 Over the last decade, we've seen the emergence of a new position in the fitness industry, a way to make money, the fitness influencer. This really didn't exist more than about 10 years ago, but now it's a potential avenue to build a business if you love fitness. Here's the problem, most people do it totally wrong. So in today's episode, we're going to talk about the biggest mistakes people make when trying to build a business as a fitness influencer. You know what I wish we would have done? Maybe Doug can do this while we're talking. I wanted to find out the stat on, because I remember hearing you, you know, reading it in an article, one of the other on the like top like five things that kids are asked in high school, like, what do you want to be? Oh, well, not YouTuber or influencers like up there now, right now. Yeah. I mean, that didn't exist just say 15 years ago as an even option. And it went from being not ever being an option to all of a sudden a top five thing that a kid or profession that a kid wants to wants to be when they grow up. I find that really interesting that something like that skyrocketed that fast. I wonder how serious that'll be when they grow up. You know, like, depending on culture, kids tend to want to do the thing that gets a lot of attention. Like, if you asked a bunch of kids, especially boys in the 1960s, what they wanted to be astronaut would have been like the top because we had the space racist stuff. I don't think kids say astronaut at all anymore. You know, professional athlete, although I think that now kids are starting to realize that that's or have realized for a while that that's super, super rare. 98% of middle school and high school students would like to be a social 98%. Oh, my God. I think the perception is that it's just like easy thing to do. Well, I. Well, I actually know barriers. I mean, there's no barriers. It's relatively inexpensive. So you don't have to have post something and they live on it all the time. So it's like they're constantly just like paying attention to all these other people doing it. So and I would imagine that everybody or every kid by now probably has, you know, like the Kevin Bacon thing, right? But within six people, they've probably got somebody who they know who's young and making a lot of money doing it. Wow. Or at least has a lot of followers. You know what I mean? OK, that's probably what. So that's a good point. I have and I even have a big gas. I have a buddy who's in his late 40s who I talked to and his his wife and him are in the social media thing. They kind of got into it in the last like 10 years or whatever. And he'll send me people over who he really likes. And even someone who's older than a serial entrepreneur, I would I would consider a smarter guy or a more savvy guy when it comes to business. Still, the his perception on what is a really like he's sending me like, oh, you got to check this. Like he's so impressed with this, this guy's business. And I'm like, you know, it's funny because I know more about that person's business than obviously he does. And I'm like, you know, because this guy posts like Lamborghinis and like, you know, he's doing like he's refined on the private jet and he's doing videos of his watches and he's got a big following. It's like this dude's ball and he's got a killer. And I'm like, yeah, you know, I don't I don't think he's got his killer of a business as you think he does. So there is this misconception around two, probably and that probably exacerbates this situation, right? That, oh my God, like, every if you got 100,000 followers, you got cool cars, you must have a sick business, too, when that's not necessary. There's a lot of ways to kind of build that perception and to rent things and to make yourself look a lot bigger than you are like in real life. And this is the kind of conundrum with the influencer space. It's just like, you don't really know for sure if they're authentic in what they're presenting. And this is just something it's it's always like very grandiose what they want you to perceive. There's a whole business around that. There's an entire industry built around products and services to make you appear as if you're more successful than you are because it provides some form of like social evidence. So if you're following somebody and you you're like, huh, I wonder if they're, you know, they're good to follow. They got good information. I kind of like them. And then you see that they have like a Lamborghini or they're in a private jet. Okay, they must be really good. But the thing with social media is obviously you can present whatever you want. And you're always trying to present an image which makes it hard to judge whether or not somebody's got good information or whether or not they're actually successful. Now, to be clear, it's very, very rare to make millions of dollars as a fitness influencer on social media. Extremely rare, very, very rare, but it's very possible if you do a good job and you're diligent and you're consistent and you provide good information, good value to make a living as an influencer. I mean, you can, I could take somebody so long as they're not terrible and they're lazy. If they're good and consistent and they do a good job and they apply themselves, I would say, you know, you've got pretty good odds at making a good living using, you know, being a fitness influencer. The whole millionaire thing, that's the forget that that's like trying to be a pro athlete. But could you support yourself as a fitness influencer through work, effort, providing value, learning and growing? Yes, you totally could. It's totally possible. These are the people that make the biggest, biggest mistakes, though, or the people who have that potential make massive mistakes throughout this pursuit and then they become disenfranchised or they stop altogether. And I think that's what we should focus. All right. Today's giveaway is Maps Power Lift. This is a powerlifting workout program. Here's how you can win. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it, subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you do all those things and you win, we'll let you know in the comment section. We're also running a sale right now, Maps Prime, Maps Prime Pro and the Prime Bundle all 50% off only this month. If you're interested, click on the link at the top of the description below. All right. Back to the show. Using your pro athlete, you know, analogy, what do you think it is? Do you think that they are, you know, watching the, the one percenters that have made millions of it and seeing like how they act and what they do and then trying to, to mirror that and thinking like, that's the reason why they've had all this blueprint in the form. Right. So what do you think is that, is that like that causes that like, that's got to be part of it, right? Uh, what you think that that person is doing and so you try to copy it, but all you really see is their social media. So you're not really sure you just see their presentation. And unfortunately the top, top popular people, I should say with the most follower followers in fitness tend to be like models or they look like models. And so you think that that's the value and that's what you try to present. In fact, that takes us to the first one, which is a huge mistake that people make in the fitness space is you see the people with all the following on Instagram or social media and they tend to be these perfect bodies, good looking, super ripped, super fit. And so you're like, okay, this is how I'm going to build a business is by trying to be like this, which your odds of success with that are not only small, they're extremely small, but then also if you do succeed this way, your, your shelf life is very, very short. You're not going to have a long term business. Well, I think that's the part that is most important is that because there is a part of that, the formula that has been proven in our space to work, right? Like the before and after pictures, the, you know, look where I was before now, look at me. I'm shredded, like, or I'm your, this gorgeous model. And so you get all this attention. And so there is, there is a part of that that actually might be viable enough to, to grow an audience, right? But to your point, it's really, really stressful to have built your success off that we've had the opportunity and I won't name drop on here of people that have been in our space for a decade or so that have built it around social media, that have got millions of followers and a lot of them battle with like depression or feel like they're not being their authentic self because they have created this image that was built around their body and their physique. And even if they love fitness and working out, they're like, man, it's like, if I'm not putting that out there all the time, then I'm not getting the traction. If I'm not getting the traction, I'm not getting the conversions. I'm not getting the conversions. I don't have a viable business. And so they get in this hamster wheel of having to kind of use their body and themselves like to promote that engagement all the time. And it's like, even though they made some good money on the way up, it's torture. In fact, I meant to bring this up on a koala the other day that I didn't bring it up to you. There's actually a counter movement to all this. I mean, there's a girl, I'll look her up, see if I can find her name. But she's, she, they did a big article on her. She's a big influencer, had like a million plus followers with that. And she's been doing this for a while. And she's now making a business on how to get out of being an influencer. Yeah, because like, and this is what she talks about, you know, building this all up, you know, all this, and then all these affiliates that you're tied to. And then being like, I don't want to do this anymore. And then feeling trapped because you've made such good money. So she's now making a business out of the business. There's, there's a few reasons why this is really a terrible way to build a media business or an influencer business if you're in fitness in terms of in the context of, you know, selling your body as evidence. One, and I'll start with the most obvious one, is to be beautiful enough or attractive enough or have a body that looks good enough to gain that type of attention puts you at the point one percent of everybody. So right away, if you're watching or listening to this, you're probably not that. Okay, I'll bet that almost everybody watching this right now is probably not that. So that's number one. That's just realistic. Now people might have distorted, you know, what do you mean? Yeah, but the truth is, look, the truth is you're not gonna, you're not that good looking to make that kind of an impression. It's just that that's just that. So that's number one. But now let's go down a little bit. So let's say that you are that person that you do have that point one percent of appearance or body or whatever to gain that type of type of attention. Well, now you've gained that attention. But if that's your first of all, if that's your what people value, how the hell do you convert that into a business? Because it's free. You're looking at me for free on Instagram. So you see lots of pages like this on Instagram where people follow people because they like to look at them. But that doesn't mean they want to buy something from you. In fact, they're getting the product that they value already for free. And we've seen this before with their stories of these influencers who have lots of followers because they're booty shots or whatever. Then they try and sell a t-shirt and they can't sell a single one. So so that's the second tier there is now how do you even convert that? And then here's the third one that I think will appeal to a lot of real fitness enthusiasts or people who want to do this for a living. This is not the right way to sell fitness. If you're a trainer, if you're not just trying to build a business, but you actually have a passion for fitness, selling the appearance and the looks is the worst way to convey the right message for fitness. It's actually what's a big problem with the fitness industry and you're not helping anybody. It's not going to help anybody to do so. It's one of the reasons why we don't even use before and after here at Mind Pump, even though our marketing team is constantly telling us to do so. It doesn't sell fitness the right way because the way you look is but one of the values that fitness provides. And if you focus on that, you are never going to help people develop this long term relationship with health and fitness. But I'm inspiring people with how awesome I look. No, you're not. And here's the last part. Here's the last part. I'll say this. This is what Adam's talking about. You can get trapped in this. This is why people like me. This is my value. I'm making money off of it. I'm getting older. This is getting boring. I feel like I have more value in this, but this is all people want. And I know people listening right now who've never had a lot of money or probably like, I don't care. I just get lots of money. I think it's exactly how I know it's so it's going in one ear and out the other. I'm going to tell you right now tell we know lots of people like this where this becomes a personal hell to where people like them for for what they're actually not. And they're making money. They don't know how to get out of it and it sucks. It sucks. I don't like to keep posting this. What am I doing slipped? They'll turn on you and they'll turn on you. So it's just a terrible way to build a don't you think it's a bit of a microcosm of celebrities and pro athletes totally and what they go through like you. Everybody wants to be this celebrity, you know, pro athlete or actor, actress. And they think it's all, you know, glam and lots of money and awesome. But many of those those actors, actresses and athletes after their career is over, go into crazy depression and become alcoholics, drug addicts. And a lot of that is because they've they've identified as this character that they've built up their entire life. And it's not really their authentic self and they're tortured inside yet they have all this money and all this fame, but they're completely depressed. I think we're seeing that play out at a smaller scale or a smaller scale in terms of probably revenue wise of fame in social media. Sure. Yeah. No, I think that's a great parallel because even you'll see a lot of these like actors, actresses like later on in their careers, like they're so known for their look, right? Like that's their entire value. And so they have to try and recreate that or at least preserve as much as possible with crazy surgeries and things. And those don't always go so well. And it's just like they just look completely tortured. Yeah. And you have a you have a short shelf life. Like if you're if people value for looking perfect, how long can you look perfect for? And then what? And then you got nothing, right? Versus your knowledge or the value that you provide people through your coaching or your help, which can last until you decide to stop. And it's much more meaningful. But again, at the very top, your odds of building any kind of business based off of your looks is almost zero percent period in the story. And I'm saying that because again, there's people who are like, I don't care. I just want to make money. You're not going to make money doing that. So don't make that big mistake. All right. The second one. Adam talks about this all the time whenever he's talking to people about building business on social media, which is like people focus a lot too much, I would say, on the follower count versus actual engagement. I love it when you go into this Adam. Yeah, well, I mean, it's no different than if we were talking about like a, you know, brick and mortar or a business that you would start 20 years ago is getting so hung up on just trying to get so much traffic your way. But if you don't have a good product, you don't add value. You're not engaging with the customer the likelihood that all these people are going to purchase or buy anything of you is very low. And I don't know how many times we've had somebody on the show or we've met who has hardly any followers, but has this multi, multi million dollar business and extremely successful and vice versa. Somebody comes on and they have millions of followers and they have a terrible business. So this idea of just having tons of eyes on you is means that you have a great business is completely false. It's what if I had somebody right, like, and I, by the way, like I went through this like experiment myself when we first turned on Instagram and Facebook and all these platforms. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I didn't know how to build a business off this. And I was trying to figure that out. And I remember using my physique to gain attention and get followers. And it's like, oh, the follower account was going up. But then what I realized was those people were following me for those reasons. And if I was trying to sell them a nutrition plan or a personal training or a product had nothing to do with my half-naked body or my abs. And so the leap from getting these people that are a bunch of looky-loos to convert is terrible. And so I'd rather have five new people listening to me because I posted something about rehabbing knee surgery, right? Because I've trained a lot of clients that have had ACL, MCL issues. It's a common thing that's happened. They want to get back in the gym. What are good stretches? What are good exercises? I'd rather do a post about that, get hardly any likes, but get two or three people who go, oh, wow, this really helped me. I just went through ACL, MCL surgery. Thank you. That person or those two people that engaged in that post are far more valuable than 500 looky-loos because I showed my abs on a picture before because one of those is attracting my client. The other one is just getting attention. I'm going to be even more extreme. OK, I'm going to really illustrate this. From a business standpoint, from building a business, it's far more valuable to have 1,000 really hardcore disciple followers. People that really are like, man, this person is the man or the girl. This is the person I'm following. I love what they say. I trust them. It's more valuable to have 1,000 of those than it is to have 100,000 normal social media followers. OK? If you have 1,000 people that really follow you, you have, no joke, a deep six-figure business, or maybe even a million-dollar-year business. If you have 100,000 people following you on social media, just normal following you, you're lucky if you make 10 grand a year off that. Lucky if you can make 10 grand a year. So that's the difference. 1,000 people who really find value in what you have to say, it is not hard at all. It's very easy to sell them a $300 or $500 or $1,000 service or product. You have 100,000 people following you on social media just because they like to look at you. Try selling each of them a dollar product. Good luck. You're probably going to sell to 20 people and get nothing else. That's the illusion that people have with social media. They see followers and they think, wow, all those people, no, that means nothing. Now I'm going to take a step back. Adam, you mentioned brick and mortar. We have become so distorted with followers that we don't even realize that these are potential customers. If I had a brick and mortar business and I had 1,000 people walking through my door, oh my god, I'd be ecstatic. But for some reason on social media, 1,000 is like, oh, that's nothing. I need hundreds of thousands. No, that's not true at all. Engagement is everything. The follower count is almost nothing. Well, and two, big businesses are privy to this now. Like they're looking for influencers and people who actually have those kind of comments in their posts where there's back and forth and there's dialogue. And they're really interested in what you have to present versus just the robots kind of like marketing, whatever they're marketing within your post. And I think, again, this goes back to being popular or just or having that kind of like fervorous type of engagement. Like big businesses are paying attention to that and they want to invest in the smaller influencer that actually has that kind of power and engagement in conversation with their fans. No, that's 100 percent right. Like I get the opportunity to talk to a lot of these companies, right? Because I handle that side of the business for us with partnerships. And there was this kind of like learning curve for them. Most all of them at one point when they had a lot of them took on funding and so they had capital and they could go, OK, we're going to go spend $100,000 on advertising. So what do they do? They go to the top of Instagram or top of Twitter. They look for just the most popular people that are related potentially to their product and they go pay them a bunch of money and they had terrible terrible success with that. And it was and then what they found was way more successful was finding these what they call micro influencers that had maybe five or ten thousand followers, but lots of engagement. They're they're five or ten thousand followers, but hundreds of comments because those people are all talking to that one person. That and that person was far more valuable for their business than the person who had a million followers that just gets, you know, ten thousand likes, but no comments. No one's asking questions. No one's engaging with that person. And so to your point, Sal, you are far better off than kind of the original point I made about chasing after that those two people who are going to engage with that post that aligns with your business than gaining ten thousand people as attention by, you know, a booty pic or an ad pic or, you know, the trends, right? There's always these trendy videos that are going on tick tock or hit the algorithm. Yeah, or that, you know, we just came out of the, you know, the dancing, pointing to things, you know, you've always got you always got somebody who's trying to trend ride and get attention. And there's this like feedback, this positive feedback loop of, oh, it's working because I'm getting more views and I'm getting more likes and it's just like, well, yeah, but are these people really the type of people that are potentially going to buy from you? All you're really doing is driving your conversion rate down. You're getting a bunch more attention, but then the likelihood of that one of those people is going to convert is even lower because they're not coming in there for your information. And to go deeper with that, people like, well, who cares if your conversion rate goes down, if you have more potential? It's harder to read your business that way. Yeah, of course. If you have a lot of people and your conversion rate goes down, like it's hard to read the signals in terms of what's working, what's providing value. You want a high conversion rate because you could read the signals, pivot and be very effective with your business. This is just a business fact. So look, if you want followers, follow trends. If you want a business, you have to add value. It's a big difference between the two. I'll add one more thing to that too. You also, by adding value, you're going in versus just trying to get followers. You also minimize the amount of negative attention that you tend to get. You know, when you're chasing just followers and you get lots of eyeballs, so do all the hate. And that's an area that a lot of these influencers struggle with is, you know, it's hard enough to get attention. Then you finally get the attention and you get equally as bad attention as you get good attention. And then you have these influencers that go into depression because they're like, oh my God. Well, yeah, why are they turning on me? I mean, I remember even feeling that a little bit. I'm not somebody who even cares about shit like that. But man, you get on your YouTube channel enough and you hear enough negative shit set about you and stuff like that and you keep reading that every day. Boy, it's, I don't care how confident you are and secure you are with yourself. Boy, that starts to affect you. So imagine if you're always doing these trendy things using your body, you're attracting all these people, most of them already, so there's a high percentage that a lot of those people are gonna be the ones that are trolls, that are gonna be talking shit about you and that if you're constantly fighting those people, boy, that becomes really depressing to be managing a business like that. So by adding value and going that direction and only trying to pick up three or five people through value versus getting thousands of people through attention, you also minimize the amount of negative attention that you get. Awesome. All right, so this next one, Adam used to talk about this a lot, was just people jumping to any sponsor that offers them money because they get excited. Wow, this person's gonna offer me a dollar per supplement or 10% affiliate fee or whatever. And you always made a really, really big deal about not doing this. So I'd love for you to go in this game. Yeah, we were very slow to add sponsorship to the podcast. We agreed early on that we didn't need it when we do decide to do it. We're gonna pick partners that we really love and we wanna work with. And because of that, we had to turn down money for a long time because really quick, the sharks come out, they see that you're a micro influencer what we were back then and they want to utilize you or use you to get your following and sell the product. And it's tempting because you're trying to build a business and you're not making any money and you finally get a little bit of attention. You finally can, now you have your first opportunity to make some money. But then what you do is you're, it's like a marriage, a partnership like us that we have is like a marriage. So as an affiliate or a brand I decided to work with. So you're not gonna go around and just sleep with everybody or marry everybody. Like you should be very slow to that because it is now attached to your brand. I did a post the other day where I shared a post of Jeremy Buendia who's, I don't know, I think he's up to 4 million followers. I've now seen this guy in like the last five, six years, he's on his fifth protein shake, fifth company. I'm like, man, these companies, they love to come and take advantage of someone like that and poach his audience because they're gonna make a bunch of money and get attention because of his following. And all they care about is brand awareness, eyeballs. Now 4 million people have seen their brand by whatever they're paying him to do that. And they eventually it'll probably happen after a six month or a one year contract, his revenue will start to decline. He won't be giving the ROI that they're paying them anymore. And then they cut his ties and they already got what they wanted from him. And then the next supplement comes along. And so people are privy to this, we're not stupid. You're following that is paying attention to you and see that they see you just brand hopping. And then they start to question like, does this guy really care about what he's providing us? Or is he just hopping from brand to brand whoever's willing to pay him more? And the reason why we convert so high for our brands is because we talked about this on the show beforehand. We said, we're not gonna take these partnerships. And when we do, you guys are gonna know that these are brands that we love, we use that are aligned with our message. And so when you do it that way, then you get way more loyalty. You get a lot more people that are gonna convert from it. And so this is a major mistake that you see a lot of influencers. One of the reasons why micro influencers, companies are finding are great ways to advertise is because they're following trust what they have to say. You, there is no faster way to lose the trust of your audience than switching from company to company to company to company that provides the same product. This is the best protein powder that's on the market. You're like, no, this is the best protein powder. Actually it's this one. And oh, this protein powder is breaking out. After a while, your audience is like, yeah, dude, you're just making money and you're really not that trustworthy. And what sucks is now you're the boy that cried wolf. So then when you actually have real product that is maybe life changing for you comes along and you finally get to partner up with them and then you talk about it. People are like, okay, yeah, buddy, sure. So it kills your personal brand and your ability to actually truly influence and actually do well. And now on the flip side, a sponsor can actually hurt your business, which is what we're talking about, but a sponsor can also, if you do the right job or do a good job, help build your business. So I'll use an example of a company that we started working with that actually has now helped our business. So there's a long process of working with us. We don't work with just anybody. We're very picky. And as a result, our audience tends to trust us. We have the highest conversion rates almost of anybody in our space as a result. And we take that very seriously. But I'll give you an example. We started working with a company called Viori a while ago before they were massive, before they were as big as they are now. We started working with them. We love the owner. We love the concept. The people are amazing. And Viori has since exploded. Now I'd like to think it's because of us, but I don't think so. I think they're just an awesome company. But nonetheless, now we're affiliated with this company that's exploding. So now it brings us as much brand awareness as almost as much as we bring them. We also look good because we've picked a great company to work with. You don't wanna work with a company that then has a bad reputation. But it's also amazing to work with a company that grows and develops this incredible reputation because it's also a reflection on you. It's like, wow, look at that person working with that company. And that company has really taken off and they've started working with them before they were that big and they continue to work with them. Like that looks pretty damn big. By the way, to that point Sal, and if you're listening and you are aspiring to be an influencer or you already are one, you will come across a point where you have to make this decision where I could partner with a brand that I love that I think is gonna be huge or great one day, but I might not make hardly any money or any money at first to build this relationship where I have this other competitor who's like a no-name brand really, but they're willing to spend money on me right away and do that. And so a lot of times you will have to sacrifice potentially money to build that relationship first with the brand that you really like in order to show that you have value to add to their company to work on that partnership and relationship opposed to taking the quick money. And so there's gonna be a point where that happens and if you make the right decision, you may not make it more money initially, but in the long run, you will to the points that you're making. We did that. I'm not gonna say names, I don't wanna call anybody out, but we were working with, I think Organifi at the time, we've been with them for a long time. And then another supplement company, and I'm not gonna say who they are, but let's just say they're one of the top or they were at the time, one of the top bodybuilding brands that was out there. And just to get their attention was actually quite humbling. Like, wow, they wanna work with us, but it's a no right out the gates because we don't like the products, we don't like the practices, they stand for a lot of things that we speak against. They would have offered us a lot more money than at the time Organifi did, but we said no because we looked down towards the future, not just right now, which I think takes us to the next point, which is being impatient. This is a big mistake. I think part of jumping with sponsors right away is being impatient, wanting to make money. But then the other part of being impatient is people tend to look at building a business through social media or become an influencer as if it's this business, it's like it doesn't follow the same rules of business. Like I'm gonna get into this and within a few months I should have this like flourishing business. In no other business space do people think this way. Nobody says I'm gonna open a brick and mortar, anything in three months I'm gonna make tons of money. Everybody expects I'm gonna lose money for the first year or two or five before I really start to make a lot of money. For some reason the influencer space, people have this weird perception that if it's not working after 90 days or six months or a year, well then it's just not gonna work. All business rules still apply. Still takes a long time due diligence and consistency to build a business and the social media game is really no different. This is the advantage the four of us dorks had, I think when we first got into this space was that we understood building a business really well before we got into the social media space and we applied that same philosophy of what makes a business successful and we knew we embraced the failure, we embraced the slow grind, we embraced not making money for a long time. You have to. I mean, that's just part of the process. If you think it's gonna turn overnight, like you're in for a rude awakening because very few people get the overnight success. And I do think because there's these anomalies that are out there where somebody, it was mentioned on Joe Rogan and so all of a sudden they get viral overnight or they come out with some product or they do some gimmicky thing that goes viral and they make a bunch of money off of that one viral post. I think because we have these anomalies, people think that that's a viable way to try and build your business. That's the norm. Sure, but even then like a lot of times they don't have the infrastructure in place, they don't have a lot of that added value already built into their business. So once they get that virality, it's like they'll consume it all and then they're left with nothing and then that huge surge is just gonna go away. What a great point you make, Justin. When we first started and we were starting to build some attraction and I would put us in the category of a micro influencer back then, people would always be like, oh man, if you guys got on Joe Rogan, oh man, if you guys, and I used to say like, I hope we don't get on Joe Rogan because at that point in the business, we hadn't built the infrastructure and this is a year or two years down, right? So we're a year, two years in, we're getting good traction, businesses doing all right, we're not crushing. It'd be like having a shot glass and someone's like, here, let me give you this pool full of water. Yes. Just all the water's on the floor. Yes, and you're like, yeah, great, I got a full glass of shot glass but then I missed all this other thing and like, so there was a part of me that like, I didn't want that attention. I didn't want that traction yet. Like it takes time to build an infrastructure. It takes time to build a good backend and to have all the systems in place to support the traffic of thousands of people all of a sudden coming to your website. Like that would be the best and worst thing happening all at once because if a customer comes in and they have a bad experience the first time, the likelihood they're gonna come back is extremely low. And then it's almost, definitely they're not gonna go tell anybody positive. There's a good likelihood. They're gonna say negative stuff which could kill your business. I'd much rather go slow, very slow, slowly build it and be ready, learn from helping one or two people, reiterate, help a couple more people reiterate, keep improving, keep getting better. Yeah, keep trying to get those two or three people to have such a good experience that they go and tell five other people. Then once you have proven that model, okay, now maybe we can handle this. But man, I don't think it was, it was, do you remember when I finally said, okay, I feel like, it was like four or five years later. Way later, that I would say, I don't want Joe Rogan, that would be terrible if we got on there. We're not ready yet. We're not ready. I barely feel like the business is ready to where it could support that kind of trap. Yeah, I mean, just to give people an example, use ourselves as an example, we had normal jobs, we had families and we would meet up every single week multiple times and record in the beginning three episodes and then five episodes a week for a full year before we made a dollar. Consistently, every single week we'd show up with content, record an episode, we'd had no media experience so it was definitely took a lot longer than it does now, edit the whole thing, put it out there for 12 months without making a single dollar. People have a tough time doing this for two months on Instagram where they could just type something out and post a picture. So just to give you an example, like we're definitely practicing what we preach, like any business that's gonna take time, that's just the bottom line. All right, the next one, I think this one's really important because people don't realize that if they pick the right medium for their strengths, it can have a profound impact on their business or if they pick the wrong medium for their strengths, then it can also have a profound impact on their business. So in the fitness space or in any business space, I think what people tend to do is they tend to look at social media and they look at the platform that tends to sell that space the best and they disregard their own strength. To give an example, if I say fitness, most people look at Instagram because it's visual. Oh, fitness, Instagram, that's the place to go because of people posting pictures of their workouts and of their muscles and whatever and that's where the biggest fitness influencer pages are. That's true, but if you suck at posting pictures, if you do a good job communicating through text or video, then it's a terrible medium for you. You're better off using another medium where you can really utilize your skills. I know people who built a tremendous fitness business through blogs because they were great at communicating that style and Instagram just wasn't their strength at all. So there's a lot of different ways to build this business. Think of yourself, think of what you would do best using, think of how you communicate. That's where you should probably focus most of your time because that's where you're gonna wanna spend your time and that's also where you're gonna get the most impact. Yeah, I think if you're great at writing, I think things like medium, I think blog posts. Yeah, sub-stack, things like that to get attention. If you're really good at communicating in long form, I think things like podcast are really good. If you're really animated and comfortable speaking to the camera. I think- Charismatic on YouTube, yeah. YouTube is really good for you. If you are good with taking photos and visually can do things with it and you can write good captions to obviously, I think Instagram is good for you. If you're really good at doing very controversial, short, witty type posts like Twitter, like so you have the ability to say something that is controversial and then be able to defend it within your posts. That's why I think Sal was always made for- Do you like to argue? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I remember telling Sal for the longest time, you gotta get on Twitter. I think it was made for you because Sal is great at this, is saying something that I think gets a lot of attention from people and then he can go back and forth and explain and articulate his point really well. So I think that type of medium does well. And the idea is that, and I remember hearing, I think it was Gary Vee talk about viewing all of it as types of real estate. And at one point, when you build a big enough business that's smart to have acquired property in all these categories and allow that to build equity in your business over time. So I do think it's smart to eventually dabble in all of these and have a presence in all of them. But initially, when you're trying to build and get traction, it makes the most sense to find the medium, not that's necessarily best for that business you want to Sal's point, but that you speak the best to. Highlights your strengths. That you like, that you're most comfortable with, that you use well. Lean into that, get good at that, learn how to get traction there and then you can start to learn the other means. Versus trying to do all of it at once, which I see a lot when someone starts. Yeah, out the gates. Yeah, out the gates, they've got a Twitter, they've got Instagram, they've got Facebook because they're told you need to have all these platforms. And it's like, yeah, eventually you can get there, but let's first prove that using the one you're best at and that you enjoy the most, that you can gain traction and attention there. Because if you can't even do it there for free, why would you waste your time and energy and equity everywhere else trying to build? Now, to that point, Adam, the next point is a mistake, which is always going in all in on one platform, right? You built your, you started your business, you found the platform that works with your strengths. Now it's growing, and then you just stay there. But that's the only place you're at and you built everything there. Now, for me, the obvious mistake with that, and again, I'd love your input on this, Adam, but the obvious mistake there is you don't really own your business when you're on one of these platforms. Like if you're on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook or YouTube, they hold the keys, they really do. And they can take it away at any moment. And I've known a lot of people where they've lost their entire businesses because they were completely concentrated in one platform. So to me, that seems like the most obvious one, but... So the way I help somebody with this that's starting their business, the very first thing, I don't care which platform you've chose to go all in at is to build an email list to compliment it right away. So if you're becoming famous or building a lot of traction on, say, Instagram and you're not capturing those leads and getting them over to an email list simultaneously, you're in a huge risk category because if something changes on Instagram algorithm-wise or like what happened to Sal completely kicked off, imagine if our entire business revolved around your Instagram when you went down for almost a year, that would be crazy. Like that would have just totally destroyed our business. Now, if you have an email list that you have, and I know it's on Google's platform, but they've email has never touched, it's been left the same for the longest. It's probably one of the safest places as far as a platform that you can get people off because then you have this list that you own. And if for some reason, one of those platforms either shuts you down or changes algorithm, you can reach your people and hopefully direct them to another potential medium. So I think one of the best ways to hedge when you're building on a social media platform is to also compliment that with an email list first. So that's like the easy like, okay, I'm gonna go- Step one. So all in on the platform, I believe that I communicate the best on. Simultaneously, I'm going to build an email list that and what does that look like, okay? Offer something, either be a newsletter. And it doesn't, by the way, people, there's a great book, Doug, it's slipping my mind right now that I cannot think of right now for that you and I both read. He's one of your favorite marketing guys. Oh, all of us read it. It's one of your favorite marketing guys that we've- Russell Brunson. There you go, Russell Brunson. Russell Brunson's two books that I really like that it's slipping the names for me right now. Yeah, that's dot comsecrets and expert secrets. Thank you, dot comsecrets, expert secrets. He goes into how simple the emailing can be. It doesn't need to be this like formal business email. It's just communicating with your people, adding value to them, whatever it is that you're doing. So run that simultaneously as you're also growing your whatever medium as that is one of the ways to hedge. So usually when you get enough traction, enough of a business, you can start to acquire all the other platforms and build those out. But to protect yourself, do not just go all in on one platform and not own your people or list of your people because of the fear of what could potentially happen. Yeah, it's a terrible fate. I've known a few people where they had great businesses and then got kicked off or lost. Like overnight, yeah. Oh, or even just got hacked and then they can't get it back for like a week and they lost tens of thousands of dollars in that entire week. Terrible, terrible position to be in. And it makes you very, very vulnerable. All right, lastly, this one's interesting because this has always been a challenge for people in the fitness space. I saw this before social media was even a thing in the gyms and to me, this is a huge mistake because number one, it's wrong and number two, not only is it wrong, it's the opposite of what's right. And that is the scarcity mindset. So here's what used to happen in gyms. When I would run gyms or own gyms and I'd have, let's say trainers working for me, you have that trainer, they're trying to build their business and they're afraid to refer potential clients to other trainers or other health practitioners for fear of losing that person. So it's like, well, they're buying 10 sessions for me but if I send them to that chiropractor that might help them with their low back or that nutrition person or that therapist or whatever, then their funds will get spread thin, they're not gonna afford working with me anymore and I'm gonna lose that customer or if I refer to that trainer who's better at, let's say athletic performance than I am, they're gonna wanna hire that trainer and not me. So I'm just gonna not refer this person to anyone. I'm not even gonna quote other fitness professionals for fear that this person's gonna end up leaving me. This is not just the wrong way, it actually will kill and hurt your business. The most successful trainers that I had in gyms and one thing that I did that really built my business was I built a network of people that I refer to and what it did is it made my value go through the roof as a trainer, it made my value go through the roof to where my clients, anytime they had an issue, they came to me and said, hey, Sal, do you have somebody that works with an naturopathic medicine or do you know a good chiropractor or Sal, what do you think about acupuncture? I became the go-to person and my value went through the roof. So this is not just the wrong way, literally it'll kill your business if you have this mentality. Yeah, I remember this mentality with something that I always had, like just if I'm not the best person for the job and I know somebody for that, like I'm gonna send them their way and it's a tough thing for a lot of people in the space to understand that what's gonna happen as a result of that? I'm gonna lose this client potentially and when you're first starting off with your business, that's a really hard pill to swallow because you need every client you could potentially get and this is all very like short-term thinking of, I need this money and so therefore I need to do this and it was tempting a lot of times, like I could take somebody through the process of like preparing them to get on stage and do a show but I'm like, I'm not that guy, I'm not that trainer, this is not my strength. I know somebody that's amazing at this, I'm gonna send them their way and I just started doing that especially when I was like an independent trainer on my own and what did that do? That created an opportunity for that trainer to now look at what I do really well, start referring people to me, we start having this like just natural network that we create and it was a powerful thing that just started to funnel more clients my way and then I had also like that kind of value established where I could send, I would keep going out and find other people like you said, like for chiropractors, for physical therapists and start thinking like even bigger than that of being able to support even a client that I have, I could send them to get even better service. It's all about building trust and adding value. Of all the points, this is the one I'm probably most passionate about because I was wildly successful as a trainer and have been my entire career and I don't think I've ever been the smartest person in the room, the most educated or the most experienced. Most handsome though, you would probably most handsome. I was, okay, I was well liked. I was well liked by my clients, by my peers and it was for these reasons. I was never afraid to say that I got this from somebody else. Oh man, I was, Sal told me this the other day and then I, I've never, because the people that you're communicating this information to, they just want the right answers. They just want the best information. And they wanna trust you. They just wanna help. And so when you build that trust that you can be that maven who goes out and finds that information for them and provides them that great value, they don't give a shit that it didn't come from you first. They know that you're willing to do that. You're humble enough to go, hey, Sal told me this or Justin taught me this or Doug gave me this information and then you, and then you're now relaying it to them. But there's this weird thing that trainers get and this happens in other businesses but it's extremely high in the fitness space where they think like, oh my God, if I tell them that Justin told me they're not gonna hire me anymore and they're gonna go work with Justin and I'm no longer gonna have him as a client. It is the scarcity mindset and it's prevalent in gyms and it's even more so in the influencer in fitness space. It's why you every once in a while you'll hear me on this show where I throw these kind of subtle jabs that other fitness people, a lot of the times the reason why I do shit like that is because I've already tried to reach out and help them out or do something for them or invite them on our show. And they- They have the scarcity mindset. And they have the scarcity mindset that they don't wanna come on our show or they don't wanna communicate because they're afraid we're gonna poach their business or maybe that they think that that's my desired outcome. By the way, that's our goal now when you do that. Yeah, he- So if you ever, if you listen to this show consistently and you hear me sometimes do that and you just think maybe I'm a dick or whatever it is, it's like, nah, those are people, whenever I throw a little jabs like that these are people that I know have that scarcity mindset and so I intentionally prod because it's such a terrible way to build a business and people will reward you for being that maven who shares other people's advice. It's okay to do that. They create a ceiling for themselves. They create a box for themselves. So you wanna do all of it all the time only your way then you're gonna be limited in your growth and that's just the end of the story. Not to mention when you lead with this, I just had a conversation with somebody we will have her on the show in the future. She reached out to me and she was like, we've known each other for a long time. We were on her podcast a long time ago and she wrote me this long old, and she started it with, hey, shooting my shot wants to come on the show. And I really like her content. I like her, so do you guys. We guys know who I'm talking about. She puts out really good business information related to fitness people and stuff. And you could tell she was like nervous to ask me to come on the show and that it's okay, you can say no, this and that all these things that I know that you're affiliated with this other company and it's like, I said, no, listen, I like the stuff you put out, come on the show and we'll do this. And I said, the guys don't want anything in return. We're not, you don't need to give me something to get on there. Like I think you put out good information. We're a friend, therefore we would do that. And you could tell she was just like blown away by that response, but it's like, when you do stuff like that, that's when those things end up coming back around. Now, maybe nine out of 10 don't, but that one person that you do solids or you help out with without any sort of conditions or transaction, I have to get something in return to help your business out or do something for you. Boy, man, you keep, if you lead a business life like that for a long enough period of time, those things really come back around and eventually boy, does it really pay off? Yeah, now that we've closed you on why scarcity mindset is terrible for your business because we have to sell you on it, here's the other part of it that's actually quite true. If you avoid the scarcity mindset and you try to refer and talk about other people that taught you, because you want that return, because you want people to give back to you, it's not gonna work. It actually has to be done in a way to where it's actually selfless. The person who does something with the intention of getting something back, it doesn't last very long, very easy to tell. So big picture, okay, so first we had to sell you on it, but now here's the big picture. If you're in the fitness space because you really wanna help people, the best way you could help people is by collaborating with other experts and professionals because you don't know everything. So if you look at it from big picture, which we've done many times, we have trainers, we just had Braden come on the show, there's zero in it for us, all for him. Actually for us it's just for our audience, the guy's got great information, he's the person you can follow in the fitness space, that's got good information. We did this with Jordan Shallow before he became massive, we loved his information, he provided value that we weren't necessarily providing in a way that we didn't provide, we put him on our show, we had zero potential growth from that. It was like- Dr. Brink, Danny Mantrego. Right, so big picture it's like, okay, I'm here to help people, this is the best way to help people. And then of course we already sold you on why it's gonna help you build your business. And again, if you go into it thinking, I'm gonna get something in return, it's not gonna work. It has to be because you see this as being the best way to bring value to your audience. It has to be unconditional love. That's it, 100%. Look, if you like Mind Pump, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out some of our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump, Justin, I'm on Instagram at Mind Pump DeStefano, and Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam. Today we're gonna teach you everything you need to know to build a strong, well-developed chest. When I think of weak points and areas that I struggled with developing for a really long time, chest was up there with the- Yeah, it was for me, it was for me for sure. I got more caught up in the weight I could lift versus how I was developing my body. I think it's one of the most challenging muscles to develop for most people because the form and technique.