 I want to talk to Mike about, uh, the thousands of people that are dying and reports are coming out that they also ate protein bars. So do you have any comments on that quest protein, snaps, the problem, what do they sell for a billion, a billion, a billion, and you said it was 20 times their profits. That's an apparently, apparently sell your core is going to get like the same deal. So you go to, we passed on sell your core. That's one of the first people even does in the, in San Francisco and after them to five million year, you know, they, they just came out with the, uh, gummy bear BCAA. Oh yeah. That's, that's popping right now. Yeah. That's actually a very smart formula. Give something, give someone flavors that though. It's that mean gummy. That's like a texture. It's not. No, no, no. They're actually gummy bears. Oh, they're actually well. Yeah. The gummy bears. It sounds gummy bear flavor. Yeah. No, it was, it tastes like gummy bears. The cornbread. Gummy can, I just saw a gummy candy flavored pre-workout or something. Really? Flavor, you fucking idiot. Wait, do you want to make cornbread protein bars? That's a flavor. Yeah, maybe. Of course it is. A little more specific. I guess you're right. The corn bed is a flavor. Now, now we did cereal milk protein though and people were like, what kind of cereal? That's actually a good point. But it does well. Like is it cinnamon cereal? Yeah, it does. It does very well. What is, it's like cinnamon cereal though. What's been the worst product idea so far? That you've had. Yeah. Like a meal replacement weight gainer. Really? Yeah. Just like a high calorie protein shake? Yeah, basically. What do you think, why do you think it was bad? Was it the name? Was it just a small niche? Yeah, I guess it's just not much demand for it. Not as much as we thought, even though you'd think there is if you were just to poke around on the internet. Like some of these products do sell well. But you know, we had a similar experience with our vegan protein. So before we launched that, we were asking people, we were always surveying what would you like to see next in terms of products flavors. And there was a lot of hype around doing a vegan protein so much so that, you know, we were like, shit, we better order more than we normally would with a new product. And release it. And it did okay. And that's why you said there's no good reason. Is that why you sent us a bunch of free vegan protein? That was the old gross stuff that we replaced. No, but and then it continued to do well. It sold well enough to justify its existence. But that was a, it was just interesting to see how, yeah, how, well, compared to how excited people seem to be, what that comes back to again, just because people say they're excited for a product or even if you try to survey, like would you buy this, not even if it's not that blunt, but if you're trying to survey for that purpose, it doesn't necessarily translate when it comes time for people to actually buy. What's your expectations? Is this two best factors for that still like the texture and taste like that's the for the protein? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'd say it's, I mean, flavor is always number one. Anything you're drinking is, flavor is going to be number one. And then as far as protein goes, texture, mixability matters. And then, and then, and then of course the macros as well. And that's high up. People pay attention to that. What about products that you were surprised like you launched and you're like, oh, shit, I did not think that was going to do that well. Fish oil. Fish oil did really well. We were like, wow. And I mean, it's good and everybody should be getting enough omega-3s. And it's hard to do through diet alone. So it wasn't surprising that we thought it was going to sell, but it sold out within two or three weeks. And it takes like 10 to 12 weeks to get more stuff made. So we were like, good. I just read some interesting studies on EPA where they gave one to one and a half grams of EPA, which is one of the fatty acids in fish oil. They gave those to people with mild depression or anxiety, kind of mental issues. And it was actually remarkably effective, especially at the mild forms of depression, which is insane. I think it's the anti-inflammatory effects of the fish oil. So I do cod liver oil, which is lower in EPA, but I do it for the vitamin D, but now I'm doing more of the fish oil. I actually had one of your Triton. Triton, is that my saying right? Triton. Triton, yeah. Going back to naming. Yeah, what were you- Steak. I feel like- Stupid, stupid. It was mythological creature. Yeah, were you reading comic books or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I locked myself into this fucking theme, and now I'm like, what are we gonna- And I have to change the name of Thrive, for example, because there's a company that has a number of trademarks. They're two word trademarks, so I didn't think it would really matter, but they're pretty annoying about it. So now, you know, what am I gonna name Thrive? Wolverine, dude. What am I gonna name Thrive? Regenerator. Guys in the office are so bad at it, and they're like, oh, what about Plant Plus? I'm like, shut up. Have you thought about surveying your audience and seeing if you do like a competition or something out of it? That would be kind of- Naming is tough. Like, coming up with the ideas, surveying with names works great. When I have, all right, here are 10 options, or like seven options, whatever. On a scale of one to five, one being I hate it, five being I love it, that's actually very useful, but asking people for ideas usually isn't, because it's hard, and you get trolled. I think it was in the UK where they actually had a ship, and they said, we will let the audience, we will let the community- That was in Scotland. Was it Scotland? Scotland, yeah, I love the Scotland. And it was the HMS. You know what they named it? Boaty McBoatface. Boaty McBoaterface, Boaty McBoatface. What? And it was like a very prestigious boat. Yeah, England, like. I didn't know this. Boaty McBoatface. They had to because they had to- That means that like Reddit learned about that or something. Yeah. It's like when those internet polls just get swarmed by trolls. Troll the shit out of them. Yeah, I love it. What's your best seller product? What's your best selling product? Free workout. It's your pulse. Yeah. By far. Yeah. That's the best. Is that the best? Because in the 90s, and when I was deep in supplements in the 90s in the early 2000s, weight gainers were actually pretty big. I remember myself. They were really big. I don't remember which one I would use, but it was like 1,000 calories per serving or something. Well, there was Gainers Fuel, which was twin lab, MegaMass 2000, and then they went to MegaMass 4000. All they did was make- Put more sugar. Mega, MegaMass. It was more scoops. Do you know how big the scoop was for MegaMass 4? It was like a laundry detergent scoop. It was like this. It was like four servings. A shovel, like a little trowel. You turn on the blender, and the blender would break almost because it would be like- You'd be like, oh, wow. This is like plaster of paint. Choke it down. Concrete. Yeah. But that market, I don't think it's huge at all anymore. Then the Prima workout market really took off. I think Gaspari was one of the big ones at first. The Super Pump 250 kind of took that market. I remember that product. And that, so that market's still massive. Huge. Still. Yeah. Yeah, one of the top ones. I mean, generally for, I'd say for most sports nutrition companies, they're probably making most of their money off of their pre-workouts. Now- Fat loss products as well. Now, one thing I like about you is that you do a very good job of not putting bullshit ingredients in your, even though they're popular, because there's a lot of ingredients that are popular, that a lot of people, there's a lot of hype. And if you wanted to, you could sell it and make a lot of money, but you tend to never, you never put stuff like that in your products. What are some bullshit pre-workout ingredients that are just common that people probably are wasting your time taking? Niacin. Um, you see value. He loves niacin. Yeah. I mean, I'm biased. I take a gram of niacin. Because I'm weird. But there's no, there's no like pre-workout profit. No, no, no. I mean, you know, actually, you might, you might get slightly better pumps. I mean, you're going to look like you have a disease. Because, but if you don't care about that, yeah, yeah. Yeah. What about arginine? Yeah, it's a good example of citrulline is just better, period. Yeah. Like it turns into arginine in the body, but arginine is just poorly absorbed. So using it, it's just cheap. And a lot of people have heard of it. So, and they think maybe it's good. So if they're looking at a label, and that's a lot of the, a lot of the, the shenanigans around pre-workouts, I guess maybe supplementation in general, is it's either ingredients that were once popular. So people recognize them. Yeah, exactly. Oh, then it'll sulfate. Yeah, it's kind of a marketing thing or an advertising thing, right? Like a big, one of the big purposes of advertising is just to increase the exposure to something so people, they feel like when they see it, they're like, oh, that sounds familiar. Or when they finally think of, I want something, what are they thinking of first? What's most familiar to them? And they also tend to cycle back into the lexicon. Like remember chromium picollinate? You guys remember that? Yeah. That was like a big like, oh, it gets your body to respond to insulin better or whatever. Vanityl sulfate. That does the same. I guarantee there'll be a product coming out at some point that'll both have chromium picollinate and vanityl sulfate. And they'll call it something like a, you know, carb reshutting or some. Matrix. Yeah, something like that. 100%. But yeah, other, other ingredients trying to think, what are- What about beetroot? I like beetroot. It's got the studies that support, really supportive. We use betine, which I prefer because that's really, I mean you just have to make sure it's a standardized, that's really what you want. Okay. You know what I mean? From the beetroot. So you can use beetroot powder, but you're going to have to then, you, the, the serving size is going to get larger. Whereas there, you know, I'd rather just get the exact, like what's, what's the molecule we're really after. Right. Norveline is kind of popular, but I don't really see a good use for it. Yeah. What about all the, the carb blocker supplements that are out right now? Bullshit. Yeah, total bullshit. Total bullshit. Right, right. What is it in there that there is- Carbon fat blockers. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I wrote. Yeah, some of them are like- Podcast on those in particular, because I get asked about those and why I don't sell them and yeah, because they don't work. No, they're a complete waste. I mean, there are, there are products you can take that some studies will show maybe it increases insulin sensitivity a little bit, but is that going to make you lose fat? No. And what are the effects? How strong are they? Not strong. Yeah. And then also- So how is it going to affect nutrient absorption? It just doesn't make, just doesn't make sense. No. And then they have binders. So these are supplements that you'll take that will bind to food and then you'll pass it. And therefore they'll be like, you get no calories because it makes you poop it out and it doesn't work either. It's not kind of how it works. So that's, yeah. What about the heavy, heavy stimulants that your pre-workout is just caffeine? Yeah. I've seen pre-workouts that have like- Every- Everything's a stimulant that you can possibly find. Yeah, what's the- I just came across one recently I forget the name of the company, but it was- Probably something like Rage or something like that. I mean, the formulation was so over the top. It was as if someone who doesn't really know what they're doing just cruised examine and picked every possible thing that anyone, that could, you could ever possibly want before a workout and just put them all in there. And yeah, it was a ton of stimulants. It was, it was, let's see, there was caffeine, there was tiacrine, there was yo-him-bean, there was Sinephrine. I'm forgetting one or two others. It was- Cocoa leaves. Yeah, I don't know. But that's not for me. I don't like the super high stem. There probably is a small market for- The super tolerant. Yeah, just very high stem. But I would argue that it's a growing market because you got to think about it. A lot of these people are, because we didn't, they weren't this crazy when we were younger. And- Well, we had speed stack. That was some shit. Yeah. But it wasn't popular. And I also had to, I worked my way up to have them fucking four of those a day, right? So- You worked hard. So I would think there's a lot of- What's the speed stack? I got to hear those, too. You know, it was- It was a fedric caffeine aspirin. But it was in a bottle. It was American bodybuilding and it sold in gyms. Okay. And you could literally- I mean, it was 25 milligrams of ephedra alkaloids, 250 milligrams of caffeine. Okay. Or 300. 300 milligrams of caffeine. No, it was 250. It was a 250. Ripped fuel was a lighter one. No, then there was Xtreme. Yeah, Xtreme had the 300. That's right. So 250, 25 of ephedra alkaloids. And then white willow bark was in there, which is, you know- I used to drive down to LA. We had a connection- And you were doing four a day. Four a day. I mean, I worked up to that. So that's my point. My point is that there's probably a lot of kids- I'm pretty sure I got a tumor from it. That I think- Yeah, I got chestnut. I did get a chestnut. He did get a tumor. Totally blame Adam for it, so. No. That's just another story. Some of his best years of production, though. That's true. I was in the company- I got some nicotine on top of it. Twice. Back to back. So my theory, though, is that there's a lot of kids that are, you know, 17, 18, 19, getting into the gym. And that's- Now it's just like, hey, pre-workout. Everybody takes a pre-workout. And so if you're starting that early at starting the 250, 300, 400 milligram pre-workouts, and you also love Starbucks coffee, a lot of this stuff didn't exist when we were kids. I didn't at Starbucks. They weren't Starbucks in every corner. There wasn't pre-workouts going on. So I can imagine there's gonna be a growing market for these fucking 700 milligram caffeine pre-workouts with all the stim in it because everyone's gonna be so adapted. Everybody's so adapted, yeah. That's a good point. When we were kids, coffee, old people drank coffee. Nobody had coffee. Now everybody drinks coffee. In fact, I was- Remember that study I pulled up? I think cardiac arrest is spiking among kids. And it's probably- I predict I think it's because of the caffeine because they're going and getting these big lattes and stuff, which- Energy drinks are probably more of a thing. Oh yeah, even that too, right? With younger kids. Yeah, yeah. Red Bulls, I mean, there's some of the rock stars now. Yeah, the rock stars are pushing like 350. Monsters, new shit. What is it, rain? Yeah, just like bang. That's the off-brand of bang, right? What do you think of that? Yeah, what do you think? Yeah, about that whole- Yeah, what do you think about buying cotton candy? Well, I mean, he's getting- He's getting- Flavor. Yeah, yeah, smart. Think about that. Cotton, what does that mean? I guess cotton candy actually- Is cotton candy just one flavor? I can't even remember the last time I had cotton candy. Can you get flavors of cotton candy? It's a distinctive flavor, though. There's a traditional cotton candy flavor. Okay, so does that make sense then? Which is pink. Okay, see, gummy bear does not make sense. Yeah, I guess cotton candy doesn't. That does it. I don't know, whatever. They're getting sued for their super creatine. That's the one first thing I was like, super creatine, okay. That's bang, right? Yeah, there's like no creatine in there. Yeah, that's the problem, right? Oh, that's why they're getting sued? Yeah, and it's supposed to have BCAAs. So I guess the pitch, right, is that it's kind of a sports nutrition energy drink, right? Because it's super creatine and BCAAs, but I guess they're getting sued because it's not- I guess there's like none of it in. Yeah. How bad shocker- Trace amounts, right? Mike, how bad is the supplement- I mean, we have our ideas, but how bad is the supplement space for just putting- Shenanigans. Yeah, just shenanigans like that. It's the worst. Actually, a part of me is ashamed to even be in the industry. Really? You're the shining light though, right? It's, well, yeah, it's just so bad. The industry is so bad. And you know, it's like a first world complaint, but so I've achieved some level of success in the space, and but I've met a number of people, and I'll meet people like you guys who I like, and there are definitely good people in the industry, but in the supplement industry in particular, a lot of the people that I've met are just people who run these companies that do quite well. I just have no respect for them. I just can't respect them because of how fraudulent their entire existence is. And so, and it's hard for me to then be like, well, they're still good people though. Like, yeah, but are they? So this is how I felt about the marijuana space when I was in that. And that's kind of what made me leave. They got to a point where I just didn't like my peers. I didn't like the people that I was surrounded with because I get lumped into that. Yeah, totally. I got lumped into that category and that's what kind of made me leave. Because of that, do you ever see yourself potentially growing legion to a point and selling off and walking away from it? Yeah, I mean, I could see that. It would have to be an amount of money, like put a real number to it. It'd have to be probably no less than $30 million in more likely north of $50 million. So it'd be amount of money where I'm like, cool, I don't have to care about money anymore. But at the same time, I wouldn't, I think of George Lucas where, do you remember this comment he made that he likened selling Star Wars to Disney to selling his kids to white slavers? Oh no, did he say that? Yeah, he said he had to like apologize after. And I was like, I'm fucking George Lucas, I don't care. He's gangster now. And so I'd want to, yeah, exactly. I wouldn't want that to happen. I wouldn't want it. Someone to bastardize you. Yeah, gut the brand. You wouldn't sell that. That'd be the first thing. Yeah. Did you read that 20 times? Eve it up. Yeah. I don't know, would I? But no, where they would come in and just go, cool. So step one, let's get that cost of goods. So let's cut that in half. That'd be the first thing to do. I mean, if you're just like a mercenary kind of businessman, you'd look at my cost of goods rides at like 50 to 60% of revenue, which is really stupid from a business perspective. Like business savvy people, I've spoken to whatever, they see that and they're like, you're really bad at this. You know that, right? But what they don't understand is, when I explain, they go, okay, I get it, is you can't have outstanding margins and outstanding products if you're in the southern space. You can't, you can choose one or the other. And most people in the supplement industry choose outstanding margins and that means shit products. I mean, to put real math to it, it means that on average, you can spend maybe four or five dollars per product and you cannot make a good anything for four to five dollars. Maybe you could like sell some vitamin C pills or vitamin D pills or something seriously. But for a pre-workout, I mean, my pre-workout costs me and we sell a lot too. So I'm well beyond the point of diminishing returns as far as economy of scale goes. And it costs me about $15 per bottle landed like ready to sell. My protein costs me close to $20 a bottle. My greens supplement costs me close to $20 a bottle. It's expensive if you want to make good stuff. So you could imagine if I were to take pulse and if you look at it from a business perspective. Yeah, what are some of the easiest ways that people cut costs or make these, or that? Well, they pick the stuff that matters the most or is the most expensive. They pixie dust or they put them in. We're just don't even put it in there at all. Right, you say they do. No one checks. Some people do. But you have a lot of people, you have when you look at any market, you have varying levels of sophistication. And so you always, every market has unsophisticated consumers. And that's not to say stupid. It's more along the lines of ignorant where they just don't know. And we've all been there in anything that we've gotten into at all that were in the beginning. Yeah, I was a very unsophisticated supplement consumer myself. And so you can cater, I would say, pander to that level of the market. And that's where you have the most bullshit is selling to those people. And that's also generally the largest segment of any market too. So that's where you can just blatantly lie to people and have awful formulations that if anybody knew anything and just looked at the label, they'd be like, this product is garbage. But in the beginning, as many people get into, in this case, fitness, they don't, they haven't taken the time to really educate themselves yet. So what it comes down to is then, so let's say you have somebody who's new and to fitness, they never, they have 30 pounds to lose. So let's say that's the number in their mind and they want to take a fat burner. Because they're like, I don't know, people take fat burners, right? These things, don't they help you lose fat faster? And so you have me, and this is gonna, it's coming to a question that we're gonna get to, where I'm saying this product will help you burn maybe an extra 150 calories per day. Let me explain why that matters. It's not gonna, it's not, this will help move the needle, but you have to also know what you're doing with your diet and your exercise. And if you do everything right and you take this product, you can lose maybe an extra half a pound of fat per week. And I can sexify that up a little bit and make it a little bit better in terms of marketing persuasion, but there's that pitch versus some dickhead who's like, this pill will help you lose 20 pounds in 30 days to take it every day. Yeah, don't change your diet, don't do anything else. Yeah, so I understand where people oftentimes, in the beginning, they're like, what do I have to lose? It's 30 bucks, I'm just gonna try the, it sounds too good to be true, but who knows? I don't know anything about this. And- Well, here's one thing that we've noticed, just as trainers, the sophistication of the fitness audience seems to be getting better. Now it's nowhere near where it needs to go. I totally agree. But when I first started training people 20 years ago, I had, a majority of my time, I had to convince women to lift weights. I had to be able to talk to them about why lifting weights was a good idea, why they're not gonna wake up tomorrow looking like- Yeah, all that stuff. Today, the questions are more complex. They're better. People seem to know more. I see people squatting and deadlifting. Never, people never squatted and deadlifting the gyms, ever. I rarely did in the beginning for the first seven years. Right, right, right. I think I squatted on the Smith machine every once in a while. Wow. I hadn't deadlifted once in like my first seven years. Wow, yeah, right. I was the same way too. Yeah, and I mean that was common, right? Well, yeah, back then it was you would- I mean, deadlift, when you buy a bodybuilding magazine, none of them told. No, and you would lump that into powerlifting. And I didn't want to be a powerlifter. I identified more with somebody who was a bodybuilder in a muscle fitness magazine and so- And you just did what they did. Yeah. So the sophistication, for us in our experience, seems to be going up. Are you seeing that as well with the supplement consumer? Are they becoming more sophisticated? I would say yes. I mean, my brand kind of pre-selects for more sophisticated people. That's true. A little bit of a biasser. Many people, yeah, absolutely. Many people find Legion and just find me via articles, podcasts, books. So these are people who are actively educating themselves. And so if looking at it like the demographics skew, I have more probably 30-year-olds, 30s-year-olds than teenagers. I have a lot of college-educated people who follow me. But in general, I do think probably thanks to- I think social media has probably contributed to the proliferation of good information. Bad information as well, but good information. So it is easier where people can just fire up Instagram. And if they're following good people, they actually can start learning useful things very easily and quickly. And I'd also like to think that what I've done, I've sold a lot of books. I've in between, now it's just one website, between my two websites, it's probably over 40 million visits to those websites. All told since the beginning. And so there are other people like me, like you guys out there spreading good information. So I think in general, yeah, there are more and more informed people now than- It seems like it definitely- Yeah, just because it's easier to access good information. When we first found you, this was a long time ago, Doug and I, we had put together maps at Nibolic, and we found you because we were impressed with your content and your email marketing. And we said, oh, look at this guy. And I looked at your information and I'm like, okay, this guy knows what he's talking about, which is rare, very rare. I was fully ready to read and be like, this guy's an idiot. But you actually had decent information, but you were never a trainer. How did you learn all this? Did you just dive in deep and try and look at the evidence? Like what brought you to learning about, you know, how to exercise properly? What are the most important exercises? Like all the solid basics that you communicate so well. I mean, it was just a self-education project, really. I mean, I started lifting as a teenager, because I grew up playing hockey. And then when I stopped playing hockey, I wanted to do something to remain active. And I was also 17. And I was like, eh, girls like muscles. I'll just get some muscles, I guess. Because hockey, you didn't, that's not, I wasn't lifting in hockey. You just play a lot of hockey. Even though you were a virgin until you were married. I wish, that made me even weirder. Okay, I totally guessed right there. That's a good guess though. I've only had sex with one person. So, but I wasn't. Okay, so there you go. I mean, we didn't wait until marriage. So yeah, it's still strange. Yeah, thank you for the qualities. Yeah, yeah. No, so got into lifting for that reason. And just did what most guys, even most people did at that. You know, just buy some magazines and gather a couple of friends and just start messing around. And did that for a while and came to then just like it as an activity. And as, you know, just something that became a normal just thing that I did. And eventually though, I was like, okay, I'm, if I'm going to put the amount of time that I'm putting into it, I might as well actually educate myself. And I know I could be getting more out of this time and out of this effort. And then that's when I was decided to actually apply myself, I guess, to it. Where did you get your information? And what year was this? What year is this? So this was probably seven or eight years ago. Okay. And on the training side of things. Well, let's see. So on the diet side of things, the first just bit of random luck. It was good information that pointed me in the right direction was I met this bodybuilder powerlifting guy who at the time, I wasn't savvy about steroid use and how to spot it. And he claimed he's natural now. I mean, look back, that's a joke. But, you know, he was the first guy to turn me on to energy balance and macronutrient balance. And so he was prepping for a bodybuilding show at the time, super shredded at this point. He's probably a couple of weeks out, right? It looked ridiculous. And I was just like, how, you know? And he was like, oh, how much do you weigh? What do you want to do? Okay, eat whatever it was, 2,300 calories a day. Eat this much protein. So many carbs, this much fat. And that's it. That's all you need to do if you want to get lean. Because at that time, I was maybe 15% body fat or something. And I'd never really been lower. Never really cared about my body fat. But I was at that point, I was looking at him. I was like, what are you doing? You know what I mean? And so of course, initially I was like, what do you mean, what carbs for example do? What about sugar? What about complex carbs versus simple carbs? What about when I'm eating carbs? Should I not be eating carbs? Just all the stupid things I had heard over the years. He's like, I don't care about any of that. I don't care. Just follow those numbers. And I was like, okay. And did it. And then that's when I got pretty lean for the first time. And so I thought that was like, that was, you know, a revelation. Anybody you remember that first? We were like, it's actually this simple. And so that then turned me on to wanting to learn a bit more of why did this work, right? So then learning about energy balance, which for that, it was just a matter of going to the scientific literature. You don't, there's, at this point now, there are really just great research reviews. You don't even have to go too deep into the rabbit hole because people have already done the work for you, basically between meta-analyses and research reviews that are out there. And in particularly now, like Eric Helms, and I don't think he did it alone. I think there were Alan Aragon might have been it. There were a few people, you can find a great review of bodybuilding nutrition, which gives you all the basics that you need. There are the practical fundamentals. And so that was pretty easy. Nutrition is not very complicated. And you go beyond that and then you learn a bit about of why does, why do food choices matter? Because they do matter. They do matter for the quality of your diet and for your health. The complexities in the psychology behind the nutrition. The nuts and bolts is basic. Yes. But that was the first thing. That's the first thing that I think anybody needs to learn is just the nuts and bolts. Yes, but it gets totally clouded with a bunch of crazy. What about on the training side? Yeah, that was your first aha moment, right? As a kid getting into fitness. This is actually a fun discussion to have because I love sharing this on the show because there's, I can recall, multiple like aha or dub moments. Like why was I not doing this before? So that was the first one nutritionally. Do you remember like what the next like aha for you was? Absolutely. Yeah. So the same guy on the training side of things. So I saw with his diet advice and so I was asking him, what would you recommend that I do in the gym? And so he turned me on to something called Max OT and I don't know if you ever came across. Wow, that sounds familiar. Why do I know that? Old school, I forget the name of the guy who it was, it was like a PDF booklet. Okay. Basically, like a PDF e-book that I printed out. And what worked about it is it emphasized heavier weightlifting whereas in the past, I would do a lot of work in the range of maybe 50 to 60% of one rep max and more and more emphasizing. The pump. Yeah, the pump and just doing a bunch of reps and no real systematic way of progressing and no very heavy weightlifting. Nothing in the range of 80 to 90 or let's say 85 to maybe 95% of one rep max. And so Max OT was just emphasizing about 80 to 85% of one rep max compound exercises. That was the first where just explaining the importance of increasing whole body strength and using squat, deadlift, using pressing to do that. It's sure you can do accessories, you can do isolation work, but if that's all you're doing, you're just not going to get very far. You're missing out. Do you remember when you started doing it, like the response that you're body? Absolutely. I was amazed. I mean, I actually got strong for the first time really and I mean, I have pictures I've shown many times on my website mostly, but I've posted them on Instagram as well. They just kind of showed the before and after of, okay, here's me after seven years. I had gained maybe 30 pounds of muscle in seven years and that's maybe being generous. It might have been closer to 25. It's kind of hard to tell exactly because of body fat levels and so forth. And then here's me a few years later of after I learned how to diet and after I learned how to train and Max was the beginning from there and moved on to rip a toe stuff. I found starting strength. I was going to ask you about how you got connected to him. Was that early on you read his book and then you had him on the podcast? Yeah, I've had him on a number of times. Funny dude, I love talking to him. He's a character, yeah. He gives no fucks. And so, yeah, I actually was, that was the first time I had ever deadlifted. I remember when I, so when I started to squat again, because previously I wasn't really squatting and then I was squatting a little bit and then I started as I came across rip a toe stuff and started to learn better form. So I got up to on free barbell squat four plates but for like quarter reps, right? And I didn't know, I just didn't know at the time that that was stupid. And so then I'm learning a proper squat and I'm like, oh yeah, I guess that makes sense. More range of motion makes it harder. Did you not go lighter? No. So I'm like, man, whatever, we'll see what happens, right? And I'm lucky I didn't get hurt. I, so I get down to the bottom and I'm like, this is not. That's not coming up. This is not coming up. And so I bailed it over. I didn't even bail it back because I never had, I never, I didn't, I didn't never really squat it. I'd squat on a Smith machine before, right? So I bail it, like I have to, I'm lucky. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I was like, well, that, that was dumb. And so, so it went from 405 for garbage reps to 185. That's what I had to drop. Yes. For like sets of eight proper. And I had to work my way up. I bet your legs blew up though. Absolutely. Yeah. Over the, over the next couple of years, I never got super strong on my squat. I got up to 365 for sets of like two or three. That's pretty good. But I didn't program specifically. I didn't, I wasn't following a strength training. I wasn't squatting three times. It was still hypertrophy based type stuff. Yeah. Just because I wanted, I actually don't, I mean, I understand as far as like bodybuilding proportions, go the legs, if I were, if I were to want to get into bodybuilding, my legs would have to get bigger, just, just proportionally. But I personally don't quite like the look, like aesthetically. Not to mention it's a pain in the ass when your legs are chafing all the time. Exactly. You can't fit in normal jeans. Jeans already, if they're, if once, they have to be like broken in, until they, when I put them on, they look like leggings. You know what I mean? Sometimes some jeans, I actually like, I can't, no, I'm not doing that. And so, so anyways, that was a big, so the importance of compound exercises, the importance of lifting heavy weights, and then the importance of, as I continue to educate myself, progressive overload and how important that is, and then how to achieve that, right? So the best way, of course, is getting stronger. You got to make sure you're adding weight to the bar over time. And then secondary to that is making sure that you are increasing your volume. So you can really appreciate the journey that people go on to try to figure out the right things to do, because you had to do that, and it took, and you're a smart dude, it still took you a while. Apparently. Yeah. I mean, it took all of us. I went down almost the same order. And we worked in fitness. You listed right now. I remember, I'll never forget, like, putting together the deadlift thing. So I always had weak ass hamstrings, and probably because there's just not a lot of hamstring movements, especially if you're not deadlifting. You know what I'm saying? Even if you're squatting, squatting is more quads. Right, right. So, and I remember getting into deadlifting, and I remember like for, I'm like 10 years in, and I've done the lying leg curl machine probably a thousand fucking times by this time. So I kind of know like where my range is, and I don't think I could get over like 70 to 90 pounds or something on that machine. And then I remember being introduced to deadlifts, and then being consistent for like a year, just deadlifting on every weekly basis. And I had just totally stopped doing all the machine work, and I was heavy into barbell lifting at that time. And then I came back one day, and it was after about probably a year, and I did the lying leg curls, and I hadn't done them in a year. So in my head, I'm going, oh, I haven't done this in a long time. I'm probably gonna have to start really light. Holy shit, like my weight had doubled, and never was, I wasn't even touching that machine just from the, and that was like, I'm like, I spent fucking 10 years trying to increase the weight on this thing. And just by deadlifting, I doubled my weight. That was like a aha moment for me. Did you have a similar jump in your back and just your pulling strength in general? Oh dude, so same thing with seated row. So I was, you know, that was when I first started lifting. Seated row was the staple first exercise I did. Pull down seated row. Yes, yep, go over the seated row, strap up, you know, and try and get to where I could get almost the full stack. You know, and I worked 10 years of lifting to get to that point where I could almost do the full stack. And that was a big fucking deal. Man, after I deadlift, that shit moved so easy. It blew my fucking... Same, I had the same experience. I got that from, I learned that it was, I think it was the summer after my freshman year in high school, and there were power lifters that were working out. And I was just in awe of these guys. And at this point, I'd still, I'd been lifting weights for a little while. I started as a 14 year old kid. And anyway, they taught me how to squat and deadlift. And they told me, this is what's going to make you big. And because they were, you know, when you're a kid, if a big guy tells you, this is what's going to work, you're like, he could have told me the horseshit and I would have done it, right? So I'm like, done. I'm going to start squatting and deadlifting. And I gained something like 12 pounds that summer. So that summer from freshman to junior, and I remember I went to school and everybody was like, what the fuck happened to you, dude? Like your legs are, you have a butt now. And it was all because I did those two exercises. Before that, I would do leg press and hack squat and all the other leg extensions and just nothing. So that's cool. Any other groundbreaking moments for you? Or was that where you're? I would say, so we've talked about nutrition, training, trying to do anything else, supplementation, learning that I don't need to be spending three or four hundred dollars a month on supplements. And that most of them are absolutely useless. And then in some cases, you don't actually know what you're getting. Like I remember. I love that guy who owns a supplement company, just said that, by the way. That's on the homepage of the, that's like the homepage pitch. But I love that. I really do. I really appreciate that because, and that's cool. That's cool that the current space that shows that honesty, you can also be successful and not have to bullshit. Well, there's still, there's still a place for it, right? There's still a place. I mean, when I was competing, I'm supplementing and doing that because the way I looked at it is I'm addressing all my big rocks. I'm doing all the other things. It's like, I want that one percent at edge because I'm at that level that makes sense to me. The mistake I was making as a young kid was I'm fucking eating three, four hundred dollars worth of supplements every day and putting everything else wrong. Yeah, but I'm not fucking squatting. I'm not fucking eating right. Your diet's terrible. Yeah, I'm just like, that's where, that's where it makes no sense whatsoever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, so I appreciate that you said it. What about sleep? When did you have you figured out about sleep and how important that was? That took me forever by that. That took me like, till like four years ago. Yeah, I didn't really, see, I always, I always, I never had sleep issues until a couple of years ago is when it started and now it's on and off. Like sometimes I'll be totally fine. Sometimes it's waking. That's the thing for me. I don't have any trouble falling asleep, but I'll wake up several times. That's like a bad night for me basically. And it's not terrible because I still get a decent amount of, I get enough deep sleep to like, I can function and whatever, but I'll notice a bit of a difference. If I wake up once versus four times, it does make a difference. And so I didn't really appreciate that until it started. Cause. Until you lose it, you know. Exactly. So previously, I don't know, maybe let's say five years ago or whatever. I used to work until right up until I'd go to bed, right? So I'd be like on the computer, I had flux and so I wasn't getting blasted with blue light, but still I'd be on the computer working, doing usually writing. So something that requires, it's not, it's not just like mindless answering emails. And so that'd be, I'd be doing that until like 1130. And then get ready for bed, go to bed at 1145, fall asleep in like five minutes, black out unconscious for, for, you know, six and a half hours, wake up naturally. And that was it every day for five or six years. And I was training hard. I was in, there was, there were a few where I was like cutting to get ready for photo shoots. And so I had to get really lean, never impacted my sleep. And so that was just life. I didn't, and then once I started to, once there was no longer the case, I guess it kind of also started after kids. Now I, I miss it. I miss my previous super power, but, but now all that really matters for me now, what that means for me is I've just prioritized sleep more. Cause like, yeah, I was able to do that previously. I was able to go to bed at 1145 and have an alarm at 630 that I'd usually wake up before just naturally. And I can't do that now. All right, fine. So I just make sure I'm in bed for eight hours. So I go to bed at 10 and my alarm's at six. And sometimes they wake up a little bit earlier because if I, if I sleep better, I might wake up at 530 and that's it. Okay, fine. But I don't sleep through the night ever. Now I wake up at least once. And so, you know, I've just, I'm similar. I do understand the physiological and now I have educated myself a bit about sleep cause I was trying all the obvious. See, I wasn't making any fundamental mistakes. So I was like, okay, what kind of random supplements can I try? What kind of random, name a random sleep technique and I've tried it. And so in the course of educating myself, also came to appreciate just how important sleep is. And I've, and since having sleep issues on and off, I've mentioned that more as a fundamental, just looking at the bigger picture. You have your nutrition, you have your training, you have your sleep hygiene, like pay attention. I would have, I would have never thought I would have caught myself wearing dorky ass blue blocker glasses. I never would have thought I would. I mean, I used to make fun of that shit forever. And, but I also think too, we saw something happen, or at least in our generation, like we were here before fucking iPhones and iPads and all those things existed. And I have really bad behaviors of, you know, sun goes down and I'm still staring at this little tiny screen answering emails and on social and stuff like that. And it took me a while to make that connection that I probably was stimulating myself so much that I was having a hard time getting really deep sleep. And just that, that one behavior alone of, okay, I can still, I'm still going to do all those things, but at least now I'm going to discipline myself to throw these fuckers on. And if I go about my work and I notice- And is that better? Because you can, you can, I mean, I have an Android phone, if what do they call it? It is better. Night shift or something. It is. So I have both. Like I do a night shift on it still and that's better than nothing, right? And if you want to go hardcore, then you want to get glasses that also that also block green light. Because green light will also affect not nearly as strongly as blue light. All light actually will affect you. So ideally you would, you would just- Well, so here's the game for me. This is the two things. If I do these two things- Candle light, when the sun goes down. No joke. No joke. If I get sunlight during the day, because that sets your circadian rhythm, so get sunlight. I do that too. Yeah, because you tend to lock yourself in your basement and work all day long. So if you go outside- Okay, the word mines. If you go outside, get sunlight, and then when the sun goes down, and I've done this a couple of times, turn off all the lights, we'll go by candlelight, or we'll use these rock lamps that kind of make this light glow, like a fire or whatever. I'll sleep good every single time. Those two things alone make the biggest difference. Yeah, I go, I get sun every day. Yeah, good deal. Yeah, what do you guys think? So my guy, it's me and a couple of guys, so we go downstairs into the parking lot next to our office, and just take our shirts off, and just stand in the sun and hang out. Do you really? Yeah, now people- A couple of weirdos. And they're absolutely- So they're office buildings all around it too. Oh, there's those guys again. Absolutely. We even had people come down like, so are you guys like a workout group or something? And I'm just like, now we just go in the sun. They're like- Like a couple of plants that turned into humans. I've been trying to get these guys to- Gotta get my photosynthesis in, you know? Put a park bench right out here so we could start having our meetings outside because this thing is a fucking- Yeah, when we're stuck here all day. I mean, just going outside. I feel it too. I can feel the difference now. I did not, when I was younger, never, I don't know if I just wasn't paying attention to it or whatever, but, you know, we'll sit in here for a couple of hours sometimes, and it'll be like 11 or noon, I'm getting groggy. And I can feel it. As soon as we go outside, sunny, and like 10 minutes being the sun, I just feel like my energy levels come up right away. Totally. Well, we have a live audience with us today who asked us some questions. These are the VIP- Where's our applause sign? Yeah, exactly. Just add the soundtrack. We're doing it. We had a dinner with them last night, and then tonight we're doing our live event where we're answering questions, and Mike is going to be one of our awesome guests. So this is going to be kind of cool. But they asked us some questions. Stage monkey. Yeah. I want to start in the area of the upcoming opportunities in the health. You want to start with the first one? Yeah, I just think that that's a fun discussion. We, on the podcast, Mike, we speculate all the time of trends or what we think is going to happen. And so regardless if you agree with the trend or you would potentially do it, I think it's a fun conversation to talk about what we think might be cool opportunities financially in the space. Yeah, so the question is upcoming opportunities in health and fitness space. So Mike, do you have any ideas of what you think are upcoming, kind of emerging opportunities? This is bad, but I actually don't pay attention too much to trends just because I dislike so many of them and I pass up so many of them, particularly in the supplement space. And my focus most of my time is on just creating good content. And that's something that, I mean, I would say, I think that the health and fitness wave has not even begun to crest. I think we're going to see it more and more popular in general and that's more and more people. It's nice to see that barbell training is getting more and more popular and we can probably think CrossFit a lot for that, actually. They're probably one of the first big commercialized activities that really emphasize barbell training. And there certainly are positive trends on the nutrition side as well, where even if it's just people becoming more cognizant of what they're eating and caring a little bit more, but the trends that I see in the supplement space is CBD or MCT. Bubblegum BCAs. BCAs are just a staple and collagen protein. And so things that I'm just like, this is all just such nonsense. And so I can speak personally so an opportunity that just for that I'm pursuing myself is next year, I'm going to launch another line of supplements. It's going to be a separate brand. It's going to be like Legion, the same unique selling proposition as Legion. It's just going to be like half the price because I know from just post-purchase surveys and having interacted with a lot of people that the number one objection people have to Legion is price. And I understand it's not cheap. It's not absurdly expensive, but it's definitely premium. And it's because it costs me a lot of money to make this stuff. And so there's a large segment of the market that Legion will never be able to serve. And those are just the more price sensitive. So how do you make them less expensive? It's just staple, like staple basic ingredient to you? So the products aren't going to be as good as Legion's, but one, they're still going to be good products that are worth using. If they're not going to be so low in ingredients or dosages that you'd be better off just not even using them at all. And they're going to be much better than any other products at that price point. So we'll have a pre-workout, for example, that will be 20 or $25. Is it going to be as good as Pulse? No. But it's still going to be good. It's going to have clinically effective doses. They're just going to be the lower end of the range. Whereas Pulse is the higher or highest end of the range. And that's generally how we approach to Legion. Formulations is if we're going to include an ingredient, we often are going for the mid to high range of the clinically effective dose, except in some cases where we actually feel like it doesn't quite make sense because you're not going to, like there are some ingredients that are expensive that you're not going to get much more out of whether you go from the low to the upper end of the clinically effective dose, but you are just going to make your product more expensive. So that's an opportunity that I see. So we're going to, you know, I'm going to do that. And so it'll be like Legion is Lexus and this is going to be Toyota kind of approach. And working out at home seems to be a big thing, right? With Peloton, I think we're going to see more and more just creative ways for people to work out at home. I could see, have you seen? I'm sure you guys. Tonal and all those, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Stuff like that. I mean, I don't know if that's going to be the one, but... I'm interested in it. I'm watching it. Yeah. I'm curious to see if it takes off. I could imagine though, you're in front of a thing and you have, you can interface with a trainer even right there. They're going to keep trying to nail it for sure. And I think that's too why we partnered up with like a company like PRX. I love their approach in terms of trying to make, you know, like real solid equipment fit within, you know, a small space and feel like it's not... It has to look nice. Intrusive. These things are expensive. So you're going to have, if someone, I mean, Peloton, I think they're... Like $1,500. Their bike is like $2,000 or something. It's too great. And then their treadmill, I think, is more. So you could imagine, let's say there's something, it might be tonals. That's where it's like resistance, right? Yes. So do you know how expensive it is? Yeah, it's up there too. They're up there with like $1,500, $2,000. But it's more considered, it's more like tech than it is fitness equipment. So I think what they're trying to do is, because people don't mind spending thousands of dollars on awesome new tech. But they won't spend that much. Absolute people, probably, who are going to be putting it into nicer house. So that's to look nice. You know, it's not just function. Well, I have two things that I'm really intrigued by and I think are smart for somebody who's getting in the space or looking at. And one of those is, obviously, and we've talked about the irony, is it's the group training or the small group, small square footage, $3,000. Like group camp style. Yes, like that. And I think there's room actually to do it better. Like right now it's all the trendy shit, like the Soul Cycles, the Orange Theories. I did a talk with Red Dot a couple, or this is almost a year ago now, and met with the owner over there. And we discussed, like he was like, Adam, what do you think about like the Orange Theories and the Crossfits? Like, you know, how do I compete with them? Or what would you suggest? And I said, you know, instead of trying to compete with those already mega brands that are already driving tons of traffic, why don't you look at the opportunities of the things that they're not addressing and compliment them? And I said, an example for me is like, these both Orange Theory Crossfit a little bit better because that's how Kelly Starrett has made his living is off of this, is addressed to all these classes like mobility and corrective type work. And I think creating a small class like setting like that that's designed to compliment somebody who loves these high-intensity type circuit-based classes is a really good idea. Almost like an F-art. Do you think that might be a hard sell though because what's the benefit? What's the magic bullet of it? There's a lot of recovery labs that are popping up too because of, you know- But it is quick fixed though. Well, here's the thing- Here, jump in this cryo thing that's not really going to do anything about it. Well, here's it's not going to be popular for somebody who's 25. You're looking at the baby boomers and the people that are dealing with joint pain and they've taken it. So one of the number one things I saw- Which is a big market. Well, you got a huge market. Number one things I saw at Orange Theory when I was there is they still attract the 45 plus year olds that come in there and do it and they do it every day for a few months and then what ends up happening. They burn themselves out. Yeah, burn themselves out. Knees, aches, shoulder hurting, all this stuff because they're not addressing all these issues that they have. And if there was a place that they could go to it's same type of core study. And what confirms this for me, so this weekend, so today or tomorrow, FRC comes in here. So they've got 87 or 90 students in this place. They have sold out all of 2020. What's FRC? So it's functional range conditioning. It's basically mobility moves, but they add like isometric tension and things. So it's kind of basically alleviate pain, get the joints to function properly again. So I've dabbled in this myself. So I used to run boot camps years ago. And one of the things, and I remember this, I built it up. It was a very successful business. I had trainers underneath me and it was kind of running all over San Jose. Probably the guilt got to me after a while of realizing I'm really not helping very many people. Maybe why they're going through my boot camp thing for four months, they lose their weight, then they go back and they do all their same behaviors and shit. So all I'm really doing is making them sweat for an hour, right? And most of them are 40 plus years old and I'm watching them as they're moving in my class and I'm going like, if I had you one on one and we were talking, like I wouldn't have you be doing ropes and fucking ladder drills. Like I'd be doing corrective work with you and teaching good mechanics. And so I actually do this now and I hold on Saturdays. It's a free thing that I do just for these people that I have ran in boot camps years ago. And I run them through this FRC type of format. It's my own. Like I've taken movements that they teach in there that I have found make the greatest change or help that population. Hip stuff, shoulder stuff, neck stuff, ankle mobility stuff. And because there's movement involved, it's not just stretching like yoga, it's a little bit of intense. So they get a little bit of sweat actually from it. But most importantly, they feel like they just went through like a chiropractor appointment after spending an hour with them. They get up and they're like, oh my God, I feel better than I felt all week long because we've reconnected to a lot of these dormant muscles that they haven't been addressing or touching and they feel amazing. So, and nobody's really doing a good job of this right now. Now I know there's certifications that are teaching trainers to learn how to take these tools and then apply it to their clients, but I think there's an opportunity for a small square footage place, 3,000 square foot, very similar model as the orange theory, the Soul Cycles only to address people like this. Yeah, I'm gonna piggyback off that because I agree with what Adam's saying and I wanna go into that. But before I do, I'm gonna touch on one that I think is obvious. We're in the middle of a big vegan push and the final macronutrient that has not been demonized, that will be demonized, is protein. And so I think we're gonna see a lot of anti-protein information start to come out and supplements that are around that anti-protein push. And some of the science they're gonna use is gonna be- It'll be amino acid supplements. They'll say, oh, you don't need to eat protein, just take these. Right, because protein elevates, mTOR, mTOR, and the presence of cancer can promote. It's inflammatory, too much protein can cause tumor growth and all that stuff. Which science will show that's true, but context matters 100% with that kind of stuff. So I think you're gonna see more vegan shit just coming out there. I don't agree with it, but it is an opportunity and you can already see what's happening right now. Which is light and flaky. Impossible burger and impossible meats are selling out all the time. And it's because they've made hyper-palatable, delicious tasting ultra-processed food. Are they good? Well, from what I've read, I have not tried. I refuse. I just look at the ingredients list, I'm like, that's not true. So much worse than me. It's not true. What is this? It's like a thousand things. It's Frankenstein. But that's an opportunity. Now to piggyback off of what Adam was saying, I think the next big opportunity for fitness is gonna revolve around making your body feel better through correctional type movements and mindfulness. I think mindfulness is gonna start making a massive push. And what do you mean by that exactly? Anything mindfulness. So it doesn't matter. It could be meditation. It could be spiritual stuff. It could be classes. But it's gonna revolve all around that sphere of... Some more holistic. Yeah, unplugging your phone, turning things off, being quiet, focusing on the present. Then maybe doing some exercise related stuff. Yeah, or with exercise. I feel like what I'm saying, you could combine that. That's what I'm saying. That's why I'm piggybacking on it. I think it would be incredible. And the reason why I think that's gonna be so... Turning that all into like a proprietary kind of branded method? Yes. So I don't know how people are gonna do it because there's a right way to do this shit and there's a wrong way to do it. I'm just saying from a marketing perspective, if you can call that. 100% marketing. In a perfect world, you would do some... I mean, we have the... We've laid the foundation for this. So Maps Prime Pro, the entire program is we've addressed every major joint in the body. And with that comes a little test assessment like is your joint moving optimally? If it's not, here's some movements to help that. And I think that that's what the class would kind of look like. It would be a... That's what I teach right now. It's I take them through all the major joints that I know are the most challenging for people at an advanced age. And I take them through a couple of exercise per joint. And that's all it is. Is I just kind of wake up that area and then they go, oh my God, they feel amazing. It's gonna blow up because people are more aware of ever, of the effects of being distracted, of the effects of not focusing on certain things. This new technology comes along with a lot of fears. So whether or not this technology is good or bad, the fact is it's new. And anytime something new comes onto the scene, it's easy to scare the shit out of people about it. This is what they're gonna do. Most people don't like change. No. And so that's what's gonna happen. There'll be retreats and everything revolving around that where they're gonna organize events where nobody has phones. Oh my God. Like, can you imagine? Digital wellness is gonna be the next big thing. Cal Newport's most recent book, Digital Minimalism on Reddit. But I like, I mean, I liked... Ryan Holiday, his new one is Stillness. Yes. I mean, everybody's on that right now. Yeah. And so I could foresee in fitness facilities opening that are workout, correctional exercise centric, but still kind of workouts. But their marketing is gonna be based off of mindfulness and correctional exercise. And then they're gonna use that as a way, they're gonna sell it as the best way to burn body fat, build muscle. And the studies they're gonna use are gonna be the ones that show that people who meditate, they tend to eat better. And people, relaxation, your hormones are better. If you fund it, they'll find it. Yeah. No. Science works. I see good opportunity there. That's me being cynical. I also think if you're a serial entrepreneur right now that just acquiring real estate in all the social media platforms. I mean, and everything from... Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. YouTube, to Instagram, to Facebook, to Twitter, to Spotify, to... All these incredible platforms offer an opportunity for you to provide some sort of value or content on them. That's something I was gonna mention. And that's just amazing. Like, that is so rad that we have this that that didn't exist when I was... I was really decentralized. Yeah. There are no more gatekeepers in the sense. Now it's up to the market to decide what's good. And you have your own litmus test right there where it's like, well, I'm not putting on anything that good because there's five people following me and nobody else wants to pay attention. So change the game up. So I'm just gonna keep putting out stuff until I find the things that are really helping people. That's such a powerful tool. And if you... What are some tips... This would be something I get asked fairly often and you guys probably have some good thoughts on it as well. So I'm sure there are people out there who know that and who know the power of content marketing but are like, how? How do I do it? There's so much content out there. There are so many blogs. There are so many podcasts. So many YouTube channels. How do I stand out? How do I... One of the easiest ways to stand out that I found is to sound counter to the common knowledge. But obviously you have to have good information to do so. So if let's say... You have to acquire the knowledge first. Right, yeah. I mean, you gotta be good. People are just skipping past that step. Yeah, I agree with that. That's a good point. You gotta be good. But let's say there's a big push for... Okay, like the vegan push. Huge vegan push. So you may actually get some traction by publishing an article that talks about the dangers of eating plants. Or the positives of the carnivore diet. Not in the carnivore diet is stupid. Yeah, but being accurate, obviously giving good information, but sounding counter, right? Like if there was this big... Yeah, contrarian thinking always gets there. Totally, and it gets shared like crazy because people like that stuff. And I love doing it because 90% of the information that's out in fitness is bullshit anyway. So it's easy to be counter to have the stuff that's out there. So it's like... PCA's. I think that we... Fuck PCA's. The fact that we get... The fact that we get real-time feedback, likes and comments and shares, and you can see all these things, I actually think it's actually relatively easy. What's challenging is people to be... We're in this era now because it's so easy and so fast. Everybody expects results so quick. This is what I tell kids this all the time that are starting a YouTube channel up. And they're like, I only have 50 people following me. I've been doing it for two months. Yeah, or they're like six months in and they're only adding like two people a day. And I'm like, could you imagine if you opened a brick and mortar business and two new customers walked in every day? That would be a fucking huge win. It'd be huge. But everybody expects to go to like super famous or super rich overnight. And it just... And I remember the first time I sat down with Taylor, who was somebody who works for us and it first turned me on to using my Instagram to try and attract a community and build a business. And he said, Adam, you're going to do this for a minimum of a year or two before you really feel like you get any traction. And I'm like, all right, cool, no big deal. Like I could put my head down and do shit like that. And I had no fucking clue what I was doing. I mean, I was just posting stuff. And but I was using that as like a litmus test. Like I put something out. Okay. And people aren't liking it, aren't talking about it, must not be adding value to them. All right. Let me try something else. Make a picture. Less value. And I tidy whities. Yeah. That's where you always start. I would keep sending stuff out until... And I kind of put this for me, what ended up working for me way back when was people like to see what I was currently doing. And before me, I don't know anybody else that was doing this in our space. Like I literally would list, if you go all the way back to the beginning of my Instagram, you could see I was doing this. I would... Here's a picture of me first thing in the morning, not fucking good lighting, not flex, not pump. Just this is what I look like. This is how I'm eating. I broke down carbs, fat, protein, the water I was intaking, what program I was running like. And I would just share that. And it was getting like, people were like, oh man, asking me why. And like I was getting engagement. I was like, okay, I figured this out. Like this is helping people there. I'm sharing what I'm doing. They're finding value in it. They're being able to engage and ask questions of me. And that was kind of like the, aha, okay, more of this. And so I just started plugging away more. And then the traction started slowly happening. And that was really the original following that we had to help catapult mine pump. Because when we first started mine pump, we didn't have any presents. No, you had something like 20,000, something like that followers. And that was it. I had no Instagram. Justin had a small one. Yeah. And that was our first... We had it. When I published Bigger Leaner Stronger, I literally had nothing. I just put a book up on Amazon. Just some dude. And I think it was small, but I knew how to get it. How did you sell a book? Nobody knew who you were. That's a better question. Self-publish. What do you mean? No, I mean, how did people find it? How did you get it out there? Amazon. Wow. I did nothing. I just published it. I think it sold 20 copies the first month. Were you already, though, creating... Were you able to buy my book? I mean, speaking of what you're talking about, I actually was, I was happy. I didn't know if anybody would buy it. Right. You know what I mean? Well, so we also were older, right? So I come from that generation too. I was like, oh, five people are talking to me. Five more than zero. Yeah. Obviously, something is working. So I just had that mentality from the beginning and just kept plugging away and plugging away. And even when you talk about when we pivoted from my little following from Instagram over into a mine pump, the formula for us there too was, let's just keep adding value. And we had a product to sell. So we had maps anabolic ready to go and sell from the very beginning. And I just want to say that that's a smart decision. That's actually a mistake that I see fairly often is that people, they wait too long to sell something and you can condition your audience. If you go too long, just giving away free information, when you do bring out something for sale, oftentimes a lot of people will react negatively. Like to them, you're selling out or they're not here to be sold to. The bigger mistake, guys. Some people are just like allergic to being promoted to. And you don't want those people, if they want to leave, leave. Right. No, the bigger issue or I should say the more common one that I've seen is the opposite, where they sell something right out the gates. Yeah, I agree. Most people now, what? I don't, I mean, I think if it's a good thing, I mean, again, I started with publishing a book for sale. I didn't have a website. I didn't have, that was literally that's it. Now, I mean, you can look at it like, oh, that's like. It's a ton of value though. An extreme case of a survivorship bias. But my point is like, although I look at the first edition of the book now and I would like, I'd be like, this is awful. But because the current edition is way better, but it was very good for what it was at the time. There was nothing like it. And so that was I started with just selling something. Well, I think that's authority right out of the gates though. And I think like from our perspective too, we had to build that authority. Sure. And by doing that, we had to go through like really building their trust and finding out what they wanted to learn. Yep. So we have to give that and do that. I also think what Sal was talking about, and I agree with him that I see more of this, which is the kid or person who's interested in this exact question we're talking about starts their YouTube, starts their Instagram, gets their first 1000 to 5000 people following them. And then right away takes on, you know, the supplements or takes on some, and they're pushing somebody else's product to make 20% commission off of it. And I actually think that hurts them more than it does. Well, I mean, when I was coming up and I had 10, 20,000 followers and I was competing, I was getting hit up by selling them. But what I knew, I knew long-term, I was building something for myself. And so I knew like, man, if I start pushing everybody else's stuff, it's going to be really hard to sell my own thing, whatever that's going to be. And at that time, I actually didn't even know what that was. That's a point if you can exhaust your goodwill, essentially, if you start, especially if you're selling other people's stuff. There's a different perception between, like it's very easy to look like a shill if you just start promoting other supplements versus even if it were your own supplement, but it didn't have to be supplement, or something that is maybe more educational. So if you bring out your own, I mean, in your example, like what could have probably worked well for you is if a lot of people wanted to know, what are you doing? How are you training? What are you eating? Coming out with an educational product that just explains, this is what he do. This is my, this is the- So that was the first thing that we ever tested to kind of get an idea. Justin and I wrote a nutrition, the nutrition survival guide. So that was what that was, came with a calculator inside of it. And was it generally well received? Yeah, I mean, what I- We just didn't have the audience yet. Yeah, what I learned from that was 10,000 Instagram followers equates to about fucking $200. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. That's what I learned from- That's the value of Instagram. That's what I learned from that. I was like, oh, fuck. I was like, okay. And that's why too, because I thought maybe I was ready. I thought, okay, I've been given value. I've been doing so much for so long. I've got 20,000 followers. Maybe it's now Justin and I dropped this book. Let's sell it. And what did we sell? 25 of them or something? I mean, maybe that. And I was like, whoa. And that was a good lesson for us. It was like, we need to impact and add more value and gain a larger audience before I really try and monetize this thing. Otherwise, you're gonna be constantly trying to push your shit to try and sell. And that's the other thing too, is I really believe that all these platforms, YouTube, Instagram, they're really designed to be more social on them. And I see a lot of companies take their social media and it's just like another way of advertising. And that's all they're doing. And without even knowing they're back in and their conversion rates, I can tell you it's not converting very well because most people that are on social media, 90% of people on social media are not on there to shop. They're on there to connect socially with people and brands and things that they're into. So the social aspect should be a place for you to connect with the community. Now, that doesn't mean it can't be a lead generation. So the way mind pump... Or a value builder, right? Authority builder. What we do is we use those platforms to drive to more free content where we now have you in our ecosystem. So it's like we connect with you socially, 99% of the time, 1% of the time you'll get Sal or Justin or I saying something like, oh, hey, here's a great free guide regarding whatever we were talking about. And then they opt in and now we have them as a lead and now we can nurture them down the road. But on social itself, you'll never see that. You never see us talk about our maps programs or push or sell something like that because I think that's an awful way to use it. And I think you'll end up losing more people or at least losing the connection to the people that are following you. All right. So let's go with the next question, which was this one was for you, Mike. Yeah. And it is, you don't sell branched amino acids, but why do you sell fat burners? Because I like money. Because, so I have two fat burners, right? So I guess the question basically is saying, like, you know, BCAAs are supplementing with branched amino acids. We know- Your friends with Mind Pump, Mind Pump talks shit about fat burners. Why, how does this work? Yeah, but in fat burners- Let's put you on the spot. Yeah, tend to be put in a category of things that you take that don't do anything. Yeah, it's true and they often are. BCAAs, I believe, have like no use. No, unless your protein intake is hell low. And you're a marathon runner. Yeah. And why is that? Reflect. What are you doing with your life? It's a good point. And yeah, so fat burners, most fat burners don't do anything, period, even if you know what you're doing with your diet and what you're doing with your exercise. However, take, so we have two different fat burners and one of them is called Phoenix and really the driving ingredients are Sinephrine. And then there are a couple other compounds that are found in the same fruit where Sinephrine comes from that makes it more effective and then for Skolin and in then EGCG. So from green tea extract. Those are the main ingredients to what make Phoenix work. And I stand by, I mean, if anybody, you've seen the sales page, you've probably looked at the research that's referenced and I stand by that research. Should a Sinephrine works? And when you combine it with a couple of the other ingredients there in Phoenix, it works even better in that it just boosts your metabolic rate. Yeah, I was gonna say the thing with most fat burners isn't the real science that supports that they actually help burn fat is the increased rate of your heart rate over the course of the entire day. More calorie burning. Right. Now of course, if you don't know what you're doing with your diet and you can take even Phoenix, let's say you're taking two servings a day, let's say, which is okay, that's fine. And then that's a cookie's worth of calories. You know what I mean? It's like two or 300 calories a day, Matt. Half a soda. Yeah, so you have to know and even if again, if you look at the sales page which I'm actually updating all the sales pages which is nice and it's been a while so I'm like, you know, tweaking a lot of the copy but I really try to make that clear before someone even buys the product in that this is supplementation is the least important thing as far as fat burning goes. And then so the other fat burner is forge and the driving molecule there is yo-him-bin. Again, yo-him-bin has good evidence that, I mean, it works, it does. And so that's why basically because I feel that I'm justified in terms of the research behind these these ingredients. And I explain to people how to use them. I'm not saying just take some pills, you'll be good. Now, if you were to compare the fat burner to the pre-workout, wouldn't they probably rival each other on the same studies in the effect as far as what it would do as far as speeding the metabolism up to burn more fat? No, because in the case of my pre-workout it's just caffeine and as far as caffeine's metabolism boosting effects. I mean, research shows that once you become desensitized to it, you're mostly losing that actually. So that's after it's pretty fast. Like you have some caffeine every day within two weeks, you're desensitized. You're desensitized. And you don't have a tolerance effect with syniferin and yo-him-bin? No, no, actually ironically with yo-him-bin research suggests that it gets more effective over time. I think it might because it builds up in the body. In my experience with fat burners, I think a lot of the reason why people like them, besides the fact that they make you feel good, and that's what stimulants do, they just make you feel good, is the appetite suppressing effect, which stimulants tend to do that. That's true. And I can see some short-term value in that. The issue I always have with fat burners is the same issue that you have. If you're not doing any behavior modifications, you're not only wasting your time, but you may be doing yourself harm because you're placing your time and effort and value in something that isn't- And just wasting money. And wasting money, absolutely. And then setting yourself up for disappointment. Because you were thinking that these pills or these powders were going to do a lot more than they actually are going to do. Now, some of the most effective over-the-counter fat burners, that no longer illegal, but were around for a little while, that had studies that support them, was the classic ECA staffee. Yeah, Ephedrine. You can still get it. You just have to- How do you get it? With the decongestion. Oh, you've got to give them your license because- pseudo-Ephedrine. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And those actually, those studies showed that those worked as well. But here's what I noticed with people when they would take those, is they take them. They get the appetite-suppressing effects. They were a hyper, which probably made it want to work out more. So they're eating less. Or even just made them move around more. That means more calories. Right, right. But then they would have a rebound when they come off. Because then when they would come off, they would stop taking the supplements and they'd feel dead tired. They'd have that period of time where they felt like they had no energy. And they'd have that kind of rebound type of effect. Do you see anything like that with Cinnifrin? You'll him be- Now, Forskolen's an interesting one. Forskolen has got some muscle building and testosterone-boosting effects. We talked about this last night. Through increasing circulating camp. And that gets the body to produce more testosterone. Actually did some research. Forskolen pretty consistently raises testosterone in man. It's actually one of the better testosterone boosters. But you don't talk about it as a testosterone booster. I mention it on the sales page because there is evidence for it. But I'm not really using it as a reason to buy it because the effect size is too small to matter. Especially when people- It's one of the reasons- So take BCA is something I don't sell. I get asked- We get emailed multiple times every week from people asking why we don't sell BCAAs. Even from people saying, look, I know BCAAs are useless, but they make my water tasty. Can you please- I'd rather give you- I'm gonna give someone my money for BCAAs. I'd prefer it to be you. And I'm like, yeah. I mean, that would literally be the sales page. So I'd be like- Tasty water. It's like crystal light, right? Yeah, yeah. Why don't you just go that direction? Yeah, put some fruit in your water. And testosterone booster is another product that we don't sell. That there's a lot of money in. And the reason being is while for Skollone to be one, deaspartic acid would be another, there are a couple things that- Ashwagandha can do that too. Can help. Yeah, Ashwagandha is in my multivitamin. And again, that's mentioned on the sales page because when I'm mentioning benefits that just here's- Here's- There's good research that shows this thing can do these things. Right. But you're not marketing it that way. Nope. And I don't really call any attention to it because again, it's not gonna make- It's not gonna either, in some cases, it's not gonna increase testosterone enough to matter at all, or it's not gonna increase it enough for long enough to matter. Or the studies that show that it raises testosterone were done in men who are hypogonadal. They had low testosterone. Sure. Which is different. Yeah, that would just be misrepresenting research. But even in the case of deaspartic acid, you don't have to necessarily misrepresent research. No. And what seems to be the weight of the evidence or the consensus right now is that it will- It works for a week or two. Yeah, for a short period of time. And I've experienced that myself in the past when I've taken it, where I've noticed that only what I noticed are, remember, noticing is more sex drive and a little bit better sleep. And it'd be for like two weeks and then nothing. They actually prescribed it. I believe they prescribed it, or the studies were done in Italy on deaspartic acid and for its effects on increasing seminal volume and more sperm, so for fertility. That makes you think of a product called ejaculoid. Yeah, that's a real product. I remember that. I remember that. Sign of the clowns real time. That's the thing top of mind is I need bigger cum loads. God, my life would be so much better. That's why I appreciate that. I feel like the hardest part for you would have to be that very similar to what it was like for me with the cannabis industry. And we could sit here all day and talk about the science that supports all these different things to help people or to benefit them. But it was just like when I was in the cannabis clubs and I was learning all about the benefits of the plant and what percentage of people that this could really help and do good for them or really change their life. But then when I opened my doors and people came through, if I was being honest with myself, 95% of them just want to get fucking high. That's what most people were coming in and buying the products. And so I feel like the supplement space has to have a very similar dichotomy where you're like, I can sit here and make a case with you on all the supplements and how I've used probably all of them at points in my training career where I see value in it. But I also think that I'm a very small percentage of the general population that are attracted to these things because probably the majority are still looking for the shortcut and that's why they purchase those. That's what I like about Mike is that you don't lie. You tell people exactly how it is and I like that. And the cool thing is, is you're proving it works. That's what I really like. The business model. Yes, you can actually build a business and not lie in the supplement space, which is crazy. It's mind-blowing. Yeah, that's impossible. It's a shocker. Yeah, now there are more companies that are taking a similar approach that are saying a lot of the same words at least. Because you're proving the model. I would think that that's something to it. I mean, Legion's big enough now where a lot of people have heard about it and it's out there, you know what I mean? And so that's cool. That was one of the reasons why actually when I started it, I was, I mean, you can read about this on the website or you can hear about me talking about it, but it really was one of the reasons why is to maybe try to help reform the supplement industry to some degree. Oh, it's like us with podcasting. To set a good example, I guess, for people to follow. Well, that's how we made our name was by basically calling out bullshit and telling people, yeah, you want to lose 30 pounds, can take you about a year. You got to do all these things right. And everyone's like, you're not going to, how are you going to sell that idea? That sounds crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Seems to be working. Yeah, similar with the books. Some of the books are teach the fundamentals. All right. So new next question was what to do when there are detractors on your fitness journey? So this was asked by one of the individuals we had dinner with last night. And we were talking about how he had lost a lot of weight on his own, had done this on his own, grew up in a family that really puts food in your face quite a bit, very similar to my family. I think his family is Portuguese and very similar to Italians. Like you, like my mom's goal in life is to see if she could feed kids more than their own parents. Like she's so proud of that. Like, oh, you know, give me your kid. One of the guys who works with me, Spanish, he's from Spain. Same thing. It was his mom's like, they didn't, you know, she grew up with, she grew up poor. That's why that's why it is. It's just their force fed him essentially. And he was obese by that time. He was like seven. Oh, my, my mom will follow, my used to follow us around while we were playing and she would figure out ways to trick you into eating. So you could just, and she's like, look, he didn't even know, yeah, it was like her favorite thing. And so I get this. And so, you know, what he talked about is he lost a lot of weight on his own, but then his family would say things like, well, you know, what's wrong with you? You look sick or why aren't you eating? Eat more food or whatever. And so his question is like, how do you deal with those kinds of people? So I guess I'll start because I was in a similar situation until this day. I weigh, right now I weigh 200 pounds, right? Six foot, 200 pounds. Nobody in the right mind would consider me sickly. Yeah. Well, any medical, maybe obese. Yeah. Yeah. BMI sucks, bro. But yeah, no, but like clockwork, I'll go to a family function like clockwork. One of my family members, usually my grandma will come up to me and be like, so what's the matter with you? What do you mean? What are you talking about? You don't look so good. You need to eat some more food. I'm like, God, I started getting like, what's going on? Am I really losing weight? Do I look skinny? Yeah. So, so I get to look like a swimmer. Yeah. The insecurities start coming up. Oh, it's terrible. That was the first time I got lean. And I was, I was wearing a long sleeve shirt. So I was like, you have like a really, really good, it's like swimmer's body. You're like, time to get bigger. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. I wasn't going for that. Yeah. So what I was telling him to do is to, you know, the thing is whenever you change, whenever you fundamentally change a part of kind of who you are, it challenges the people around you. So as you see this happen quite a bit with, with couples. So if you look at the statistics of couples that are, that get meat in there and get married and are both obese, and then one of them lose a lot of weight, and the other one doesn't. They're almost always divorced. The divorce rate is like astronomical. It's something like three quarters of them. So almost all of them will get a divorce, unless both of them go through together. And mainly it's the challenge. And in that case, it would challenge their ego. Is this person more attractive now? Who are they? I don't know them. But even with your family and friends. So let's say you and your friends connect over alcohol, and you guys like to go out and drink and party and whatever. And then all of a sudden you're like, you know what, I want to get my shit together. I want to build a business. I want to, you know, whatever. And so you stop doing that kind of stuff. You go out with your friends. We're like, nah, I'm cool, man. I don't want to drink. I got to wake up early tomorrow. They don't know how to take it because to them, who is this person? And not only that, but who am I now? Take it personally. Take it personally. So when you're raised in a family, that is constantly celebrating food and constantly eating. And it's this wonderful, great thing. And now here you are saying, no, I'm okay. I don't want to eat that. And no, I'm cool if I just eat the salad or whatever. To them it's like, well, either something's wrong with you or something's wrong with me. And so that's the question now. So by you, by this person, now challenging them by saying, no, I'm not going to eat that way anymore. It's actually causing them to reflect on themselves. Yeah, you're a big mirror walking around. They're like, you know, you're upsetting them. Yeah, you did it and they have it yet and they have to face that. And one of the easiest ways for them is to not face it and deflect it back on you that you have the problem. Right. And I remember, I remember this one incident. I was with my cousins. We were at a big family function and my cousin married this guy into the family. Great guy. And we're all hanging out and everybody was drinking beer. And he's like, have a beer, man. And I'm like, no, I'm cool. I don't, I'm all right. I'll just, you know, I don't want a beer or whatever. He's like, come on. And so all night he kept saying that to me. Come on, have a beer. Man, you never have fun. You, all you ever do is think about working out. Man, you need to loosen up. But, and he kept hammering on me. And finally I got angry and I grabbed his belly and I shook it real hard for everybody. I made a joke about him. And it was a really mean thing to do. And it hurt his feelings, but he stopped, he stopped bothering me. And afterwards I reflected on that. I'm like, I handled that terribly. All I did was make him feel like shit. And the reason why I made him feel like shit is that I felt bad for saying no. And so what I did from then on was just feel more confident in my decisions. And real confidence is calm. False confidence is loud and it's, it's contrarian. So the false confidence is like, no, stop making me want to eat. I don't want to eat. I'm trying to stay thin. I don't want to gain weight or whatever. Real confidence is like, no, I'm all right. No, I get, no, it's cool. No, laugh about it. No, I don't, no, it's good. I already ate. I'm cool. No, I'm all right. Hey, what's going on tomorrow? And just change the subject. The longer you're calm and confident in your, in your, in your new skin or whatever. And the more they realize that it's, oh, it's the same person. You're just have some different behaviors. That's the only way through. Cause they're gonna, they're gonna keep hammering you. Like this is happening every time I go to my parents' house. They're always something like, oh, you're so high and mighty. You're not going to eat waffles anymore. Like it's a big deal. You know, and I'm like, no, I don't want to, you know, it's fine. But yeah, you just have to keep, keep calm and just consistent and like not make a big deal out of it and be like, I just kind of shook my head like, you know, and then, and then they just eventually give up. And you're going to say they call you skinny. And that, and now what they do, and now what they do is they'll say something and then they'll leave it. And it's not a big deal. And now family members will prepare sometimes a separate thing for me. Like, oh, Sal's not going to eat this. So we'll, we'll make this. And it's not that big, it's not that big of a deal, but you're just going to have to sit in it, kind of be cool and confident and just, it's not a big deal and then change the subject and then let them do their thing. And that what's happening, what you're, what you're witnessing is them processing this different version of you. And that can be very difficult. It's all them. I remember even like when Katrina and I first met and, boy man, her family just, they had a hard time with me. I was right in the heart of like this whole mission to compete and like carrying my Tupperware and like, and they're, you know, big Hispanic, big Hispanic family, everything. Full Neurosis. Oh, Pete Neurosis. I was, yeah, absolutely. And I knew that, you know. And, you know, they're a big Hispanic family. Everything is centered around drinking and food, everything. And they celebrate everything. And so every week you're, we're at their house and, you know, I refuse to drink. I refuse to eat the food they're having. I'm eating my own and boy, for probably the first two years. If I saw it is really rude. They did. Yeah. Yeah. He doesn't like our food. Her brothers didn't like, they thought I was antisocial. I didn't want to have fun and I didn't want to get to know them because for them that's the way they all connected. They all threw back the drinks and ate and laughed and messed around. And I'm over there eating out of my Tupperware and passing on all the drinks. And I was just at a family reunion and one of my cousins was like, hey, you can come have a beer with me. I was like, I don't drink. And he was actually like, what does that mean? Yeah. He like shorted it in his brain for a minute. You're really not going to come have a beer with me? I was like, I'll come. I'm just not going to, I'll drink waters. I'm like, you want to do something? And he didn't show up. It's literally their own shit. It's their shit. Saying the reaction that you get is that that's all of them. They're struggling with all their own insecurities and their own shit that they're dealing with. And you not partaking or making a different choice really makes them have to think about that. And speaking to confidence, I think you have to be confident to not give in to that pressure. And just the pressure to conform and be acceptable. Well, the irony of it is too is that the harder they'll push, the more you want to kind of sit in your space and be like, I'm not budging. Eventually, here's what ends up happening. Eventually, if you're cool about it, you're calm about it. It may take some time. It may actually take like a year for people to just kind of realize like, okay, he's like, it's not that big of a deal, whatever. Then eventually after about everybody calms down a little bit, then you find yourself relaxing around it and be like, I'll have a little bit. It's not that big of a deal. And you kind of enjoy yourself. And then it's not that big of a deal. But at first, boy, I mean, imagine if any of your close friends, who you, let's imagine, think of your friends right now and think of their characteristics. Like, oh, I got a friend, you know, John, he likes to ride his bike all the time or something like that. And then imagine if all of a sudden he's like, no, I don't like bikes. You know what I mean? Who's this guy? I don't think I don't know if I know you anymore. Great analogy. And that's exactly what happens. Who's this guy who likes skateboards now? You're like bikes? This is crazy. We can't be friends anymore. Alternate universe. So all I liked about you is you wrote a book. That's all I liked, man. That's what you had to go for. Now there's nothing. No bike. You're dead. I mean, now the next question. Someone's going to have to school me on this because I'm not familiar with Senna tea. Okay. So the question is about Senna and is, is it recommended to take it only for a week and what can be done to fix one's self after excessive. So school me on this. What is it? So Senna is a natural laxative. It softens stool, but it also stimulates the muscles of the gut to expel, you know, to make your poop or whatever. I'm assuming it's in a lot of these poop teas. Thank you. The 50. Yes. It's in a lot of those. And it legit does work. If you drink something with Senna, it irritates the gut lining a little bit, gets things to move. Gets things moving. Gets things moving and we'll make it to the bathroom. Now here's the problem with using Senna. It's the same problem that there is with all laxatives, is that the body adapts. And what will end up happening is your body will, when you go off of these things, won't work anymore. You can get, there are people who become addicted physiologically to laxatives. So because they either be super constipated, like then you or just drink the tea every day, then you have to use it. You absolutely have to use it. So the way to back out of that is to do a couple of different things. One is to drink a lot of water and eat foods that help with your digestion. For a lot of people, what this looks like is very well-cooked vegetables. Okay, so raw vegetables tend to not do this as well, but well-cooked vegetables tend to this. You want to cook them till they're mushy. So you want to eat things that are leafy, green, spinach, rapini. Easily processed. Asparagus. Yeah, cook it really, really well. Plenty of soluble fiber. Yes, and increase your fiber, increase your water intake. But soluble in particular, I don't think of just insoluble fiber as, but if you eat plenty of vegetables, you'll get plenty of insoluble or soluble fiber. Yes, yes. And then what you want to do is you want to slowly reduce your use of Senate. If you go cold turkey, you'll probably have the constipation of a lifetime. So what I would do, and the way I recommend people go off caffeine is I tell them to reduce it by a quarter use every week. So you might want to try something like that. So let's say you use, let's say you're having two cups of this every single day. Then I would lower it down to one and a half cups for about a week. And then the next week, one cup and then a half cup and then so on. And if it gets really bad, stay wherever you're at for a little while until you feel like you can lower it. So most common thing that I would see with clients that struggled with this would be the overconsumption of protein and the underconsumption of good dietary fiber. That's the other one, yeah. Greens and berries. And that would be like the recipe for me. I'd make sure they have, I'd bump them up significantly higher in their fiber through greens and berries. I'd have them eat like a cup or two cups of blueberries, raspberries, like a little bowl of that. And then a bunch of spinach, rapini, add that into their diet. Then also a look at their protein intake. Are they doing one gram per pound of body weight or more? And then I would significantly reduce that. And that tended... You hit the nail on the head. In fact, when we talked last night, he was telling me that his protein intake was actually quite high. So it would be smart to lower protein intake as well because that can really... Hydration matters too. Big time. Just making sure you're not dehydrated. You don't have to be drinking gallons of water a day, obviously. Digestion's a good one because when it's off, it fucks with everything. But it's almost always a symptom of other things, just like sleep. Like sleep fucks everything up. But the reason why you don't get good sleep, it's often the symptom of something else. So I would increase those vegetable intake, well-cooked vegetables, drink a lot of water, reduce your protein intake, and then slowly reduce your consumption of Senna. Because it is, it has been shown, to have people build a dependency on it. Yeah. I know some of my clients that actually have taken this tea because when they travel, a lot of times they tend to find themselves constipated. That's like a common theme. So this was one of those. But obviously, if you could get access to vegetables and have that combo available to you, it's going to be ideal. Yeah, caffeine is also... Here's the other thing too. I don't reduce caffeine while doing this. Wait to reduce your caffeine till later. Because reducing caffeine for some people also results in constipations. Or add one to two servings of Legion greens every day. Yeah, there you go. I'm not going to do this. Come on, man. We didn't get paid for that. That's bullshit. This guy's a genius. I was waiting for the commercial plug for himself right there. That was like a layup right there. Well, you could add some Legion greens to your diet every day. It's funny because we have zero affiliation with Legion. We just like you guys so much. I keep trying to get in. It's hard to get over this wall, dude. We're all poods. Oh, cockpits. Such a biggie. Couple poods. Such a biggie. All right, next one. All right, so here's the last question. It was transitioning from active work to more sedentary. So in this particular case, she's a dog walker. That's her job. Average is, I believe, around 20,000 steps a day. And also was following maps aesthetic. Maps aesthetic is one of our highest volume workout programs. There's three big workouts a week and then the workouts in between are shorter. But you're working out basically five or six days a week. Full body. How do I transition from I'm not going to be walking dogs as much so my steps are going to go down and my workouts, I'm going to lower my volume. Now, have any, have you guys experienced like anything like that dramatic or more dramatic than that in your career? I did with personally yourself. Not myself, but with clients who like smaller workers. For me, I'll never forget when I left 24-hour fitness. As a personal trainer or fitness manager or whatever on the workout floor, training clients or lifting weights and re-racking weights for 10 hours a day, six days a week. And then training myself on top of that. Easily, I was stepping 20 to 30,000 steps and lifting and doing things active, right? Every single day to completely stopping that and then sitting at a marijuana dispensary with no, nobody coming through the doors for the first six months to a year. Holy shit, was that a, like a total swing. I went from the guy who could struggle to get enough calories in to maintain his size to really quickly, it didn't take much for me to over consume. And it took me a while to figure out what my new caloric maintenance was because I was, I was the guy who was, I was trying to get 5,000 calories a day and I had a hard time with that every day because I was just burning so much to being super sedentary to where I could eat almost half the food and that was enough for me to maintain. So, you know, my first suggestion and I recommend this over any sort of tools that are out there is to just, when that time comes, when you transition to a lot less movement, is you need to just almost like you're starting from square one again. It's like, it's time to track again. And you could probably already just guesstimate that you're probably gonna reduce a solid 500 to 1,000 potential calories. That's what I would say. Start with a good new estimation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Start with a good estimation of reducing X amount of calories and then be consistent with that for about two weeks of tracking. And the goal obviously in those two weeks is to not see weight gain or weight loss and that should give you a good idea of the new caloric maintenance where you should be at. So. Yeah, that's though 100% would be my advice. You're gonna have to lower your calories but you can also try to focus on building muscle. So you can also make the focus on strength. I think the combination of all of it would be ideal. Yeah, I would focus on building muscle because that's gonna help offset some of the... It's not gonna be much. It's not gonna be much but it'll help and it also changes your mental health. It's not that metabolically active. Yeah. I mean, going from 20,000 steps a day to 5,000 if that's what it's gonna be or whatever and less workout volume. Yeah, you're talking about. You cannot begin to replace that. 500 to 1,000 calorie difference for sure. Yeah, and what you might want to even... Some people do it by eliminating a meal so they say, okay, I'm not gonna eat breakfast anymore. I recommend just reducing the size of each of your meals and getting used to that being your new normal. It's gonna take a little bit of a time to kind of get used to it. But as far as a metabolic activity of muscle, here's what's interesting. This is actually a good discussion. I know studies show that it's not that much. Like gain a few pounds of muscle, it's not that much. It's like less than 10 calories a pound or something. But you know what though? Here's the funny thing. Inexperience, I've taken people and reverse-dieted them and had them build four or five pounds of muscle, which isn't that much, and had seen their calories increased by 800 and not gain any body fat. There's other mechanisms that are happening. Something else has happened. There is something else that's happening. You could say maybe some of that is due to nutrient partitioning, but even I would say there are probably other factors. There is. There is. There is lifestyle factors. Well, and there's also activity and... You know what I mean? And if you're switching and you're putting a lot of energy in building muscle, you've probably naturally increased intensity in your workouts, naturally, progressively overloading. So there are other factors, but generally speaking, I agree with Sal. It's weird. I've had clients who went from like insane amounts of activity and volume and actually had to reduce it because it was just too much for them. So I had them cut way down and we do this slowly. I typically don't go cold turkey. That's another piece of advice. It'd be great if you didn't do cold turkey, where you went from 20,000 steps to 5,000 steps. I would get a step tracker and once you stopped dog walking, I would try to at least get maybe 5,000 less. So 15,000 steps. Are you doing cardio on top of that too or no cardio right now? No. So that's it. I mean, here's where lists is incredible. So, you know, just low intensity, steady state cardio has a lot of value for someone who's making this transition. So maybe when you go from the 20,000 steps from dog walking so much to all of a sudden dropping, you know, potentially down to five, instead of dropping all the way down to five, spend a half hour to an hour every day walking on the treadmill and multitasking, either reading emails or listening to your favorite podcast, Mind Pump, or go outside and walk. If you can't, it'll be better. Well, yeah, no, that'd be no dogs. Yeah, yeah, you're right. That would be better. So I mean, I would see a lot of value in doing that. It doesn't need to be intense at all. It's just walking, you know, just replace it inside the gym or outside. But I tell you what, there is something interesting that happens sometimes. Like I've had clients who, you know, over the course of six months, lower their activity significantly because they had to, because they were just doing way too much, focus on resistance training, slowly reverse diet them and see their metabolisms completely change. And on paper, it doesn't make sense. And I've seen that happen many times. You see that especially with competitors. Changing macronutrients. They're like going from a low protein to a high protein. You also, what happens? What happens? We all know what happens too. When you start to feel better about your body, you build muscle, you walk around with your chest puffed out more, you're active, you're more lively. So there's a lot of factors. Okay, so I'll bring up a study that was interesting. Did you see the study that was done on the, I can't remember the name of the tribe. They're a modern hunter-gatherer tribe. But through some pretty sophisticated testing, they were able to test their, how many calories they were burning every single day. So, and what they thought was, okay, here we are with this modern hunter-gatherer tribe. We hypothesize that they're burning a shit ton more calories than the average person. These people are active all day long. They're taking 40,000 steps a day or more. Just totally active. You know what they found? They weren't burning that many more calories than the average person. Now, it makes perfect sense, if you think about it evolutionarily speaking, why would your body allow you to burn shit tons of calories by being super active? If you can't eat them back. Right. You'll just die eventually. Right, and we evolved in environments where food is very scarce. So there are other mechanisms at work that I don't think we fully understand. And the human metabolism is so complex, we act like we know how it works. The only thing more complex than that is, look at Doug. Doug looks up a pop-up right there. He gets a legion hitting him. Can't get away from this motherfucker. Come on, click on it. Click on it, Doug. Throw his numbers off. Click on it, don't buy anything. Yeah, so that's the study right there. You're following us. There is something interesting that has happened. So this should give you some hope, because a study like this shows that, although you're really active right now, if you reverse out of it and kind of do it the right way, you'll probably still have to eat less, but it may not be... Is it the Hansa tribe? What is that tribe? A hodza, hodza. Yeah, that's right, hodza tribe. It may not be as dramatic as you think, where you might think like, oh my god, I'm gonna be eating 500 calories a day. No, I don't think it'll work that way if you do it the right way, so. I agree. Yeah, anyway, good time, Mike. Always a blast having you around, man. Looking forward to tonight. Tonight will be fun. Yeah, I'm always like, what's he gonna say? Are we gonna get in trouble? I'm a master of walking. Let your hair down a little bit tonight, dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah, good time.