 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the video. My name is Salamite. If you don't know, I've been doing this fitness thing, this YouTube thing for a little over a decade, maybe 12 years, is when I started the podcast in 2011. I've been powerlifting since about 2009, 2010. I would say I'm part of the online fitness community starting in maybe 2012 when I started making friends with people like Omar Esoff and Bart Kwan and Brandon Diamond Campbell, Max Chuning, Christian Guzman, the boys from Mastethics. Things go on and on. We're going to go a little bit down memory lane. We're going to be a little bit open here. We're going to talk about just some things that have happened in my life in my brain. So recently, the news I think is public now that Garrett Gonzalez from Mastethics has passed away. So I want to send my condolences to him, his family, his girlfriend, his friends. I grew pretty close with Simon and I've known the Mastethics boys forever, but pretty close with Simon over COVID. We've obviously traveled and met, hung out many times at expos, et cetera. But during COVID, a lot of things kind of came to my mind or kind of shut down in some ways. Obviously the world and the pandemic and the gym scene was rough. We all went through our own challenges and our own ways. I've struggled with anxiety and depression my entire life and I know many of you struggle with your own demons. I was actually going through a little dip in life, a depression, if you will, before the pandemic. Starting kind of in the fall of 2019, things weren't awesome in my brain. And that was kind of the first real break I think I took from YouTube. I wasn't working out, so then what was I going to film? I wasn't training, so then what am I going to talk about? Plus, you know, weeks and months of just not eating, not be able to get off the couch. During the pandemic, for those that don't know, I started opening a gym called 3rd Street Barbell in Sacramento, California. We got the keys in June 2020. We had talked about the lease, et cetera, in about December 2019, and we're figuring out those parts of it before, you know, the world shut down. And obviously everyone was told two weeks, so we're talking to our real estate agent and we signed the lease regardless. Obviously those two weeks turned in California two or three years. I opened the gym during that time. We did a lot of renovations from June to about October, working 10, 12-hour days for any of those that have, you know, done any kind of renovations or started any kind of business, you know, the hours that it takes. During this time, you know, I think online fitness and YouTube fitness will do a very big revolution. Obviously, TikTok had been around since maybe 2017, 2018, 2019, but the fitness scene on TikTok exploded the next generation. You know, maybe the fifth, sixth generation of content creators came about. I couldn't make content because I was too busy literally hammering hammers and nails and screws and doing car heart shit. And then for the next two years, I had to run the gym. We really didn't have any employees. Obviously the pandemic was still lingering. We were considered an outdoor facility by the county because we had three open walls and so we just continued to stay open. Probably wasn't until 2022 when I got a team, Seabass, Avi, Kyle, and it allowed me a little bit more freedom to step back into the scene. So we started traveling to USAPL Nationals. Obviously I made some trips to hang out with Bart and do film. We still filmed for Barbara Brigade, et cetera, et cetera through that time, but getting my face back in the scene. It's a great creation, although it has more varying scales than someone like a performer or an entertainer. You're basically an entertainer or performer, right? Someone like an actress, an actor. Your current worth is only that of what your audience is as a business or as a performer, right? You could be the best actor in the world, but if no one's watching your show, you ain't got a show, right? I think I'm a pretty confident human being. I've been to therapy since I was in third grade, not a lot of self-exploration, had a lot of professionals help me and teach me things along the way, and I've had many talks with recent content creators that are a little newer in the game. I'm not talking about that. This show, we need to build a foundation because the foundation isn't your views. Yeah, it's your community. Shout out to you all for rockin' with me now for 12, 13 years. Your community can be part of that foundation for sure. But views come and go, likes come and go, follows come and go. And despite me considering myself a pretty confident person, I definitely had times where coming back to YouTube or coming back to consecration on Instagram or the podcast would rattle me emotionally. When you create content, at least what YouTube used to be, we just filmed ourselves. We didn't have a persona. We weren't acting. You saw into our lives, into our brains. I tried to share knowledge and experience with as many people as I could. That was literally always and still is the goal. So when things get rattled, whether it be views or likes or whatever, it kind of rattles you. I'm big on not tying your identity to one thing, because you see with athletes all the time, right? You're the best basketball player in high school. You rip your ACL. You don't have basketball no more, and you just, your life crumbles, right? So we want to diversify not only our hobbies, our interests, our skills, but who and what we consider ourselves, you know? I'm a son. I'm a friend. I'm a boss. I'm a mentor. I'm a student. I'm a lifter. I love music. I love clothes. And so I've been pretty confident in who I am my entire life. But always things and negativity are going to sneak in your mind as your views go down, as your followers go down, as the momentum of what you've known for a decade starts to go away. We recently took a trip to Houston, Texas and Austin, Texas to hang out with some boys. I've actually done two trips there over the last six months. You know, we have a lot of homies. Texas is obviously a very big hub for fitness in the last couple of years. And some of those are OGs, Shali, Russ, Guzman, Max. A lot of really good friends of mine. And so obviously Guzman and Max are content kings. They're so good at what they do, business-wise and content creation-wise. But they started this whole journey the same time I did. And so there's kind of like this low-key brotherhood or frat there. And I came home, I was talking to Seabass in the plane, maybe the car. And the feeling of, I guess, legacy in a way built me a little bit more confidence that what we did mattered. What we did stands the test of time, that it made connections, that the community is still there, although the fitness community is bigger. And in my opinion, maybe a little bit more diluted by TikTok. There's some great content creators there. And there's some people that are just showing ass on there, which is just a little bit. Sure, that's always been a part of fitness or marketing, but just feels a little bit different than all of us being trainers or being meatheads and then sharing the journey of content online. Whether you're a content creator yourself, whether you want to be, whether you're going to be one, to really think about who you are, why you're doing things, what's the point of all this? What impact are you making now or down the road? And then have a little bit of a plan. I'm not the most organized guy, I don't have a degree, I don't have a five-year, ten-year plan, but I have goals and I have a path and I have strategy to how I move through this planet, through this universe, through this world and how I want to impact people. I have like a guiding light, I have a North Star. And so if you have that, I think you'll be better off. I've just seen so many people get crushed and disappear and mentally, physically take it so on the chin that their views aren't there or their likes aren't there, their following isn't growing, et cetera, et cetera. And trust me, it's exciting, it's exciting. I want just as many views as y'all want. I mean, you don't want to put the effort into buying the camera, thinking of concepts, sharing your knowledge and experiences to get no views. No one wants that, but a point is that that shouldn't rattle you so far into a downward spiral that I've seen. And then for those that aren't there, it's coming. And I don't mean that in a negative way, but no content creator, no actor, no basketball player, nobody stays at the top forever. And so if you tie your identity so tight to your follower count or your view count, it's gonna be a real shock. And so I just want to share a little insight from my world what that maybe looks like and to maybe think of how you can build foundations, whether it be financially, which is a big part, how it could be emotionally, which is also a big part of the journey of maybe being a content creator. There's also a trend of hardcore lifters or these, I call them shut up in lifters that have this tough guy motto that the gym is the therapy and stuff and let me tell you from someone who's been to therapy and who's also been to the gym, nothing replaces therapy. So if you're struggling, if you want to learn about yourself and people and how the world kind of works, I recommend therapy to anyone. But know that fitness to me is a baseline of this self care movement. But it's not the answer to self care. Same idea when people are like, self care day and they fucking take in a bath with a glass of wine, that's not self care. Doing things that allow you to relax and maybe unplug for a bit, yeah, that's another piece of the puzzle that is self care. But just because you eat broccoli and tilapia and do squats twice a week doesn't mean that you're mentally or emotionally taking care of yourself. And it's a little bit of a pet peeve of mine because I am kind of a mental health advocate. I think it might even be mental health month coming up in June. I just think it's important to look at your life yourself as different aspects and be able to handle all those. Sleep's a big portion. Yeah, nutrition's a portion. Who you surround yourself with is a huge portion of your mental health. The job and things you do every single day are a big part of your mental health and will play a role in how you're feeling and how you treat others. I think how you look at things, the perspective of being as positive as you can in situations plays a role in your own mental health and those around you. Yes, stoicism and these things are getting really popular where they say the outside world doesn't affect you, but it does. That's the world we live in. We're social creatures. If that wasn't the case, everyone would be isolated and live on their own. But humans don't move that way. We move in families, we move in communities, we move in groups. And in the modern day, obviously, we move in city, states, counties, whatever, but we need each other to get by. Not only logistically, right, food, how our world works, roads, police officers, firemen, teachers, right? We need each other applicationally, but emotionally we do too. And so you can have a net positive or a net negative effect on each other. And so one thing that helps my own mental health is being cognizant of how I'm affecting others. If I can be more positive, and I even tell my team, I'll tell them this morning, my bro, I'm irritable this week, I'm trying my best over here, but I'm just almost giving them a warning. I ain't trying to be grumpy, but things might come because every other day I'm so conscious of being a positive force in everyone that I cross paths with. And if everyone does that, we probably have a more positive world and a more positive culture that we live in. Now that ties into content creation easily because with content creation, and a lot of people do do this in a great way, they reach hundreds of thousands of people with entertainment or education, right? So if your effect is that great, you have to have a responsibility on the messages you're sending. I guess I say all this just to say that if you're a content creator, you're not alone. If you're an athlete, you're not alone. If you are injured, going through it, losing someone, loving someone, missing someone, you're not alone. We all go through it. Trust me, and I say this in the most humble way, I'm very confident in who I am, what I have to offer in this world, and even I have gone through negative days, weeks, months, feeling less than because of where my social media or online presence goes, has gone. You always expect this onward trajectory to go on forever, and if you're a content creator, I'm here to, you know, and maybe this falls on deaf ears, you know, because it's easy to see and hear things until you experience them, right? Until you experience something is often the only way you can feel it, and I've experienced a lot of things, and that's why I talk about these topics. So hopefully others that are feeling this are going through it, or those that potentially down the road will can connect because you can't be fully empathetic until you can understand what it's like in someone's shoes. It's okay. Business is hard, life is hard, content creation is hard, nothing stays up top, but if you continue to follow that guiding light, whatever that is for you, you'll just have to pivot. Everything in life is a pivot. I'm double-teamed at the half-court, I'm going to pivot out of it. You know, pandemic comes, I'm going to pivot out of it. I can't be as strong as I want to be or used to be, I'm going to pivot out of it. Content creation is not what it used to be, we're going to come up with new concepts, new ways that I can reach more people and continue to help people. In the core that is still here, I'm going to give them the best value I can while they're here. That's a pivot in itself, right? Marketing, there's often ways to grow wider or ways to grow deeper, and often the answer is to grow deeper, and if I can grow a deeper connection with a certain community and help them with my experiences, my words, or even just having fun entertainment, which is obviously the majority of the channel, I'm going to do so. So, a little bit different video today, man. Just want to let you guys in, kind of bring the Wizard of Oz veil back and let you see how my brain works, what's going on in my head over the last three, four years, I want to help entertain our educators, many people as I can in this world, if I can make you smile, if I can make you better, because I've been to some dark places, and I know you all have too. So, I'm going to go catch some cardio. We are starting a deep cut, the shreds life, so episode one's up, if you guys want to go check that out, and I hope you follow along. Be sure to subscribe, man, give this thing a thumbs up. If we can get 200, 300, 400, 500 likes, it'd be much, much appreciated. 3sb.co, big sale coming soon. Stay tuned, goodcompanydiscord.com, and I'll catch you all in the next one.