hey, I want to do a pre-workout. Let's say you have some Instagram influencer,

some dude or some chick that has a couple million followers and they're just like, it's time to cash in. Let's make some supplements, go to manufacturer. Yeah, make me a pre-workout, just make it good. I don't know anything about this stuff. I don't care, whatever. I need the cost to be $7 a bottle, no more than $7. That's all I care about, right? And they go, oh yeah, sure. Here, we have this off the shelf formulation. It's really good. And they go, yeah, yeah, whatever. I don't care. Again, that's actually the process, generally speaking. And so in the beginning, even with the products, the manufacturers I was working with were, they thought it was cool that I really did care. And I was very specific

about what I wanted and what, even what like types of ingredients I wanted. And in some cases, they needed to be special types that were, that had standardized amounts of very specific molecules that deliver all the benefits. And we're on one hand, they thought it's nice to see on the other hand, kind of a pain in the ass because they weren't, just weren't used to having to work that hard for quoting because some of the ingredients are actually kind of hard to find. Like if you want some generic junk version of the ingredient, yeah, no problem. Oh, you want like a good one that is standardized or you want a patented one? Not as easy. Anyway, so in the case of the protein bar, there's the whey and the pea protein. We also included healthy prebiotic fiber, which is,

if people aren't familiar with that, that's soluble fiber, right? So stuff that's found in fruits and vegetables and that's very good for your gut. So we have, I believe it's 10 grams per bar in the form of chicory root and soluble corn fiber. And there are even specific reasons why we chose those. And I share this information on the website. And so in the end, really, it just comes down to high quality protein, 20 grams per bar, naturally sweetened and flavored, which adds a fair amount of cost per bar. And then good carbs, not just maltodextrin or other junk carbs that you can throw into a bar. And no fake net carbs shenanigans either, which I believe that's over now, right? Because I think

Quest got sued for that and then they had to stop. Yeah. And they've also been some other labeling guidelines. And so most of the people that are using the IMO fiber syrup or the VitaFiber syrup is they've started listing it out or just removing the fiber, that fake fiber number in there altogether. You just mentioned about cashing in, the Insta famous people cashing in for their big paydays. You've built up a considerable following. And at any time you could have sold out, just said, screw it, I've got my millions, I've made my money, I've left my mark on the industry, it's time to cash out. What has kept you level-headed and prevented you from just selling out and hawking the latest fad or exogenous ketones or BCAAs or anything like that? Collagen protein. Exactly, yeah, that's another one too.

Partnering with goop. I guess it's just a matter of, I'm going to sound like a politician. It's a matter of integrity for me. It's a matter of personal ethics. I just don't agree with it whatsoever. And it's not worth, I can make plenty of money doing it the honest way. So why not? And if I were to sell out, this is like a different discussion, a deeper discussion though, of like something that is generally just important to me is that I'm very interested in the type of person that I am and the type of person that I'm being. And that comes down to my behaviors and my values. And so if I were to do that, it would be so at odds with my values that supersede just business or this business or just business in general. It would be so contrary to what I believe is right and how I believe people should behave that the cognitive

dissonance would fuck me up. It'd be hard for me to imagine a scenario where I would do it. I mean, even if let's say things got rough and I really needed money, there are plenty of honest ways to make a lot of money quickly. It requires a lot of work. It's not as easy as just lying or being a scammer. But if you're a creative person and you have a good imagination and you're not afraid to work hard and you know how to market well, and that doesn't mean dishonestly, you can be a good marketer and be completely honest and transparent. It's just salesmanship and persuasion and being able to use those things to sell in an honest way, then you can make millions of dollars. And maybe I would have made money faster if I would have

sold out. But in the long run, and that's also maybe another element of my personality is I tend to have a very low time preference, meaning like a longer time horizon. I'm very much more interested in the future and what I'm doing now and how it's going to impact the future and how it's going to come back to me in the future than what I'm doing now. And so if I were a high time preference person who was just addicted to instant gratification, then yeah, then I would have had more of an incentive to just sell out. And by selling out, just to make it very clear, really all it would have meant is cutting my cogs in half, just making stuff that's not as good. And I probably still could have experienced a lot of growth because if I would have done it

in a sneaky way, in an intelligent way, it would have been hard to just outright call me out for it. But there could have been plenty of things that really would have resulted in is millions of additional dollars that would be in my pocket right now. And so eventually, though, I just believe that you can't go around treating people in ways other than you'd want to be treated and you can't go around harming other people and harming just the world around you. And that is harmful. I believe it's harmful to lie to people to sell them junk pills and powders. Is it as harmful as many other things that could be done to them? No, but it's still harmful. So you only can do that so much before it all comes crashing down. And I've seen that many times actually over the years, just knowing people who at one point in their lives were making a bunch of money, quote unquote, doing well, but doing

it in very dishonest ways and eventually seeing the crash and burn. It doesn't always happen, but I've seen it a number of times. the crash and burn. It doesn't always happen, but I've seen it a number of times. And so I think that's especially likely to happen when you know what you're doing is wrong. It's one thing if you're so deluded or just so inherently criminal that you truly believe what you're doing is right and you can get into the whole greatest good rationalization. If you're into that, if you're into like the end justifies the means, then it's very easy to justify just about anything. Actually, if you have any sort of IQ, you can justify a lot of things just using that way of thinking. But if you know, though, if when somebody comments about maybe something, maybe not talking about you, but what you are doing and you get that kind of sinking feeling in your stomach because, you know, that's not what you want to hear. You know, it's true. You know, that's what you are doing. And you get that kind of sinking feeling in your stomach because you know

that's not what you want to hear. You know it's true. You know that's what you're doing. You will get what you deserve eventually. So I intentionally didn't want to put myself in that position going into it. And so that's why, first and foremost, I was like, we're going to make good stuff and we're going to sell it honestly. We're not going to overhype things and we're not going to promise benefits that are even unlikely. Like we're going to go with weight of the evidence, good evidence. And of course, these are natural products. So they will work for some people and not for others. That's the case with creatine, for example, which is the most studied molecule in all of sports nutrition, but some people just don't respond to it and that's okay.

And that's just the way it is, right? And so by doing that, you know, yeah, I've made less money from selling supplements, but I have preserved my self-respect and that's worth more than millions of dollars. Honestly, it is. Yeah, you can put your head down at night and rest comfortably knowing that you haven't sold out. You've maintained your integrity. And see, that sounds kind of cliche. And I understand there are people out there who would be skeptical of that because, you know, if you have financial problems, and I've had financial problems in the past, I know what that's like. And it sucks. It's something that is always weighing on you. And you'd think that taking that burden off like, yeah, whatever, you know, so what you lie, you get into the politician mindset. And then you think that if you could trade the stress that you have, the financial stress that you're feeling every day for

some sort of existential angst over maybe saying some things you shouldn't say to sell some stuff, it's not bad. It's just not as good as you're saying. I can understand why people are like, nah, just give me the easy road out and I'll figure out how to deal with it. But again, I've seen it's that shit eats away at you. It just eats away at you and you just become a shittier and shittier person. I've seen it a number of times over the years. And again, to where I'm like, I don't want to go down that road because it would be stupid for me to think that it wouldn't happen to me. And that's that outlier thinking that also people tend to fall into where, you know, take any sort of negative behavior that is repeated over and over and over, even if it's something simple, smoking, right? And then thinking like, well, yeah, all the

increased risks of all these diseases, that's not going to happen to me. I'm an outlier is what they're saying, right? No, statistically, you're not. Maybe you are, but if you're going to take that position, you need to start with the assumption that you're not because the base rate probability is that you're not, that you're right in the middle of the bell curve. Same thing with me and everybody, no matter what we're looking at. So if we're now going to argue why we are an outlier in any regard, we need to make a case for that. Not just, well, I feel like I am. Where's the evidence, so to speak, that you're an outlier? Now, in that case, we're like, oh, well, I took this genetic test and I have amazing detox pathways and I have no genetic risks for cancer. And then at least

you go, all right, well, actually, genetically, you are an outlier in that regard. Good for you. But of course, it never goes that far, right? And so now we're talking about something that's more almost spiritual in a sense that how are you going to say like, well, yeah, you know, being a shyster might eat away at other people and turn them into Scrooge McDuck, but it won't happen to me because I'm just different. Okay. McDuck, but it won't happen to me because I'm just different. Okay.

Would you say the way that your parents raised you had a key determining factor in how you built yourself and your company's ethics? Yeah, for sure. Without a doubt. Because yeah, my parents are just good people. And my dad in particular, not that he's like a better person than my mom, but as my dad, he know, he obviously served as a role model and he's just your kind of archetypal good guy, like truly just a good guy. And he has, I've always seen him operate like this in his business and in his life. And that's not to say he hasn't made mistakes. He's definitely made mistakes. Ironically, some of the bigger mistakes that I've seen him make in business, at least, are on the side of being too generous and letting people take advantage of him. But growing up, obviously, in a household like that, where personal ethics is valued and talked about and lived out, where there was even, I would say there wasn't even like my parents

never, I can't, I don't even know if I've ever even seen them drink alcohol before, just because they're not into it. Not that it wasn't for like religious reasons or anything. It's just, they just never got into it. My dad, when he was in college and he was younger, he definitely was into it, but he just, I don't know, he just gave it up, I guess, maybe as when I came around or something. So certainly that helped. And it helped in that not only did it obviously, there's a subconscious influence there that, you know, just kind of impresses patterns of behavior into, as a parent, you're going to influence your kid's behavior, whether they realize it or not. But it also showed that it's actually a viable way to live. It's not a sucker's way to live.

It's not the world is not, you know, get them before they get you or suppress or be suppressed. Right. And it's not every man out for himself. And I saw that it is possible to, like, again, treat consumers, treat your customers well and treat them the way that you would like to be treated and take care of them. well and treat them the way that you would like to be treated and take care of them. And they will reward you with not just their support in the way of money, but also word of mouth and goodwill. And that stuff is worth a lot. You can't buy that, actually.

You can buy customers through advertising and it's expensive, but you can't buy goodwill and you can't buy word of mouth. You have to earn those things. And if you do though, that contributes far more value to a business than just paid advertising. So yeah, that's, I guess my answer to that. That's perfect. That's very insightful. As a family man yourself, you have a wife and two small children. How do you juggle managing multiple successful businesses while still being present at home and trying to set that good example for your own kids? That's a good question. The honest answer is, although it's a little bit better now, in the beginning, I just worked.

I wasn't around very much. There wasn't much work-life balance. It was really just work. I would work every, let's say, Monday through Thursday, mostly from basically the morning until the night, throw in a couple of breaks for food and to do some cardio if I was cutting. And if I was eating dinner, it'd be with my wife and first came my son. But, and then Friday night, usually I wasn't working. So Sarah and I would do something Saturday. I would work all day and Saturday night, we might do something. And then Sunday I would work in the morning and I would in the afternoon either do something with Sarah or go play golf. And I was

golfing for about a year, year and a half. I was going consistently for, yeah, once a week for the afternoon, which it was nice to do something other than work and to just get outside and be by myself for a little bit. It was actually, it was like a little bit of almost therapeutic. It sounds maybe kind of selfish given what my schedule was like, but I felt like there actually was value in that. And that the time that I was spending with Sarah was probably actually a little bit better because I was, I had a little bit of time every week to just do something that was outside and by myself and nobody needed anything from me

and whatever. Right. So that was the case first for a number of years. And then my daughter was born a couple of years ago. I'm trying to think exactly when that transition occurred, but sometime in the last two or three years, I've ratcheted back a little bit, but not too much. So if I speak to now, just where am I at right now? I'm still working. I'll get home between 7 and 8 p.m. from the office on weekdays. And from there, it's make myself some food, help put my son Lennox to bed. So he usually eats some food while my wife is putting our daughter to bed. And she usually takes a little bit longer to get in bed. She's two and gets sleep and whatever. two and get to sleep and whatever. So that eats up a fair amount of time. So I'm not like, you know, there, I'm not at home at 5 PM just for the sit down dinner and, you know, hour and a half with the kids and, and wife, it's kind of a rush like, okay, I'm cooking my food. I'm making Lennox food. If he needs a shower, I give him a shower, take a shower with him, clean him, whatever, put in bed, brush his teeth. So by the time both Sarah and my chores, so to speak, are done, it's like usually

9pm, maybe 8.30. And we go to bed at 10. So we have a little bit of time at the end of the night to spend with each other. And I also though, it needs to be something relaxing. Like if we have sex, that's good. That's relaxing. If we have like a chill kind of conversation about something, I honestly, it's not about it's not a matter of like fighting or not we don't fight very much like we sure will have fights here and there and disagreements and arguments but it's more like even if it's in a stimulating conversation for me if it requires my brain to really work then chances are it's going to mess with my sleep i've actually experienced that enough now where if i don't go to bed in kind of a relaxed sleepy-ish state chance i'm not going to have any trouble falling asleep, but I'm going to probably wake up multiple times in the middle of the night.

And for me to have a good night's sleep, I need to have power down, so to speak. So that's like really the end of the night is Sarah and I spend some time together and just kind of power down after the day. Sarah and I spend some time together and just kind of power down after the day. And then on the weekends, I take Saturdays, I'll work in the morning and then do something with my family in the afternoons, Sunday work in the mornings and either do something with them in the afternoon or go play golf in the afternoon. So some people would hear that and be like, that life's not for me. That's not a balanced life. And I understand, but I don't really believe in work-life balance. I don't think there is any way to balance everything that, you know, let's say you have your health, you have your family, you have your work, you have your friends. Those are like the main buckets, right? You can't have them all. You just can't because taking care of

yourself, for example, health, it requires getting enough sleep. Let's start there. I make sure that I'm in bed for eight hours a night. That wasn't the case in the past because I used to be a superstar sleeper who would fall asleep in like five minutes, blackout unconscious for like six and a half hours, wake up and be totally fine. And that was just rinse repeat every day for like six years. But now I tend to wake up once or twice at night and I need to make sure that I'm getting enough sleep. So for me to get up at 6 a.m. when I get up, I have to be in bed at 10. Okay. So that already puts a limitation on what am I going to be up to, especially on weekdays. And then health means exercising. It means three to five hours a week, ideally, of exercise for just everybody and whatever you do. I mean, there are better and worse things you can do, but if you're getting some sort of exercise, you're doing a good

job if you're doing it regularly. And so that takes time. If you're going to eat good food, that also takes a bit of time. It probably means you're going to be preparing your own meals, which I do as well. I bring my lunch to the office and work takes a lot. If you're going to really get somewhere, whether it's building a business, especially if it's building a business, but even building a career, you're going to try to do it with a nine to five mentality. Good luck. Just good luck. I mean, again, we're looking, if we look at it in terms of a bell curve, the vast majority of the people who have, and we look at it like on the horizontal axis is number of hours worked per week and achieved some significant level of success. the middle of the bell curve,

it's a number probably ranging from 60 to 80 hours per week, especially in the beginning when you're getting something off the ground. And then once you have something successful, it's up to you in terms of, do you want to let off the gas a little bit and not work as much, knowing that it probably will slow down your growth

or are you a very type a person who you're just like nah i just want to keep going and okay then just know what that time commitment looks like and then family same thing right and friends and so for me like i have no social life and i'm fine with that i actually don't care like i don't hang out with friends i work with my friends i'm fortunate to like all the guys I work with and in the office, it's just guys. We have some women working with us, but they're remote. It just kind of worked out that way. But I count all these guys as friends and our time together is really here in the office. But outside of that, if someone wants to come golf with me on a Sunday afternoon, hey, they're welcome to come. But I'm not hanging out on a Tuesday night

with friends or a Wednesday or Thursday or often even a Friday night. And I'm totally fine with that. And that's a sacrifice that I'm willing to make in the future. I'll probably feel differently about that in the future. I probably will consciously go, all right, I'm going to turn down that work burner a little bit so I can turn up this friend's burner and have a bit more of social interaction in my life. So the idea again, that you can have it all. No, you can't. You just can't. You can't. Hearing you recount your typical week or day is I was nodding pretty much constantly through that because your schedule is very much akin to the way my wife and I schedule is with our toddler and all that and the amount of hours I'm working through the day. So it's nice to know that there's more than just me out there that's doing something similar. That's maintaining that kind of schedule.

It is the only way. And I mean, there's even, it's one of those things we don't need science to tell us this, but there's quite a bit of research on this. It's in the way mostly of surveys, but that just how much successful entrepreneurs in particular are working. Just how much successful entrepreneurs in particular are working, even CEOs who are often demonized as lazy fat cats who just sit around smoking cigars and counting their money, which is just really ironic. You have to be so ignorant to actually think that. One, there's research out there. You could go look into what your average CEO of a big company, what their life looks like. And two, you could also,

depending on what circles you run, and maybe you're not meeting these people, but in my travels, I've met quite a few people and they're, so take what we're doing and then add a bunch of travel on top of it as well. And that's like your average CEO of a big company. And yeah, they might be making millions of dollars a year, but their entire life revolves around that job. And they're often not at home. They can't even have the option to like put their son to bed because half of every month they're out of town and traveling. So yeah, that's just the reality. I've said this to people who reach out to me asking about getting, should they get into business for themselves? And one of the criteria is if you can't comfortably work at least 50 hours a week, and that means work, not on the computer with like five social media sites

open and your phone dinging and maybe the TV on as well. And then you're quote unquote multitasking on maybe your email or something, right? No, that's not working. I mean, true focused work. Now, maybe it's not going to be 50 hours of what Cal Newport would call deep work. I'm not even sure I could do that where you are really, it requires all of your focus, all of your concentration. Writing is a good example of that. It really requires a lot of focus and concentration. Doing anything creative really is a good example of that. And I don't think I actually could do that. Or if I were to do that, the quality would certainly decline probably after five or six hours in any given day. So, okay, but you have your deep work, but then you have your more shallow work that just has to get done. Like take email and take

all the just random logistical things that go into running a business and the meetings you inevitably have to have and just all the stuff that goes into a job even. It doesn't even have to be building a business. And so what I've told people is if you can't comfortably do that for at least 50 hours a week, at least, that's a bare minimum, I would say you should be able to push yourself north of 80 hours before you start feeling like, wow, I'm working a lot these days, then don't do it. Don't get into business unless you have like the next Snapchat or something, then fine. The, you won the lottery and the markets will carry you to riches. But again,

if it's like most people, this is a business that is going to have to, you're just going to have to grind into existence. You have to be able to do a lot of work and a lot of high quality work. Excellent. Awesome, Mike. Well, I know we're coming up against our time deadline here. So I'd like to get you back on the show in a couple weeks possible, because I'd like to really delve into your writing style and some of the challenges that come along with that, some of the enjoyment that comes with that and give listeners an insight into that as well. Yeah, that's fun. That's actually something that I haven't spoken about much just because I haven't thought to really monologue about it on my podcast and nobody has,

well, maybe not nobody, but I'm rarely asked about it. Yeah, I think it'd be a wonderful opportunity to gain some insight into that. I'm sure everybody knows where to find you because you're fairly prominent in the industry, but go ahead and do the sales pitch feel for Legion and yourself. Let me get my Billy Mays voice going. No, just you can find me at legionathletics.com. That's really the central hub now for anyone who's still listening. You heard muscle for life. And that was a website that I had that I eventually merged into Legion because it just didn't really make sense to have two different websites. And so Legion, that means now Legion has not only the supplements, but it also has, we have a coaching service with

about 500 or so active clients, a lot of really good success stories. We work with men and women of all ages and circumstances, all levels of fitness, and really do a good job. It's a very VIP kind of hands-on high touch service. We have pre-made meal plans for losing weight, for gaining weight. We have a custom meal plan service. I also have a ton of free content. I have probably a thousand articles now published at Legion's blog because Legion got all of Muscle for Life's articles. So Legion had, it's maybe not a thousand, maybe it's like 800 or so, but hundreds and hundreds of long form, well-written, well-researched articles on probably anything you could really want to know at this point regarding how to improve your body composition, your health.

My podcast now lives over at Legion. It's still called the multiple life podcast, but we just have now a section of the website so people can find it and listen to episodes on the site if they want. Most people obviously just use whatever software they use to listen to podcasts. And we have some other neat stuff coming. We're going to be doing another podcast, a different podcast. It's not going to be me. I'm going to be working on it behind the scenes, but I'd like to build out almost like a media network, produce other podcasts just because I like the medium and I think there are some interesting opportunities. And we're also working on what we're going to call, it sounds a little bit cheesy and pretentious, but I haven't

thought of anything better yet, is Academy, like Legion Academy. And what that's really going to be is it's going to be more of a deep dive into the first, it's going to be the science of supplementation. So think examine.com, but more user-friendly basically. And anybody who's familiar with examine, I'm sure appreciates the level of detail and the amount of technical information that's there. But if you're not a scientist, most of it, it's incomprehensible actually. And so, I mean, it is, right? And so I have on who's working with me, the former co-founder and lead researcher and writer of Examine, Curtis Frank is his name.

He works with me. Everything that you see on Examine, basically, all the technical deep dive stuff was research and written by Curtis. And so we're going to be putting together a database, so to speak, of information that is going to be more accessible. And it's going to be easier for just laymen to understand some of the deeper mechanisms of how different supplements work. And yeah, those are some of the projects that we have in the pipeline that I'm excited about, in addition to new products, of course, and new flavors and stuff. But that's fun,

of course. But I like all the educational stuff that we're doing. So I tend to talk about that more, maybe sometimes to a detriment of sales. No, that's why I started this podcast was for consumer education about the science of supplements in the first place. So I'm glad there's more people out there like that, that are doing this. And it's, it's been a real pleasure to talk today, man. And I'd like to get you back on the podcast soon and Curtis as well. Yeah. Yeah. Please do reach out. We'll be in touch via email. I know you're speaking with Roman, so let's set it up. Awesome. Great. Well, then thanks so much, Mike, and have a great day. Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics,

which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Head over to www.LegionAthletics.com now to check it out. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order. And it'll ship free if you are anywhere in the United States. And if you're not, it'll ship free if your order is over $100. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. 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.