 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump! With your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pump... Oh, we brought you guys a guest. Mike Matthews, he's the author of some top-selling fitness books like Bigger Leaner Stronger and Thinner Leaner Stronger, and in the fitness world and the fitness sphere, there's few people that we really respect. Mike Matthews is one of them. He puts out good information. He's got a great following. So I reached out to him a while ago to maybe do some kind of a collaboration, and you never know what you're going to get when you meet someone in person. You know, you're either going to like them or you're going to think they're idiots or douchebags or whatever. Mike is a great guy. As soon as we sat down with him, I mean super transparent, super open. His motives are in the right place. We like him a lot, and so we recorded some episodes with him, and in this episode... Man, entrepreneurs are going to perk up on this. Exactly. This incredible mind for all you business minds. So if you're, yeah, entrepreneurs for sure this episode, I think we had no idea what direction we were going to go with him. In fact, I think none of us had the desire to just go into basic macro and... Because we're not basic bitches. Well, I mean, part of why we even decided to do that with him is obviously we look into someone like this before they come on and saw already a lot of his philosophies with nutrition and training are very similar to ours. And so definitely we know the guy gets it, and I think talking about that same old stuff would be kind of boring. So getting into peer into this guy's business mind. He's a very, very successful businessman. Very smart, very transparent. You can find Mike Matthews on his two websites. So MuscleForLife.com is where he writes all his blogs and fitness information. And then LegionAthletics.com is where he sells his supplements, and there's no affiliation. We have no affiliation with any of his products, but after meeting him, I could say his products are probably legit, probably good. So, and he has a podcast. You got to check out his podcast. He's, again, he's a wealth of information from the sky. The podcast is MuscleForLife with Mike Matthews. By the way, 30 days of coaching, one of the most popular things that we've done, we get so much feedback on it. It's a way for you to get 30 days or 30 bits of information that we think are the most important when it comes to fitness, health, and wellness. And it's free. We wanted to give something free to everybody. All you do is you go to mindpumpmedia.com, register, and you'll get topics covered in detail, like proteins, fats, carbohydrates, calories, resistance training, cardio, mobility, meditation, supplements. I mean, we run the whole gamut, and it's there and it's free. So all you got to do is go to mindpumpmedia.com and just register. So without any further ado, here we are talking to Mike Matthews. So I don't think I shared this with you. So I was an athlete, grew up super religious, so I didn't do any drugs. I didn't have sex. I didn't have a security card as a kid growing up. And when I was... This goes out to all the parents who think that's going to make... If you force those things on your kid, it's going to make him turn out to the grave. He's still going to be crazy like me. So I started, or I helped start two of the first medical marijuana clubs here in San Jose. And the way that happened was there was a client of mine who made an offer to me that I could not refuse. And I had no... And he wasn't even an Italian. I didn't know anything about cannabis. I didn't know anything about it at all really. I had a bad experience with it in my early 20s, the first time I ever tried it. One of my favorite stories. So this is not for me. Never will do this again. And I told him, I said, listen, dude, I have no... I don't know anything about this stuff. Why would you want me to do this? Well, I've seen the way you lead and you manage and I want to have six or seven of these and I would like you to oversee them. And he goes, I know that you're a smart enough guy. You'll figure it out. You'll learn. And he goes, I don't need you to be a weed connoisseur. I need you to manage and lead people. So he made, like I said, made me an offer. I couldn't refuse. And I did that for two years. And during that process, I started for the first time ever reading about marijuana because I didn't care whatsoever. This is actually how Sal and I got kind of connected was I had already gone through that process and then I find weed. I find it kind of was it was the first... Oh, I think when we started, when I started talking about cannabinoids, that's when you first fell in love. I did because I was like, I had been doing my own kind of research and reading and learning and trying, like I didn't know anything. So I'm like bottom, I'm trying to figure stuff out. And then I made this guy who had already been intrigued and reading that direction. And I was like, oh my God, a fitness guy that's really smart and healthy, but like knows a lot about weed. So we hit it off. I had a different, close family member diagnosed with terminal cancer. So I just researched everything I possibly could on everything that could help. That was not traditional treatment because the type of cancer that she had, there was no known. I mean, chemo, radiation, nothing. Like you asked a doctor, they put her on the most aggressive chemo of all time. And I said, what are the statistics show? And he goes, it's not going to do anything for her. Why even? Exactly. So I went through and I just researched everything I possibly could. And the one thing that, believe it or not, had the most research supporting it was cannabis in terms of its effectiveness on actually improving quality of life. Not just that, actually killing cancer. There was a study done in Spain by Dr. Guzman, I believe. And he studied on rats and they gave the rats a untreatable multi-form glioma, which is a brain cancer. And high doses of THC actually cured it, I believe in a couple of the rats. And the other ones that prolonged their life tremendously, they still died, but it was just like, whoa, what is going on here? Yeah, there's something there. And subsequent research on cannabinoids has demonstrated anti-cancer effects. Almost like it, and what it does is it tells the cancer cell to die to, you know, program cell death, which is the opposite of what happens with cancer cells. That's where the apoptosis goes wacky. There's zombie cells, they just don't die. And for whatever reason, cannabinoids tend to do that. And some cancers are very, very susceptible to cannabinoid treatment, not all cancers, but some of them are. So this family member of mine was given basically three months, three months of live. She had stage four lanitis plastica, which is a form of gastric cancer, which is, if not the worst. I was going to say, they say that in stomach or... Well, no, it is a stomach cancer, but the type of it is lanitis plastica. And they call it that. It means something literally plastic because it spreads out and it just doesn't stop. And I think the only cancer with the worst prognosis would be like a stage four pancreatic cancer. So she was three months and she ended up making it over a year and a half. And the chemo that she did end up going on, she did all these cannabinoid treatments while she was on chemo. And by the way, this was a very traditional, conservative Italian woman, like never had done anything. And the chemo that she was on, she was on three types of chemo, plus she was on a daily continual chemo pump. She walked around with an actual pump on her body. And the doctor's like, yeah, you're gonna feel terrible. And the first couple of treatments she went through, she's like, she's sitting there talking to everybody. And the doctor's like, wow, how do you feel so good? And she's like, I have weed. She was so happy telling everybody. But yeah, so that's what got me into all the research and stuff behind it. So that's pretty much it. And then how did it go from there to your own personal, like your decision to? So I had severe irritable bowel syndrome. Almost to the point where I thought I might have something like Crohn's, which one of my family members has. I mean, it was really bad. I lost 15 pounds. Couldn't figure out what the hell was going on. And I had done food intolerance testing, which was helping probiotic treatment, which was helping us taking psyllium husk because my tendency was towards diarrhea and not towards constipation. And I went on a trip to Belize with some friends and we're in Belize and my buddy buys a bag of weed from one of the cab drivers. And it's like dirt weed. It's like shit. Like, you know, in California, you see what weed looks like in other places. You could see that they're, it's total crap, right? So you have to smoke the hell out of it to really even feel anything. So on vacation, that's what we did. And I had no symptoms of these gastro issues, but I didn't connect it necessarily at that point. I thought it was on vacation and relaxed. When I get back symptoms... Or maybe difference in food quality or... All that. So I'm thinking this is what it must be. But while I was there, I was eating gluten. I was eating like, I told myself like, I don't even care. I'm going to do whatever I want. So I get back here, symptoms come back. I start to think maybe it's the cannabis, got my hands on some cannabis. And you know, here in California, actually, especially in the legal states, cannabis is bred to be very high in THC because that's what people want. They want to feel high. Yeah. So there's a big difference between weed now and back in the six seasons. Definitely. This is why I had such a bad experience as a kid because nobody... I didn't understand that. Nobody explained to me that I could smoke too much because everyone always told me, oh, there's no real adverse effects. You can't have too much. That was the advice I'm being given as a 20-year-old. So I sat in a circle and just... I'll just keep smoking it until I feel it and had a horrible experience. I scared the fucking living shit out of me and wanted nothing to do with it for years and years later. I stayed away from it. It activates parts of the brain that also process fear and paranoia. So I've had a couple instances myself where it's fucking terrifying. It's about... It's a good four-hour shitty situation. And then you come out of it and you're like, wow, that was weird. But anyway, so I tried cannabis and it didn't help. And so I thought, oh, that must not have helped. Then I'm doing this research for this family member of mine and I'm reading about the other cannabinoids that are finding in cannabis that are non-psychoactive that also have effects. And I realized that, holy cow, I had to smoke a lot when I was in Belize. It must have been low in THC and I was getting all these other cannabinoids. So then I got my hands on high CBD cannabis, which was... It still had a little bit of THC, but it was mostly CBD. And I used that and boom, totally helped. So from that point on, I used it medicinally. And when I say medicinally, I mean it. I vaporize it or I eat it. And there are times when I use it for relaxation, like I would a glass of wine or whatever, but medicinally it has positive effects. But I do want to also say that that doesn't mean it's not without its side effects. That's what I was going to ask you guys, concerned about the downsides? Absolutely. You can for sure there are memory side effects that come from abuse of cannabis. So if I use too much, I will find it more difficult to recall words or be able to be as sharp. It does stimulate in low doses and they found this in animals. It does stimulate actually new cell, neuronal cell growth. But at high doses, it can cause atrophy of certain parts of the brain, in particular the hippocampus, which is for memory. Is that more on the THC side though versus the CBD? So the thing about CBD that's interesting is there's two cannabinoid receptors that we've identified. There's the CB1 and CB2 receptors. One of them is in the peripheral central nervous system predominantly and one of them is in some of the organs and throughout the body. This may be why sometimes people feel more of a body high versus a head high. This is all speculation. But a CBD cannabidiol actually does not attach to either receptor. Now they think there may be a third receptor we haven't identified, or it may mediate its effects indirectly to one of those receptors, or it may have your body, perhaps it may up-regulate receptors so that your own natural cannabinoid production. So it's hard to say what's happening. But we do know that CBD not only doesn't cause memory loss, but it actually will mitigate memory loss if you use THC. This is what I've kind of experienced because I had like a total stigma about marijuana and growing up. I tried to avoid it as much as possible but inevitably I would end up using it just like I would abusing alcohol where I just get super high and paranoid and so that was one of those things. It was always like, well in this situation I'll go for it or whatever, but I was never super stoked on it. I didn't know all the health benefits you could get from CBD and from all these medical uses of it. So that was one of the things like really just meeting with these guys and not to say it's a bad influence but it's definitely has reframed my thought process towards it and so it's been one of those things on a low dose. I feel definite effects of it. I feel benefit, especially using CBD and I'm totally correlating things but I played football and so I smashed my head quite a bit and all this research coming out that's scary as hell for me with CTE but I have noticed like just being able to recall things a little bit better and I don't know if it's attributing it to that or it's just a better diet but it's definitely something that's interesting to me. The anti-inflammatory effects or the balancing effects that they can do at the right amounts, right doses which is by the way a lot lower and less frequent than stoners. It's like anything else that can get abused. I feel like almost anything in moderation you can find some sort of positive or health benefits even some of the hardest drugs out there that are illegal. Most of them were used in medicine at one point so there are ways to find benefits but the problem with this and everything like it is people tend to abuse it but we abuse, I honestly think the number one thing that we abuse as a country or a nation or even worldwide is food. No one talks about that but if you look at all the stats that that's doing I find it funny when we demonize certain drugs that are out there and when we really look at the things that are really killing us right now is it really like all these hardcore drugs that are illegal and stuff or is it like the food that we're continually discussing? It's a very fascinating topic just from a scientific standpoint because what you're going to find is, mark my words, you will see this that cannabinoid medicines they're already dumping millions of dollars by the way in research in cannabinoid treatments you're going to see a completely new paradigm in treatment of certain ailments with cannabinoid types of molecules it's a completely different type of molecule it acts on a completely different pathway you're causing a reaction at the cannabinoid receptors if I'm not mistaken, the most abundant G-protein coupled receptor in the body so you're talking about a wide scope of application there's a lot of money going into its treatment for its potential treatment for diabetes for all kinds of neurological issues like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's you're going to see it for inflammatory type disorders and I think what'll happen what'll probably happen is pharmaceutical companies will find a way to alter the cannabinoids to make them non-psychoactive because that's one of the side effects that I think are definitely side effects that pharmaceutical companies don't want it's already happening I'm super fascinated in seeing the companies I know you're a businessman so you talk about cool things to watch right now or these people that are doing this my cousin happens to be one of the biggest guys that do this right now which is extracting the CBD to all the way to its purest form which in the past we had all these when they would do it in the past with water and basic extraction methods or with butane bad stuff that you're getting it was like you couldn't get a very pure clean source they now have it broken down to where you can pull it out to its purest to where it can be used as medicine and you're seeing it happen already and the people that are going to the businesses that are already setting up those things in place to let to make that happen because you know once big pharma gets a hold of it it's going to they've already got their hands on it yeah GW Pharmaceuticals already has they've gotten orphan drug status on one of their medications and they've got the green light to produce that's for the seizures right seizures yeah so for intractable epilepsy they're ready to become approved they're studying it for alzheimer's diabetes osteoporosis and I can't remember what else it's a company I've studied quite a bit well you bought GW how long ago that was a long I bought it a while ago and it's worth quite a bit now it's very speculatory so I'm not recommending anybody do it it's like you could you know crash at any moment but I definitely it is an area of medicine that we're going to see explode right up there with the microbiome like fascinating you know it's interesting too statistically speaking when they look at the medicinal medical marijuana states opiate use and all of them goes way down that's the only reason why it's taking this long is for that exact reason because it's going to initially it's going to hurt big pharma that's why you say they got their hands on it they're starting to get their hands on it once they have a chokehold around it then you'll see it go completely but until they can have that guaranteed money to supplement all the money they're going to lose on opiates and things like that yeah no that's do you know who's got who's invested a shit ton in land and getting ready to fucking produce fucking Marlboro has bought a shit ton well because they already make they've got all the stuff that they need you know what I'm saying they've already invested quite a bit and there's some patents that have been going through for you know what's a bummer about that is it will be once the floodgates are open it will be the race to who can produce the most the best the fastest the cleanest the purest right like so and unfortunately for those that saw this way in advance like myself and people that are connected to me it's like I don't have the power to even fuck with them that's part of why I left it because I just I won't have enough muscle to dominate it like it'll need to be dominated because it's going to be dominated really quick and by companies like that that have the manpower that have the structure in place already and you know so many people reach out to me and they want me to like ask me like that side of the like that was I was part of the very beginning so being a part of the beginning was in my opinion the better time to be there when they were trying to figure all this out it was riskier scarier for someone like me risk and reward right right but now it's like everybody is trying to get companies that come so everyone that's having making good making good money right now it's going to be short-lived it's not the long game for sure but I think it's crazy how different some of the states are like I think you're in Virginia right they're not a medical marijuana state I don't think so but DC is DC is yeah and then Florida definitely not but Florida because that's where you're originally from right Florida one of the highest and opiate now that hills are big there too right that's amphetamines and oh all that and then what was that one aesthetic drug that was getting that I saw videos like crocodile or some shit what was that some dude is zombies yeah like ate someone's face or something that's some scary shit I was definitely a Florida thing that was Tampa wasn't that when we were down that's what we were talking about like the last thing I we were down in Tampa visiting Ben Pakolsky Elliott Holstos guys and we were talking about when was the last time you'd heard anything about Tampa and one of you two brought that up when the guy was eating jumping through the window scary it's good times we were seeing a story of someone went to a drive through a fast food restaurant and through a fucking baby alligator through the window I don't know why that's a Florida thing you hear that kind of story you're like that's gotta be Florida that would be awesome to do that in California someone would shit in California do that in Florida something got in if you threw a baby alligator in California you'd go to jail for hurting the baby alligator very true so do you guys think that everyone should smoke weed or yeah totally some people do anyone that doesn't is missing out and just doesn't get it I'll tell you right now there are certain people there's a lot of people that I think should never ever touch that stuff like I said I've experienced the extreme fear in paranoia that come from having too much or having the wrong strain it's a psychoactive substance so it's gonna have powerful effects anything that makes you feel good as addictive and there's also this reality anything that you take that has or use that has an acute or effect on the body the body tries to balance itself out by regulating itself we have a natural endocannabinoid system we produce our own cannabinoids anandamide is one of them and we have the receptors that we talked about earlier if you have a shit ton of cannabis all the time or you become a regular user you can expect to produce less of your own natural your own natural cannabinoids or down regular receptors and there's I mean all 100% stand behind this anybody who has ever used cannabis regularly will tell you you do build up a tolerance it's a good thing no that's never a good thing it's also a bandaid look I use it medicinally and I understand that it is a bit of a bandaid because why is my body not producing the cannabinoids that I need or why are my receptors down regulated I need to figure out the root cause and I'll tell you what over the years of working with my nutrition meditation and you know avoiding certain things like I don't have any artificial sweeteners I avoid certain foods less and less and less for those medicinal effects in the early days I would need it every single night now probably 2-3 nights a week and I'm fine sometimes not even that so you gotta be smart with it the hardest conversation I ever had to have was to my little brother who's 12 years younger than me and having an older brother who was a part of you know these cannabis clubs and here he is at 20 years old coming up and he by this time had already been introduced to smoking weed and having this conversation I'll never forget you know how challenging that was for me like cause what I wanted to tell him I had to also keep in mind like okay here's your brother in the middle of a business like this how many I tell you like stay away from something like that and all I could really explain to him was that my experience with it wasn't until I was almost really 30 years old I was like in my late 20's and so when I experienced it I had a different head on my shoulders and the average teenage boy or 20 year old that gets a hold of it and so I really don't I don't recommend it to anybody really unless you are a grown ass adult and you have like sleep issues or you got pain and you don't want to take pills you're somebody who's like above 30 years old and you coming with that and that's just so you have a good head on your shoulders just because real quick it can turn into just like smoking cigarettes or just like drinking alcohol like or bad food I mean it's real easy I think you can get away from you and you can turn into something that you get high all the time and you don't do shit and I watched my little brother starting to go down this path and it was really tough for me to also sit there and tell him wow I'm in the middle of building this cannabis club so that was a really challenging time for me and it's I still struggle with it because I kind of see and he's you know doing his own thing he's a he's often Colorado and snowboards and you know he's happy doing what he's doing but I feel like a lot of what what keeps him from excelling is you know he loves to smoke weed all the time and it's it's unfortunate who am I to tell him he can't but I feel like that's where people get let it get away from them as they start getting high all the time because it's a run away from shit like anything but then I then I think it's no different than anything else you can do that with gambling but you know on the developing brain to the cannabinoid system is plays a very crucial role in the development of the brain and we know this for an absolute fact so like for example the they have evidence that there are cannabinoids in breast milk so when your baby you know is breastfeeding and then just you know if you I'm sure you have two kids with their breastfeeding and all of a sudden they're afterwards they're drunk they're high they're high from the cannabinoids it plays a very crucial role in development of the brain so if you're a teenage kid and you're just bombarding your brain with cannabinoids way more than what you would produce naturally that's going to affect the way your brains are developed and you could cause you saw you saw research on this I saw something a couple months ago on this point that it leads to that I mean a lot of young people were up in arms about it of course no no no yeah that's not true don't take away my weed yeah no so you know think of it this way I treat it like caffeine the same way I treat caffeine when I start to notice like if if I have to take more than like two puffs of something to get that relief or get myself to settle down before bed if I notice myself doing that's already my sign that okay I need to take a week off and just be away from it completely just like caffeine and so but that's what I mean by how it can get away from you real quick where you're just oh I don't get that same feeling so now I'm going three then four and next thing you know you have to do you have to smoke half a joint the other joint the whole joint and then it's like it turns into this you're smoking an eighth of weed a day and that's now we have a problem. So I'll give you an example when a kid learns a new language or learns new languages they don't develop an accent right you have a five-year-old you could teach a five-year-old three languages and by the time they're adults like they'll speak all three of them fluently with no accent you take a kid past a certain age and try and teach them a new language they'll learn it but they've always had an accent and that's because the basic structure of the brain that processes and develops language has been set by a certain age meaning it's not as plastic as it was before so it's just not going to have the same capacity this is true for a lot of things as your brain develops so for example if you have a child a baby and you're constantly feeding them a lot of sugar and they grow up there's going to be some permanent changes to their brain to where they may permanently have issues with sugar and they can change quite a bit but that basic scaffolding that basic structure just doesn't change this is true with cannabinoids you have kids, teenagers smoking a shit ton of weed it's not like an adult who smokes it you know if you're a 30-year-old man and you get real high a bunch of times all the time they decide to quit those effects are probably going to go completely away if you do this as a 13-year-old kid and you stop smoking weed you'll get some of the effects gone but not all of them and they're finding it'll affect your IQ and it'll show as much by 10 points permanent so I definitely don't think it's a good idea for kids ever except in the rare cases of intractable epilepsy or medical conditions interesting fascinating subject Mike something I don't know much about well you know it's definitely I don't know too many fitness guys that actually talk about it that's why it's always an interesting topic when we get with somebody how was the first other fitness guy that I knew that actually had read more about it than I had I mean I was fascinated because I was in it and so I was learning about it and then I meet this guy who took it to a whole other level well you're in the supplement industry it's going to start penetrating I think Ben Greenfield is selling cannabinoids he sells CBD derived from hemp because hemp you can't get CBD you're going to see it in fat loss supplements because it has an insulin sensitizing effect you're going to see it in recovery supplements and sleep supplements so those are the three categories that I think you're going to start seeing a lot of and again the companies that are going to really dominate the ones that have this structure to be able to supply all of it everything from the recreational to the medical to the all these different supplements yeah it's going to be vertically integrated the companies that really we've talked about supplementation moving out of the sports nutrition space I mean the companies that that's where the insane money is oh yeah I mean supplements on the whole $100 billion a year industry globally sports nutrition I believe right now is like $27 billion I think it's projected to rise to $45 oh that's gross I mean it's growing but it's so what's the big part who's making the big sales and supplements then if it's not sports general health stuff stuff that you see in Walmart Costco and Sam's Club and you know so you have in terms of the brands I mean I guess you have stuff like Kirkland you have Nature's Pride you have I mean if you just go look at the shelves of if you want to just go pick up your basic you know simple one a day multivitamin or a vitamin C or a magnesium or a vitamin D or something like that so if you get like two pounds of it yeah exactly but who ultimately owns those those are more like those are just brands or like imprints you know what I mean so I actually don't know I haven't looked too much into it because I'm more just kind of niched into sports nutrition but I'll bet you it's a handful of of big probably food companies and pharmaceutical companies that ultimately own you know seven different brands of supplements and they all just kind of they are their own competition is there a reason why you haven't because I've wanted to go and look into this direction of actually going into supplementation like the vitamin D and see like is there a reason why you haven't gone that route how can I compete I mean what's the is that why is it because it's just the markets way too competitive yeah I mean I could see but I feel like I would assume people who's buying from you is mostly your network so they I would think they would buy anything from you so I feel like right now for example I you know I do a vitamin D supplement right so I would love to get that through a company that I'm already with you know even if it was well that's me I guess if even if it was two dollars more I would pay it right because it's you you know what I'm saying and I'm buying it anyways and it's like I'm gonna order whatever you just buy everything right are you buying your protein powder or whatever yeah it actually is on the list like we want vitamin D would make sense and there are a few you know probably magnesium would make sense for people that need supplement with additional magnesium and it's just we're not Omega 3 maybe too I mean I have that I have a oh you do okay you have a visual but but could do for example a plant based like it'd be an algae based like people don't want to do fish and so we do have on the list to do some of these simpler supplements it's just I haven't done them yet because I've been focusing really what it comes down to is I mean it's mostly money so it's expensive to launch products now these products are not be expensive but the the products I'm in the middle of like you know I'm gonna be doing a casein protein because a lot of people want it a lot of people just like casein they prefer it over way they prefer it over you know any sort of vegan protein but that's probably gonna cost me I think in the end probably about $20 a bottle to do a good casein protein and with minimum orders let's just say when it's all said and done when you factor in everything it's probably $60 or $70,000 to launch casein and then you gotta get it established gotta get it going blah blah blah so right now we're focusing again on the stuff that is I mean I guess I look at it as kind of like the low hanging fruit the stuff that you know people are saying yes please make that protein bars stuff like that now what do you say so what kind of advice would you give somebody if they're gonna go buy supplements like you know it's obviously an unregulated industry which I'm fine with but what should be their litmus test how can they know what are some things that they can do to ensure that they're getting what they're paying for that they're getting quality and nothing else unfortunately you have to do some digging as a consumer because ultimately what it comes down to is trusting the company and trusting the brand I mean you can you can look at labels and that can tell you some stuff so you know if you look at if you're looking at a protein powder and you look at the serving size in grams look at how many grams of protein are in the serving size and if there's a big discrepancy there if you have a big serving size and or let's say there's you have a 30 plus grams serving size with 20 grams of protein what else is in there you know what I mean also looking at for talking about protein what if it's weight protein like what type of protein is it so weight concentrate for example is there's nothing wrong with weight concentrate it's just the protein by weight can vary widely it can be as low as 30% or as high as about 80% wow what do you mean by the weight by weight so like you know per gram of powder it can be as low as 30% protein and the rest would just be fillers or carbs and fats because it's just low quality or as high as 80% that'd be like a higher quality weight concentrate usually you don't go above 80 that's where you get into isolates right and so like my way is 100% weight isolate which is where they've removed the lactose and it's basically just pure protein it's like it's 90 to 94% you know protein by weight and so that's something when you see weight concentrate you don't have to automatically be like oh that's shit not necessarily but there's a higher likelihood that it's shit and then it comes down to what do you know about this company and why do you trust because for example I get contacted all the time by mainly mainly raw suppliers from from China and you know if I didn't care about the quality of my products I could so my way cost me I want to say it's like around 19 or 20 dollars a bottle right my cost and I could cut that down to like six dollars wow maybe seven holy shit that's a big difference and still be able to say that it's way no wonder your guys are fucking greedy in that industry cause it's that easy so that easy it's just saying like that easily it's just like double your profits yeah like money that's about it right and then by the way your transparency the transparency is that you have and this is fucking great I really appreciate you going over even the numbers absolutely I don't know anybody else that does that in this industry nobody does everyone's afraid to because even even the people that claim that they're being straightforward about things there's something that they're they're getting over I'll say on the whole when you look at it from the from the top level look at the financials like I want to run I want to be able to run Legion with a gross margin of around 40 percent and a net margin of around I mean ideally would be 15 percent right now it's lower because we're growing and putting money back in right and spending money on exploratory marketing things and whatever like it's not I'm not trying to optimize for profitability at the moment I'm trying to optimize for growth and you can't really have it both ways but such an important thing for an entrepreneur to understand what you just said right there I should make you break that down it's just you just said it so quick and so fast but you know Taylor and I discuss this a lot you know off air and stuff about you know what the challenges of scaling a business you know and people don't understand the outside are looking in you see all these things that are going on oh they must be making all this money and stuff like well no not if you're really if you're doing a good job of growing your business you're probably not making that right there absolutely right you know you especially when you have a cost of goods involved and especially in my case when the cost of goods is quite high you know it would be different if I were just selling digital products and even then I mean there's still that it's still you're gonna you're there you're gonna have hemorrhage cash to some degree when you're growing because you have to try things and you know like I was telling you guys we tried using you know Instagram influencers mainly girls with a lot of a lot of followers millions of millions of followers lots of ass shots yeah a lot of a lot of butts with like Psalms I don't know that's a word formula and apparently those followers don't read much what else could they be doing hmm yeah that was a great story by the way so you guys did that and got nothing out of it I mean nothing nothing that we could quantify I did feel I did $50,000 we put into it I do feel so much better about hearing that I felt really bad that what we spent and you spent a lot more than us we did try that we did the same thing same success but yeah so you know to your point with growing a business I mean there's just even if you go about it intelligently and you really try to lay things out and plan things out and be organized it's a bit chaotic and with that comes my Tyson says it best right everybody has a plan to get punched in the fucking face so yeah so there's that point of like back to what you were saying you know my goal financially for the business is for it to be a good business and a profitable business but I'm not I don't feel like I'm going for anything I'm not stretching to be greedy about it that's where I feel like the supplement industry draws a lot of people that are not like that and the irony of it all is that you're actually playing the long game that's going to make you successful in the long term so you can definitely fool the market for a short period of time but not very long and then eventually like flash in the pan like we've seen companies we talked about Shreds in the past it was a great company and I don't mean great isn't awesome I mean a great example of flash in the pan using Instagram to owning all these pages they're kind of like the Titanic of the industry there's an example for future generations of not how to not do it so you talked about these Chinese suppliers how many supplement companies do you think are getting their supply from overseas is that like a big that's definitely a thing so there are supplement companies because there are so many supplement companies there are little guys popping up every single month it seems like and so you have people that from the outset are saying yes I don't care about the quality of the product I don't care how much protein is actually in this protein powder I just want to maximize profits and I want to be able to say that if this were to get analyzed that yes it is it is way protein that's it so you have people that from the outset and then you have people and those are like the scummiest of the scum and then you have people that actually want to do right by their customers but they get screwed by the manufacturers so that's a whole nother and that's one of the reasons why the manufacturer I'm with I pay a premium to be with them they are not the cheapest by any stretch of the imagination they're actually fairly expensive but I know like one I mean they work with very very big not just they don't just only work with big sports nutrition companies but also just big companies are very big in the supplement space on the whole and then they also work with pharmaceutical companies and the pharmaceutical companies obviously when you're talking about pharmaceutical compounds they don't fuck around like you can't you know what I mean you kill people yeah exactly and then that also though tends to be the case with the supplement brands that these pharmaceutical and food companies own the shenanigans is usually with would be people like me just people you know that privately owned supplement companies are the ones that are more likely to try to cut corners because you know they're run by individuals that again are they're looking for the instant gratification of just cash they just want cash and they want shit they want bling they want cars you know right now and whereas the bigger conglomerates that's not actually exactly I mean from what I've seen that's even though you might think that because they're a big conglomerate and they must just be a bunch of evil capitalists and all they want to do is rate people not not so much actually and that has been borne out in like even independent tests of it was talking about protein again where like for example optin nutrition which is owned by Glanbia big pharmaceutical company has a monopoly on way basically they own the farms own everything there's completely vertically integrated I my the protein that I get the way which comes from overseas it comes from Ireland is Glanbia owns the farms it's Glanbia right so like you either you're making your competitor stronger by it I don't care at this point on is you know do a billion dollars a year in revenue they're the king I don't know if we'll see what it'll take if someone can ever you know dethrone them but discover a new protein yeah so I don't even know it I mean it'll be interesting it's one of the breast milk yeah that's a big market the insect move is moving I was just thinking that yeah that's a hard sell though it is a very long road for that it doesn't taste bad though have you had to get it I feel like no oh it's not bad I feel like that that might work if we find ourselves like overseas collapses no right find yourself in like a mad max I'll fucking eat some insect protein it means yeah it's actually staying alive I'm eating some cricket protein it's not fucking bad we had but we believe you and some company some rounded up the powders it's like not like you're like you're like I know but you just know yeah you just you're drinking disgusting little bugs yeah it's gotta be one of the hardest sells for sure how how how widespread would you say in the supplement industry would you say this kind of the shenanigans are is it just a fuckery it's widespread I mean it's an epidemic I mean it's a problem for sure I've run into it myself so in setting up a backup manufacturer which is something that now is finally in place I should have done it earlier because I ran into some supply chain problems with my manufacturer now because they were going through a transition where so I was with a company called integrity they were based in Tennessee run by a guy named Peter Miller super cool guy he took really good care of me and then his company was bought by a private equity group and they bought another company called cornerstone supplement manufacturer based in Utah and then they wanted to merge them into one they wanted to combine operations in Utah and they kind of it didn't go very smoothly there were some problems and you know so there was a time where I ordered so pills are generally a 10-12 week lead time it can go a little bit faster but that's what you want to plan for on your inventory planning and your financial planning so we had ordered it had been it took them a year to get us so we were like completely just oh shit and so in that period when they were starting things were starting to get rocky and they basically was like triage they had to decide my manufacturer had to decide which accounts are going to get serviced and which aren't basically because they had limited capacity in their lines and they're having all kinds of problems so in that time I was like well I could have prevented this I should have had a backup manufacturer like that's one of those basic things I hadn't had any problems previously so that's why it never really occurred to me but then when it did happen I was like yeah it's pretty obvious like you don't want to have a manufacturing exit it always seems obvious when you get fucked so I go out and I'm looking I found a company that had all the certifications look great they're based in New York and wanted them to run to do the multivitamin to start with because I need multivitamins I need it right away so let's start with that and I told them that I'm going to send the product to Eurofin it's a big respected lab to get tested to ensure that everything is better because again a lot of manufacturers what they'll do is they'll give you a great price so you say this is what I want even if you want to make a good product they're going to be like okay here's your price and you'll be like wow like I mean again we get pitched by not just random Chinese protein peddlers but also other manufacturers that will say hey we'll make your pre-workout for you know 60% of what you're paying right now and that's also so if I were naive or maybe or just saying I like money and sure whatever then I could do that as well and then what they would do though is so coming back to the story so this manufacturer in New York runs multivitamins and I tell them I'm going to get them tested and also before I pay for them like I'm going to make sure I want to make sure that I'm getting what I want and what I'm paying for and so he does it and I send them off to get it tested and it comes back that they're basically vitamin C pills so I didn't pay and I was like just wasting my time though I was telling you I was like what the fuck was the point of that I told you I mean I guess he just thought maybe he was going to call my bluff or something or maybe I would just how did you know to have the smarts to do that did you have just an idea because of the margins like you're just like he's offering this to me for so cheap he's got no because I wouldn't have went like his price was good and I expected lower than you know capstone is the name of the company I'm with right now because again like capstone they're not they're not the cheapest but and now we're past all that stuff they've been really good now they have everything streamlined and you know that transition is that period is over but so no his price was a little bit better but it wasn't so low because if that were the case I would have just moved on because you know if he would have come at $6 a bottle and then I know like yeah that's going to be vitamin C and what sucks about this is you're talking about vitamins minerals protein like herbs like there's there's herb blends and stuff like how do you know how expensive it is to test I do know because I've done it like my multivitamin has it's not just vitamins and minerals there's 14 other things in there and some of them are herbs and so like that's like specific testing yeah I think if I remember correctly how much was it for so triumph is the multivitamin it was I want to say five to $6,000 just to test that one product and so you know a whole round of testing which I've done several times with capstone for the same reason just because I want to make sure and keep them honest so to speak I want to say is 30ish thousand dollars just to just to know that like what you're getting is real you know what I mean that's crazy that that's your responsibility to do that yeah I mean a lot of companies don't do it which is you know also something we're going to be there's like a little internal kind of evolution that we're going through and it's something I want to do from a I mean it's going to it's a branding play but I think it also is going to I want to I want to kind of maybe set a standard for the other supplement companies that consumers can hold other supplement companies up to so like one of the things so few of the things are going to be we're already good with transparent formulations and using education and not hype to sell and at least internally making sure that you know what I'm selling is what I say it is but I want to I want to kind of push this a little bit further because obviously right now the evidence-based fitness movement that whole space is growing and more and more people are using science or appealing to science to sell things right whether it's to sell programs or products or even sell themselves and it's not very hard to do if you want to bullshit people because you can just use big words and make it sound like you know what you're talking about and you see more if we're talking supplements more and more of that a lot of these new supplement companies that are popping up are their angle and their copy will read it appears and reads very similar to mine right and so it's gotten to the point where when I first started Legion there weren't very many companies that were talking about clinically effective doses for example that just you didn't hear that phrase very often and they while some companies would I mean I would say they'd make passing references to scientific research it was very lazy it's not like they were really trying to dive in and justify the product scientifically it was more just like oh yeah there's some studies that say this is good so you know what I mean so when I first started my approach was unique and now it's not so unique a lot of people are doing the you say you're one of the first guys to really start doing that because you see it that I know of to do it the way that I'm doing it again with like no proprietary blends so fully transparent formulations clinically effective doses but then also in the sales copy where it's very educational and it's explaining why every ingredient was chosen and why the dose was why we set the dose where it is and citing research that anybody can go access and read if they want to three years ago when we first met before we started Mind Pump we talked about some of the trends that we saw in the fitness industry and one of them had to do with the supplement industry and I made this very I was very passionate about and I said look what we see right now what we're seeing with food right now is going to start to carry over into supplements for example you know 78 years ago Safeways, Lucky's, Nob Hill you know all these major grocery store chains did not have organic sections at all to get organic food you had to go to Whole Foods you had to go to a specialized store now all grocery stores hell your 7-Eleven now carries products that will say organic on them and I said watch what happens as a supplement industry you're going to start seeing all of them move in that direction and we actually had a friend his name sounds like Mo Connolly who had a supplement company and I I had a very very subtle right there I had a huge argument to be leaving a real name because he wanted us to sell his supplement to promote a supplement and I'm like we can't we can't sell your products because they're all artificially flavored they're all full of chemicals and shit and and we're not going to promote that and I said you said if anything you need to pay attention to the market because it's starting to shift and you're going to and it's going to be a problem and you need you should shift before and I think I'm right I think it's starting to happen already I mean what do you think absolutely I mean that's one of the things that I saw initially and I'm also just believed in personally so you know all of our stuff is naturally sweet and naturally flavored and no one necessarily fillers are junk no food dies stuff like that's not necessarily like do you really care if you're pre-workout is green yeah yeah whole green electric yellow yeah yeah or you know just like kind of a pinkish color do you give a shit so and you actually can I mean like so our blue raspberry flavor yes it's blue but it's not or if it you can you can you can change you actually have natural natural natural smurf extract in it making it blue smurfs out smurf it that's the secret that's the secret I'll let it out it's anabolic jerking off smurfs I get it so it was the other day who kind of was like maybe a month ago I think someone tagged us on a post by what's that supplement company that's the physique guys are all in and oh global that's one of them too ghost which I don't know much about them global formulas was it that or no what's the other one the one that what's his name owns that lives in the area little Evogen so Evogen has like he's naturally flavored yeah I knew what it was by just doing that you know what I was talking about but he sounds like a little meatball we're just we're just fucking throwing people out of the bus I don't know what you're talking about today is bus chucked he sounds like a meatball but I saw them had a product that was like no artificial flavors I'm like look at this motherfucker I was doing that shit from the beginning so do you see the market totally growing that yeah to the point where it's gonna be have to be next year so it's gonna be a pain in the ass but we actually want to we already use non GMO ingredients but would like to move I mean if we can move to fully organic I'd love to do it I actually I just I'm not sure if it's possible for the from the perspective of sourcing certain ingredients and then also price some organic ingredients are super super expensive and unfortunately like sure I could do that but I would have to check the price by like nine dollars yeah and I can't I can't do that so what I'd have to do is I'd have to pull ingredients out so I have to sacrifice product efficacy basically for just just to have it be fully organic so you know I don't know if I'll be able to go to where it's like a hundred percent organic line but we want to but that's the direction yes move to is as make it make it as or everything as organic as possible and that's not I mean that's partially a marketing play because I do agree with you that's that's the definitely where the trends are going but also I agree with it you know personally like I eat mostly organic food and even if it's just for nothing else just to reduce my exposure to glyphosphate and you know pesticides and herbicides and stuff yeah and also you know it's been obviously I know this that organic produce like certain fruits and vegetables are more nutritious like there are more vitamins and minerals and good things in them and that's why I'm eating it you know like sure I've eaten that's just kind of my diet so I've come to enjoy it but in the end is you know is the cauliflower as tasty as the french fries no so why do we eat the cauliflower that's because it's good for us and the irony of all of this is because the organic market is starting to grow so fast because it is it's exploding Amazon's Whole Foods yeah look at Costco go to Costco there's like so many organic things like three years ago weren't even in there that a lot of the organic stuff I hate to say it's gonna piss people off but a lot of the organic products we get now from China like they're sending us organic yeah I know exactly and who's watching who's watching that whole thing you know we talked about the Whole Foods I'll say though that it's not not everything that comes from China is bad it really depends on the company and that's where if we're talking about manufacturing I'm glad you said that so wouldn't you keep explaining yeah so that's so you know there are we get I know that Caps don't get some of their ingredients from China and I know they get some of their ingredients from India which also is can be hit and miss especially stuff like spirulina there's good spirulina that comes from India there's bad there's good spirulina that comes from China there's bad what's the difference between good and bad just contamination oh wow so that's where again you have to have from if as the supplement I mean I'm not the manufacturer I'm the as the as the company or as the seller is the person that's you know creating the products that's up that's on me to know the how how the manufacturer I'm working with like how much do I trust their raw sourcing right and are they because that's where manufacturers they cut corners where they can pad their margins are getting just cheap inferior like you know take bit alanine there's a big difference between the patented you know cornucine which is high potency and just some low potency crap you can get from China for a fifth of the price big difference all you know is on the if you're just a consumer you don't you don't know that you just go has bit alanine bit alanine now it's not so there's that and then there's there's fill volume right so you know to be compliant with CGMP you have to you can have a variance of about 10% but that's like you mean that label claim and what is in there needs to be you know 90% of what is supposed to be in there but you know there are manufacturers that will if they know that you're not on top of it and you're not going to hold them to it and you're not going to check it out yourself you it won't necessarily you know they'll fill it to 70% so if you're talking about caps in particular you know what I mean so obviously just that's just profit for the for the manufacturer did you know all of this when you got into the into this business no I mean you were pleasantly surprised yeah it was kind of a learning process which again all credit Peter from you know that was the first manufacturer I found that that really took good care of me and so I had in a sense I mean I wouldn't say it was I wasn't just like a mentor that just taught me everything but Peter was I mean he is still still obviously he just he just is not with Capstone he's with another company now but cool guy honest guy and showed me the ropes to somebody and then there was also just being in the space and you know having experiences and talking to other people and it's just whatever when you when you really immerse yourself in something you learn stuff you know what I mean so go ahead no do you attend do attach yourself to people like that when you meet them like because it's so rare I feel like in this industry when you meet someone was like fucking smart got a shit together yeah yeah and then usually try to see what I can do for them as well you know what I mean like I don't like to run around asking for favors generally so like I usually won't ask people for things very much I'll be more I'm more interested in what I can do for them so then if at some point I do need to ask for a favor it's like no problem right because I think it's kind of silly and annoying when I mean I get it quite a bit where people ask me to do random things for them when I don't even know them it just doesn't make sense right why would you everything that would work at any point when you're doing this when you're entering the market and you're learning about all the shit where you like fuck it I'm out I don't want to do this anymore no just because again I was just I believe that I can just do it the way that I want to do it and I knew that that meant that what gave you that confidence though is that just because you did you recognize right away that you were smarter than who you were going up against or did you how did you when is hubris yeah just basically no well so there's one thing there was like going into it I wasn't my goal wasn't to create the biggest supplement companies you can't be I mean I'd say this probably applies to any any industry you can't be the biggest and the best but that's particularly true in supplements right so the biggest companies are never going to make the best products because they're always going to be reliant on retail and if anything that is I'd say any sports nutrition product that is that is on the on the shelf of GNC unless we're talking protein powders from very like on protein powder for example it tests I mean there have been a lot of independent tests that have been posted on reddit and stuff and whatever and on generally checks out and again that's coming back to glambia has no reason to fuck around it would be really against their interests so would crush them yeah it'd be stupid for what they already there you know just that one of their piece of the pie already that's just on is just one of their brands billion dollars a year and I like I said and they have a complete monopoly on the way market so why risk that for why why would they ever want a minospike that would make no sense oh so you're saying so on has a direct connection to the glambia is owns on straight up so and and glad else to the own ABS I think and ABS they may have bought BSN as well they may have in glambia I don't I'm not sure they own a number they own a number of that's when you're gangsta when you competitive yeah it makes sense I mean again because and that's what they do in food food companies big food companies buy so dude what big pharma will buy big Irba like you have a big organic they'll buy organic products absolutely yeah so so yeah so going into it again my goal wasn't necessary to create the biggest the biggest supplement company I know hundreds and hundreds of hundred million dollars in revenue I wanted to do I mean it's kind of cheese I want to create I wanted in my least to my standards one wanted to make the best the best stuff you know I mean and so and and in terms of my personal confidence in in being able to do it I guess if I so when I go back and I was looking at it it just seemed it seems straight forward like and this is maybe something there's a little conscious element and I've this is how in business I'll just when I I'll know I have a good I have a good intuition for things that will work and when I see something and I and I feel strongly about it and I and I see it in my mind of this is where this could go and and when I have a personal conviction that like oh yeah that's gonna work like there's you know I just there's something that will flip for me and I just go yeah there's no way that fails like if I just execute there's no way that's just a matter of execution at that point so and then and then I'm confident in my ability to execute and again it's not just me I've recruited people also that are very good at execution and and also very good at ideation as well and so like there's that I know that you know I can get things done and then also I know that I can work really fucking hard so like if there are people sure there are people out there that are smarter than I am but can they out work me you know what I mean and and so that's also been kind of a culture that I've cultivated you know at with my team again is you know everyone everyone works hard they put in time and they don't fuck around and they get shit done and it's not something that I have to I'm not a slave driver I have to like run behind them and micromanage them and and and you know beyond them to finish every little task it has kind of just naturally developed now that all being said or can you give us examples of times when you thought something would succeed and it didn't yeah yeah sure so most recently we released a vegan protein right it's like a pea rice quinoa and hemp blend and so there was a lot of hype on it on social media people are freaking out about it I can't wait for this can't wait and released it and sold like I want to say maybe like 500 bottles in the first week which is which is bad like you know when we when we released our fish oil it was like 3000 bottles in the first week and and and since then it has it has now caught up and because there's a point where you have to look at it from from from a cash flow perspective where if you're not selling enough of of an item it's not worth having because you just have you have minimum mortars you have to work with so how much cash do you want sitting in your warehouse is what it comes down to paying the ass when that you figure that out and then you have to cut it off and then you got to deal with the handful of people that are going to be killing you right yeah yeah so we've had that so 500 people yeah yeah we've had it we've had it now it looks like it the name of the product is thrive so it looks like it's going to be fine looks like it's I mean it's it did not meet our our expectations at all it from that sense it was like and it also is just interesting to see that the disconnect between the hype of people saying how excited they are to the actual hard line numbers and you know that's I've come across that and just reading about marketing and this is my first I'd say like that stands in my mind experience where surveying is great we've done correctly but don't don't think that just because people tell you they're going to buy something that they will and don't think that just because people say they're really interested in something that they're going to buy it it's very different it just is so so that that was that was an experience that recently we also had that with unflavored whey protein so like there's a huge market for unflavored that's what I would think especially on on Amazon there are a few companies that are destroying and that's all they do is unflavored shit naked is one of them and good branding I don't know who's behind it but they're smart like they know what they're doing at least from a marketing perspective from a branding perspective they've done a good job and so we thought that it would be kind of a no-brainer for us to have have unflavored we didn't expect it to to explode but it just it just didn't do well at all like where we just just just we looked into that I mean I wasted a bunch of money on doing I believe yeah we had we had five pounds we have like two point two pound way and then we have five pound for people and you can essentially when it comes down to per serving you're getting it for like 10 or 15 percent less per serving if you're buying the bigger one and so the bigger ones I mean it's cool but they're very expensive my cost and like again I'd say I don't know the exact number but probably somewhere between 40 and 45 dollars something per bottle for me right and and minimums are I want to say 1500 to 2000 bottles and so had a bunch of unflavored five pound way because again we thought it's a lot of way to be hanging around we thought it would do well it's like a hundred K and just unflavored you know big bottles of of unflavored way and you know they sat around for for months and months and months and again so like that shit matters though because especially when you're trying to aggressively grow a company and then funding it myself right your margins are already thin cash is everything cash was everything so if you you know we weren't we weren't counting on having that money tied up for as long as it was tied up which then just like means you have to you're constantly re you know just juggling your financials basically and so you know a couple a couple examples of that also the app that I that I did is another example something that was I just went into it I mean it was a lesson of and I'm that's a mistake that I tend to not make is miss or underestimating effort that's also something that when I'm when I'm like looking at when I'm considering doing something you know you have to consider because an opportunity cost anything right if you're gonna do one thing is you're not gonna be doing something else and it's one of those things where in the beginning when you're just getting into something you say yes to everything right because who cares the cost is your time and the opportunity cost is low because your time isn't worth shit in the beginning because you don't have anything so you know just jump at everything you can do jump it say yes yes yes yes yes but then it flips as as you become more successful you have to learn to say no to a lot of things right now we had this conversation not that long ago where we were you know I remember when the business hit that point where you have to look at your time now is you're breaking it down like okay I could I could have even though in the past I would have done that because any exposure or anything doing anything is good but not when you could be potentially doing something else exactly I mean your guys so you're in your business that comes down even guests right so in the if you were just starting you'd be a lot of yeses get get whoever you can and then and try to make those conversations as interesting as possible right and just get rolling but now with where you guys are you have to be picky and you probably have to say no to a lot more you know you probably people reaching out all the time where it just doesn't make sense nothing personal right it's just because if you're in a sit down and spend time with that person you're not going needle you're not yeah exactly you're not going to be spending time with someone else that might you know that would love to be on the show just as much as that person exactly yeah in the beginning I had a couple friends that would that were guests on our show they were they were interesting they were definitely experts in their field and then later on like a couple years later you know I'd have other friends who knew them like hey do you want to interview me so I can talk about them like I'm sorry I can't I've got other guests coming in right now can't do it when that happens in a business though I think it's one of those crucial points it's like a stepladder and there's these points where a lot of business that's where they can't figure that piece out and usually that correlates to income or revenue I mean you'll find that you know it's it is usually tremendously difficult to get to break the seven figure to get over a million dollars a year in revenue and so that's like a big milestone and then I'd say probably ten million is that's another big like very very few businesses ever break ten million dollars of revenue in a year and you know depending on who you listen to some people you know they say that kind of in the middle there that's also where think of it as in terms of like the version isn't necessarily linear it's more step wise so you kind of like you hit a certain level and then you're kind of plateaued and you're working you're working in the business so you can then break through to the next level and the challenges are very different as you move up so I know that you know so then getting from okay so you've gotten to ten plus million you know in revenue in annual revenue that what got you there won't in most businesses will not get you to the twenties right and that's just another game and usually what that comes down to is personnel and that because that's where scaling the business if you don't have good hiring processes and good onboarding processes and training processes and if also you're not willing to get rid of people that are not working it's very hard to take a business and again this is generally speaking from that ten million a year revenue range to the twenties and then again so like what got you to twenty won't generally get you to fifty that's like the general so I normally say one to three then the seven to ten then the fifty and then the hundred and it's like very few get to here even less get to here there's in that middle though for sure there's in that twenties which is you know in the case of Legion kind of what I'm going through now and we're doing I think we're doing all the right things and we're putting it's just a lot of work because we talk about in absolute numbers so you know you need to if you're doing things that are let's say there you could add something that that increases your revenue by million dollars a year right that's significant and then if you're doing two or three million dollars a year that's big you just you know greatly increased your revenue relatively speaking but if you're doing fifteen million dollars a year and depending on how much work it takes to make an extra million dollars a year that's fine but you haven't you know you've increased your revenue by seven percent and depending on you know if that cost several let's say months of your teams work to really put that in place that's several months that are gone you know what I mean if you do that if you can do that twice let's say try it again the next thing doesn't really work and then by the end of the year let's say you have two real winners that that you know have increased your revenue by two maybe three million in that year sure you've grown you've grown you know whatever it is ten to twenty percent but you know that's ten to twenty percent and a whole year went by so you have to figure out you know how do you how do you how do you what are the big levers that you can pull that are going to you know give you that thirty to let's say let's say fifty to sixty to seventy percent growth for the year if you want to if you want to break if you really want to break through and again a lot of that is comes down to business infrastructure I think systems in place and because as you add more people it gets more chaotic and if you don't have if you don't have good business systems in place of your business if it is relying more on extraordinary people than extraordinary systems that's a very difficult business to scale you know what I mean it's hard to find exactly extraordinary and it can be hard to keep them too because then they get really good and they want to do their own thing or they get offers to go somewhere else and depending on the culture of your business and how much they believe in it and how much they believe in you they may you know they may not if it's just a job to them if they're very good at it but it's just a job because what you're doing doesn't really it doesn't really resonate with them and they'd rather be in a different industry or they'd rather be doing something else or in some cases they'd rather be working for someone else because a lot of business owners and CEO types are really obnoxious and it would not be fun to work for so you know all those things really I mean they they can they can work for you or against you and when you again when you get into that where you need let's say you're you need 20 30 40 50 staff to work efficiently for the business to work now you really need a good administrator it's not just about like everybody kind of you know just getting their individual things done and everyone just pulling their own weight it has to remind you because you are an athlete has to remind you of sports so much to me yeah there's so many parallels yeah talking about a hockey team or a football team and like everybody's specific roles everything from the coach to the trainer to all the athletes to the positions on the I mean I feel like that's real when you start getting to a level where you're running a 10 50 hundred million dollar business that's when you start looking at it like that you know where there's just all the there's 50 people on this team and every one of these pieces are extremely important for their own learning how to lead in orchestrate I think it's too it's it's what's sad about it is that today we're not taught as kids what goes into all that and the benefit of all of that we don't know that so like if I if I go out and I interview you know 100 random people and I say hey you know Beyonce made a hundred million dollars last year and that's her money she made that herself do you think she deserves it most people absolutely man she works so hard like she's a hard worker and if I say okay well you know this CEO over here of this particular company you know paid himself a hundred million dollars do you think he deserved it oh no not at all like that you know he's taking all his money he needs to people don't realize the amount of work and not to say that Beyonce doesn't deserve it and the other person does but it's there's a lot that goes into it and every penny that they make goes into investing or most of it goes into investing building this business and building these jobs and it's just we don't know this I feel like I feel like CEO of a very large company probably one of the most stressful jobs you could ever ask and you need to be a fucking genius I feel like you can't none of us are in a position to talk shit about anybody like that like I know there's people that don't we talked about Jeff face the other day right I know there's people that don't like him and there's people that didn't like Apple freaking Steve Jobs you know I know there's these people when they talk shit about them because maybe how they use their money or how they treat their employees but I feel like until I can provide as many jobs for other people as those people I have no place and it's not no place in that conversation if I haven't provided as many jobs for other incomes for other families you know I'm saying how is anybody in a position to talk shit about somebody like that there's that but there's also the fact that at least if it's not in a corrupt way if somebody built a 10 million or 100 million dollar business they did it because they were serving a consumer they're making a person's life better in some way shape or form I like to use Bill Gates as an example Bill Gates now is one of the most prolific philanthropists in modern times and so people when I tell people like what do you think of Bill Gates he's a great guy but they don't consider that when he was the one who created Microsoft he probably did more for more people with Microsoft in terms of positively affecting people's lives not just as employees but his product all the people that used his product and those products brought tremendous amounts of wealth to the to the world and fed people and housed people and I love to say that to people kind of fuck with people I'll ask them who do you think did more for humanity Bill Gates the philanthropist or Bill Gates the businessman and most people the philanthropist actually probably Bill Gates the businessman because of the things that he created and I think we you know I would love I really would love modern education to start to teach children these things because we just we just don't know we don't realize you know what goes on behind the scenes and all of the good things that come from all the fucking hard work because most people they see somebody at the top or they see somebody who's leading this big company or this big business and they think oh that that you know that person is just so fortunate so easy like look what they're doing it's like you have no idea these people are working the most hours the most stress and they're doing things that most people you could give a person I could take someone off the streets and put them in that position say here you go your salary is ten million dollars a year but you got to handle all this and within a month they would quit yeah absolutely within a month they would stop doing it for sure if they just had to go shadow that person for I don't think they war yeah they be wore out just fall around by the end of the first week let's just start with like having to wake up early and you know no more watching TV just start there yeah not for me sorry put out international fires no no really let alone having all the responsibility and having to be the consummate you know problem solver and so I mean that's but it's first just the basics of you know what it takes to be able to to run in those circles and you know I've seen it I've seen it first hand I've seen it through I mean I mean through my own work and the people I've met but even previously my dad is an entrepreneur a successful a successful dude and I've met a lot of people through him and you know seeing people that are very very successful and you know in one case so there's a guy his name's Bob he's in his 70s now and he built up a company called Pharmacyclics and he sold it for $27 billion and he himself walked away with 5 or something and so he's in his 70s and he's been I mean he's been working probably I would say 70 to 100 hours a week for his entire life like this all this guy has done his first big win was he built a it was a cookie company so he bought into a cookie company that was failing and then turned it around and then sold it for about $100 million and another big win was robotic surgery got into robotic surgery made it into this whole thing his next big thing was a cancer drug and the story is you know it was he had put everything on the line and it wasn't looking good similar to like an Elon Musk type story when you know when SpaceX was down to its last you know he had noted that was his last money was the last launch for SpaceX and he had to borrow money just to make payroll at Tesla and shit and in the end though and it was with Bob's company it was just so many things were going to have to happen that were unlikely so many unlikely serendipist things would have to happen but it all happened so now here he is in his 70s unlimited money what's he doing we just started another company and he's doing that that's just that's that's how he is and the other part that I try to tell people or talk to people all the time about is that at least in like I said in mostly free societies we the people the consumer has all the power we have all the power so if we don't like something we vote with our dollars we just we can put them out of business tomorrow tomorrow you got people walking around like hey you know too many liquor stores and alcohols bad just stop buying it guess what it'll disappear or look at all these magazines promoting all these horrible idea you know body ideals which we talk about all the time on the show well it's not going to exist if we stop buying it we have all the power so we can control what we want what we don't want and really what are your thoughts on body ideals on the body ideals and what we think on people's I think it's unbelievably distorted now man yeah I mean I think there's some value though in peer pressure for sure I mean there's there's research on that is like weight loss research that peer pressure is effective there's no question that I mean I don't agree with this what is it love yourself at any size or anything we have these morbidly obese people what they're saying they want to they want to tell themselves they're beautiful no you're fucking not well so you look really bad that is not beauty South said something really good the other day on the show actually there you know when there's a difference between self image and body image that's right yeah so if you're if you have a problem with food or whatever and you're massively obese you can say objectively like man my body represents my poor health and it's I don't like it I doesn't mean I'm a bad person doesn't mean I don't deserve respect it doesn't mean I'm not a human and doesn't mean I don't love and I shouldn't be loved those are all still true but you can you can have a an objective body image people confuse it to so you have people who are just as sick who look ripped and lean and fit who've identified with their body who that's their value and I think some people by sick do you mean physically or you mean mentally both both physically and mentally there's I mean we work with people and you know taking drugs and doing things to make themselves look a certain way yeah when drugs enter the picture or just the starvation that some people will do so I think being chronically calorically deprived though is not going to be as unhealthy as being obese no but you can get it that way push it of course but you're right absolutely and it's not nearly the epidemic that chronically overfed is but if you you know I think they're trying to solve their own mental anguish by instead of them saying you know they feel pain right because they're overweight they see people look at them differently they fit and close differently they move differently they feel terrible they don't like what they see and they don't like what they see there's that perception too don't forget there's also that perceived like I know I don't look good now anytime somebody says something that I don't like or anybody does something I don't like I'm going to see it through that filter and oh it's because I'm fat or oh it's because I'm short or whatever right it's because that so it kind of self perpetuates and I think people try to solve that that anguish for themselves by throwing it all out and saying fuck it I love all of this and I'm going to own it and I'm and it sounds empowering yeah it's actually not it's not empowering it's ego building it's and it's no different than like I said the other people the other side of it I mean it's delusional it's delusional but you can have a body image that says hey man my body's reflecting my poor health I need to work on that but doesn't mean I don't think I'm a great person or a bad I this is just something I need to work on that's a healthy you really feel like you're a good person if you let yourself go that I do I don't think I think I think it's a facade I think it's I think it's something that I think that's a reflection of their own insecurity and so they're overcompensating I think that's what that is I think that's I'm pretending to be super confident myself but deep down inside I'm screaming and you know I mean because if you're if you are constantly engaging if you're constantly doing things and this just I think this extends beyond just eating but if you're constantly doing things that you feel you shouldn't be doing or not doing things that you feel you should be doing that you're just not going to feel good about yourself right I mean and not just the physiological level but the emotional level absolutely but there's also your actions really determine your feelings your attitudes and so it's much easier I think to so if somebody wants to make some big change personally it's much easier I think to look at what actions can we change that will naturally inculcate the beliefs and the ideas then it is to try to dive into the subjective and sort out why do I feel this way and you know if I just try to if I could only feel differently then I could you know behave the way that I want to behave I think it's much easier to aim at changing actions even if it starts with very simple actions first step to awareness is taking a step and they're both but they're both the same thing and what I mean by that is let's say I'm morbidly obese and I feel like shit I can just say look that's it I'm going to avoid soda and lose 15 pounds and that's going to make me feel better for 30 minutes today I'm just going to go walk and that's going to make me feel better and help me look at myself differently and help me examine myself but the flip can be also true I can also look at myself I'm self-aware and be like what am I doing to myself which will then make me make those decisions I don't think that they're separate I do think they're all connected and they can both be manipulated and worked with but you know but in the end only the effort wins though if you're not willing to exert effort and I think this is just in life of course but there's a level of I think we don't appreciate the level of unawareness that people can live in literally can literally live in like people will have no idea how bad they feel until they come out of it for sure or have no idea I mean I know for us how many clients I'm sure you too have dealt with that you know tell you I feel good like oh I feel good yeah no I feel great every day but they just they've never really truly felt what their how their body is running when it's being fed optimally it's being it's rested it's training correctly then all of a sudden it's like oh shit no I really feel good now but they had no idea so there's also you know people at that are all probably at you know suffering to that some degree right now we could all feel so much better right you know if we were doing things differently well I don't know that so you challenge those things might be for us personally are gonna be different but I mean I I believe that of myself for sure oh no we talked yesterday about you know with the last podcast we did together was the whole sleep thing like I didn't put that together till way later I didn't I mean my my idea of like sleep back then was like I'll sleep when I'm dead you know I sleep extra hours that's I mean I remember saying things like that where but I didn't think I really needed it I didn't know it was making that much of a difference until you start to pay attention to those things oh shit look at that yeah I think that we have to appreciate though we really have to appreciate where people can be I mean I know people who will they won't even look in the mirror people eat to escape people don't even pay attention to what they're eating it's it's kind of an escape they're just feeding themselves and not aware of what's going on some they've actually done studies where they've had people do mindfulness practices while they're eating that's it they've done nothing else all they did was say before you eat take a few minutes a few seconds to think about what you're about to eat sit down don't have any distractions don't be on your phone don't watch TV with every bite savor the meal chew it 30 times consciously swallow like do this whole like bring awareness to what I'm doing while I'm eating and people lose they just become more aware of what they're doing to themselves so and this is reflective this is very reflective in what we're finding with you look the obesity epidemic there's so many different causes to it but part of it is they just don't know and you know this by the way people feed their kids because I know that's unfortunate it's extremely unfortunate but I'll tell you what when they feed them healthy right but they're you know they don't feed themselves the same way because they're just like unaware they want healthy but at the same time they're probably see more just unhealthy yeah healthy or you see what I so I shared on the podcast recently I've totally flipped out on my mom for trying to give my little niece a popsicle and what why I got upset was because three times the baby said no and she still tried to give it to her what's the point of that right but and what I put together and realized is you know a lot of people have such a bad relationship and connection with food that they it's like this rewards it's like you're trying to buy the child's love because you know when she puts in her mouth she's gonna light up and be like oh and you know she's gonna which it's you don't really realize why she does I wonder if it's darker than that though maybe not consciously but subconscious people love taking me down a little bit well you know if you if you're struggling with something you it's like shot and for you you want you get some sort of gratification by seeing other people struggle at the same thing and you and on the flip side you don't want to be around you don't want to be reminded of it by let's say you see someone who does not struggle with it at all and is very strong every week a lot of people there's that cognitive dissonance there where it's like you just don't you want that to go away and you know I've seen that with me well I've been there myself but I've seen it I just think of friends of mine growing up that had you know video game addictions and just random stuff like where it's bad you know and they would a couple of them were you know they had that mutual understanding that were mutual delusion basically so you have people that you know where it I just if they if someone is is is engaging in a clearly destructive habit they tend to be around other people that are doing it and tends to be self reinforcing and they all justify each other and they all feature rationalizations absolutely confirmation I tell you what I was I was going to go on a trip I was going on a trip to a sunny beach area okay beautiful beaches we're all going to be in bathing suits and it was a group of people that were going to go group of friends and they had the trip planned and then you know they invited me to go later on and my friend said when these when these people found out you were going to go everybody was like fuck man I got to go on a diet like you know man I don't like that he's you know not because I'm a bad they like me we're all friends but the fact that I'm a fit guy reminded them that they themselves now are going to become really self-conscious about their bodies or whatever because it reminds them you know just like you're saying it reminds like if you get your video game addicted friends and they're around a bunch of people that like to go outside and do shit like they're going to be like it's going to especially when they know they shouldn't you know what I mean there's a part of them they have these moments of clarity where they're like yeah I'm fucking up you know what I mean they're not going to change but then they project that's what's happening so then they end up putting that front that's the same thing that we talked about what you're saying with the really obese girl that's you know oh it looks so sexy you love my body like that's her projecting her insecurity just in a different way you know I hate to frickin end this and wrap this up but we have to get our boy over to the airport right now or he'll miss his flight so there's always a time to what a good time Mike you're one of my favorite absolute I'm not saying this because I don't what do you want man oh by the way you're one of my absolute favorite guests man I appreciate you coming down this is my first time doing something like this excellent I've been on a few other people's broadcasts but not you know it's a handful we ruined it for you this is the 10-10 we set the bar bro you literally banged the hottest chick in the world and now everybody else is this ugly I can't go down from here that's just life I'm gonna let our audience know we're airing this but we have no affiliation with your products or anything like that so people think we're trying to promote no we're just asking you honest questions and I appreciate your transparency these kind of things are fun too check this out go to mindpumpmedia.com get yourself enrolled in 30 days of coaching it will 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