 Oh boy, you're gonna love this episode. Got to talk to Mike Matthews, one of my favorite people in this space. In today's episode, he gives us insider secrets into the supplement industry. I mean, he breaks it down. Like, how much do these supplements actually cost supplement companies? What are the margins? How do they profit, right? What does the marketing game look like? What about the dirty stuff that happens in the supplement industry? All the crap, all the supplements that say they have something that they don't or they actually have illegal pharmaceuticals in their products. Like, we talk about all that and more great, great episode. Also, here's the giveaway for today, Maps Anabolic. If you leave a comment in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode, subscribe to this channel and turn on your notifications. And if we pick your comment, we'll notify you and you'll get free access to the flagship Maps workout program, Maps Anabolic. One more thing before we get going with this episode. Two Maps programs are 50% off right now. Maps Performance, this is an athlete-inspired workout program and Maps Aesthetic, which is bodybuilder-inspired, are both 50% off. So here's how you can get either one. If you want Maps Performance, go to mapsgreen.com. If you want Maps Aesthetic, go to mapsblack.com and the discount code for both of them is FEB50. All right, here comes the show. I didn't know this about supplement companies till I met you. You see a supplement company, you see, oh my gosh, there's $10 million of revenue, $50 million of revenue, but you have no idea that, I had no idea that the margins on supplements could be so small, especially if you have a quality product. So, you know, 10, like you told me, I remember when I talked to you at first, you said if you have a 15% profit margin with supplements, you are crushing. And I remember- I said that's very good, that's very good in supplements. Yeah, I got blown away by that. So how did you get affected by the supply chain stuff with supplements? I was working with, there's a company that I was, I don't wanna say who they are, but I was working with and they were asking me my advice on what, like a new product. And so I was giving them, you know, like ingredients and stuff and they said, well, we'll see if we can get our hands on stuff because it's really hard to get certain things right now and the supply chain's really weird and whatever and they weren't able to sell certain products. Do you guys get affected? You have to change like who you were working with? Like how did you navigate all that? Fortunately, we got ahead of the supply chain snafu by placing huge orders early lat or well, middle of last year is when we started to place big, big orders. You know, I had to get a, I had to get nearly a $2 million SBA loan just for that because it required a lot more money than an end. I've been pretty conservative in managing Legion's finances in terms of cash reserves and whatever, but I only have so much cash and to make sure that I was gonna get what I need this year, I had to come up with a lot of money in the middle or show of last year and that's with lead times being all wacky. I mean, there were some, so I worked with several manufacturers. One, they were giving me 40, 50 week lead times. And I'm like, dude. 40, 40, wow. You can't run a business like that, man. What are you talking about? 40 to 50 week lead times. Give me a break, right? What does your percentage look like as far as what you spend the most on advertising between like Google retargeting, Facebook ads, and let's say probably Amazon, I would guess are those your three major ones you probably mess with? What's the percentage look like? Good question. You guys will probably find this interesting. So Facebook, what do you think my Facebook spend is at, right? Well, I bet you, so, you know, we just shut ours down. We've shut ours down for the last three. So I bet you've either reduced it significantly or you're probably like us to where it's really low. Where are you at? I'm at $0 a day. Yeah, that's so are we. We've been, it's now, I want to say six or seven months. Would you say Doug? Yeah, that sounds right. You have about six or seven months now. And no impact to revenue, right? Oh, no, we're going the other door. It's going, the Google retargeting is doing phenomenal and the Facebook ads was looked like now, looking back was contributing very little to the business. So really interesting because that was just what two years ago. It was a big deal. Yeah, everybody was talking about how amazing Facebook was as far as a place for advertising. So that's interesting. Why do you think that is, Mike? What do you think Facebook is not as effective as it used to be? Well, I mean, that iOS update was devastating. It totally messed up attribution and also messed up targeting. And that's where I know in my business and in other businesses, that's where it all started to go wrong. You just could not get the results that you were getting previously. Now, I even question at this point the quote unquote results that I was getting previously because again, we go from, we never spent that much on Facebook. I'm gonna guess we peaked at maybe 100K a month. I think it was a little bit less than that, maybe 70 or 80K a month. And according to the numbers that we were getting from Facebook, there was a good ROI. But again, we go from that pretty quickly. We went not overnight to zero, but within a month or so to go from that to zero and see no appreciable change in revenue makes me wonder what was going on? Now, the problem for people who are in the know on this of course is attribution, where Facebook's Pixel is taking credit for sales that were happening, they were going to happen otherwise. They were not actually driven by that advertising. And so in my experience, I've worked with several ad agencies, a few big ones that have been really bad. If you were to look at their websites and their portfolios, you'd be like, oh, they're gonna do great. No, the agency game, not to get off on a tangent, but I hate this, that the agency game is, here's how it normally goes. You have a core of people who are good and let's say it's marketing, they're good marketers, they're good advertisers, they know how to make stuff work, they know how to sell and they get clients and they get results and they get more clients, they get the idea of starting an agency, then they start making more money and they wanna scale the agency and it's basically impossible to find people who are as good as they are. So they get people, maybe they find, for out of every hundred hires, there's one person who really stands out. So then they have now themselves, they have another layer of effective people who they give their biggest and best accounts to and what they wanna keep growing, they wanna keep scaling, they don't want to limit their growth to their ability to actually deliver results. So they just fill their organization with low skilled people and then give all of their less important, less profitable accounts to those people and the MO is do as little work as you can get the bare minimum results to just keep the client and then eventually you know you'll lose them but it doesn't matter with your own marketing being good, you'll, you know- Yeah, you'll backfill three for the- You will, yeah, exactly. You will get wins with your biggest clients and you just use those to sell and so I've worked with agencies and Facebook, what I've concluded is that it's not hard to do well with remarketing, with retargeting for example on Facebook and that's something that I would recommend you guys look into. I'm gonna bring that back because I think that's easy money where it goes to the question about the viral, the funny ad, that ad has done quite well with people who are familiar with us. So on a remarketing basis, on a retargeting basis, it's done well. It has outperformed with the agency that we've been working with, outperformed I think most everything that they've tried up until now, with cold traffic though. In your own community though, okay. Exactly, with people who have at least heard of us, they're familiar with us, they've been to our website, maybe they've read an article, there is at least a slight positive association there but with cold, people who if they have heard about us, we don't have any way to know that and a lot of these people have not. It did okay, not well enough to really roll out at scale and that's not surprising when I look back at how that ad was put together and that it was mostly entertainment and it wasn't strong in terms of like actually selling you on Legion but it also wasn't expensive. It only cost me, I think my all-in cost was like 35 or 40K. And I'm able to use it, still able to use it, I might be able to use it indefinitely on a retargeting remarketing basis. So anyways, Adam to finish answering your question, that's where Facebook is at, Google has been doing quite well for us, Google Shopping has been doing quite well for us so we continue to scale that. Amazon is in an awesome place in that revenue is almost at high, it's like, well actually is, I mean I look at it on a monthly basis, I'm thinking gaily numbers but so we're doing the best we've ever done on Amazon in terms of revenue but our spend is very, very low. We have cut our spend from, I mean it probably peaked at 100 to 130K a month we've cut it to like, I don't know, 30 to 40K a month. Now, do you attribute that to like a compounding effect of you just being on Amazon for so long and the reviews coming up and now you have lots of books on there now and so because of that, you're going wider and so probably ranking higher organically that you don't need to pump so much, is that why? Yeah, so I would say it's two factors. One is this brand factor that Legion is becoming a bigger brand. We're getting the most traffic to our website we've ever gotten, we're getting the most brand queries on search engines that we've ever gotten. We are working with the most influencers that we've ever worked with. Like everything is as big as it has been. And so of course, then some of that trickles over to Amazon because we really try, I'm always trying to come up with more reasons for people to buy from my website because LTV on my website is almost lifetime value for anyone listening is almost $300, 280 or so right now. And LTV on Amazon, you can't get it as exactly as you can on your website but it's about one third of that probably, $80 to $90. And if someone buys from my website I now have somebody I can communicate to I have an address, I have an email address, I have a phone number, Amazon shares none of that. So yes, I think that there's the just the organic growth of the company and then there are some interesting new strategies that we're using on the paid side of things to mitigate some of the inflation of costs. I mean, it is so expensive to advertise on Amazon. Now, Amazon has really changed. I mean, this is a good example of an interesting principle in business. When you think of a successful business or successful businesses or even books or really anything that has done well in a marketplace and you try to answer the question like what's the primary factor? What are the primary factors that really made this work? Was it funding? Was it the quality of the idea? Was it the team? And how well they executed? How agile you are? Was it the timing? And I think you can make a really strong argument for the importance of timing. And doing the right thing at the right time. And you could argue that an idea isn't a good, like you have timing and idea is two different things. You could argue that a good idea is something that has at least a little bit of good timing to it. But I think it is helpful to break that out. And when I started on Amazon, whatever that was seven years ago or so that was good timing. It was way easier to gain traction. Amazon advertising was way cheaper. It was way less competitive. And you compare the situation then to now and if you are, I can say with certainty in sports nutrition, if you are not already fairly entrenched, meaning you are seated all throughout the websites also bots, you have thousands and thousands of reviews on your product. You have at least a four star average, ideally a four and a half star average. And if you also have, it helps to have attained high rankings in the past, that matters. The history of the ASIN matters. An ASIN that has performed really well over a long period of time gets a lot more love from Amazon and their algorithms than an ASIN, which like a SKU that's brand new. Even if you come in and you pour tons of money into it and you spike sales and you lose money on every sale, you're like, I'm gonna burn through $5 million just to establish this product. It still might not work. Like when you finally turn that spigot off, you better be able to sustain those sales in other ways or you're gonna lose traction in a very competitive space like sports nutrition. So that's where the advertising is at. And I think for me going forward, what's clear is I do know that Facebook, and I'm sure for you guys, Facebook acquisition can work, but my current hypothesis so to speak is that it requires really good advertising. It requires, you're not gonna be able to just, the days are gone when you could just put together something that's okay and just get it out there and make good money and get a good return from that. It seems like with cold acquisition, the people who still make that work have outstanding advertising. And none of my advertising has ever been outstanding. Yeah, it's just much more competitive. You know, a while ago, Mike, when we talked to you a long time ago, we talked about some of the dirty tricks that supplement companies will make. Like I remember learning about amino acid spiking to make a protein supplement. Still goes on. Well, I was just gonna ask you it, you know, what are some of the things that you're seeing? Or is there anything new? Like, what are the things that consumers should look out for when buying supplements? Because it is a, and I'm very supportive of open markets. It is an unregulated market, but that does place a lot of responsibility on the consumer much more than if it was a very regulated market. What are some of the dirty tricks and things they need to look out for? They're still playing games with negative reviews on Amazon and all that as well. Oh yeah, yeah. That's fortunately, fortunately. I actually, where's some, is this wood? Yeah, that's wood. Knock on wood. Because it's funny. I was just talking with my CEO yesterday. I was like, you know, we've had a good run here. We haven't had anybody really, really messing with us. And it's probably not because they're not trying. It seems like Amazon has better systems internally because it's not in their interest, of course. If you take a really hot ace and a really hot product and then it gets taken down because of shenanigans and it takes a month to get it back up, that's bad for Amazon too. They take 15% off the top of every sale. And they get their advertising nut too. So they get a lot of money out of every sale. And so there has been certainly less of the, kind of like guerrilla warfare, which is nice to see. But that has been replaced by the soaring costs of advertising, which fortunately, again, I mean, my revenue split now is about 70% website, 30% Amazon, where when I first met you guys, it was the other way around. That's right, yeah, yeah. Amazon was 70% of my revenue. And I've focused all of my personal efforts on growing the website and the people who work directly with me. Basically, we've worked on nothing but growing website revenue and letting Amazon grow at a slower pace, even though Amazon, we're still gonna grow at 10 to 15% this year, but I'm much more interested in what I can do with the website. So anyway, so what still goes on on Amazon, of course, is the review nonsense in terms of gaming reviews. And I don't know how Amazon's gonna stop that. It's not in their interest to stop that. It's in their interest to pretend like they want to stop it. And it's in their interest to have the occasional news story out there that they deleted 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 fake reviews. And they're policing this and watching it closely because of course that inspires confidence in consumers. But when you know that there are probably 30,000 fake reviews posted every 10 minutes on the website, I mean, maybe it's every hour. It might be sensationalizing a little bit, but when you understand the scale of the marketplace and what goes on, you understand that. How are they doing that? Are they having real people in these review farms in India and China or whatever that are just leaving reviews? There's that. I mean, so there are services still, there are fewer of them because Amazon has gone after them and shut a number of them down, just by threatening saying, we're Amazon and we're gonna bankrupt you in court if you just don't go away basically. And so there, but there still are services that are more kind of like underground now. You have to be in Amazon selling groups. You have to, they don't have a website you can go to and sign up on basically. And so you can buy reviews and they're expensive and that's risky because so the argument for doing it is that quote unquote, everyone else is doing it. That's one argument. That's where it usually starts, right? So it's like, well, it's like if you're a professional football player is using PEDs, cheating, of course not, because everyone is like, if you're not using them you had better be the most disciplined super freak of super freaks because you're not gonna be able to keep up or you're gonna barely keep up with the people who are like you, but also on drugs, right? So similarly on Amazon, the argument is like, well, basically everyone's doing it. And also if you're buying reviews and if you're doing it in a kind of an anonymized way even if Amazon quote unquote catches you how do they know that was you and not a competitor buying reviews to try to get you banned? Yeah. Because you could do that then, right? If I were a shady person I could then just start buying reviews for a competitive product and then get caught. Oops, right? And so that's an argument for doing it. The argument against. I learned about this on about social media too. I don't remember what I watched but it was like a document or an Instagram and talked about how many fake. Social dilemma. Social dilemma. Talk about how many fake followers there were and they said, well, yeah, Instagram wants the fake followers too because it makes people feel like they have more followers as more people on there. So I can see how Amazon would kind of not mind if there's a lot of reviews that are fake because it adds credence to the product probably sells more, you know. It adds value to the platform so long as people think those are real reviews. That's the key. It's like controlling anabolic steroids in sports like you said. Exactly. It's optics. It's optics, right? It's almost like politics. And so you can make some arguments for doing it. The argument against doing it though is in my case, for example, I've been on Amazon again for what it is seven years now. We do quite well. It's growing. And I don't wanna run the risk of getting banned because if they do, you can get banned for that stuff. Just arguing, well, that wasn't me. I don't know who was doing that. I wouldn't bet millions and millions of dollars of revenue on something like that. And I think that there's an argument for generally playing by the rules and not doing things that are just blatantly detrimental to the marketplace. So there is still a lot of that that goes on. It's not as easy. I mean, there was a time when there were websites and this was actually, there was a time when Amazon, they didn't have a clear position on this. What you could do is you could go to a website and you could say, hey, I'm selling this thing on Amazon. I'm willing to give it to free for people if they leave me a review. And I'm not going to incentivize a good review versus a bad review. They're gonna get the thing for free and they're gonna leave a review. And theoretically that's okay, actually. Amazon, again, they didn't come out and say we are explicitly okay with these services, but that was not actually really a break in their TOS because Amazon is okay with you giving away things for people to check out. And then if they want to leave a review, they can leave a review and if they want to leave a good, right? So, but of course, I remember this one website, what they did is they allowed you to see each reviewer's history and then you'd see like that. Pick the people you want to send it to. Exactly, and those people, but then it became, but because it was transparent like that, the incentive as a reviewer was to always leave a five-star review because if you ever left a one, two, or three-star review, you're gonna get passed up. You're not gonna get free stuff. Exactly. So what you had is you just had a bunch of people who would always leave five-star reviews. Wow. And so, you know, it's just... It's not surprising when you see things like that and you see how these little marketplaces pan out and how human nature works, but it just goes to show how hard it is to your point about free markets, how hard it is to try to centrally control everything. You know what I mean? It's not gonna work. People are resourceful when there's something in it for them, people can get pretty creative in figuring out how to get it. Is the supplement industry trending better or worse or the same in the context of like having what they say on the bottle is in the bottle or not having impurities. I remember there were a couple investigative reports. I haven't seen one in a while, but maybe a few years ago where they went and tested, I remember 15 supplements and found that 12 of them had little to nothing. You didn't even have anything that they claimed, yeah. Yeah, you're taking a capsule of, yeah, like wheat, you know, and it says it's got a supplement. I remember, dude, I remember it sticks to my mind because it's so absurd. Houseplant, that was one, it was just, it was powdered houseplant in the house plant. That was actually like in the report. Powdered asparagus, that was another one. Man, this creatine's not working, what the hell? So would you say it's getting better or worse? Is the market's like weeding these crappy products out or is it still a bit of a Wild West? So what I've seen is that you have different levels of sophistication in consumers, right? This is true of any market. And this doesn't imply intelligence, right? A low sophistication buyer is not necessarily an unintelligent buyer. It's just somebody who's new to this and is not very informed. We were all low sophistication buyer. I used to go to GNC once a month and load up with like hundreds of dollars of stuff, you know, go, what's the newest awesome testosterone booster? What's behind the lock and the key in the back of the store, right? So I was once that person. I like to think I'm not stupid at least. I just was uninformed. And so what we still have is we have a lot of low quality products, low quality ingredients, small amounts of ingredients, even some of the label games where it doesn't even have to have any of the ingredients. Actually, if you're working with a shady manufacturer and those types of products tend to be sold to the lower sophistication buyers, those are, for example, fat burners that are claiming you can lose 20 pounds in your first month just popping these pills or they are testosterone boosters. Those are very big right now. Testosterone is a very hot topic, particularly among middle-aged and golden-aged people, and so you have products that are being sold more on. You have some internet marketing, but you don't reach that crowd primarily through the internet. So you have like infomercials and radio commercials, right? And so you have a lot of those types of products that are minimally just their ineffective ingredients, tiny doses, but those are also obviously the people who are willing to cut all corners. Like if you're willing to sell, to blatantly just lie to people to get their money, then why not just lie a little bit more and get even more money, right? And at that point, if you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound. You know what I feel like, Mike? I feel like that there's these people that own, I don't know this for sure, but that's what it feels like to me, that they'll start a shady supplement company, sell a bunch of products, uh-oh, they're kind of getting found out, stop and then re- Let's go legit now. Yeah, or go rebrand and start another supplement company. Yeah. And it's almost like- Apply the same hustle. It's like the snake oil salesman that went from town to town selling their crap. And by the time people found out in the town, they went to the next town type of deal. Kind of reminds me of that. Do you, does that happen or am I just imagining things? I mean, you're dead. What's his name, Aaron Singerman, is he's in prison now, right? I mean, there's a perfect example of that. And PJ Braun is probably next. Hmm, oh, is he getting in trouble? The Blackstone Labs? Oh, yeah, Redcon one. Singerman is gone. He's, he's going, oh, he's going to prison. He's in prison right now. Didn't they just, didn't they just get acquired recently? Or did they acquire somebody really big? They were in the news. What was the deal? I don't know the whole story here. What's the deal with that? Why is he in prison? For selling steroids. In supplements? Yeah, I mean, so- Damn. Which supplements were these? It was Blackstone Labs, I believe. It was him and PJ Braun. I don't want to get details wrong because just, you know, on principle, but there's no question that he is, that Singerman is either in prison or going to prison or for selling illegal drugs, steroids. And that was not a Redcon one thing. That was a Blackstone Labs thing. But what you just described is the story of Singerman and Braun. It was Blackstone Labs selling steroids, then Redcon one to quote, unquote, go legit. I don't know if Braun was ever associated with Redcon one, but Singerman, definitely. I mean, he is, or maybe co-founder X CEO. But yeah, if it looks like you guys are looking it up right now. And so- Yeah, I see, yeah, Doug's pulling them up right now. Doug, see if there's, you can find a news article. Okay, so I just read, I wish I remember what the article said, but I brought big Redcon news to the podcast about seven or eight months ago. And I can't remember what the news was. I thought they either were acquired or they made a big acquisition and made big headlines. And actually, I thought you and I talked about it. I thought I- I know. Didn't you and I text about it? I could have sworn I sent it over to you or you sent it to me and we were talking about, oh, shit, did you see this big move? And I- Deja Vu, here, here's a PR news wire. So Redcon one, this was April, 2021, complete strategic investment. Well, it says here former Blackstone Labs co-founder Aaron Singerman sentenced four and a half years behind bars, but what was it for? You're saying sold steroids, was it? Cause I know I've seen this before where people will buy like a boner pill and in there is actual Viagra or an actual pharmaceutical or- Or were they just using their big platform of people to backdoor and sell black market? Yeah, or were they actually selling steroids or were they selling supplements that said they were test boosters, but actually contained like, you know, super drawl in it or something like that. Like that's, that's what I don't know. Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm not sure because I just read- Oh, no. Oh, I'm reading it. Yeah. Ready for that? Here's the quote. Open that up a little bit, Doug, so I can read this. So it says- Sold us that dietary supplement. Yeah, selling products labeled as, hold on a second. Selling products labeled as dietary supplements that actually contain controlled substances and unapproved drugs is illegal and potentially dangerous. So that's the deal that happened. So apparently people were buying- That's the old shell game that's been going on for a long time. Dude, and you know what's funny? I bet the reviews on those supplements are great. Yeah, well, wow. Holy shit. Remember craze? Remember craze? You guys had to have had people reaching out to you about craze when that was- What was that? So that was that pre-workout that had meth, basically. I missed it. Dude, I used to get emails. Wow. A handful a week. Every week people would reach out to me saying, have you ever tried this stuff craze? I've never felt a pre-workout like this. It's amazing. And so when I first heard about it, I went and looked at the label and I was like, I don't get it. I mean, have these people just never had caffeine? It has some caffeine, it has some creatine and like nothing else. There's nothing in this. Well, there actually was meth. It turns out that meth makes a pretty good pre-workout if you guys ever- Yeah, that's the next level right there. Yeah, it was pre-workouts great, but the next thing I knew, I was grinding my teeth. I was giving my workout partner a hand job and I sold my kids. I don't know what happened. For more craze. For more craze. This is wild. So now, okay. Oh, wow. I did see- You know what's funny? We talked about this. I remember. Yeah, we did. God damn it. This is what I miss out on by not trying a lot of supplements. Doug, could you look up either Redcon, Redcon won acquisition or acquired and see what you get? Because I know Mike, you and I talked about this a while back and I did not know that they were in this mix. I didn't know that they got, because PJ Braun and the Singerman guy, they're all Blackstone labs. So what does Redcon have to do with that? Are they- So Singerman was part of Blackstone and then looks like he went off to start Redcon. I don't think Braun is associated with Redcon. That was Singerman's thing. Okay, okay. And to what you were saying, Adam, if I remember correctly, it was, was it a PE group that invested in- That's right. We're looking at it right now. Just as Redcon won complete strategic investment from TriVest partners. So somebody, that's what it was. They got a big money infusion. That's what it was. Right, which means they maybe- $135 million in capital investment. Well, no, remember, because I remember Adam texting with you and we were like, that company is worth $435 million. That was the size of the fund. That was the size of the fund. They didn't say how much money they put into it. Now it's all coming back. That's exactly what I remember. I think I sent it to you because I was blown away at what I thought that- Yeah, I mean, both of us were like, what kind of revenue are they? Yeah, we were like- To get a valuation like that, I mean, you're talking like 300, 250 million in revenue. No way. No, that was the size of the fund. We don't know how much. Now, Mike, what about this? What about when a study comes out that says new compound found in whatever increases fat oxidation in vitro or whatever by 15% and then a company takes it and turns it into a fat burner? Do you still see a lot of that? Well, they'll take a compound with one silly study that really is a meanie thing and then just blow it out of proportion and sell it as the next greatest thing. That's just a common marketing ploy is to take mechanistic research, take animal research, take in vitro research and just assume that people are not gonna really look into it or even if they did try to look into it, they're not scientifically versed enough to understand that this doesn't mean that it's going to actually do anything for you. And there are a lot of ingredients over the years that have shown promise, not even in vitro have shown promise in let's say rat research, which some people wonder why rats. Well, we actually share, it's like 99% of our DNA with rats and certain elements of rat physiology are similar to human physiology like metabolism, for example, even though rat metabolisms run a lot faster. And so that's why animal research will often start with that to see if there's any reason to believe that this could be effective in humans. But then when we get to the human research, it's a flop. Raspberry ketones are a good example of that, showed promise in rats, seemed to work great, but then completely flopped in humans, Tribulus terrestris showed promise in rats for testosterone boosting and you still see that product or that ingredient in so many testosterone-related. Now I'm going to defend Tribulus for a second. I'm going to defend it for a second. It won't raise your testosterone, but it can boost your libido. I do notice when I take it, if I take a good quality one, I do get a bit hornier, but I don't, I know there's no raise in testosterone, but that's probably going to confuse a guy, right? He'll take it and be like, it must be raising my test, but really you're just a little extra horny. Yeah. What is it? Mike, what is it that you... It can help women, it can help women in that department too. It's actually, that is in my multivitamin for women, for that reason, but not in the world. Oh, do they know you put it in there? Is that a sneaky? No, it's it. It's on me. Hey, I've actually had people, I mean, it's on the sales page. I explain what the ingredient is. I cite the research, but I have had people reach out confused, like wait, it's in the women's product. Bro, I'm buying into the bottle for my wife. Great multivitamin. Yeah, exactly. So Mike, what is it that you, what do you wait for before you decide you're going to experiment with something or add it to your line? Like what are you waiting for? Yeah, what are your standards? Yeah, what does it look like? Good question. So one, there has to be good human evidence. There have been a couple of ingredients over the years that we've used that only had animal evidence, but my asterisk with that is, I made that clear. Like I never would base a formulation because the thinking behind the formulations is, all right, we need to have a foundation of ingredients that have a lot of high quality human evidence of not just efficacy, but also meaningful effect size, meaning that if something were to increase your testosterone by some tiny amount, it is insignificant. 10%. Yeah, if you, if you only, if you only, if you play a little bit of a numbers game, you can present that in a way that actually sounds kind of interesting. But if people understood that going from 600 to 660 NGDL means absolutely nothing, then they wouldn't buy the product. And so I look for not just efficacy, but also something meaningful is happening that actually is going to help people get to whatever goal is associated with this product. It could be, it could be, it doesn't have to be an essay muscle growth or fat loss. Like, it could be a joint product that meaningfully reduces joint inflammation, meaningfully reduces joint pain, meaningfully improves joint health, for example. And so in the couple of cases where we've used, like rutacarpine is an ingredient that we used in our sleep product because there is interesting animal research that indicates that it might help the body clear caffeine out faster. You told me this a while ago and it's legit. Oh, it's interesting. Yeah, it's legit. If I take it, because if I have caffeine too late and I take that, I do, I do, it's like the caffeine is out of my system faster, just like what you said. And so the reason that that's an example of a specific ingredient that we were okay with using because although there was only animal research, and I work with people who know a lot more about formulations than I do. And so I can't even take the credit for this stuff. But one, we were open about it saying, hey, this is a speculative ingredient. You could even say it's a Hail Mary if you wanna be very skeptical, but it's not very expensive. So we're not asking you to pay a premium to have it. And even though it is just animal research, there is a good reason to believe that if anybody, if there ever is human research, which something like that there may or may not be, like where's the money in it come from, for example? But if there is human research, there's a fair chance that it will work because, for example, here's what it does in rats. Now we have other examples of things that do similar things and then we've seen those things do similar things in humans. So again, this is extrapolation and it's speculative, but that's why we have felt confident enough to include it. But generally, generally we're looking for not just one study showing effectiveness or efficacy in humans, but multiple studies, ideally multiple trials, plus at least one, if not more meta-analyses, ideally research reviews, ideally there's enough clinical data to do some studies of studies. And also, who was the research done with that matters? Because if something is shown to do great things in someone, I mean, if we look at something like intermittent fasting, right, something that I'm sure you guys, I get asked about all the time, I have to comment on it like every quarter or so just because it's a never ending topic, right? And so there's some interesting research out there that if you just took it at face value, maybe if you just read the abstracts of those papers, you might be impressed with what it could purportedly do for body composition and for insulin sensitivity and for certain biomarkers related to aging. And but what is missed is that when you look at a lot of that research, it was conducted with sedentary obese people. And we are, and a lot of people listening are not sedentary obese people. And so it is an extrapolation, it is a jump to assume that because somebody who is sedentary and obese saw a market increase in insulin sensitivity following an intermittent fasting diet that we would experience the same thing when we are active, we have a healthy body composition and so forth. Yeah, I'll give you another example of that, Mike, like DHEA in older populations, you'll see increases in strength and muscle and bone mass. Even in testosterone, actually that. It doesn't do that for younger people. And that's because when you're over 60 or whatever, your DHEA is low and you can see that. But so, and to take it even a step further, there are certain supplements that have been shown in studies to raise testosterone effectively, but only in men with really low testosterone. So like if you're like really low, like 150, then you may see it go up to 350, but if you're anywhere in the normal range, you see almost no bump whatsoever. And then another thing I wanted to comment on when you mentioned the 10% increase in testosterone from 600 to 660, it's not much, it's not gonna do anything. But what supplement companies will often do, and I remember years ago when I picked up on this, they'll show a graph on the ad and they'll be like, before and after, like holy shit, that's huge, but wouldn't you read it? And you're like, wait a minute, that's not even 10%, that's like 50%. You'll look at the graph and you'll notice that the bottom number 600 and the top number is 670. So it went from here to here, holy shit, that's a big yeah. But what they did is they just changed it. Yeah, they changed the X and Y axis and now the graph looks super dramatic. And circling back to your fasting comment, I believe was it, was it Volter Longo that did the research on basically if you were to eat a low calorie diet for a week or so, you're getting all those benefits that the fasting community is touting about. Yeah, all the benefits, physical, physiological benefits really come from the calorie deficit. You can argue the potential spiritual benefits, but that's also depending on the individual because it can also go in the opposite direction, fasting can be done. That's a great point, especially when weight loss is involved because we know if somebody loses weight, especially if they're going from very overweight to not very overweight, their insulin sensitivity is going to improve quite a bit. Yeah, it's all the same, calorie restriction versus fasting, you'll see the same stuff. But there's some spiritual benefits for some people, but in other people, it's the opposite. You'll get the opposite of spiritual benefits. You'll get this dysfunctional eating pattern, which we see in our space all the time. The people we recommend it to are the complete opposite of what you would think, right? So the people that we tend to be like your competitors or somebody who has this attachment to food. They have to eat every other hour. They're so attached to eating every two hours and they haven't broke that cycle for years and it's like interrupting that and saying, hey, you know what, you're gonna be fine if we don't eat for 24 hours. There's tremendous benefit to somebody who has a relationship with food like that and breaking that kind of addiction to having to eat that way. Whereas the people that are using it are typically the people that are seeking out the fat loss benefits and those are the people that don't see very much benefit from it. If anything, it ends up worsening their relationship with food. Yeah, I used to just say that you're just not eating enough or you're skipping meals. You know, Mike, I wanna ask you, cause I know you give a lot of credit to your research team, but truth be told, I'm gonna toot your horn a little bit. You're very, one of the most knowledgeable people I know about supplements. I'm also a massive supplement nerd and you and I sometimes go off together on stuff like this. For the last seven years on the podcast, I've been talking about creatine and how it's going to be probably going to be one of the number one used health supplements. Forget muscle building, forget strength. We know it does that, but just for general health, cognitive health, heart health, organ health, mitochondrial function, all that stuff. What are you seeing with creatine? Are you seeing some of this stuff that's coming out with some of its health benefits? I just read some studies on arthritis, on helping with dementia. I mean, it's pretty incredible. And have you thought about actually marketing it that way yourself instead of just as a performance, just maybe purely towards like a health? Yeah, great, great, great questions. And your prediction was spot on with creatine. At this point, I guess my prediction is that over the next several years, I would not be surprised if creatine becomes a supplement that is considered useful for everyone, not just people who want to get jacked. Everyone of all ages, especially people who don't eat enough protein, especially people who are older. I know, Sal, you've been talking some time about the emerging research in cognitive benefits. And since I at last heard you talk about that, more research has come out. And it appears that you might need to take a bit more than the standard three to five grams per day if you want to get the biggest brain benefits, so to speak. Interesting. It appears that up to 10 grams a day actually might be significantly better in that regard because it's hard to get, it can get through the blood brain barrier, but it's hard to get certain things through that. And it takes a bit more to get enough into the brain to make a difference. But we see it, we see it how it can impact bone health and we see how it can impact retaining lean mass, especially in people who... Now, of course, we would always want people to do some sort of resistance training. But as much as we would love that, not everyone is gonna do what we want them to do. And so creatine is, it's interesting that it's been around for so long that it might have another, a whole new kind of breakthrough in popularity. I saw a study on pregnant animals and they gave the animals creatine and the offspring were healthier, more fit, stronger. And if you understand how creatine works, obviously it supplies more of the fundamental fuel that all cells use, makes perfect sense. I think they're gonna give it to kids. That's what I think. I think it's gonna... I was just gonna say that I had a professor on my podcast, Darin Kandau is his name, professor at the University of Regina, which yes, that is the way that you pronounce it. Regina and he has about, I think, 90 peer review papers on creatine, a lot of it is regarding body comp but he's a deep, deep expert on it. And I asked some of these questions to him because like kids, for example, I get asked all of the time and his position is absolutely kids can take creatine and there are good reasons why we might wanna start including some creatine in children's multivitamins, for example, which I believe in giving, I give my kids a well-formulated, I would love to make my own, actually a line of children's products. I have, you know, a heart it is to find a good one for kids, yes. A really good multivitamin that has, again, just the same approach that I've taken with Legion, like, all right, I'm gonna sell, I just did an analysis and I'm gonna see how I can integrate this into my marketing but we looked at our primary competitors and I got quotes from my manufacturers on their products at similar scales that they're running at, right? How much would it cost me to make what they're making versus mine? And when you compare my multivitamin to my average competitors, I'm spending almost 80% more. Like multivitamins, the name of the game with a multivitamin generally and with capsules in general is you make that a profit center. You wanna spend no more than four or $5 a bottle on a multivitamin. If you're really generous, you might go to six or $7 a bottle and that drives profit. Whereas a protein powder, there's not as much profit. A pre-workout can be profitable but not as much. You use those to get your customers then you sell them pills. And cause pills, you don't have to flavor, for example, it's just cheaper, it's easier. So in the case of a multivitamin, right? So mine is costing me almost $15 a bottle to make and then I also have to like get it to people. It's expensive. And I suspect that if I did the same thing with a children's multivitamin, I can make something pretty outstanding if I was just willing to spend more than the average company. I would love that. I've been looking for my kids and it's complete garbage that's out there. Now, Mike's circling back to the creatine talk. I believe I saw you were gonna do a hair loss study on creatine. Did you follow through on that? Did you do anything? Yeah. So we started that and then COVID paused that and then it was, we don't know when we can get it restarted. And so we ended up repurposing that money in that lab into other research but that's something that I would like to come back to and I just, the problem with COVID and now we might have enough prediction to be able to run the paper is at the time or run the trial at the time. It was like, we don't actually know when we can even restart and then if we can restart, we don't know how long we can go and if we can't go long enough, like if we're just collecting data, piecemeal in small amounts over the course of who knows how long it might just not work out. And so that's why I was like, okay, well, can we maybe do something else? Can we get some research done on a shorter, something else? And I would like to come back to that though because unfortunately that's still an open question even though- I'll make a prediction. I'll make a prediction that because I'm sure someone will do the study if it's not you and I'm gonna predict they're not gonna show any effect on hair loss the speculation comes from the slight increase in DHT. Which still was in the realm of normal. Yes, okay. It's not like it shot DHT out the roof to super physiological. No, no, no. So you have testosterone, we all know what that does. Then there's a hormone called DHT which is related to testosterone but it's very androgenic, right? So it gives you the masculinizing effects and high DHT can potentially cause your prostate to enlarge. And if you have a lot of DHT receptors in your scalp then you're more likely to go bald. This is why men tend to go bald and women don't and why some men go bald and other men don't. It has nothing to do with who's got more testosterone and more DHT but rather who has more receptors in those areas, especially in the scalp. And the rise in DHT from creatine is inconsequential from what I've seen. I don't think it's gonna do anything for hair loss except for maybe the most hypersensitive individual in the world who's probably gonna go bald by 22 anyway. Otherwise, I don't see, I don't- Also mechanistically ambiguous. Like there were a couple of hypotheses about how this possibly could even work but the researchers in that paper with the rugby players they were also a little bit like how could this even happen? I'll guess. Here's another guess. I bet because it increases ATP, cells do a better job of what they're supposed to do. So you probably have your lighting cells producing a little bit more testosterone, maybe a little bit more DHT. But remember, there was no change. There was no such effect seen in testosterone and free testosterone, only dihydrotestosterone. Yeah, but it was a little bit odd. Yeah, I don't know. It's gonna come back and show nothing. That's what I think, you know, from it. And I was excited to be, you know, again, if I can restart it, I will because it would be nice to get that out there. Just because that's probably the number one question. I know that's the number one question I get asked about. It's a big fear, right? But no, but I will say this, the segment of the population that I think should be using creatine the most consistently or maybe even should be marketed to the most towards our vegans. If you look at the, I mean, I'm sure you're familiar with these studies on their cognitive function. It's a big boost. Now, it's not because, you know, the creatine makes that big of a boost. You'll see a little bit in almost anybody, but it's because vegans don't eat a lot of creatine. They don't eat, and you get creatine from animal products. So they get the, it's almost like they're deficient and you see this. But they won't do it though, because they're vegan. Right. You can get creatine, can't you get creatine from vegan sources? Let's see, the last time I looked into it. I'm pretty sure you could take what it was. It was a no, but. What are the two amino acids that make creatine? It's methionine and something else. Can't you just make it? Or am I tripping? It's a good question. Something I'd have to, I actually, let's see, I haven't. I did look into this. Look at vegan creatine, Doug. I thought you said, we talked about that a while. Yeah, I think you can do vegan creatine. I don't know, I haven't been wrong. I haven't been wrong in 15 years, so we'll see. Yeah, this is never, he's wrong right there. Yeah. Oh, there, look at there, vegan friendly. The creatine in most supplements is synthesized from sarcosine and what? And cyanamide and does not contain any animal byproducts. It is therefore vegan friendly. There you go. Okay, so those are like chemical compounds. Where is that coming from? No, no, no, they're just making. It's still coming from an animal product though. No, it's from amino acids. Yeah, it's just friendly, but yeah. Just because they like rebranded it. Yeah, so. It's not, well, they might have gotten those from plants and then. Yeah, boy, kind of plants. It's very, it's very quote unquote unnatural. Not that that makes it bad, but you know, it's probably taking stuff from plants. And I know that, I know that the creatine in my product is not that, it comes from animal sources because vegans have that. Yours comes from baby seals, right? From, yes, from their genitalia. Best source. Creatine sales, broo. And they also, they need to die an excruciating death. You know how it's kind of like an adrenochrome. It's similar, it's similar in the field. You should clip this as an ad for sure. It's from black. It's right on Facebook. Some people, some people will. Oh God, yeah, yeah. Okay, no, he's joking. We're all joking. From Dodo bird beat. No lie on the black market. I wanna ask you, so okay, when we are, very beginning this conversation, we were talking about the business and you're sharing financials with us. So when you talk about the financials and the profit margins and things with the business, you do not include the book. So how do you have your business say, and does that include your coaching or do you have like, tell me how you have the LLC set up? What are they, how they structured? Yeah, yeah. So I have S-Corps and so I have a publishing company that handles all of the books. And then I have Legion that handles all the supplements and the coaching because we are obviously a sports nutrition company. We focus our primary source of revenue and really the brand is built around, if we're talking about products, just the products, it's the supplements. But the coaching does quite well. It still does seven figures in revenue but it's something that we offer simply because a lot of people want it and we are able to do a good job with it, but it's not the focus of the business. Yeah, I never see you market it really. I really don't ever see you market it. Which is a mistake. I mean, so. Yes and no, I think there's some integrity to how you do it so. Yeah, but I could market, it could be marketed in an ethical way. The little marketing I do for it, I would say is very ethical. I don't over promise. I'm sharing real success stories. These are real clients and I'm also setting real expectations like, this person worked with us for three months and here's what they accomplished and I'm not showing 12 months of results and saying it's three months and some people that it can be a big difference in three months or it can be a big visual difference or maybe a less big visual difference even though they did quite well. Like if somebody starts very overweight three months, they could lose a lot of weight and you could see a difference but it's not as striking necessarily as somebody who starts kind of overweight and then they get, then they have abs and you see that and you know. Right. And so that's how I have them split out and just to run with that for a second with the marketing, as far as challenges, it's interesting. I'm now learning, so I mentioned earlier this point of timing and how important it is to do the right thing at the right time. That explains a lot of my success as an author. Bigger leaner stronger when I published it back in 2012. That was just the right book at the right time. I had no connections. Amazon advertising didn't even exist at the time. I just wrote the book. I was a dude. I had abs and muscles and I said I knew some things and... You don't give yourself enough credit. You put out good information, Mike. Let's be honest. I mean, I appreciate that and I do try. I mean, that's what I've always done from the beginning is I really do try to make things clear and I try to make things practical and I do try to, with that book, I was writing the book I wished that somebody would have just given me when I was 17 or 18 and said, hey, don't bother with all the stuff you're about to do. Just do this and you'll get a lot further. But still, if you look at the market, that was the right time for that book. Something like that did not exist. So now, if I look at where Legion's at and just businesses, the biggest bottleneck is execution. It's more on the team and that's not to put down anybody I'm working with. It's more that there's only like 50 or 55 of us. Well, this is my point, what I meant by integrity, not by the integrity of you being able to market it in an ethical way. As you scale a business, it's the reason why I've stayed away from this. It's real quickly, it gets out of control. All of a sudden, your 50 guys are now servicing 1,000 people and let's be honest, how well can they stay on top, especially talking about nutrition and exercise, coach some 1,000 people. I know as a coach for so many years that once I start getting beyond about 20 or 30 people, my coaching dramatically drops the value of you because I'm not able to reach you, to touch you, to be able to pay attention to what you're doing. So that's what I meant by your integrity is I know the challenges of scaling that and you could throttle it down and make more money and you could advertise in an ethical way but your service would probably diminish as my guess. Great point, yep. And so that is coming back to this point of you can only find and recruit great people so quickly. Even people I know with much bigger businesses than I have who have several people in HR, that's all they do is read resumes all day and set up interviews all day and try to screen all day. And even those companies, I've heard from owners of companies that in one case, the market cap that recently went public, it's a multi-billion dollar company and he, the founder CEO, was telling me the same thing that in marketing in particular, he's just frustrated that he's still too involved in the marketing. And now that was probably about a year ago, maybe that's not the case anymore but and so to your point, yeah, that if you're gonna run a coaching service and you're gonna really provide a good service, then you're going to have to accept probably slower growth than you would like if you are an ambitious person I guess or if you're a greedy person because there's finding good people and then there's onboarding them into your system and making sure that your quality control is in. And so I'm much more interested, especially with the coaching is we provide really good service. We provide, we get really good results. Our money back guarantee applies just like with our products where it's very simple. If you buy anything of ours and you don't like it, just let us know, we'll give you your money back. Or if you want something else, we'll give you something else whatever you want. You don't have to fill out forms. You don't have to pay restocking fees. You don't have to return the product by carrier pigeon to the PO box in the Gobi Desert. You just tell us we didn't like it. And if we can't make it right for you, we'll just give you your money back. Similarly on coaching, if at any point somebody is not happy, if they're like, this did not work for me, we just give them all their money back and we rarely ever have to do that because it also, I like that from an organizational perspective because it puts a certain standard internally. It makes it clear that in coaching or anything else, we need to meet these expectations that we are promising. And if we don't, then we're gonna know because we're gonna have people who are taking us up on this money back guarantee. And so I like it. Obviously from a marketing perspective and it gives people peace of mind. They understand that it's basically a no risk transaction at this point. But then internally, it puts the pressure on my people to make sure that the quality is always there. Now, when you talk about the 10 to 12% profit margins and the coaching is within Legion, are you separating that out? That's the coaching is more profitable than that? Or are you including the coaching in that number? Yeah, so coaching is more profitable than that, but it's a small, it's not in the scheme of things. Right, when we're talking about $20, $30 million, we're not talking about a bulk of that is coming from the coaching. But here's the thing though, it's brilliant because if you're servicing those people, even if the margins were terrible, but you're somewhat profitable, I guarantee every one of your clients that are coaching are probably on every damn supplement you guys use. So if you go above and beyond taking care of them on the nutrition and exercise coaching, they probably end up being lifelong consumers of Legion. We learned that in the gym industry with personal training. Mike, speaking of books, I know you're coming out with a new book. It's actually one of the reasons why we have you on this podcast right now. Yeah, let's talk about that for a second. So what is this new book? Who's it for and what's it about? Yeah, so it's actually already out. It's been out for about a month or so and it's called Muscle for Life. And it is, so over the years, so I started with this bigger, you know, stronger book, right? And then I had a lot of women reading it and then they were reaching out to me saying, hey, a lot of this makes sense, but I don't want to be bigger per se. Should I be doing this? And so then I decided to take that book and rewrite it for women and change the workout programming and just make it as applicable to women as I possibly can. And I wrote other books and did other things. And something though that I've always heard from the beginning is somebody who's, I've heard from the 40 year old, the 50 year old, the 60 year old often not in good shape, very new to all of this or maybe they were once in shape and now they're not. So they're getting back into it and they would read bigger, leaner, stronger or my thinner, leaner, stronger, which is for women. I actually liked the title, fitter, leaner, stronger, better than thinner but in surveying it with a bunch of women who were a good cross section of my target market, thinner, leaner, stronger, won by a huge margin. So, okay, all right, the market is spoken. But regardless, so I would hear from these people and they would read one of those books and they would like it and they would learn a lot but they weren't sure if the program made sense for them. Like, I'm asking you to squat, deadlift, bench press. Now we're gonna do it appropriately and you're gonna start with low weights and you're gonna learn proper form but still, if you guys know this, having coached so many people, if you have somebody who's 55 years old and has a lot of weight to lose, let's say more than 20 or 25% of their body weight and they've never touched a weight before, you're not gonna take them into your garage and load up the squat rack and tell them to go have at it, right? You might start with like going for daily walks. Maybe we just start there and on the diet side of things, you're not necessarily gonna make them this all in, let's overhaul your entire diet, let's get you the measuring cups, let's get you the scale and let's do this. You might ask them to write down what they tend to eat and maybe you're gonna pick one thing. Like, okay, instead of the fried chicken multiple times or every day or whatever, can we do some air fried chicken or instead of the thousand calorie frappuccino, can we scale that down to like a latte or even a cappuccino, mate? Can we get that down to like 150 calories? And so I kept on hearing from these people and of course that is the biggest addressable market really for all of us, right? Is 40 plus out of shape wanting to get into shape. And those are the people who need the most help actually. I mean, it's nice to help a guy go from jacked to a little bit more jacked and we all know that's cool and it's like fun personally, but there's more maybe satisfaction in helping somebody lose a hundred pounds and come off all of their medications and completely change their everything really at that point, right? And so I had for a long time kind of a standard canned response that explained to people basically like here's how to modify this for you. Here's all the principles that you learned, they apply to you of course, you have the same fundamental physiology like the machinery is still the same but we're gonna work it differently. Maybe we will get to doing what's literally in the book but we're not gonna start there. And so that's why I wrote this book, Muscle for Life. It is for those people. It is also for people, if we take age out of the equation, take anybody who just has to lose a lot of weight. Like let's say again, more than 20 or 25% body weight that is a very different set of circumstances than somebody who just has maybe 20 pounds to lose and they already do a little bit of fitness maybe even a little bit of resistance training. Maybe it's just like yoga here and there or whatever. Like that person, you can just throw them into the gym actually and get them going and they'll do quite well. And so that's why I wrote the book and it also made sense for me to do this book. So this is the first traditionally published book. All of my books previously have been self published and one of the reasons I wanted to do that is for distribution because a lot of 40 plus people, they, I mean, if you've been to a bookstore recently, like look around, it's a lot of 40 plus people. A lot of them still buy books in physical locations, whereas a lot of younger people, they'll buy the e-book on the 25 year old guy is probably gonna buy the Kindle e-book and read it. So it's very hard to get offline distribution to any degree, even if you're a relatively successful self-published author. So that's the gist of the book and why I wanted to get in. What you're doing with this book is it sounds like you're targeting the bulk of the obesity chronic health epidemic because that's really what you're dealing with. I mean, although we see childhood obesity and health issues in people in their 20s and 30s, it's once you get over 40, where you really start to see, for the most part, really bad health impacts. That's when you can reach terminal velocity. I mean, that's like, absolutely. It's always so impressive to me talking to you that you understand this with as minimal coaching experience. Wow, what a good point. You talk like someone who trains, you train people for a long time. I mean, what you're literally saying right now is how we knew Mind Pump was gonna do as well as it did because when we looked at the landscape, there was so many fitness professionals that were literally speaking to other fitness professionals or the teenage boy who wants to get jacked. Like, all the marketing, all the books, all the programs online, and there's such a small percentage. And we would all talk before Mind Pump existed, we would all talk off air and go, man, when I look at the hundreds and collectively thousands of people that we have trained, none of them look like that avatar. In fact, they look like who you're talking about right now. And what I'm so impressed is that even the people that do get that there's a big market there, they still go about the advice wrong. And the advice you just gave is absolutely spot on and brilliant. And I think where so many people miss the mark on is that they just think that like, well, this works for this group of people, so it should work for everybody else. And the reality is, as a good coach knows how to meet somebody where they're at. And somebody who's extremely deconditioned, who has terrible eating habits, thinking that getting them to log into their fitness scale and get their way out everything and hit deads and squats three to five times. I mean, it's just, it ain't happening. And if you really want them to see lifelong results, you've gotta find things that they can slowly start to build as far as good habits in their lifestyle, and then you build upon it. And it always impresses me when I talk to you, you get that. Yeah, actually, I have a question along those lines, Mike. You do a very good job of looking at and analyzing data, but there's a lot of people that do that pretty well, but here's the difference. You have the ability to take data, because here's where I see a lot of people get trapped. And this is our, we have a, this is a bit of a pet peeve that we have, because we look at data, we break it down also, but our experience is working with people. So we communicate it very differently. We know what to communicate, what not to communicate. And we also know, okay, well, real life had as a supply. People who look at data tend to not consider that at all. So they just tell you the science, but they don't consider behaviors. They don't consider real life or whatever. You do a very good job of both, and you don't have a ton of experience training people. Where does that come from? Do you just listen to every MindPub episode? Like, how do you know how to communicate this kind of stuff? I mean, all right, you got me. You just want to admit it, dude, come on. No, I'm just, I'm just good at stealing stuff from smart people, that's it, that's it. Oh, but hey, it's marketing. That's all marketing is. That's a skill in itself. No, all joking aside, all joking aside, how do you do that? Because data is important, but how it applies to people and considering behaviors, that's when it gets really effective. Like, what's your process like when you look at studies and you're saying, okay, should I communicate this or should I not, or should I communicate it in this way? What's your process? That's a good question. And I suppose that that's something that maybe is, it's just a personal preference. Like, I'm just generally a pragmatic person. I'm interested in what works in any field, really. And in some ways, I mean, this is not to go off on like a metaphysical or epistemological tangent, but in some ways, I would say to me, what's true ultimately is what works. Or at least that's enough. That's enough for me. And so I've always kind of had that bent as an individual. When I'm learning things, for example, I have always tended to like to learn things that I'm gonna do something with. Just collecting random facts is, it can be gratifying, but in a sense, it's almost like intellectual junk food. It's better than watching Netflix. But I would much rather learn something that I can do something with. And that's definitely true in the case of fitness and in any other hobby that I've gotten into that I've studied. I would say there are some topics that I've always just been interested in and I don't have any use for the information. I just like learning about it for whatever reason. Like ancient history, I've always just liked. I don't know why, I can just read that stuff and I have no use for it. And I don't, also, maybe when I was younger, I had the idea of, well, if I knew a bunch of things, I could make people, I could impress people or I could sound smart, I could make for interesting, I could stand out in a crowd or stand out at a party or something like that. And as I've gotten older, I've moved away from that consciously because I actually just don't, I don't want to be like that. And so with fitness, I myself, it also held quite similarly to you guys is it started with me scratching my own itch, right? I was already doing this stuff and I wasn't getting great results from it. And I wanted to know how to get better results first and foremost. And I wanted to know the theory and the techniques that were going to get me better results. And I didn't really want to know all of the things that were not going to get me better results. And so that's how I approached bigger leaner stronger in the beginning was very much like, it was a minimum viable product kind of kind of deal. It was maybe 50,000 words that manuscript. Whereas fast forward to today, I'm actually getting ready to release a new fourth edition. I've rewritten it from scratch again. It's a little bit autistic. I'll get all of this in, but I still stand by it. I think it's going to be bigger and even better. But regardless, I mean, now it's probably 130,000 words. So initially it really was like, all right, I don't know everything, but I've parsed through a lot of stuff. And I can tell you that here are the most important things if your goal bigger than your stronger, if you're a guy and you have yet to gain your first 25 to 30, maybe maybe 35, let's just say 25 to 30, or sorry, 20 to 25 pounds of muscle, this is it. This will do it for you. Now, if you are trying to gain every last ounce of muscle and strength available to you genetically, for most guys that's probably 35 or 40, maybe a little bit more than that pounds, then you're probably going to have to know some other things and do some other things, but that's not most people. So I've always just come at this topic and my work with that, I've always kind of looked through that lens of what can I do with this? And some people they're not, they just don't really think like that. Like they just, they are more interested in, for example, nerding out on the details and speaking to their peers, other nerds. And also there does seem to be a lot of, I don't know, Shoman, I don't know, one-upmanship and wanting to appear educated and wanting to try to impress peers, like not just communicate with them, but show how maybe you even know more than they do or be accepted by people who have a bunch of acronyms after their names. And that's fine. That just has never been interesting to me. So, if I liken it to maybe something relevant like the American Revolution, right? You had Thomas Paine, his approach was communicate to the people in words they can understand and in ways they can understand, whereas the founding fathers actually were intellectuals and they were communicating to their peers. And I would say if you look at all of the obscure references and the complicated structures of their writing, that they were probably not very interested in even trying to communicate to the average person. And so, different thing, but without Thomas Paine, there might never have been the revolution because the average person wouldn't have known what the hell Jefferson and his friends were even talking about, they couldn't understand it. I mean, people just weren't literate enough. It was a different time. I tell you, we always say this on the show. You've got good stuff. You know what you're talking about. You're one of the few people in the space that we tell people you can trust. You can trust his advice, a lot of integrity. And then you have the unique ability of communicating science the way an experienced trainer would and you're not, but you do. And it's very rare. In fact, I think you're the only person I know who can communicate like an experienced trainer and you've never really trained lots of people for long periods of time. So it's a compliment. Yeah, you seem to remain skeptical. That is what I think, is I think that even, you have the ability, like not very many do, to be able to read a study and actually unpack it. And be like, what does this mean? And then even when it points in a direction that may be favorable to something you're selling or you're doing, you still remain skeptical until you see the proof or feel the proof. I'm not gonna double and triple down on it, which is not like most people. If something confirms their bias, even in the slightest way, they are quick to market as fast as they can, or quick to their friends so they can sound smart. And I just think you remain skeptical. And ignore, ignore, just hunkered out if there's ever even a peep of criticism or a shred of evidence that maybe something is otherwise. And I get that, we all have that tendency. And I think though, we have to try to, yeah, I mean, we have to try to consciously work against it. I think if, and then try not to get too emotionally invested. I mean, we see this in science a lot, not just sports science or nutrition science, just science in general. You have a lot of researchers. I mean, you can, we could understand where imagine the amount of time that somebody spends to get their PhD in something. And then the amount of time they spend in creating a model of some kind. I mean, you're looking at thousands of hours of work, right? And they've built their own personal brand in their own circles. And credentialism seems to be particularly strong in those crowds where there seems to be a strong desire to be accepted, to be in the in-group, right? And some of that is financially driven. And, but regardless, so you have somebody who's invested a huge amount of their time and their energy and their emotions into something. And it would be pretty jarring to come to a point where you just realized that you were wrong. That's it. All of that was for nothing. And that at least that's how it feels, right? It'd be hard to go all jocco and be like, good, I just wasted 6,000 hours. Now I can learn new things. I would say that one of the very important skill, especially today, is to learn how to read and understand studies and also look at the studies and say, how does this actually mean anything? And can I replicate or duplicate it? I mean, I remember reading a statistic, especially in the mental sciences, that something like a vast majority of studies that show an effect have never been duplicated. Oh yeah, anybody listening, look up the replication crisis. Awful. It's a real thing. In other words, zero, it didn't mean anything because you can't duplicate it. So, and that's very, very, it's a big number, especially in the psychology and mental sciences, but it's still a big number even in the physiological sciences, so that skill is very important to have because we're in an age now where a study makes a headline and that headline. I mean, science is almost weaponized at this point. Totally. I was just going to say that. Yeah, let's not go down that route. No, no, no, no, but don't anger the lizard people, Mike. They already kicked me off Instagram. I don't want the lizard people after kicking me off everything else, too. All right, brother, we'll let you go, man. Thank you, guys. Always good talking to you, Mike. Good seeing you again, brother. See you, man. You too.