 Now this interview has probably been a little bit overdue. We are combined, what we're about to do is put four relatively older gentlemen of the fitness industry in one room to have a pub, not in one room, but in multiple rooms, but in one podcast to chew through, well, I don't know, Leon and John from aka The Lee Machines on to just come and wax lyrical about what it's like spending a decade in the industry. And these guys were there at the start of content creation. And this is just a great story of their learnings and lessons along the way. Yeah, I was expecting it to be fairly honest and just like they're straight up guys, like that's what you sort of, that's what you see. And actually having had the conversation now just sort of blown away by just their honesty and their openness and just free willing to share that because they know that by them being honest and sharing that true reflection of themselves, where they're at now, how they've got there, like it just, it's going, that's going to give everyone listening to regardless of what your current situation, whatever it is that you're doing, the, for you to just step into that place of just being like the best version of yourself, which is just you being honest about who you are. And yeah, I, I couldn't be blown away by that. It's, it's a great message. So you can absolutely, yeah, you can absolutely love it, I think. So we won't delay you any longer from the, from the worlds of wisdom from the Lee Machines. If you want to check out our online training platforms or any workshops that we've got, coming up if you want to go and give yourself a little dose of movement strength and play, you can find us all on schoolclassics.com. Just go and check out what we've got going on. And we hopefully will see you online or in person before long. Roll that jingle. Listen, players, you're listening to the movement, strength and play podcast by the school of calisthenics. Here are your hosts, Tim and Jacko. So welcome to the movement strength and play podcast, the Lee Machines. How are you doing, John and Leon? Very good. Thank you, Chaps. Thanks for having us. Yeah, absolute pleasure to be here. This is my first little bit of work speaking in the last couple of weeks. So you will get a nice, probably jet lag voice at some point, but we'll get through it. Yeah, well, we'll talk about what you've been up to and where you've been. I was thinking, the thing I was going on the intro was thinking of like dynamic duos. And I was like, the dynamic duos meet another dynamic. I was like, what's a pair of dynamic, a dynamic duo of dynamic duos? Now I was thinking of Batman and Robin. Now I was thinking, is there another dynamic duo or is it only literally Batman and Robin? I was considering us the four of us being like a pair of dynamic duos. Anyway, that's not really a very good question. Is it stepbrothers, really? Stepbrothers, yes. Who would you be, Dale? Yeah, probably. Well, they're both curly hair. I've been Brendan, he's taller. Yeah, he's a nerd as well. So fellas, just give us a little bit of a background of like the short version, we want to get into some good conversation of like, where did it actually all start for you? And I'm imagining like way back, was it YouTube before, Instagram was even, it was Facebook before, it's like, now who cares about fate or what? What's that journey been like for you? And where did it actually all kick off and how did your boys know each other? Well, kind of all start, we've been best friends for years and obviously working as personal trainers. Our first gym, we both worked at the same gym together. And it kind of started basically filming videos on a spud, what it looked like, a little handy cam back in the day. We were basically very hungry personal trainers in our local area. And what we found was, as personal trainers, you have seen as naturally quite unapproachable. Anyway, we had quite big personalities. We loved working out, high fiving, having a laugh with people. And there was always this encouragement to go and correct people's form in the gym. And we always understood and remembered it from being young gym users ourselves that you're in an already uncomfortable environment. Can you imagine what kind of emotional turmoil this person's going to go through by me going even in a nice way, you're doing that wrong, try doing this. It just always didn't feel right. So John came to me one day and was like, tell you what, why don't we film YouTube videos of like tutorials and information for people and just put it somewhere and they can take it or leave it. And back in the day, you know, we're talking 10, 12 years ago, music rights meant that basically videos would just get ripped down as soon as you did anything. So we just started at like 10 o'clock at night when the gym closed, filmed till midnight, filmed a load of content, and then just started spewing it out three times a week. And that's how it kind of started. And as they say, you know, the rest is history really. Nice. So started with YouTube. Yeah. YouTube was numero uno for us in terms of like stepping into the social media sphere. This is before YouTube was a revenue maker before it was really anything. And before really, you'd even really have YouTube as your go-to place to search for things. If I'm being honest, this is 10, 11 years ago now. This is not too far after MySpace and that type of time. So we're way before TikTok. Did we even still have Bebo accounts back then? Bebo is gone. Bebo, MySpace, and then we start talking at Facebook, which is obviously now Meta. By the way, Leon, have you got a filter on your webcam? I feel like I haven't got a wrinkle on my face. I just naturally put something on it, a little bit of blush. Just smeared some makeup on the mirror. Yeah. Well, if you want to know how long ago this was for us, I remember sitting there starting a Twitter account with John's older sister, not knowing what Twitter was, but just being told you have to have Twitter. And then when we got to the Lean machines on Instagram, we had a fan account, had made the Lean machines before we even had an Instagram account. So this is like how far back we've gone. And literally the expectation for us and the only hope was we might gain some clients because, you know, we're in our local area, we're putting content out. We didn't even see YouTube as this huge global tool. It was just a cool way to help people in an approachable way that wasn't right in their face. And it might turn into a few clients. That was the sheer naivety of the dream. And how ironic it is that now it's become a place where everyone goes to social media and YouTube to get advice on training and avoid going to personal training. Yeah, you're basically just constantly swimming as hard as possible just to stay current now. So have you guys done that? I have this thing, we've got some really old videos on YouTube that I'm somewhat embarrassed about when you go back and look at them. Have you guys taken your old videos down or are they still there? Because ours are still there. Yeah, I couldn't want to take them off because I'm like, oh gosh, we like... You've got to keep the originals. 90% of them are there, including our first video. There's a few that I've taken down which I just don't agree with anymore in terms of training principles or stuff like that. I look back and I'm like, you know, I don't want people to think that's what they need to do because it's not. I mean, it was a different time 10 years ago. So there's a few things, probably nutrition based more than anything else that have been taken down and just been yeah, just been killed basically. Yeah, I think to be honest, with nutrition and training, you're not really reinventing the wheel. So luckily, for us, we didn't come in with any ridiculous claims of like everybody has to be keto or DIY, intermittent fasting or anything like that. So we've always been quite middle road with a lot of the bits and pieces that we put out. So there was never really any worry of major factual inaccuracies or anything like that. It was more just a case of, which I think we all have our biases and things change and grow and adapt as we go through the industry. And I think maybe back then, I wasn't really in as much carbs. So maybe I would lean towards, oh yeah, maybe drop your carbs a little bit more rather than, based on your own experience, rather than saying carbs are a killer, you should never eat them. So it's just certain things that maybe just changed and evolved as we have. But I still love going back into the old archive and sending screenshots and stuff to John. I don't even remember this video, so I don't do it. It's more because we're annoyed at how much older we've got, I think, more than anything. A lot older. Have you guys found that, like, how have you found that process? Because obviously with social, and Jack and I have had this experience to a certain point, when you play it down the middle and it's not particularly sort of controversial or divisive, it's not the easiest way to kind of actually build a following and give information to the people who want to put the right information in people's hands, right? We would much rather go and watch the liver king than to somebody to say, just eat a normal balanced diet. Like it's crazy world that we live in. I think a good way to explain it is you might not burn as bright, but you'll burn for longer. There's few people that have been doing it for as long as we've all been doing it now and are still credible because they haven't stuck themselves to one thing, like eating raw, awful, or whatever it may be, and being out there, being controversial to get traction. But traction on that kind of stuff only lasts a small amount of time. And I think that's the reason that we've all remained current because your opinions have changed as we've grown a small amount, but our core principles and the value of what we're giving hasn't changed. And you've not trying to, like you say, there was a time when intermittent fasting was nuts and if you jumped on that, but then all of your diet advice, unless you're going to rebrand yourself, is around intermittent fasting. So if you call yourself IF John or whatever, you kind of, you pigeonhole yourself. So it's about being sticking to your, to your morals, but also being consistent in terms of your approach and the value of your content that you put out. Sure, we did silly things back in the day, like Harlem Shake video, which has probably been long deleted now. And the cinnamon challenge. Yeah, just when you're just still trying to just suck stuff out and gain traction and stuff like that. But actually any of that kind of stuff was not related to our fitness stuff. And most, certainly then, because fitness was so low on, on social media in the last couple of years, it really picked up. It was always makeup and that kind of stuff. And then it was rare that you would get something that got traction that was viral through fitness. Whereas now you see a lot more of that, probably a good chunk of it is now fitness related. Sex sells on our industry. That's just the way that it is. And like we knew back in the day, there was multiple times where we could have adjusted our method and gone purely about growth. Because and we were encouraged left, right and center by everybody around us, everybody supporting us, everybody behind us, around the business level, go for growth. It was all about numbers, numbers, numbers, get subscribers. And we were encouraged for a very long time to do topless content, do, you know, you want to be doing stuff that's just to the point, follow one method or follow one piece of advice and everything like that. And it's all well and good. But we didn't, we were fortunate that we didn't start it from a business perspective. Like we only really, if we're completely honest, started running this as a business four or five years ago. Up until then, it was, yeah, it was great opportunity, things were going well and all the rest of it. But we were still personal trainers hustling, you know, for a very long time. This was just that side hustle. And it was actually a publishing deal that came in where they were like, you cannot physically write a book for us in six months, if you want to write every word yourself and still do 50 hours of PT a week and run YouTube channel. And we were still going naively, yeah, we can, we're fine, we just crack on. It wasn't even until they highlighted everything that we were trying to do in a week, that we suddenly realized, we're like, we're not really giving this the time and energy to actually build something off the back of it. And that's when it all changed. We just kind of went for it. That was actually a scary time when you think about it, because next to no one then was making a living from anything on social. No one was. So you're not only are you going away from security, as secure as personal training is, you're going to something completely new and just go in, all right, we'll just, we'll just suck it and see what happens. And really just kind of carving a new path for one of a better term, not that we looked at it like that back then. But Leon and I have always had this thing, whether it's a TV appearance, or it's doing something big, you just give a little fist bump and you just send it and just say, I'll see you on the other side and what happens, what happens, but you've just got to, you've got to just take those chances. And it's kind of come around full circle as we started to take things more business minded, we were able to think, well, what do we really want from life? And we want to spend time with our kids. We've both got little girls, not so little anymore, but well, Bobby will be four in January when Jack's four December, December, just before. So a lot of the last few years for us, actually kind of COVID didn't necessarily come at a bad time. We got to spend a lot of time with our girls. And that's really how we've, we've, we've channeled our time into, if you know what I mean. So then that means that we were able to start coaching again. We did a lot of online coaching now. Honestly, we do a little less traveling, partially because we weren't really able to during the pandemic and partially out of choice now. So I think now it's kind of, I know Leon's just been over Sri Lanka to do his 250k ultra marathon, but it's also, I think it's a lot of people are probably discovering now it's forcing yourself a little bit to be a bit more extrovert and make sure you get out and you do these things. So it's very easy now because a lot of things happen in London. One of my good friends Faisal, he's got a launch of a new class that he started, which he's super proud of in London next week. And I was like, I don't want to go to London. It's for the morning. I don't really want to drive up there. I can't be asked. It's two hours. And I'm like, yes, but he's there to support us when we do that kind of stuff. He's got something new. I'll make the trip and I'll go. And it's, it's, it's sometimes you just have to kind of give yourself a little kick up the arse to make sure that you are still stepping outside. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Um, just shifting gears slightly, which will start to get us going into a bit more, a bit more sort of detail on some of the stuff you, you a bit more current like what you're up to now, but how, how you get to where you're now, I think it's really, really interesting in terms of both, or you can answer in any order, but from a, how's your view of your own training and that type of thing changed? Um, you know, I remember seeing, seeing, you know, if we followed you guys for ages and seeing you doing like a transition into like far more CrossFit, for example, but like, what, how's your own thoughts and what you want out of training changed over 10 years or even more, if you go, you know, if you go further back, if I think of my mindset towards training now compared to when I played like rugby and sports and things that are very different, but also what's your, um, how's your view of the fitness world changed? Has it changed? Like compared to, you know, however, however old you were when you first started PT, like, but excited to train people and didn't it? Like, and your view on training, you already said you took down some videos because you thought some things will change over time. Just really interested to see what that, what that journey's been like. Yeah, I think, uh, fitness when we started was dominated by your size. It was still, we're still in the shadow of Arnie and that kind of stuff. It wasn't as open as it is now. It was very much about, it was also very America. Yeah, it was about how you can you get. Um, and obviously we worked in the gym, young lads at the time, single when we first started. So a lot of it was about how big can you get bodybuilding and stuff like that. That's not a race I'm ever going to excel at with my body type. So then it puts you, it then puts you in the, it then puts you in the realms of do you want to do steroids? And that was an honest question that I have of myself at one point. Went on and for that, that dialogue for us did go back and forth for quite a long time. Um, to be completely honest, because when we started, like we remember when we were trying to deliberate over the name, the lean machines that actually joke, wasn't it? It was off the cuff because again, it was so American dominant on YouTube that you needed something that was kind of out there in your face. You've got like athlete X and you've got like, you know, you've got buff dudes and stuff like that. So like, cool, let's be the lean machines because it kind of, it sounded you're playing against that American market. And there was this period of time where we transitioned from yes, we were getting some traction, it was going in the right way to having to deal with the trolling that came back. And you know, everyone talks about it now, like it's just a normal thing. What's your best truck? What's been your, what's been your best one that you can look back on now and, and just laugh at? I think to be honest, I think one of the worst ones I got was actually nothing to do with fitness. It was actually someone saying, he's so evil. I think he beats his wife up or something like that. Someone said something really fucking vicious. Oh, I can see hate in his eyes. It's like, people say, you know, people would come on and say, why should they're not even big or they're not even big or you're not even lean, why should we take your advice? Like that kind of stuff was super, super common. And we did reach this junction of do you just turn around and get yoked and kind of go down that route, do a couple of courses, everybody was doing it seemingly from, you know, whoever they wanted to admit it or not, there was so much gear in the industry. And it's like, you could do it, get away of it, make your money and get out before anyone really worried. It was, it was a viable option at the time. But then every single time you have those conversations, you realized, you know, we're lucky we had each other to level us out. And it was like, you realized it wasn't coming from a personal position. It was coming from external factors and external forces kind of drawing you towards this, this idea. And like the fact is I've always said the same is that if I wanted to take gear for my own personal reasons, because I physically was like, you know what, I've reached my set point, I want to go beyond it. And it's purely just for me, no insecurities, no ego for anyone else, it's just me, then I would happily take gear. There's no and I'd be 100% honest and open about it. But I think we always realized it was one of those conversations that was led by external factors. So yeah, luckily we didn't get in there. Yeah. And what happened for us is actually, rather than changing ourselves and what we were going to put into it, we actually changed our surroundings. So when we left the gym, we actually started doing some calisthenic stuff. Leon did a fair bit of tumbling and stuff with gymnastics, we filmed some bits of the bar spot guys and girls a long time ago. And that kind of that was quite freeing, because once for the first time, my value was not on how big or small my calves are, which is an ongoing joke, which I'm the first take, which I'm the first to take the piss out of, or how big my biceps are or what I could bench press that wasn't the value anymore, it was down to your skill. And to a certain extent how big your balls are with some of the stuff that those guys and girls do. And then and that just kind of transferred into CrossFit, we were with one of the supplement companies we were sponsored by, we went out to Marbella, Leon and I were like, we're both pretty beat up and excited just to have a few days chilling by the pool, got there and one of our best mate, Zach and him and Sam were in there with their tops off and I was like, who the head of these guys? And they were doing like two workouts a day. And we ended up just having just so much fun doing that. And that kind of what started our, our kind of CrossFit escapades, if that's the best way to explain it. And that was super freeing. Because once again, there is an element to it of vanity that always will be with my fitness. I'm not going to pretend that it's not, I always want to feel confident in myself. And that comes with certain stipulations which are set by me, which I feel are healthy ones for myself. But that came with the thing of, okay, every dog has a day. Are you flexible? If you're not, you're going to struggle. How are you walking on your hands? How's your cardiovascular fitness? How's your, how's your movement in terms of your proprioception? How strong are you and all these things that kind of mix into each other. And it was just nice for once for me to feel like I was leveling the playing field and not so much in competition with other people, but more myself. What was my, what was I feeling pressure from? And the answer was I wasn't feeling pressure anymore. I wasn't feeling pressure that I had to look like the massive dudes or I had to look like this. All I had to do was be good at whatever I wanted to do. And there were so many different ways and shapes and forms that that worked into it. I just found that pretty freeing. I think for me, that's where my enjoyment and I guess my love for CrossFit really came from. Not really because of the methodology or which I agree with some of it, some of it I don't. But it was just the fact that every dog has their day and everyone has a spot that they can fit into. You might not be the strongest in the world, but I bet you can do something that the big guys or girls can't. Yeah, I think for me, my training kind of as a youngster was always performance driven. So it was running and then it was football and captain Matim and all that kind of jazz. And then it was boxing, did boxing for about three or four years. So I had everything was about performance opposed to aesthetics. You know, the closest thing to aesthetics was the boxing in terms of the weight category. I boxed that I always had to make weight. So I was always very aware of scales and stuff like that, but not in a negative sense. And then when that became more body building style, which was purely just environmental based, I was working in a gym. So I started lifting weights and you know, you're peacocking, you're trying to meet your misses and you think it's all about getting shreds. Started the bodybuilding stuff. And then to be honest, I think we both felt extremely trapped by bodybuilding because that's how we built our audience. You know, it was absolutely terrifying to be completely honest when we shifted from predominantly bodybuilding content on YouTube at maybe half a quarter of a million subscribers, I think, was around the sort of time we started to shift and went towards CrossFit because you still get it, but back then it was really bad. It was purely like your CrossFit or your bodybuilding. And as soon as we started to change, like these two entities just kind of met and you're getting absolutely caned by that's not a pull up. Well, what the hell are you doing? You're pushing through your arms and your shoulders is shut up. Like it was just the audience when almost completely stale for like six months where there was this transition phase of constantly people leaving constantly people coming in. And at the same time, there's, you know, they're meeting in the middle and views just our views literally died overnight. And it suddenly went from the conversation we had to really sit down and have is right. Okay, so do we just try and put out bodybuilding stuff every now and again to keep these people happy, the odd ab workout six pack abs, which is always the stuff everyone wanted. Or do we just continue down this route of taking people with us and getting them to essentially feed off our passion and our enjoyment. So you may notice there was a little bit more of a shift towards vlogs. So at this time, people wanted to know a little bit more about our lifestyle. So the audience that started to grow from that point that they grew in a natural sense because they were just following us and they were enjoying our passion and coming along for the ride. And we just went, you know what, I don't care about views anymore, I would much rather create the content that I want to create, which is following the passion in terms of getting involved in CrossFit, then create stuff just for the sake of views because it was murderous, like we would sit there deliberating over titles for videos, getting the right thumbnail and all that kind of clickbait crap that you have to do. And then it suddenly just went, I put a lot of love into CrossFit because it was quite, it gave us that transition and that trust to just go and do what you want to do. And now it's for me, it's kind of changed a little bit. I still do, you know, I've picked up everything, you know, I still skip, I still do some shadow boxing from back in the day. I still do bodybuilding, my favorite workout of the week is bench press and biceps, love a gun Friday. And I use elements of CrossFit in terms of the E-Moms, the AMRAPs for time, that kind of stuff. So I still, I'm picking up bits as I go, but now obviously entering into this ultra endurance world, I'm not becoming like an ultra athlete or anything, but one of the things that I've started to really yearn for, especially as I've got into my 30s, I don't think it's a ticking time thing, but I think just generally it started to happen is I really seek out challenges that are undefinable in terms of, oh, it's going to take me X amount, or I'm definitely going to be able to finish it in this amount of time. I look for the stuff now, or I'm attracted to the stuff that scares me a little bit, and it's like, did a 50k last year, first time I've done an ultra, and for the first time I was going into a training block for something going, I don't even know if I'm going to finish it. And I also don't know what state I'm going to be in, whereas like when I was doing my CrossFit stuff, you're having these conversations, you're like, oh, this bit's going to be really crap, but it's going to take about 17 minutes. If I break it down like this, it's going to be an average pace of this. You've got a rough definable route to follow, whereas with this I was just like, I'm just sending it into this storm, and I haven't got a clue what's going to happen. And that was a real buzz. So then, you know, now we've just done the 250, and that's just kind of this door that was slightly ajar in the challenge world has now just been basically kicked through with the sole of my foot. And it's moving into that space and carrying all this other stuff that I already do, but now just exploring this new space that I've moved into. Yeah. Nice, man. Great. I think there's some stuff in there, guys. I just want to, you know, sometimes in an interview, you kind of go backwards because you want to go forwards, but it's just a point that you make around some of the people who aren't industry professionals. And I think you can only do this when you've been in the industry for a certain amount of time. You guys have been like super open and transparent around your struggles and experiences as people who are looked to as models of health and fitness. And then I guess my point around this is like we now see, I look on and having been in the industry for quite some time and looking at what I'm seeing online, and you know that so much of it is being driven by insecurity and people looking for validation and they're actually outwardly expressing their own internal struggles through under the banner of health and fitness, right? And it's just, I think, listening to you guys say that and the journey you've been on is it will be massively refreshing for people because it's not talked about enough. We like to portray it. We've got it all sorted. We're super body confident, but the majority of people that are training like that are massively insecure with their own physique. Yeah, often the people that are in the best shape you want to come back on often the people that are in the best shape are the most insecure. And one thing I would just say for people that because we all get in our heads and we all have our own hangups and our own things and that's perfectly normal, but there is nothing that you can feel which is not normal. I think that's an important thing for people to realize where it doesn't matter what your goals are, what you're feeling pressured by. That's absolutely normal. And the problem means is that we like to normalize things that are not normal on social media. We like to normalize the highlights real of people's lives because they think that's what their life's like. Their life isn't like that. I've been doing content online for 10 years and I will know a lot of these people and that is not what their lives are like all the time. They may look like they're having a great time but they're also sitting in their bedroom by themselves at 10 o'clock at night editing their videos of them being on their jet ski and they're swimming pool and doing all this kind of stuff like it's not it's not they still have to work and they still have to do stuff and as they get bigger sure they get other people to do that for them but that's few and far between people that are that grow at that rate. Yeah I think the dangerous thing that you have is this virality on social media now whereby absolutely everything that you're doing gives you constant analytics and feedback so somebody turns around and does something or creates a piece of content puts up a topless photo or a chick will film a video of her ass or something like that and it goes really well unfortunately you will look at that and go I need to repeat that again and it's so so easy you'll see these I see these rhythms with people all the time where they create the content that they want to for a few months and then they realize that actually it's not getting the same engagement that it used to they'll then go back to the old formula of I'm going to do something really relatable now and I'm going to tell everybody how much I'm struggling with my body you might be struggling with it but what you actually want is engagement and that's the thing where there's you see it from the other side luckily for us because we've been doing it for so long where people are constantly trying to draw their audience in and get the feedback that they need which is likes comments engagements and followers rather than just putting out content that they enjoy and I didn't and I realized now like I've been training for the last four or five months for this this last challenge I didn't really care what I shared and what I didn't I was just turning around and putting bits and pieces up and the funny thing is now it's had more feedback more inspiration to people it's been it's grown and gone so much further and wider and I haven't had one thought of I need to edit this like this I need to look at it like that I need to put a filter on it for this because it's just real life and I think it's a really scary prospect to get to on social media when you get to that point where you're just freely sharing content you'll notice like the most calculated content that we ever create now if you want to use that word is reels because reels get seen by a lot more people who don't follow you that's the only only thought process with our content whereas back in the day for years we had three years of having to create content that had to be the right piece of content it had to be how do you how to lose stubborn belly fat how to get six pack abs how to get lean for the summer like it had to be that rotation so we've we've been through the wash of how miserable that can actually be so now it's just a case of you know people people just aren't there yet and when they get to the point where they're comfortable with themselves they'll suddenly just start you know it'll get a lot less sexy but it will get a lot more real and I'm looking forward to that. I think that's a good thing to say is most people because they're they're they're newer to it I went to a event in the day for our buddy Sonny Webster's a launch of his mobility app and I went there and there was people at the social media which are three generations removed from when I started and I looked at it I'm like why am I here I don't know I'm here for Sonny because my friend but where do I fit in in terms of this social thing am I someone who's trying to cling on trying too hard like well that's not really my business model anymore I program and train people more then people come up to me go oh you're like an OG and I was like oh I might like this new dog for you. Should I be offended by that or should I be really happy? Where do I stand in this and I think Leon made a good point there is when he said about doing the same thing over and over because that's what gets you traction it's like living in Groundhog Day it doesn't create a good relationship but we've done it and we've done it more times than you and we've done the same thing over and over and over again hoping to replicate a result because that's what we felt that our audience wanted to see and there is a certain amount of that your audience fall into the niche that you have but you've got to make sure that you're doing it for you and it's for the right reasons because otherwise you'll just grind yourself down and quite honestly I'm very candid with this stuff as Leon is as well I don't mind telling you like one of the first things I said was I consider steroids I really don't mind talking about that but we've done it we've been through and I remember I would sit there when we first put YouTube videos up no I like three years into putting YouTube videos up maybe longer I'd put YouTube videos up and I put a lot of time and effort into them and we used to know that with the real-time stats if you topped out 301 views within the first 10 20 minutes that would be the cutoff point it wouldn't show you any more views until the next morning but if you got there in x amount of time if you got there in like six or seven minutes you know you were you were 10 20 000 views by the morning started and I would sit there and I would refresh that bastard and if it didn't get to it it would affect my mood for the rest of the day or we'll put up an evening sort of the next day you're refreshing it and I could not count I would kind of like to slash hate to see myself from like a bird's eye view or and just watch like a and just watch myself how many times I refresh that phone and how much impact that had on my life for the rest of the day but then also as well that it was value you know the thing is is there was a point where we would like John would spend like a vlog which would be it's probably the simplest way to edit is like put chop in a vlog together you'd spend like 12 14 hours editing a vlog putting different creations on learning like videographer and cinematic tools to be able to add something in because for a long while it felt like well that was a level that that got to so now we need to go to this level to this level but what it was actually was was happening was the fact that we were just in this transition point where we'd shifted gear and gone into this new zone and our audience were changing because even now we've got what nearly half a million people on youtube half of those people don't give a flying one what we're doing now they're just there and you just you arrive at this point where you realize that you're not trying to constantly bring all of your audience in to every single piece of content you're doing you're just going back to we've gone full circle we're back in day one where we're just chucking content out and we're like take it or leave it you know and that's that that's that that's the place to arrive at yeah yeah and i we it's that is that because you guys have got like a more security and confidence in your business model now whereas before when you were trying to build engagement and audience people to speak to you did you feel like you had to play more to the wind or the desires of people whereas now you're actually you've taken business a bit more seriously so you've got more free there's a turning point for us and Leon and i will both tell you exactly when that was so for when to be finished pt we were all i was a carpenter before Leon was a roof tyler we were used to being in control of our money you do a job you get paid we did about a year's worth of work and you start working with big brands it was it was a good year yeah so we were basically sorry for we were owed a year's worth of money which was a modest amount of money for us and it hadn't been paid Leon had to was at the point where he needed to redo his remortgage for his house and we were in the position we had to go look we've got this much money outstanding substantial amount of money to our agents like where is it because we in any end we got a forward from them of money that we were owed so Leon was able to sort his mortgage out in the way that needed to do it and i was saving for a deposit for a house that's like we can never ever be in that position again where all our business cards are in someone else's hands you can you can not be there you cannot have your business model based on social media because if job stop coming in because it gets more saturated what are you going to do and if we're honest that's not why we got into it it's just what we fell into and became comfortable because the money was good but that's only finite they only last so long and then we were like why don't we go back to our passions because this isn't fulfilling a lot of the time sure you go around the world and you meet famous people i'm not going to name drop because i don't really give a shit about famous people but actually the only famous person the one that i really love is Jamie Oliver because he is a dude he is a dude like we like we went when we went to film with him he the first thing he does is like gives you a hug and then just starts taking a piss out of you and i'm like right yeah we're besties so yeah like you get to meet these people and and it's great but it's not none of that's real life you don't few and far between do you make lasting friendships or even create a friendship with these people they're normally facilitated by a third party whether it's a brand that you're both sponsored by so yeah i think you just you have to be true to yourself and sure you get swept up into it's great you get to do all this traveling you get to do all this stuff but it's really important you come back home and what i mean by that is you come back to what your passion is because our passion is helping people and there'll always be that and no matter what i do in my life it will be around helping people yeah i think it was a huge shift when we created our business alongside youtube opposed to youtube being the thing that that's where like now in the nicest possible way i'm like do i want to film today if i don't want to film i'm not going to film and there was a lot more pressure to film and i think in some ways the content that goes out now is better because some because back then we used to live to this you know like it used to be like a tv schedule it had to be monday thursday sunday monday thursday sunday so sometimes you'd try and scrape around to get a video together just because you could get some content up but what you realize is that ends up being more damaging than not uploading at all because it's content that doesn't really make sense you've not really thought about it you're not really enjoying the process so i'd say that the only thing that's really changed is the fact that we now get to decide when we want to create something and yes you know the business model is there and everything and it works really really well which is great but yeah i think youtube's just now a choice you can't spend 10 years didn't feel like a choice reinventing a way to show people how to lose belly fat how like it's it's it's one two videos at max you can't just keep going this is the thing i'll go back and do what did well for us how can you reinvent that video once a week for 10 you can't not without going absolutely back shit crazy it's just not going to happen so you have to diversify and it got to a point where like look our audience are going to come with us or they're not but i'm not going to dictate my life around what they want to see they can come with us or they can't and at the end of the day we'll just go to whatever the next thing appears for us um yeah what i'm what i'm hearing from from both of you throughout that is uh just a really nice message for literally everyone regardless of where you're out and what you're doing at all like everyone that's listening of and some of it i'm sure will be just like as we get older in terms of our maturity in our self our self worth and our self acceptance but i'm hearing that you you gave yourself permission to go i'm gonna be me and this and here it is this is me this is me doing nothing not trying to be trying to be what you want me to be or be what i think someone wants me to be to make this video go about it's just like here it is and like leon say you saying that you're just like the freedom that gives you it's just yeah it's just wicked to to hear and also like you can tell when you say it you can see it you can when you're talking about the old times when you were like you know compared to saying well now i just took it out there and it's like this is me and like actually what's cool is that those people that then it resonates with like they go yeah this is great and everyone's just being real and the more people like yourselves that are just being real in the real world is it just gives permission for other people to do the same yeah i think you have you have to ask yourself and you have to have a definition for what wealth is to you and i had this conversation with sonny and a few people at this thing that i'll what you're doing now and i explained to them and be like wow i've never thought of that or i'm how have you got to that point at this age um a lot of that through therapy and stuff like that i've done for a long time which has been amazing um but you have to dictate what wealth is to you wealth to me and leon is time with the family and health it's not money it's money's not our driving factor so sure could we do more hours and do more things yes but what do we lose we do that we lose the top of our list time there's always a scale isn't it it's always it's always a banner so yes we do things that we enjoy and we do certain amount of stuff but at the same time everything is to facilitate partly security because you've got to have that but time with with our kids and with our lives because you only get that once yeah and i remember we're our agents worst nightmare for like two or three years because you'd go in for the meeting the annual meeting of her which is all again it's all just numbers great and they're talking about how much you earn how much you turn down and what the projection is for the next year and we'd sit there and we're turning down 65 70 percent of the work that was coming in but like well what the hell am i going to do with some blusher you know i don't care about that you know it's like there's there's so many there was on your face yeah years and years of opportunity and there still is opportunity that comes in now which is amazing but one of the things that we were an absolute nightmare for in some ways for those guys is the fact that we weren't i'm not going to do a job just because it pays i'm like if i haven't got a story to tell if i can't make somebody laugh if i can't give them some value or some education out of it it's just not going to work and also as well every time you do these ads that don't really add any value to people you're ruining your credibility as well so because of that you know that's that just that just shows you know one of the main reasons i think we're still here is because we haven't sold out a million times to the to the wrong brands i think a good way to define that leon is we were personal trainers and health coaches who discovered and became part of youtube we weren't youtubers who wanted to do health and fitness yeah so we had our principles we had our skills we had our outlines before and we knew what worked and didn't work with clients so they were non-negotiable unbudgable things and we've turned down some pretty amazing stuff in the past because it goes against our values and that's never going to change um and our values haven't changed because it's integral to who we who we are as people um that's a good point we should really film that mars bar content oh yeah shit yeah better than that actually the first ever job we got offered we hadn't made a penny out of youtube we didn't know you could really we just they just gave you a cpm once you hit 10 000 followers you've made you got paid click per thousand which is a certain like a penny per thousand people that views at a certain amount of time of your video and i think it was mars or snickers that came in and they offered us 15 grand to do a video and we were personal trainers doing okay actually but working every hour under the sun 15 grand a lot we're like how many hours of pg is that we like there's like a lot of hours it's amazing how many miles bars could i buy with 15 grand yeah it's like this is amazing but we can't do it and we turn it down we were both just like and we also were okay about it and that was when we thought okay we're doing so and that was the president precedent for how we held ourselves and it felt good to turn that down yes do i eat mars bars yes do i eat mars don't always yes do i promote them no but am i honest about eating them yes there's a big big difference and it's about being clear with how that sits for you yeah nice love it well as you could probably do another 45 minutes and i think we'll maybe save that for another day but thank you so much for coming on and just yeah like being real i think it's such a refreshing voice to hear for voices to hear from people who have been there put the skin in the game come through the other side of it and the thing that comes out to me is you guys just see really content where you're at and that is wealth right if you can if you can find contentment and happiness enjoying what you're doing then the rest of the material stuff is less important but i think you've got to go through the middle a little bit you've got to promise got to go there try and experience it to know that it's not actually what it's packaged up to be yeah to come out it's not always it's not always easy as well being content because on the other flip side now of am i doing enough should i be doing more so it's about managing that at the same time i don't want to pretend like oh yeah i've got everything sorted and i'm all my lines and my induction aligned they're not they're just better than they were before yeah i think for me as well it's important they're right because you i was gonna say i think in terms of when we're talking about the wealth wealth factor as well i will say now that back in the day i remember when we got our first big check one thing that i always wanted to buy myself was a nice watch and i remember buying that watch and i thought for two or three years afterwards i was like oh i'm gonna really regret that because i've just spunked a load of money on something material but i'll be honest that that still has so much value to me 10 years later because it was a statement it was a statement it was it was attached to a moment in time and it and there's there is still there is still value in material things but the difference is is when they have different layers attached to them and they come with you know a lot more emotion rather than just oh i'm going to go and buy this because it's filling a whole emotionally then you know i still think they have their worth and value it's just a case of you know context whereas back in the day you know we're seeing people going and buying lambos and and penthouse suites and stuff like that and i'm like it's because you're trying to encourage people to come and hang out with you because you've got no friends you know it was obviously it wasn't about the watch the reason it means to me is because it's what the watch what that watch stands for yeah represented you know and that's the thing is i i definitely wouldn't sit here and say that i'm not materialistic but the difference is is i'm a lot more calculated with the material purchases that i have nowadays rather than just buying a new pair of shoes because i'll get a nice comment about them whereas now i'm going to buy new pair of shoes because i want them i've got to i've got to ask just like my one final question um leon you've done a hundred 250 k ultra in shlanka what like last week yes flew home it was last monday through friday i flew home sunday so how many days was how many days was the run so uh it was scheduled five days back to back and you average you camp in the jungle you're self-sufficient in terms of the fact that you live off the hydrated meals you have your health your strategy with you and everything like that and it just gets transferred to each each camp and you average 50 k a day so anyone out there who normally talks in marathons a marathon is 42 k so you average 50 but some days were like 40 44 56 there was like a 65 that was supposed to be in there but unfortunately that got cancelled and then there's like another 45 so you're averaging basically a marathon a day for the week um and it was amazing like i'm somebody who absolutely loves running anyway but i was like a 10 5k runner before this so it's not like i just walked up to it i ran my first put it this way i ran my first marathon time during training so i'd done like the 50k but i couldn't tell you what my marathon was because i was doing the 50s he's also been very modest it was his first ever ultra-mountain and he came to third out of 52 people yeah wow yeah so where was that Sri Lanka uh well he came third now in that thing yeah yeah so the course stuff obviously i massively exceeded my own expectations and i've just been because i came third i've been offered a spot to the world here's some more punishment welcome the world championship qualifiers in Slovenia which i will be turning down which is in june not because i don't want to do the running i have i must admit i would there's 100 of me that says i will do another one of these um because you know when you're doing these things from the outside perspective you see physical output and you see miles or you see kilometers and it's like what the hell are you doing this for but from just the small conversations that i've had like with John we did a podcast yesterday talking about it a little bit deeper the amount these challenges offer mentally and personally is indescribable you you you you you just can't it's one of those things when people say you can't understand unless you've done it like when i was when there was moments where i was running where you know you having this pure realization that you can't silence the voice the thing is everyone says oh the voice is there sometimes of doubt sometimes it says to support you sometimes it's not there at all the thing that i realized is it's always there it's a case of how you use it and mold it to help you and support you rather than trying to constantly silence it and i'm like i've now almost it sounds really strange but i've almost got more respect in some ways for paranoid schizophrenics and people talking to themselves on the streets i'm like they might even be more awake than what i am because they're all they're doing is sharing their voice outwardly you know it's like there is this there's this level of conversation and murmuring that's always there and you know there's moments where i may have looked like an absolute mentalist running down the world the road going yeah let's fucking go on yeah you know i am doing it we are getting it done i don't know if i should stop or and it's like you realize that this voice is really just there to try and seek comfort in the situation you know this inner in a dialogue is anxiety 101 that's all it is and when you you reach these moments where you're at the darkest your lowest point you're having this conversation back and forth and you realize that it's actually your greatest tool and it was it was unbelievable that it was a great experience so i'm actually that's exactly what i'm listening to right now but yeah it was it was a great challenge um physically it was great you know i thought that i wanted just a medal out of it and all the rest of it and finish it which which i got those which was great but for me it was there's moments that happen throughout that which were character building they they showed me levels of who i was which i didn't really know that i had physically and mentally and emotionally and then you know netflix movies and really sick yeah it was sick um and then you know i come back and i get that another another level of pride where i haven't injured myself i'm not completely broken my knees haven't exploded i i've started training again and i ran again today you know and it's it's things like that you get constant positive reinforcement and all it does is you know it comes back and it breeds more confidence and self-belief which you know we could all do with a bit more well i've got a fun little run for you in september if you fancy it around angle see in wales why not 135 miles in three days easy for you it's shorter it's about half the distance what is it a ragnarilla age though um so it's uh the coastal path around angle see um it's 135 miles yeah in three in three days it's a bit weird in that they're like first day and last day are like 35 miles something and then the middle day is like 70 lovely yeah why have you done it like that can't we can't we just make it even that's the way that they do it and they always they always put something in there just there's a bit of a sickness so but yeah now i'm up for it why not yeah okay i'll send you some i'll send you some details i'll send you what i'll send you have you heard of the dragon's back race i feel like i have heard of that um but i don't know much about it are they claim it's like the watch the documentary they claim it's like the hardest in the world but obviously it's like it's the Welsh claiming that they're there but um anyway it's from the north of Wales to the south Wales so from Conway to Cardiff across all the biggest peaks yeah it's mental in a week you're asking the documentary is amazing amazing there's this lady that comes like third or something and she's just like jogging in like smiling every day just like absolutely fine it's like incredible legend do you know what i'm pleased about this podcast is literally taking on the exact advice from you boys and you've you've sacked off what everyone's wants to listen to you got two exactly just be in this position leon gave me a position to be myself i don't care what you want to listen on there you go brilliant and lads thank you so much for having us on like massive respect for you guys as well and what you do and and keep on fighting the good fight as they say i appreciate it thank you boys we appreciate it thank you very much we hopefully we'll catch up again soon sounds good there we have it a fascinating conversation i'm just going away like uplifted um feel like i just want to yeah go and just be be more us like how much of us can we be um i just think that's just already i think you are generally quite authentic online already you do a good job of that yeah i'm not i don't i don't think i don't think that we're not authentic i just think the whole like oh yeah if like yeah like that's why that's what i want to do it's like let's go and do that whatever that whatever that thing is and i just hope the people listening of feeling that as well and taking giving yourself permission to like whatever those things you want to do or how you want to be like just if that's right for you then then go and do it and i think that one of the things that the boys said was you know it's not about it's not about sort of playing the game they've been there and done that and like trying to actually just the more honest we can be with ourselves the better and you know in all honesty you're probably going to think this is a five-star review on iTunes or whatever you listen to your podcast aren't you so it's probably just fair to just give that that that that honest five-star uh five-star review for the podcast there we go we're going to put our own content it doesn't matter what the people think yeah i mean it doesn't matter because we're just going to carry on doing the podcast but it does make a difference to the bottom line um anyway yeah so we hope you've enjoyed that one guys thank you massively to john and leon for coming on and uh and just yeah be an open transparent talk about things that the fitness industry needs to talk more about and also the influence of of social media and some advice from people that have been there and very much done it got the t-shirt so until next time keep exploring your physical potential with movement strength and play class dismissed