Adam Schafer from the popular podcast Mind Pump has an axe to grind with business masterminds, and in this episode, you’re going to find out why.

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In this podcast, I talk with my friend and fellow podcaster, Adam Schafer, who’s the co-host of the popular podcast Mind Pump.

Unlike most of my interviews, this isn’t a focused discussion so much as a fireside chat about things on our minds, and in particular, on the current trend of business mastermind groups that have been popping up left and right over the last few years like mushrooms and roadkill.

In case you’re not familiar, the pitch for these groups goes like this: pay us $1,000 to $10,000 or more per month and we’ll give you the inside baseball on how to achieve some highly coveted goal or status like becoming an Internet millionaire to superstar “influencer.”

Not only that, you’ll also get exclusive access to our VIP Inner Circle of beautiful people who will deign to shake your hand and pretend to give a shit about you a few times per year at our annual “retreats” that you’ll be invited to attend on your own dime.

Just think of how impressed your 500 followers on Instagram will be when they see you fist bumping with people as rich and amazing as me and my friends and how jealous they’ll be when you tell them about all the 7-figure businesses opportunities being tossed around–opportunities for you to give and risk everything for a chance at absolutely nothing.

So if you’re ready to progress on your personal path of manifesting higher vibrations for a better tomorrow . . . blah blah blah infinite income loop opportunities . . . will that be cash or credit?

Well, I guess I’ve kind of tipped my and Adam’s hand regarding what we think about most masterminds out there, but in this interview, you’ll learn why.

Before we go there, however, we do a bit of meandering on esports and gambling as Adam is interested in and I’m more or less ignorant of both. For instance, I was surprised to learn that in 2018, esports had more viewers in the United States than every traditional sport except the NFL, and major esport events are held in huge stadiums and attract over 100,000 fans to come and watch.

Anyway, I hope you find this discussion interesting.

Timestamps

8:14 – What type of gambling do you like?

8:59 – What does line mean in sports betting?

11:37 – Do you think video game gambling will bring more attention to the gaming industry?

13:07 – Do you think video game gambling is culturally good?

20:17 – What are your thoughts on masterminds?

43:44 – The biggest life lesson Adam learned.

52:00 – Adam’s thoughts on social media and where it’s going.

1:03:40 – Adam’s thoughts on the online coaching industry.

1:19:06 – What are the differences between you and your brother?

1:22:10 – What do you splurge on? Do you collect anything?

Mentioned on the Show:

Deep Work by Cal Newport

Mind Pump’s Website

Adam’s Instagram

What did you think of this episode? Have anything else to share? Let me know in the comments below!

Transcript:

Mike: Hello friend, welcome to another episode of the muscle for life podcast. I am Mike Matthews. And this time around I interview my buddy and fellow podcaster, Adam Schaefer, who is the cohost of the popular podcast mind pump, which I guess they’re expanding beyond just a podcast. So it’s really a becoming like a media company.

They have a, also a very popular YouTube channel over at mind pump. But anyway, unlike most of my interviews, this is not a tightly focused discussion on one thing, so much as a fireside chat about a few things on our minds and in particular on the current trend of business mastermind groups that have been popping up left and right over the last few years, like Mushrooms and Roadkill.

And in case you’re not familiar, the pitch For these groups usually goes like this. So you have someone who appears to be successful according to their Instagram, they are successful. They drive expensive cars and have expensive things. And the pitch is pay. Me or us, if it’s a group, a thousand to 10, 000 or more per month.

And yes, some of these masterminds are that expensive. I’ve been pitched on ones that are that expensive. And we’re going to give you the inside baseball on how to achieve. Some highly coveted goal or status like becoming an internet millionaire or a superstar influencer. And not only that, but you are also going to get exclusive access to our VIP inner circle of beautiful people who will deign to shake your hand and pretend to give a shit about you a few times per year at our internet cafe.

annual retreats that you’re going to be invited to attend on your own dime, of course, you’ll have to pay your way, but just think of how impressed your 500 followers on Instagram are going to be when they see you fist bumping With people as rich and amazing as me and my friends and also how jealous they’re going to be when you tell them about all of the seven figure business opportunities being tossed around, opportunities for you to give and risk everything for a chance at absolutely nothing.

So here’s the bottom line. If you are ready to progress on your personal path of manifesting higher vibrations for a better tomorrow, blah, blah, blah, infinite income loop opportunities. So will that be cash or credit? All right. All right. So I’ve tipped my and Adam’s hand regarding what we think about most of the masterminds out there.

But in this interview, you are going to learn more. Why, and also what we think you should do instead of wasting your time with these masterminds before we go there. However, we do a bit of meandering on e sports and gambling as Adam is interested in and I’m more or less ignorant of both of those things.

For example, I was surprised to learn that in 2018 e sports had more viewers in the United States than every traditional sport except the NFL. And major eSport events are held in huge stadiums and attract over a hundred thousand people to come and watch other people sit and play video games. Anyway, I hope you find this discussion interesting.

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Welcome. What’s up, man? Oh, just another day in the dungeon grinding away. Grind. What are the, what’s the video grinding mobs for XP, is that what it is? I can’t, that’s the video game the video game speak. 

Adam: Dude, that’s, man, we just had good friend of ours, Mark Mastroff and he is he’s signed, I think, six teams or whatever now, NSRG or some shit, I think his name is the Bay Area has five or six teams here.

Multi billion dollar industry and watching that just. Continue to rise and they’re about to open up the floodgates with the gambling. So you’re about to see 

Mike: what’s going to happen with the gambling. I heard, I don’t play video games. I don’t follow the industry at all. I just heard something about e sports gambling, 

Adam: bro.

Okay. This wasn’t even a planned topic for you and I, but you just sparked something that’s been on my mind like crazy lately. Everybody knows that gaming has been popular and it’s growing and it’s crazy. Yada. That’s all true. It’s one of the fastest growing industries ever and we’re seeing it explode and it’s now reached in the billions of dollars and it’s now, they said the other day that it was generating more than like the NBA, the NFL and one other organization all combined, like the amount of money that’s being spent and crazy, right?

These kids are filling up stadiums and you have stadiums, football stadiums, full of kids watching other kids play video games. It’s just, 

Mike: I’ve seen that. Yeah, I’ve seen that. It’s in it’s I’ve, was it for that? For the game Fortnite, I don’t know, but I saw it for one of these big games. That’s 

Adam: one of them.

Yeah, there’s a, there’s Overwatch, Fortnite, and then there’s a couple other ones that are like world famous for for these type of arena events. League of Legends. Yeah. I’ve seen that. Yeah, that’s the other one. So these, so what I find really fascinating about this and they, Kind of talking about what we talked about for a gun on air.

That’s crazy. And where are this going to take us? So you have, can we know that Las Vegas, right? Probably want to generate one of the cities that generates the most or most amount of cash flow going in and out of it, right? And how much gambling is an addiction for people and all this issue and what that could potentially lead to.

Okay, so you are about to see in the next Okay. Year or two. I think it’s when I think in the next year is when they pass or who knows what the laws, how long it will take. But in the next 3 to 5 years, let’s say you are going to see the most addictive thing we’ve ever seen for Children combined with the most addictive thing that we’ve ever seen for adults merge, which is Sports betting and gaming.

And so I’m wondering what the fuck is that going to do now? I’m a gambler. I love to gamble and I’ve got quite a few friends and I think probably lucky for me. I’ve seen people lose their entire what 

Mike: type of Gandalf. What do you like 

Adam: sports betting? I love sports betting, especially like sports betting on like the Warriors.

I typically stick with Warriors and NFL. And the reason why I like it, maybe it’s the old man in me is because I played my whole life. I love the game. And I’m a student of the game too. So I really watch a lot of basketball and football and really understand, especially basketball, the game.

And I think the thing that sports betting gives me is if I like me, I watch every single warrior game. I know the team really well. I know the teams that we play really well. And so I can look at a line and, sometimes the line is a really good line. It’s I’m like, I could go either way. And so I stay away from it.

But then sometimes I’m like, Oh, hell no. 

Mike: Like 

Adam: last night. 

Mike: And I’m a gambling, I’m completely ignorant. So a line is like what the bookies are offering basically. Exactly. So 

Adam: last night we, the Warriors played the Rockets and we’ve lost to them three games. Three, the only three games we’ve played in this year, they’ve had our number, right?

And here we are going into the fourth game. We’re playing them. It’s the last game before playoffs. We also are missing Kevin Durant, who’s arguably one of our best players. And so the line is giving the Warriors four points. The Warriors never get points. They’re getting four points. In other words, Vegas believes that the Rockets are going to win by four or more.

Yeah, I love that bet. And I love it for 

Mike: It’s like a handicap. Yeah. 

Adam: Yeah. And I, so I jumped all over and I won. And so I think that so betting for me has turned into that as an adult. Like I, I can easily walk away from stuff. I don’t bet crazy money. It’s just, it’s fun for me to watch the game.

And when I appreciate it, so I, It probably makes the games more fun to watch too, right? It makes it incredible. And you feel like you have more skin in the game. Totally. And I, at the, every season, the beginning of the year, I track all my winnings and losing, and I’m having probably the best season of my life in gambling, but I look at it like, okay, I’m going to put X amount of dollars to the side.

If I lose that through the course of the year, I lose it. It’s all for fun and games. And obviously I want to win. And so I don’t, I have really good habits around it. I think a lot of the habits have came because I’ve had lots of friends that I’ve seen get addicted to it and go down the. The really bad path.

And back to the gaming thing, we see the addiction of games with kids, right? It’s just insane that you can kids now can sit and play video games from sun up to sundown every single day. And they’re incredibly engaging games, and it’s hard to get them to peel away from it. So we know that how addicting it is for Children.

And then If you know how addicting gambling is for adults, and I’ve just never seen something like this combined. And we’re about to see that you’re going to be able to lay sports like sports bets on kids that play video games and the generation coming up. Like I wouldn’t know if, speedy Mike from Indiana, who’s playing, whoever from China.

Who are the top two fortnight players are merging and playing each other tonight, but there will come out a line and there’ll be like a betting line on them and you’re going to be able to bet on who wins and whatever. And of course, just like anything else, there’ll be prop bets who gets killed first and who, how many minutes do they serve and they’ll find everything and anything to gamble on, which is just going to feed into.

These addictive properties that this game already has. And it’s going to be interesting to see the repercussions that we get from that. I’m very fascinated to watch that. 

Mike: Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth.

If you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say, Thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness.

Do you think the gambling is just gonna bring more money and more attention to it in general? Yeah. Yeah. No, of 

Adam: course. Yeah. 

Mike: No. And again these are probably stupid questions, but I don’t follow, I played a bit of poker back in the day. I don’t, so I don’t follow sports betting. I have no idea even how popular it is.

It’s probably hugely popular. I just have no idea. Oh my 

Adam: God. It’s like one of the most popular things. So it’s actually a decent question. I get a lot. ’cause a lot of people aren’t into gambling. They don’t know. But so I, I remember the first time I, that I became aware that, okay, this could become a problem even with myself.

And it was just cause I was hanging out with another guy that was gambling a lot. I had a lot of loose cash at the time. And I found myself on a Tuesday night gambling on two teams that I don’t even watch gamblers that have a real issue. They’ll gamble on anything and everything. Like right now, the way I gamble on a team that I watch.

I know lots about them and I’m watching the game. And so it’s entertaining for me when it becomes an addiction. It’s your gambling on anything and everything that you can get your hands on, the horses are racing in 15 minutes. You’re on that. There’s fucking a coin flip going on. You’re wet. You’re betting on that.

And yeah, it’s gonna be really fascinating to see what that pulls into it. So I’m actually, this is part of why I’ve been talking to Mark Mastroff and Andy Miller, who are guys that are connected to this. They’ve got millions of dollars invested into it because I’m trying to find areas where I can invest on the industry because I believe the industry is as much as it’s already grown and how huge it is.

It’s going to go Ape shit when you actually start to pair it with gambling. Do 

Mike: you think that’s a good thing though? Do you think it’s culturally 

Adam: it’s good? No, so I gotta be honest. If there’s a part of you that feels guilty for betting on that, right? Or for me investing in it because I’m invest it’s like me.

Why? Why? Why invest in it? Because I know it’s going to go. Because I know that it’s going to go that direction because people, 

Mike: but but you can make money in many other ways. You don’t have to support shit that you don’t believe in. You’re like, this is fucking bad, but money is money.

That’s true. No, that’s fair. And I think that 

Adam: but fuck what? You could say that about stuff. I was joking. I was joking. Yeah. That’s a great, that’s a great question. It’s a, it’s an internal battle that I deal with all the time. It really is. It’s what business isn’t like that, right?

What is the ones that are the most successful? It’s because there are people have an obsessive personality over them and they just keep coming back and buying more. We’ve turned into this consumer culture that didn’t even exist 40 years ago. Yeah, that’s true. There’s not much money in virtue.

That’s for sure. Yeah, no, there’s a better way to say it, right? And so I guess that’s, you’re right. I don’t disagree with you. And it’s something that I think I, I wrestle with man, it’s it’d be like for example, I remember when that, the, I don’t know if you remember when that happened.

That’s stupid tool. And I know it’s still growing where people could eat whatever they want. And it’s a tube that goes straight to their stomach. It’s basically and they try to say it as like a medical thing that they can help people out. It got FDA approved to, I didn’t hear about, Oh, it’s a stomach pump basically.

And it’s, and they literally do a surgery where they put a tube into your stomach and then you get a pump. And then right after you eat, you can purge through the pump. Yeah. You don’t know about this. Oh, no. Yes. Clown world. Never 

Mike: fails. 

Adam: FDA approved man. This is, this blew my mind. So you see something like that and there’s, I’m not gonna lie.

There’s the urge to invest behind it because I fucking know people’s behavior. I know there’s a million people that see that and go What? You mean to tell me that I can go out drinking and have fucking donuts and cake and just, all I gotta do is pump it out my stomach and because it’s FDA approved and there’s people standing behind it and saying it’s okay, that it’s not the same as me sticking my finger in my fucking throat and just throwing it up afterwards?

Really? Wow. I struggle with that all the time. I got to think you do the same thing too, right? How many times have you seen a potential investment opportunity or something, is going to explode. And then you’re like, Oh, fuck, man, it’d be smart to put money on that. But do I really want to support that?

Mike: Yeah, I would say speaking to supplements because you brought that up, that was of course one of the reasons when I first was even considering supplements, I was not, I didn’t think I was going to do it because I figured that you basically just have to be a bullshit artist to make any money in supplements.

And that’s true to a point. So how I’ve done it is the story I just spend a lot of my products. I have a high budget for any of these products and I would work with people like Curtis Frank, who’s the. Co founder of examine. com and Menno Henselman’s and Eric Helms and James Krieger and Brad Dieter, all the guys that are over on me on my scientific advisory board, which actually is an advisory board.

It’s not just a marketing ploy. The formulations, Curtis is really the driver on formulations because he knows more about supplementation than anyone I’ll probably ever meet. For the rest of my life and all the other guys are a sounding board. And so we really strive to make products that one are actually worth buying.

That’s the first criterion, right? That it will do something. It’s not completely worthless. And then two that are clinically dose. So meaning you have ingredients that have been proven to. Provide benefits in good scientific research where you could say the actual weight of the evidence is that this thing does this, not that there was this one isolated in vitro rat study that suggested maybe this does something sometimes, and then putting enough of those greedy ingredients into the products. And what that came down to is from a business perspective, Legion is. Is horribly flawed in that it’s cost of goods is literally about double what it should be. So somebody who doesn’t know the industry and I’ve spoken to savvy business people who are like, what the fuck is this cogs?

What are you doing? This should be half. Like, how are you supposed to grow and make millions of dollars? What are you doing? What that means is that legions profitability, it’ll cruise. It’s been quite low in the past, but that’s more due to spending money on things that didn’t pan out, but running the company well, running the marketing well, running it efficiently, really leveraging our advantages, which come in many ways from all the work that I do outside of Legion, writing books, recording podcasts, writing articles, all that stuff, it can reach maybe, let’s say two thirds of the average profitability of the industry.

So it can reach a level of profitability where a business person would say. Yeah, that’s pretty good. It will never be great. It would, it will never have a 30 percent net. Never. It just never will. The only way to do that would be to gut my products. And so I could have done that though. That’s what most people do in the supplement space.

They don’t actually care to make good products. They just care to have good margins. And then they just lie. It’s not that complicated for what it’s worth. I can say that at least I have the courage of my convictions and I’ve made decisions that have. Directly lost me millions of dollars. Like I would be several million dollars, literally several million dollars richer cash that I could have done anything with if I would have done it that way.

I would still do it the same way though, because integrity does mean something to me and maybe I’m just not. As money motivated as some people. And I also maybe, and this is going to sound like me bragging, but I’ve actually thought about this. Like, why do I feel this way about it? Not that I think it’s bad, but it just out of actual curiosity.

And so I’d say it’s probably that I’m not all that money motivated and I’m not afraid of hard work. I’m not looking for a shortcut. I’m not trying to get rich quick. And so if it means that I have to work harder. To create more good stuff that people like, I’ll just do that. And so that’s really what I’ve done.

So the supplement business is doing well and I make a fair amount of money from it, but I make more money from my books than I do from Legion. And those books represent. A lot of fucking work. And so I’ve more gone about it that way where I’m like, okay, so I have Legion and then I’m good. I’m going to create books.

Okay, good. I’m going to have a coaching service that has several hundred active clients and is going to do, seven figures in revenue this year. What else can I do? To compensate for the fact that I didn’t just completely sell out on the supplements when I could have just done that. And then probably honestly, the books are a pillar of all of my stuff and it would be stupid to stop doing them, but as far as the finances go, it wouldn’t be as necessary.

So that’s my long winded answer to the supplement point. 

Adam: That’s actually a great segue into the original question that you asked me about masterminds. 

Mike: Yeah, that’s a good point. Or that’s sure. Fucking easy money masterminds. 

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. And I guess it’s been, Anybody who I guess that really knows me, like I’m so where are my emotions on my sleeve type of guy.

And when I do posts like that, there’s always something that stirred me up. It’s okay, I got to fire up my ass right now. I’m going to, I’m going to say something because this is just starting to annoy me. And I had this kid reach out to me. He was telling me that he had hired this guy for coaching and I know both guys.

I know where their business is at just based off. And just to be 

Mike: clear, this is business coaching, right? Not 

Adam: yes, this is business coaching. Yeah, this is and what I’ve seen and what’s going on right now in our space is nothing new. This has been around forever. And anybody that’s been in marketing like you for a really long time understands that one of the best ways, one of the fastest ways that you can make money and a lot of money is to teach others or sell others on the idea that you could help them make lots of money.

That’s Pyramid Scheme MLM 101. And we are seeing that surge right now with these mastermind groups. What I’m careful about saying, and I do want to make this point when I’m talking about these is that’s not to take away from somebody that has reached a point in their career where they are a fucking black belt and a ninja at business and they shouldn’t charge.

Tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars for their, coaching business coaching services because they’re that fucking badass that, you’re going to learn everything you need to know to scale a business to a 50 to 100 million company. So I believe there’s outliers like that out there, but what we’re seeing is.

All of these people that are learning to gain traction on social media. And so you have this illusion that they’re really successful because they’ve got a hundred thousand followers or whatever on whatever platform. And they take pictures of their cool car and they do all this. They 

Mike: rented a Lamborghini for the day.

Adam: Yeah, they do all the things to, to look the part. And we as a bunch of silly monkeys, we see that and we just assume that they’re wealthy and successful and rich and they do a business. And then the next thing is to sell business coaching or sell out these mastermind groups. Where you charge people a few hundred to a few thousand to, I’ve seen tens of thousands of dollars to join these groups that are going to help you build your 

Mike: business.

And those are recurring expenses, right? Those are annual. I’ve been pitched on a call. There was one that I was pitched on. It was like a hundred K a year to hang out with a bunch of fucking slimy con men. Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. 

Adam: Totally. And that and I’ve been the same thing. I’ve been pitched things from as low as 1000 a month type of reoccurring to as big as 150, 000 a year reoccurring to be a part of these massive, mastermind or coaching groups.

And when you really unpack these people’s businesses, 90 percent of their fucking revenue they’re making is off of this. They don’t ha It’s not like they have a, it’s not like they have a hundred million dollar business and they’re saying, Hey, you know what? Of course not. Because if they did one, they wouldn’t care to do the business match mine.

And two, they probably wouldn’t have the time. And this is what people don’t see. It’s dude, if these guys and girls have enough time to teach you how to build a seven figure business, they’re probably not operating one themselves. Cause I’ll tell you what it takes on my end to do something like that.

And it’s fucking overwhelming as shit. And I have no business spending time talking to groups of people to teach them how to do what I’m still learning how to do and continue to do right. It’s if they were legitimately doing that kind of money, then, you know what that takes as a business.

And you also know what you’re constantly focused on. Like when you get to a point where you’ve scaled a business to seven or eight figures, half of the monster is always looking three years ahead. Because that money doesn’t just always keep coming. It’s what am I going to do next six months to make sure these revenue streams keep coming in?

Nobody builds a business like that, where it’s like, Hey, I’m making 10 million a year and I don’t have to do anything like travel around and hold these mastermind groups and teach people how Dude, these people are getting suckered into this and it’s just, it reminds me of MLM. It reminds me of the, Manavi and the Anway and the, all these MLM groups where there’s always like an outlier who’s been successful, whatever dollar amount they got to.

And then really where they make most of their money is convincing all of you. To listen to them and buy into the product themselves. And that’s what we’re seeing with these mastermind groups. And it’s really annoying to me, especially when there are people that. Like I know, like this, the person that I’m sharing this story about that kind of lit me up was, both of these people, we held a thing two years ago and it was, we called it a train the trainer and it was free.

We, we basically capped it at, I think, 50 trainers. That’s about what we thought we could comfortably fit in the studio and said, Hey, anywhere you’re at in the world, you can come to this. It’s free. We can only fit about 50 people. So if you want to come get a call, sign up, do your thing, and we’re going to host an all day training event to help you guys be better trainers and better business men and women.

And it filled up and then we did it and we had a great turnout. And what I saw was there’s some people that had taken that and they had networked with all these people that were at our thing. And some of them have taken a page out of some of these other Transcription quote unquote, influencers, the Lewis Howes, the Amanda Bucci’s, these type of people that are making a lot of money off of these influencer type of academies and shit.

Is that what they’re teaching people how 

Mike: to get Instagram followers? 

Adam: Yeah. Yeah, no, it’s definitely, I know like Bucci, she has a, that’s literally what her, I believe it’s her main revenue source is her influencer academy. So teaches you how to be. An influencer on Instagram, and I’m so fascinated by how many people are making a ton of money teaching people do this.

And so you’re starting to see all these lemmings. Everybody’s doing the same thing. It’s get enough people following you on social media, get your imagery right, get your posting right, get enough attention there, and then pivot into finding the few whales that are willing to pay you to try and learn to do the same thing.

And it’s a fascinating thing to stand by and watch, but it’s really pathetic and it’s really unfortunate. And I can’t stomach myself to do it. And I was actually talking to this CEO lady the other day that I ran into that’s a friend of a friend and she was asking business stuff. And I’m very transparent about if someone asked me, what do you guys make?

What do you guys do? And how do you monetize and all that stuff? And I was sharing these things with her and she goes, you know what you need to do? And she starts telling me, the money is in you teaching others how to do what you’ve done. I’m just like, No, I just don’t feel good about that. I don’t want I know there’s a ton of money.

I get dms every single day of people asking that. And in fact, what brought this up was this kid was about to start spending 1000 a month. On somebody teaching him a mastermind and he was reaching out to me To see if I would do something similar to that in that price range and I was just very plump with him I said man, I dude I literally I love you.

I think you’re a great kid I think you got a lot of great things going for you. But what you’re asking for me to do One, I don’t think that you’re ready for what I would give you for monthly coaching, where my mind is at is totally different from where you’re at and the stuff that you need to learn.

You could go pick up from a book from Barnes and Noble for 9. You know what I’m saying? And read it or just put it in the, 

Mike: That’s a point. I just want to interject is that is I get asked all the time. Not if I’m going to do a mastermind cause I’ve never spoken about doing it. I never would do it.

But just asking for business advice, people sometimes asking to have calls and stuff. And so I have a standard list of books that I recommend to people. I’m like, honestly, this, if you just read these four or five books. Just start here and really absorb this information and apply it halfway intelligently.

You don’t even have to be a genius about it. Just do a good enough job. You will be on your way. You don’t need to pay me. I don’t even know what I would charge if I was going to be doing consulting because I, I don’t, yeah, it’s just, there’s so many other things that I could be doing. It wouldn’t make any sense to me to do it at all period.

But. You wouldn’t need to pay me that money. Just read these books. Let me know if you have any questions. It’s really think of it like training. It’s not that complicated. It’s energy balance. It’s macronutrient balance. It’s mechanical tension. It’s overload. It’s frequency. It’s volume. That’s it. Put those things together, mix them up and you can have a fantastic physique in business.

There are five or six other little, here are the levers, here are the buttons, just push and pull them in the right order most of the time and work fucking hard and don’t fuck it up and you can be very successful. 

Adam: It’s like these groups too that I see, like the 10X with Andy Vercella and all that crew, right?

Grant Cardone and all those dudes that are over there that are in their little, click and they all feed each other marketing stuff and poach each other’s people and make a ton of money. And then they all come together and they market to their people to come to these massive events.

Yeah. It costs thousands of dollars and they fill up freaking huge events. And I just, I couldn’t sleep at night cause here’s what I know. I know statistically speaking the likelihood that you’re going to succeed as an entrepreneur. I already know what that is. Like I already know that I’m sitting, if I’m sitting in a room with a hundred people, maybe 10 of you make it, so that, and that’s at best, right?

Are going to make it and be really successful. So I just couldn’t sleep at night making this hoopla energy, music blaring. I come out talking a big game, fucking roll up in my Lamborghini and tell you guys, you want this life? You want this life? You can get this life. And knowing in the back of my head who am I kidding?

Most everybody who’s listening to me right now is not going to see that. That’s just a fact. They’re not going to be that successful. They’re not going to ever reach the success rate in entrepreneurship is like 20 percent those that make it into the millions of dollars is like less than 10 percent and those that can actually manage that and keep that going for more than three or five years is reduced by another 

Mike: Yeah, I think it’s lower than that, Doug.

If you pull up, I’m going to get, if you want to, if you want to Google it and check it, I’m going to guess that businesses that reach a million dollars in sales and just in revenue, it’s probably at most 1 percent would be my guess. And businesses that reach 10 million in annual in revenue, it’s probably 1 100th of a percenter.

That’s my guess. 

Adam: No, I think you’re close. I know that I’ve seen this before and I know I’m throwing just random numbers. I know it’s less than that. That’s what I’m saying is you’re in this arena of 1000 people and you and your 10 buddies that are all rich, have come together and combined forces to sucker all these people and to listen to your motivational bullshit and you get up on stage and you start talking up a big game about how they can do it too.

Like, how the fuck do you sleep at night, dude? Yeah. Like, how do you sleep at night knowing damn well that there’s the thousands of people that are out there that are listening to you, that are pumping your tires, literally 1 percent of them will ever even come close to doing what you’ve done. If that, to me, it’s, 

Mike: I can’t do it.

I guess it depends what you’re selling. Ironically. I know Grant. I wouldn’t say he’s a friend of mine. He was, he, my brother knows him better. And as far as I know, he’s actually a pretty good dude. He’s not lying about the money he makes in real estate. That’s where he makes any, he’s open about that.

That’s where he makes absurd. That’s what really funds his lifestyle. But I don’t know what he’s selling outside of that. I don’t fully follow him. What is what’s the pitch or the whole 10 X thing? Is it just because he has some books and he does these events. 

Adam: So I don’t know what, to be honest, and I’ve heard nothing but good things about these guys, so I don’t, this isn’t me talking shit about them as people, right?

I just, I think that I’ve had multiple people that are connected to Andy Vercella, and they’ve said positive things about him. I think he lies 

Mike: about revenue, 100%. So do I remember a couple of years ago when he said it was a hundred million a year. And I, so he has a couple million dollars in cars.

You’re so cool, dude. And then there was a video I saw of it was like a transformation video where he was super fat and he was going to get in better shape. And it showed his house and his house was nothing. It was maybe a five or six or 700, 000 house. And at that point no, Stop.

There’s no way that a dude. Who is supposedly whose companies are supposedly making a hundred million dollars a year and who is loves to show off money is living in a five, six, seven hundred thousand dollar house. Impossible. Don’t care. Anybody says 

Adam: No. Yeah, no I 100 percent think it’s a facade.

They took a page right out of the shreds model. What they did was they got a lot of influence. So I think he came in with capital like so far, and this is me totally speculating right now. So for the audience that’s listening right now, I don’t have, I, most of my information is hearsay and from what I observed, it’s just as, as.

A business minded person and being in the industry for as long as I have, what I see is somebody who came in with a decent amount of capital, enough capital that they could afford to say, okay, we are going to find the 100 most influential people in the fitness health space. We’re going to pay them 1000 a month.

Plus, we’re going to pay them commission on all of their sales and we’re going to scoop them all up. And they did, they got a bunch of people from, asked showing bikini girls to fitness guys that are buffed and ripped and showing cool exercises. And they swooped up a ton of them. And I’m sure they all got paid commission, maybe some, and I’m sure they have a sliding scale.

I think he’s a smart sales and marketing rah guy. So I think that they probably had a sliding scale that if you sold X amount, you get bonuses and no being the sales guy that I am and running sales teams for a very long time and structuring that. It’s exactly how I would do it if I didn’t fucking care.

If I didn’t have a moral compass and I didn’t care. And I had some capital in my pocket. If I had 100 grand or whatever like that in my pocket, I’d go after the top 50 to 100 influencers in the health and fitness space, pay them a few bucks, but really motivate them through incentive because I know if I motivate them through incentive, anything extra or harder they work, I’m going to get more money myself and bonus them and override them and then compete them against each other.

Then I hold these big events, which you see them do. Where I get them all together and I bring up the top 10 in sales and give them a Rolex watch and fucking spray champagne all over them and be like, we’re changing lives. You guys, you know what I’m saying? And I would do that. I would totally be this guy if I didn’t, if I was like that and I was just chasing a dollar.

And so that’s what I see. I see a company that did a very good job at that. They came in early in the Instagram space as far as Supplements. I thought that they did it just shreds did, but a little bit more taste. I think he had his business a little bit tighter than shreds. I think shreds had, a guy from fucking Jersey shore behind it.

You know what I’m saying? That’s it. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. 

Adam: They just turned it completely loose. Yeah. That’s what I read. I ran into what’s his face. I can’t think of his name right now from Jersey shore. And he was just coked out of his mind and a fucking mess coming out of Las Vegas one time. And I’m like, yeah.

This is the guy who fucking helped build shreds. That’s why it’s not existent today. To give Andy credit, I’m sure he’s a pretty savvy business guy and smart enough to probably not let a bunch of idiot kids running his business. And he did a good job of taking advantage of all these influencers and bringing them in and spiffing them and motivating them to sell more from, but that’s really that whole model, that’s all.

I don’t, at least that’s my perspective. Do you agree or do you see something different than I do? 

Mike: Yeah, again, I don’t pay that much attention to first form and what he’s doing, but from what I’ve seen, yeah, I’ve seen the events and like you’re saying, I’ve seen obviously the formulations are weak one for one.

I know how much those products cost. Let’s put it that way. 

Adam: Then you have great margins, right? So now you have the ability to. Yeah. Yeah. So you could sell high, you create awesome margins. So you can spit your people out that are hustling for you. So that’s the part where if you’re did a good job, which I’m assuming that he did this, the people that are hustling, the heart of the people that are really responsible for making that company grow to whatever it is right now.

Are those people, the people that are hustling on Instagram as hard as they can to sell these supplements. And they’re happy because they’re. Probably making decent money, they’re probably getting commissioned out and bonuses and overrides if you’re the, and just like any other sale, the 80, 20, right?

80 percent of the people are making 20 percent of the money. 20 percent of the people are making 80 percent of the money. So there’s probably the top tier people that are actually probably crushing it and they’re fucking live and die by the brand because he’s paid them well. And to me, it’s not rocket science to build that formula.

And to do that, I just, and it wouldn’t be fulfilling for me. It wouldn’t be fulfilling. I wouldn’t feel like it’s a incredible business that I build. I wouldn’t feel like I’m helping. That wouldn’t be, I wouldn’t 

Mike: be proud of it, honestly, I wouldn’t 

Adam: be proud 

Mike: Because it’s to me, what does that represent?

It represents a hustle grind. It represents you are smart enough to build a simple machine and you’re willing to work hard enough to do that. To me, that’s not impressive. That’s not even admirable, and it’s not something that I would be proud of personally. 

Adam: I think if I were to do something like that, it would be literally to get to a point, sell, and get away from it, because I don’t want anything to do with it.

It’s let me prove that there’s a bunch of lemmings out there, that I could easily build this up, I could do this, I could scale it to be a 10 million company, and try and sell it off for, more than that, and then walk away from it and say, it’s your headache to deal with, I don’t want it.

Because, 

Mike: Yeah, I know a guy who, who just, who’s just in the final phase of doing that, where he built up a business. He doesn’t really believe in there’s cognitive dissonance. He has to live with it every day and that he has a moral compass and he’s been flouting it to build this business.

And yeah, he just wants to sell it. And be done with it for the, there’s the money, but then there’s also just the, it’ll give him some peace of mind to talk about sleeping at night where he can, that was in the past. Now he can, maybe do it a bit differently in his next venture. Do something that he believes a bit more in.

Adam: That’s, I’m a walking story of that. I did the cannabis industry and I did it for the money. A hundred percent. Like I, I was an anti cannabis guy leading up into that. And I just could not refuse the amount of money that was put in front of me. And I’m 28 years old in my life and very money motivated at this point in my life, because I came from nothing and I, my whole life, I was driven by, wanting to have success and reaching this financial goal that I had set for myself.

And, I found that in medical marijuana and the thing that I found though, that was. The best thing that ever happened to me was I reached that point and I was there for a couple of years. And I tell people that man, the first year, no doubt, fucking awesome. First year of making the money that I’d always wanted to make in my life.

The stories that came from that, the shit that I bought and spent and did and yeah great time for one year. And then after that year, like I was empty. I just, I was in the worst shape of my life. My personal relationships with my girlfriend at the time, with my friends at the time was terrible.

I was unfulfilled, absolutely unfulfilled at the deepest pockets I’ve ever had in my life. And up until that point, there’s nobody that could have told me that story and got me to tour from what I was already doing. I was on a mission to make a certain amount of money. No fucking person that’s older and wiser was going to come in and say, son, that’s not what it’s about.

You’re going to get there. You’re not gonna be happy. Fuck you. You don’t know what it’s like to be as broke as I was. I need to get there. And I did. And when it got there, it was, is absolutely, that was unbelievably unfulfilling. And I had realized that moment that three years before that, when I was making a 10th of the money, I was a happier person.

And that was really what made me come back into fitness was, Hey, there was something, That drew me to fitness forever. And there’s a reason why when I left it, I felt unfulfilled and I missed it. And I came back and what was great when I came back to the beginning of us building mind pump was I didn’t need money.

I didn’t need it at that time. And I was in a position that I could not take an income from it and we could slowly build it. And really the conversations were never really around how are we going to make money? They were around, like, how do we want to present ourselves? How do we want to build this thing?

What do we want to give? And so the focus was completely different and it’s amazing. It’s and of course the business has been scaling and growing since we started it, but I’m just as happy today as I was when we were broke at the very beginning of it, it’s like, it’s the mission, the idea of what we’re doing, it just continues to be fulfilling and enjoying.

I love every day that we come in here. I’ve never had something that I’ve worked on before where. I just can’t wait to get to work and put our minds together and figure out what we’re going to do or what we’re going to talk about. It’s a lesson that I needed. I absolutely had to go through that to feel it because I don’t know if anybody, just like I’m sure there’s somebody listening right now to your podcast who is a kid who probably came from nothing and is broke and is, he’s got a hustler mentality like I did and is on a mission to not be like his parents and not have, wants things.

And I think there’s a lot of good with that. I think that you can use a lot of that energy to drive you. But what ends up happening when you get there is you come to realize that it’s not all that what it was cracked up to be, 

Mike: and if you don’t have something else, you had something to fall back on.

So it was on the whole, a very positive experience for you because it was a lesson that you were able to learn. So you’re like, okay, that didn’t quite go as planned. What can I learn from this? Maybe I should do something that is actually fulfilling to me and something that I actually believe in.

I’m actually drawn toward and then we’ll figure out how to make money, but it’s going to be, I wouldn’t call it an afterthought, but it’s not the primary objective. It’s more like, how can I make money doing something that I really believe in? Many people though, and I know this just from talking with a lot of people in person via the internet.

Where they will experience what you’ve experienced, but then they don’t know where to go from there. They don’t have something where, I’ve spoken with people that it’s a common trope in these conversations is, I don’t know what, I’m just not passionate about anything. And sometimes these are people who have made a lot of money.

Sometimes there’s people that have not made a lot of money, but making money, I think you have to be a, there has to be something wrong with you. A bit of a, Sociopath. I don’t know. There’s something if that’s your true passion is just making money, you’re probably not a very good person and you’re probably going to cause a lot more harm in the world than help.

There’s a lot of people I think that probably identify with who I was. Let’s say this way you’re, if that’s where you’re at, you’re in that while you’re being that person. I just don’t think there’s that much good in the world. That’s my passion is I just want more. Money. I want more money. Some of the worst people I’ve known in my life are those people.

Adam: You’re incredibly insecure at that point in your life. That’s where I was at. Someone asked me a question about this last Q& A we did about what was the the most life changing or biggest life lesson that I ever got. And for me, it was when I short sold my house and when I short sold my house, I did it at the time because my buddy who was into real estate and actually had done my loan had told me that it would be a really smart strategy based off of where the market was going.

And yeah, my credit’s going to take a ding, but I’ll be fine. And yada. That’s The whole point of me sharing that story was what had happened to me was I come to this realization that I am not my house. I’m not my credit score. I’m not what other people think I am. And to that point, I was, I took so much pride in being successful and having an 850 credit score and being this person who bought his house by 21 years old.

I cared so much about that. That when I had to walk away from it and it got all fucking flipped upside down, it just like it threw me in this depression until I snapped out of it realized I am not that person. This is not who I am. This is not my identity. And so it was one of the greatest things to be stripped of.

All that was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. But I think a lot of people that just go on blindly forever doing that. I even told Katrina that if I would have had a kid at that time of my life, yeah. I would have allowed that the impacts of my insecurities to have trickled down to my newborn child That’s coming because I know me at 25 and 26 and when that stuff mattered so much to me That my insecurities would have bled into my child I would have a child and I would spend tons of money on him and he would have all this expensive shit And it would be my insecurities Because I would be, in my head, I already know how I’d be thinking, it’d be like, I didn’t have these things, and my parents couldn’t provide this stuff, and I’m gonna give it all to you.

I’m gonna, and this is what we see, and you don’t realize it, but, then that has its cause and effect years later because of how you raised that kid, and, I think a lot of these people that are super money hungry, they have whatever reasons that drove them that way, and probably many of them can relate to how I grew up, because I get it.

And what happens is they never grow out of it. They never grow beyond it and they allow these things that these tangible things monetary things To try and fill this hole and it’s an empty hole. You just keep pouring You know cars and money and strip clubs and toys and you just keep pouring it into this And if you got a lot of money You just keep doing more and more of it.

And if you run out of buying things and you just you push harder for more money, and you never really realize what the root cause of this feeling is. And the root cause is that I’m insecure. I’m still insecure about who I am. And I feel the need to have these things to fill that. And so the people that I see like that, so I have empathy.

I have empathy because I go, I Okay, I can connect and relate to that because I was like that at one point when I was younger in my life and they’re still living it. And unfortunately, some of them are 40, 50, 60 year old men. That like we were talking about earlier in the podcast that they are still in that place where like I have a hard time like even showing the things that like I posted my camaro the other day because i’ve gotten so many fucking dms from people that found out that I had a 68 ss And I just don’t like doing that.

I don’t like putting that stuff out there because I feel like anybody that’s confident who they are and the success they have I don’t need affirmation from other people anymore to tell me how successful or how badass I am Where 10, 15 years ago, I did. I seek that. And so when I see these people like who we’re talking about doing these things, that’s what I see.

I see insecure boys in grown ass man’s bodies that still need that affirmation. They still need to be told that they’re great, that they’re awesome, they’re badass. They’re so successful. It’s nah, and I tell people this all the time. And I actually use you as a great analogy because I think you’re a really good example.

Of somebody who the average person would have no idea just how fucking successful you are But that’s because you come from a place of confidence But you’re not insecure about it and you don’t need affirmation You don’t need guys like me telling you how successful how great you are. You fucking know it And so you don’t need to post about it.

You don’t need to talk about it. You don’t bring it up But what I have found in my life Is and i’ve been around tons of millionaires now I’ve The ones that are the most successful are those ones are the ones that you would have no fucking clue The ones that are having to present it and show it are the ones that are pretending You know, they’re not the ones that really get there because what’s, you know what, most people that have had a lot of money, which I know you can relate to this.

When you reach a certain point of success, you actually want less and less people to know about it because more and more people try and take advantage of you, more and more people expect things from you, more and more people want things from you. So most people that have reached a point of real success and made a lot of money, they don’t want motherfuckers to know, keep my shit on the hush.

I don’t want people to know I got this money because it just gives me more of a headache, right? 

Mike: Yeah. And if you’re not seeking that approval or the admiration or the acknowledgement, then what are you getting from trying to, even if it’s subtly inform people that you’re successful, there’s nothing positive that comes out of it.

There was a switch we think of. A guy a couple of years ago who emailed and just saying he read my book, he read big leaner stronger. He really liked it. I’m just curious if I’d have some time to get on the phone with him. He’d just like to learn a bit more about the businesses and how it’s going. And I get these emails here and there, but his bio looked fancy and I was like, I wonder who this guy is. So I google him. And it turns out he is the CEO of Take Two Interactive, the video game company that had Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar Games, they own Rockstar Games. So he’s the CEO of that and he owns a significant portion of it because he has a private equity company with like 13 billion in assets, right?

And yeah I’ll let’s talk. And I’ve gotten to know him. I’ve had him on my podcast. He wrote a fitness book, he’s really into fitness. And. Just one of the most down to earth dudes I’ve, I’ve been New York a couple of times, met up with him, had lunch and stuff very similar in that if you were to just be hanging out of here, just to show up at a party, you might get a sense that, this guy is.

He’s had a, an amazing career as a business person. I think he has a degree from Harvard. He has a degree from Yale. So if you spoke to him, you would get a sense of this guy’s smart, but never talks about himself. You would just never know that he’s as successful as he is. And he’s much more interested in other people and just interested in the world.

Then he is interested in trying to be interesting. And I think that’s one of the key things, right? It’s the difference between it’s one of those, the famous two people in the world framework, right? There are two people. There are people who are interesting and there are people who are interested. You have the people that you’ve been describing that are just stuck in that.

I have to be interesting. I have to get attention. Versus people who are interested in things in interested in people and interested in topics or in events. And you can quickly tell when you spend five minutes with somebody, you can quickly tell, is this person interesting or. Interested. And for whatever reason, it’s probably cultural.

We have a lot more people in the world, at least here in the West, who are interesting and who that’s the only thing they’re interested in is being interesting. And there’s just something repugnant about that. And it’s pathological. And it’s a dead end. And basically, I think of it as The analogy of you’re just gathering speed.

It’s a dead end. And the more you get into it, the faster you’re going when you finally hit the wall at the end. 

Adam: I use the phrase that it’s you have people that have the juice and then you have people that have the sauce, right? And you, if you have the juice, like anybody could be fast and juice and be quick, but the sauce is the recipe.

And you’ve got to have the full recipe to be this interesting person that goes on forever and not just pretending to be interesting. The crazy part though, and what I wonder about is We are in this social media Instagram world now that man, it just perpetuates this so much that you’ve got to have this image.

You got to have this look on social media in order to be successful. And it’s driving everybody in the opposite wrong direction. And what I wonder is. Will it catch up? Will, are we going to see in five years all these people that were so focused on an image and gathering likes and comments? On their social media platforms that really weren’t business savvy people that really didn’t have anything of value.

They were providing people that didn’t really have something sustainable. Are we going to see the rug get pulled out from underneath them? Or do we live in a world now that because you have this ability to connect? For example, I’ll look at A kid like Devin physique, who was tied to the shreds company and I followed shred.

Oh yeah. There was that coaching scandal where 

Mike: he was ripping people off. 

Adam: He was part of a terrible company like shreds. He got caught up in the coaching scandal of hiring some 20 year old girl to pretend to be him and answer all his clients questions. And he made a few million dollars.

And that was back when the kid had, I want to say 800, 000 to a million followers and he recovered, he recovered from that and is now at 2 million something followers and probably right back to doing what he’s doing, but probably tighten up his game and is maybe handling his clients more or what?

I don’t know what he’s done system wise, but. I wonder if, because you have this ability to reach so many people so fast, like you were saying, is the rug going to get pulled out from underneath them or are they just going to find another million suckers because we’re, we’ve got billions of people on this earth.

And shit I built a business off of 1 million people. I fucking did some shady shit. I did bad. I blew up in my face. That’s okay. I can turn right around. And for example, the other kid who was part of shreds, Joey swole, who has started another supplement line called rise sups.

And they’re following the same formula. And so I wonder if we’re going to see it collapse, or there’s just that many people that are that many suckers that allow people like this to do bullshit like that, get caught up, blow it up, and then still turn right back around and do it again, and there’s nothing you can do to really stop it.

Mike: Yeah. I just I just pulled up Devin’s Instagram. Yeah. He’s at 1. 7 million now. And He’s a walking tattoo. He looks like he belongs in prison. Spending 

Adam: all your guys money on face tattoos and Lamborghini. 

Mike: But to your point you look at it into this is just another dimension of celebrity, right?

Celebrities generally. Have a shelf life. Of course, look at it in terms of actors and actresses. So you have your time in the light. And then eventually you just become irrelevant. People don’t care anymore. I guess it’s a little bit different social media that it’s a little bit more under your control because in Hollywood, it’s up to the gatekeepers.

They really decide to. Whether you get cast and whether they’re going to give you that role or not, and I know that even among top tier celebrities, there is an anxiety among many of them of, is this it? Am I done? Was this last movie my last? Because I don’t get to decide. It doesn’t matter what I’ve done or how, Good of an actor or actress.

I am, there’s a small group of people that run this game. And if at some point they’re like, nah, we’re done with him. Here’s the next guy. Then I’m irrelevant and sure. These people can still make money, but in social media, of course, you don’t necessarily have that. So it’s just, what’s the next ridiculous thing that I’m going to do that’s going to get me enough attention.

Yeah, who knows this might, this phenomenon is new. Social media really hasn’t been a thing what we’re probably 10 years into it really pervading as pervasive as it because you go back to my space and that was not like what we have now. Not even close. Yeah, it might just be a thing that’s with us until it’s more, I think, more to the larger point, which is.

We are in the late stage of this civilization and history says it’s going to, it’s all just going to come crashing down and there’s I just mentioned this in the last podcast I recorded actually, but if you if you look up on YouTube, Will Durant fall of Rome, it’s 11 minute excerpt from an audio book of his.

Where he walks through, here’s what was going on socially, politically, economically, culturally in Rome before it collapsed. Point, you’d think he’s just describing our current situation, add some technology into the mix and that’s it. Arnold Toynbee is a famous historian who also I think he had 20 something points of.

Your indicators of the late stages of civilization and we check most of those boxes. So 

Adam: well, there’s a lot of people that believe, and I don’t know if I could get on board with this theory of that. We’ve been here before. This is a cycle. That man does, we, and then we completely destroy ourselves.

We get to a point. 

Mike: Oh, historically, there’s no question. You don’t even, you don’t even have to inform yourself. You just have to read a couple of books and you’re like, Oh yeah that’s obvious. And now if you mean literally like Atlantean, who knows? Maybe 

Adam: that’s what I’m saying.

I’m saying that there’s people that even believe it to that point. And I don’t know how much I disagree when I start, when you start to look at what we’ve seen and when you think of like the longterm. effects of all this. I can’t imagine with where we’re going with the tech. Like how could Elon Musk had a great interview with Joe Rogan and there was something that he said in there that just is I’ve not been able to rest at night over it.

And it really opened my eyes to what I think A. I. Is going to really look like and be like. And he makes a statement on there with his phone. He goes, everybody is all worried that AI is going to, it could kill man. And what happens when it’s smarter than us? And then it kills us.

And it’s no, it’s not like that, what it’s going to look like. He’s we already have examples right today. And he goes, and he picks up his phone. And he’s we’ve already got it right here. And the only difference between today and probably five or 10 years from now is this thing I’m holding in my hand will just be gone.

The capabilities of all that will just now be in either embedded in you or connected you to where, when you want to search a topic, like I find this very fascinating, right? Like we are at a time now in our generation today that is so different from when I was a kid. If somebody, if my buddies and I, we all were.

Debating a topic. It could be an all day thing. We argue and debate. No, I know it was this so that we’re going back and forth where today you could grab your phone and you could Google the answer within seconds and you can have the right answer. And so what happens when that just speeds up? What does that look like?

And that’s what he’s explaining. Like what A. I. Is gonna look like is a question gets asked or something you’re not sure of, and it’ll be as quick as you thinking it. Or saying it really quick to have the answer. 

Mike: And the tech is going to be, it’s going to be super expensive, which means that there’s now going to be an even larger intelligence gap, so to speak.

You know what I mean? So if you have that chip in your brain that allows you to immediately know any piece of information, period, imagine the advantage you’re going to have over people who don’t. 

Adam: So it is, it’s going to cause this major gap that they’ve been trying to control forever of trying to equalize everybody.

And it’s no, what’s going to happen is they’re 

Mike: can’t happen. It’s just, it’s in, it’s embedded into nature, the majority of intelligence, the majority of capability and the majority of will and drive and ambition is possessed in the minority of people. And that’s just the way that our DNA. It’s just wired into us.

So you can blame nature from that. So it’s, yeah the never ending quest for the true. Truly egalitarian society, I think, is it’s just never going to happen because it’s fundamentally at odds with our 

Adam: biology. I agree with you. The question will be, though, what happens when these people have this capability and, either one, you’ll have to accept that.

Oh, I’ll just never be that smart because I can’t afford to be that way. Or I choose not to be because I don’t want to be plugged in. I want to be unplugged. I want to be 

Mike: Think about work, though. Okay. So you’re trying to get a job. How are you going to outperform the dude with the neural link brain chip?

Adam: No it’s, I, so this is not that far away from us right now. That’s why I find this conversation fascinating and it keeps me up at night thinking about it. I don’t know where I’m going to stand. I think we’re like lucky and blessed that, you We’ve established ourselves in business and we’re at a point in our lives where I guess if the world really went that really bad direction that we’d be able to hole up somewhere and take care of our family or whatever, figure things out.

But man, I tell you what, if you’re somebody who’s growing up, that’s my, like my son, that’s just being born into this whole thing. It’s really interesting to think. What it’s going to be like 10, 15 years from now with AI and the capabilities. And if that’s where we’re going to go, and I don’t see, I can’t disagree with him, like people, we continue to prove that we want faster and faster.

Like I just got a new car the other day and it’s pretty cool how the thing sinks up and becomes my Apple iPhone now. And I’m driving, Oh, text message from Sal DeStefano. And then it just automatically reads it to me. And then I speak into the car and then it texts them back. It’s dude, we’re.

We are not far away from just getting rid of the hardware. That’s the only difference right now is that we have to hold, we have the hardware and real soon here we’ll get to a point where it’ll just be embedded in you and then you’ll just be able to speak or you’ll have these tools that hover around and follow you and you won’t need to use your hands anymore.

And then they’ll, you can see the evolution already of the. The AI too. I remember when it first came out, I was like, Oh, this Siri thing sucks. It never listens, can never understand me, but now the thing is so fucking smart. It’s predictive. Sal sent me a text message because he was on his way to pick me up to go somewhere and he goes, Hey, shoot me your address.

And my fucking iPhone answered him. My iPhone brought up my whole address and all I had to do was hit send. And it was my whole address, zip code, everything. I was like, Whoa, I didn’t even, I didn’t, it wasn’t even predictive. I didn’t even start typing. He asked the question. It gave me the answer. Oh, Whoa, dude.

We’re real close, dude. We’re real cool. We are close to irrelevance. That’s what we’re talking about, dude. 

Mike: For, just, it’s worth mentioning Cal. I like I liked Cal Newport’s book, deep work. I’m 

Adam: trying to get him on the show right now. Have you had him on the show? 

Mike: No, I’ve tried.

He just is super busy. And I, I know from reading, he talks about how he runs his life and his schedule and stuff in deep work. So I understand that he has his priorities and my show also is probably, I don’t know, I get a half a million plays on a good month. So you guys are much larger than I am.

I understand. No hard feelings, but I’ve tried. 

Adam: Yeah, I’m trying. He was just on my buddy Jordan Harbinger show and I thought it was a great episode. But yeah, I know it’s crazy, man. It’s crazy to think where we’re going. I also see another thing I see that I think is crazy is and we get this question a lot because we have like you probably to have a large trainer following or aspiring to be trainer following and there’s this new model of Going straight into online coaching, and I don’t know how much I agree with it.

I just I’ve done both, right? So I’ve had the privilege of training clients one on one in person for many years, and I started online coaching back when I was competing. I did it on the side, and When I was going through the online thing, I don’t know how I would have done it well without all of the years experience and all the different body types, personalities, psychological issues that I had already dealt with to be able to communicate over text.

I think it’s already difficult training clients, like training client one on one and looking at movement patterns and be able to say Oh, you probably have a really tight piriformis or Oh, this is probably bothering you because I could see the way you move. And then teaching them and actually putting hands on them and and then also getting them to execute and follow through and then learning that, the psychological piece to all of this even matters more than all of this shit that I continue to talk about with programming and exercise and nutrition and shit.

I needed all of that experience to be able to communicate really well to these people that are, DMing or texting me or emailing me. They need help with these things. And so we’re starting to get these trainers that they’re completely skipping the training people in person model and going straight to the online coaching.

And I’m really curious to what that’s going to look like, too. It’s I don’t know how good of a trainer I could have been or how well I could have helped somebody. Without all those years of experience first. So it’s that’s interesting to me to see the way that’s evolving and changing right now, too. And it’s turning into the people that are coaching the most clients.

The people that are impacting the most people are the people that have the most influence on instagram and they’ve got the most followers. And in reality, that rarely ever Aligns with the best true coaches, right? Like some of the best coaches and 

Mike: training because it takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of one on one time.

Just speaking to that point, I have a coaching service. I don’t coach people myself and I don’t pretend to. I have somebody who runs the whole service. I work with him and we have coaches. And so I know exactly what you’re talking about. We’ve intentionally CoachingBadminton. com it’s a very high touch personal one on one service and there are daily check ins and weekly check ins and we get great results with people, but it’s a lot of work.

You can’t have 100 clients per person. You have to have fewer people and provide a really good service. But yeah, it’s easier just to, it’s easier just to throw people, cookie cutter shit, and then have a team of people who don’t really care pretending to be you. So I’m assuming that’s the model, right?

So if you had a million followers, you’d pretend like they’re all getting trained by you. Is that the 

Adam: you see what happened to that Britney Dawn girl. Did you hear all that shit? She made the Today? No. Oh, shit. That was a big follow. So this Influencer, right? I’m in air quotes. Brittany Dawn, who was, she was on the Today Show a couple weeks ago and she had this massive falling out and because she pissed off a bunch of angry mothers.

What did she do? She’s, she gained a huge following from her Instagram. She posts Pictures of her butt and in her bikini and in her Range Rover and all these cool things to get all this attention, and she’s artsy. And so she had a half a million, I think, followers is what she had somewhere that 500, 800.

Mike: Yeah. I just pull her up. It’s 536 right now. 

Adam: Yeah. So go back. Go back like three, any post probably even now, but go back three or four posts and you can see just the onslaught of people that are hammering her right now as a scam artist, because what happened was she was doing this coaching thing and.

Like anybody else that I see that are chasing, building a social media following more than really understanding business, no one stops to think what if you actually do build this thing to be a monster? Can you handle that? Can you handle 500 people trying to buy coaching from you in one day?

Like you ever thought about that? And a lot of these idiots don’t even think about that. They’re working so hard to get attention and they’re hustling so much to add clients that no one stops to think Oh, what does this look like if I actually scale it to 500 people? Is it scalable to that and can I manage that and what would that process look like getting there?

And it was like an overnight thing for her I mean because of the ability to go viral these days and if you do a sexy enough pic It could instantly get a hundred thousand views and her shit grew so quick That she was literally just emailing everybody if she was even responding. So she was getting people buying shit and she wasn’t even able to respond to all of them.

And the ones that she was responding, she was literally sending the exact same thing to everybody. And you do that to a couple thousand people and sooner or later, two of them are friends, and she got found out. And just a massive backlash and then it already spent all the money, she’d already been spending everybody’s money and she couldn’t even refund everybody.

She offered like 20 bucks back or 40 bucks back on their program to try and save her ass. And I’m like, yeah, but this is what we’re seeing this everywhere. It’s actually really popular or really common to see these people that I, that are, they’re coaching and I’m like, okay, I did it. And part of why I don’t do it today is it’s not that 

Mike: scalable.

Oh, I can say the only reason why I started it was one of the guys, one, I get asked about it all the time. I guess there are two primary reasons. One was that, and two, there was a guy working with me. He still works with me. Now he works over on the Legion side of things and he wanted to do it.

And I was telling him, I was like, okay, this has to be a business though. And he’s a smart dude. And he understood that it’s going to require, he saw firsthand, like you see what’s going on here. With Legion in the systems that you need to have for hiring and the systems that you need to have for quality control and blah, blah, blah.

Like we’re going to need all that for the coaching. It can’t just be something that we can’t be like that. We can’t just put a signup form up online, start taking money and be like, Oh, we’ll just figure it out as we go. And there’s been now it’s a few hundred people, a few hundred active clients, and that might sound like, Oh yeah, cool.

To take care of three, whatever hundred people and to deliver a really good service is it takes a lot of time. So the guy who effectively runs that business, he doesn’t coach people he did in the beginning. He coached a lot of people, but now he is just running the business. And we have other people who, in one case, one guy, one of our best, one of our most popular coaches, he has a certain number of clients.

Then he also. Spends a lot of his time managing the other coaches as well. And then there’s a full time salesperson and it’s just a, it’s a business. I’d imagine 

Adam: too. It’s probably not the most profitable side of your house of everything that you got running over there is 

Mike: as far as profits go, it’s not bad.

It’s pretty good. If you’re looking at it just in terms of net, but in terms of I’m talking about percentage wise in terms of absolute profits. No, it’s negligible. I sure I can always use more money and there’s things I can do with money, but. I don’t count that income is rather insignificant for me personally.

Adam: Yeah, it’s something that’s it’s on my radar and we’ve talked about it before, but the only way that I would do it because I’ve already done it myself and I know that once I get personally to about 20 to 30 people, it’s a lot and I’m not organized, so I know if I was better organized, I could maybe scale that to 30 to 50 people.

It’s just not a scalable single business by itself. If you don’t have other revenue streams coming in and there’s much bigger fish for us to fry before I address that, I am getting to a point though, where I do see the opportunity and I do have the connections and relationships with other trainers that I can say, okay, and this is what I’m thinking about doing right now is, okay, I’ve got like the Danny’s, the mics and the, these really high level trainers that I personally know, and they’ve been training for a long time, super smart guys.

Totally know the brand and know everything about mind, but listen to every single episode. I’m like, okay, these guys are perfect. That I could put them in a position and say, okay, here’s the deal. You’re gonna run this coaching program. We’re gonna be the top of the funnel, so I’ll drive everybody to you.

You’ll make X amount of money for it. We’ll make a small piece of that for driving everybody to you, and this is gonna be this little thing that you build. So that will be something that we do, but it’s not, I’m seeing the opposite right now. And people that are in our space are going that direction first.

First, they’re just trying to get. Lots of attention on social on Instagram. And then they’re pivoting that into a coaching business with no rhyme or reason or idea of what that looks like. If you scale it, like what happens if you’re Instagram also, why 

Mike: They’re not doing it to with the primary purpose of helping people they’re doing with the primary purpose of just making money and the fact that it does help some people here and there makes them feel a little bit better about themselves, which is it is what it is, but how, at least how I went about it was the other way around.

Okay, the, I don’t have any doing this does, is, does, actually doesn’t make sense for me financially to put time into that when I could put my time into other things that would make a lot more money, but a lot of people want it. So it’d be a great service that I know a lot of my followers would like. And two, if we do it right.

We can help a lot of people, but really do a good job with everybody and make sure to really do our best to make sure that everybody’s happy. Everybody gets the results that they want. And if we can’t do that, we just give them their money back. And that rarely happens. It’s usually due to life circumstances.

People have to. Things change and they either can’t start or they have to drop out. And, but that approach, it does not scale as easily as just not caring. And yeah it’s not as profitable, but again, that comes back to all the stuff we were talking about earlier in that profits. They’re not, they don’t, They’re not very fulfilling.

Money is just not very fulfilling. It’s just not once you get past that threshold. I think we all have, I know the studies that show an 80, 000 a year or whatever that doesn’t work for everybody under all circumstances. Like you can’t tell me that someone living in the middle of Alabama, 20 year old dude making 80, 000 a year single, he’s going to, I’m sure he’ll feel good about his position and in his situation, he’s not going to have any pressing financial problems, but you.

Take a married couple bootstrapping, a startup living in Manhattan, and you try to make them live on 80, 000. It doesn’t work. I think it’s all relative to where you’re at. It is. It is. But I would say for most people, no matter what you’re doing, where you are. It’s probably in what, a couple hundred thousand dollars a year is probably the ceiling to where you no longer have any money problems and money, the satisfaction that you get from money, that’s where diminishing returns really kicks in.

Adam: Oh yeah, I think wherever you’re at and I, we live in one of the most expensive places in the country to live, and so for here, Once you reach beyond that, about that 200, 000 a year mark, the difference between 200, 300, 400, half a million isn’t much of a difference anymore 

Mike: in terms of quality of life.

Yeah, it’s just you either you have more money, you might, maybe you buy more trinkets and knickknacks and or you buy experiences or you’re smarter and you invest and you try to set yourself up for a better future. 

Adam: Yeah, no, it’s I think that’s 100 percent true. That’s in my personal experience.

That’s what it’s been like is, which is what I told you. I had to learn that lesson, like you, you could have told me that I could have listened to your podcast 10 years ago and I still would have let it go. It would have fallen on deaf ears. I would have been like, it doesn’t matter. I got to go find this number and yeah.

But when you reach that, you find out how unfulfilling it is. It’s just cause you don’t, a lot of us don’t think about long term. Like I want to do something if you’re creating, if you’re a creator, like we are like, I want to create something that I’m proud of and that I enjoy for my entire life.

And sometimes when we’re chasing a dollar amount, you’re just thinking about something right now because you’re thinking a house, I want a car, I want these things. And so you’re so driven by that. And then you obtain all those things. And then you have to actually look at yourself in the mirror and go Oh, do I enjoy doing all this stuff that I’m doing every single day?

And you’re like, fuck, maybe not. 

Mike: All that happens. Now you have a new wishlist and now you’re, and now you’re dissatisfied, completely dissatisfied with the things that you have because you need to have the next thing you need to have the next car. You got to have the, you have the daily driver. Then now you got to have the Lamborghini.

And if you’re gonna have the Lamborghini, then you got to have the bling. And if. Then you’re going to have that. Then you want to, Oh, now it’s traveling commercial is, it’s so peasant. I want to try it. I want to be able to fly. Probably just, it just never ends. 

Adam: Right now I’ve always, I don’t know if you share with the podcast.

No, and I know you share with us. I know that you came from money and yeah, you’re. 

Mike: I would, let me, I’ll qualify that. So my dad. Started, I grew up until let’s say it wasn’t apparent to me, honestly, until I was like 16. Okay. So in the beginning, 

Adam: will you growing up or anything? 

Mike: No. In the beginning, my parents had no money at all.

We, my dad was a hard worker. He made money, but when we talk about quote unquote, having money, he did not have money in the beginning. He worked his way up. He was a sales guy and he worked his way up eventually to having a sales company and selling it. But that was a, there was a journey there. So I was raised.

And we always had food and it wasn’t I was not in poverty at all, but there was not money in the sense of Ooh, they have money that I’d say phase began when I was probably 15 or 16. It’s when my parents built a house. So we were living in Florida and we lived in a normal, we actually just renting.

It was a bigger ish house, but a normal neighborhood, nothing special, just a nice place to live, normal neighborhood, normal track home to 3000 square feet. Okay. I’m trying to remember. Yeah, it wasn’t, it wouldn’t have been much bigger than 3000 square feet. It was a little bit bigger than the average house, but it was, rented.

And my dad was also funny, along the way, he had started to make a bit more money, but he was like, he still drove the same. It was like a, an old blue Nissan car. He didn’t care. He didn’t care to my mom was one who forced him finally to just get something that it looks a little bit nicer because he didn’t care.

He’d be like why do I need a nicer car? It doesn’t a car. I drive to work, I drive home, my Nissan works great, right? So we went from that, which I don’t know if they would have bought. The house would have been probably a couple hundred thousand, few hundred thousand dollars, maybe. I don’t know. And then they built.

At the time, so they, this was back when I was 16, it was probably with the land, three or 4 million home. And so that’s when I was like, Oh I guess my dad has been more money than I realized because he just wasn’t, he’s not an extravagant guy. He’s still not an extravagant guy beyond, I guess maybe the house looks a bit extravagant and for him, maybe that was fulfilling to be able to do because he grew up in a family with I think, shit, he was one of 10 or nine and his dad was a hard worker and always provided, but, they had to watch their money.

So yeah, that’s when it became apparent, but I wasn’t spoiled or I wasn’t raged like a little shitty rich kid. My brother, however, was because he’s six and a half years younger than I am and he’s a good dude. He works with me now and he’s on the right path. But. There’s a market difference between the two of us.

So anyways, you were to make a point, but I just want to explain 

Adam: curious actually to you because of your success. And if you were somebody who didn’t come from being like the rich kid and you didn’t come from being the poor kid, trying to make a ton of money, like where does the drive and desire to be successful and to grow a business and to scale and to keep making more and doing well, like, Where does that stem from then, or when you started, like what the fuck, what motivates a guy like you who technically could fall back on mommy and daddy if he had to back, when you’re 20 years old, like what separates you from you and your brother?

There’s a good example. You said you guys have market differences here. What are they and what was it that made you so driven? 

Mike: Let’s see. I’m looking back. I would say There was a financial element of it, but it wasn’t so much about want to have things for the sake of having things.

It was being married, having a kid on the way and wanting to be able to provide a good life for my family. Not that you needed a huge amount of money to do that, but, You need to do well. I think. And so there was that. There was also, it was exciting to just build something. You’re living it just as I am.

It’s cool to, I thought it was just exciting to envision something and build it and make it real. And the fact that. Money came with it as well as nice, but it was more just fun to do the work and see it all materialize that was fulfilling. And it was I’d say for me, work in general is it’s a flow producing activity.

For me, it gets me into that flow state where you, your attention is fully absorbed and you’re fully focused on what you’re doing. And you forget about your worries and you forget about time and yourself, and you are really just in the moment and that’s an enjoyable feeling. And so I’ve always been drawn to work simply for that reason alone.

So in some ways I could probably enjoy just about any type of work so long as I could. There are some, I’d say some conditions that would need to be met for it to even be able to produce that state. But so long as I could do that, I could do a lot of different work that may not appeal to me inherently.

I may not feel drawn to it, but once I get into it, I can enjoy it. So I was probably drawn to work just for the sake of it’s more enjoyable than what the fuck else am I going to do? You know what I mean? Okay, so let’s say I’m just gonna be a rich kid. I know these people, right? I have friends or, maybe I’ve lost, touch with some, with most of them by now, but not because there was a falling out per se.

So if I was just gonna be a rich kid, what do I do then? What do I do? I travel. I wouldn’t get married. ’cause that’s stupid, right? If you’re gonna be a rich kid, you’re just a degenerate. I would just travel and I would just have sex and do drugs and buy things and you’re wise enough to know that’s fleeting.

Yeah. Oh, that I would. And just see what happens in the what happens next? Do we come back? Do we, am I going to hell? I don’t know. That seems more interesting to me than going in. I’m not joking. Then going and being a degenerate because I know exactly where that goes. I’ve seen it firsthand.

I get it. You know what? It leads to internal hell, right? And you die anyway in the end if you take it there. So let’s just skip the foreplay. Let’s get straight to the execution and let’s just see what happens. 

Adam: Now, what is the point though of, and this is where I try and have balance with this.

I think that I still spoil myself or I still do things that I shouldn’t say spoil. I still enjoy Getting certain things or spending money on certain things. Do you have things that you justify that? Hey, I work really hard. I do these things and I’m into X, Y and Z. I’m a sneakerhead. I’m a watch guy.

I’m a car guy. These things I’m into. I don’t find the need to flaunt them to others and show them what I’ve done. But personally getting into The rover or getting into the Camaro is like one of my favorite things to do on a Saturday. And I, I don’t share it on Instagram. Nobody knows I go do it, but I’ll go take a ride with all the windows down and music playing.

And I love it. I enjoy that. Do you have things that cost money that were expensive to buy or that you buy for yourself that you indulge that you are okay with? Or do you live this? I don’t care about these things at all, and so I’m not gonna spend any money on any of this shit. 

Mike: At this point I’m fairly, monastic would be the word.

I like collecting things. I don’t spend very much money currently, because I’ve Doing other things with my money, but I do collecting things. So I’ve bought things that I just think are cool. Like I bought a Flintlock pistol from like the late 1700s made by some master Italian pistol maker, just because I want to just think it’s cool.

And two, I like that period of history. And it’s just something that’s appealing to me. Let’s see. I bought a typewriter that was owned by a guy named Mickey Spillane, who was a writer back, I think. Turn of the century ish, maybe a little bit later than that. And he had sold like a hundred million novels in his lifetime.

And I thought that’s cool. It’s just symbolic. Cause I guess I consider myself first and foremost, a writer. Oh, I bought a standard oil stock certificate signed by John Rockefeller. Just because I read Titan and I was like, this guy was, there were serious things wrong with this guy, but in some ways he was admirable.

He was just one of these larger than life figures of history who stand out and you can’t help but admire a lot of what he did despite. How ruthless and merciless he was. And let’s see, what else do I have? Some first edition books, like a first edition of Atlas shrugged. I want to get a signed one, but I’ve seen a few go up.

I just didn’t want to spend. It was, there was, I think they ended up selling for multiple thousands of dollars. So I have an unsigned. So it’s stuff like that. I’ll spend. It’s not that much money when you, some of the items were expensive individually, but when you look at it over time, it’s not much.

I drive a nice car. I do driving a nice car. I don’t know how much I really care about it though. Like I’ve thought many times, this is a waste of money. Like I don’t need a, an S class Mercedes. It’s nice to drive around, but I could probably get like an E class for half the price and not care or anything else.

So I guess cars, not really my thing. I thought maybe I could get into watches. So I’ve, I have a few watches that are not crazy, but fairly expensive. And after getting a few, I just wasn’t interested. I just wasn’t even really interested in wearing them. So I was like I guess that’s not for me.

And so my wife is very much, she’s very into fashion. And to her credit, I’d say, I can’t say that there’s got to be a part of her that I don’t know if, is it a, if it’s just a female thing, cause most women are into fashion to some degree, especially if they have some money to spend on, getting nice things.

My mom was a perfect example of that. So previously before my dad started making more money, she would. To wear just normal clothes, whatever, right? She would maybe go to target and get like 22 pairs of shoes or actually I’m skipping. So she just wear normal clothes, right? Then my dad starts making money and then she just starts buying more of that stuff.

So it’d be like, go to target and get 22 pairs of shoes instead of getting maybe three or four pairs of very expensive shoes. I’m exaggerating, but you get the point. And then. My wife at the time, I’ve been with her since I was 17. So we start dating. She’s into high end fashion. And so as we’re dating and my dad does better and better, he ends up selling his company, a company that he had made a lot of money with that. So then my mom going into it initially was like, I’ll never get into high end fashion. And I understand Sarah’s into it. It’s just not me. And then. Once she got a taste of it though, Sarah got her hooked on this stuff is nicer.

This Chanel bag is actually nicer than the Michael Kors bag. And you like the Michael, the part of you that likes this Michael Kors bag is going to really like this Chanel bag. And so then my mom, yeah, then Sarah fully corrupted my mom. I don’t know. I think my mom had a phase where she was buying a lot of stuff.

I don’t think she, I think she, Is over that now, but my wife is still into it and we have a simple agreement. She has a budget that she can spend every month. I don’t care what she buys with that money. She could spend it all on one ridiculous thing, or she could buy, several ridiculous things.

I don’t care at all as long as she sticks to the budget. And but she’s into it and she’s been into it for as long as I’ve known her. But she’s not, and I’m biased because it’s my wife and I love her, but she really, I do not think it’s because she wants to try to make other women jealous or wants to necessarily show off that she can afford some more expensive things.

She genuinely likes it. Like she would. She’s been just raising our kids now for years, but once Romy, our daughter’s going to be in school, Sarah will probably, she may come work with us in the office, but she’ll probably, if she weren’t to do that, she would want to work in the fashion industry. She just loves it.

And I wish I had something like that. Like I tell her, I’m like, I think it’s cool that you’re into it. I’m not into it. I don’t understand it. I don’t like the space. It’s similar to fitness and it’s very narcissistic and just weird, but I understand there’s a, there’s an aesthetic there that there is an art to a lot of this stuff.

And I don’t have anything like that. I was into golf a bit when I was in Florida and I could see enjoying that it can be very expensive. I didn’t make it very expensive. I understand being into like, Oh, I’m into shoes or I’m into cars because I see it with my wife. I just don’t currently have anything that really is that interesting to me other than buying some collectible things here and there that yeah, I like board games.

There you go. They’re not that they’re expensive. I just I grew up I’ve never got really into video games, but I like, Games in general, and I like the social element of board games, so I own quite a few board games. 

Adam: Hey, did you ever get a chance to play Railroad when I sent it to you for Christmas?

You remember last year, or the year before last year, actually. It was two years ago when we first met. 

Mike: Yeah, the Ticket to Ride expansion. So I have Ticket to Ride. I’ve played it. I didn’t play the one that you sent me simply because it’s hard to get. Like the people together and then get them all to agree on a game, but I’ve played ticket to ride and I thought it was a thoughtful gift.

It was 

Adam: that’s what I tell you. That’s one of the things that I think we talked about the first time that we met that I was actually just having this conversation with Katrina that I need help. I’ve never been in a position right now. Where I have built so many relationships with so many people that I actually like and that I think are very valuable relationships for many reasons, and I take a lot of pride on making sure that I do thoughtful things and letting I come from a place of that quote, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

And I really believe in that. And I try and lead with that with people always, but man, has it, it’s been a challenge because it’s one thing to be helping and help build and scale the thing we’re currently doing, but then also to manage all those relationships and make sure that I’m making those connections and showing people that I do value and care about their relationship.

It’s definitely been something that I remember I talked on your podcast the very first time that we did a podcast about this for the first time in my life, I’ve. I feel over, I pride myself on being really good at that. And for the first time, I feel overwhelmed of, Oh my God who do I prioritize?

Mike: No, I understand. I’ve run into that myself. The good news I think is at least I’ve experienced this, the most of the people who maybe would be. On that list understand because they live the same life, and whenever there is some sort of, Hey, how’s it going? They understand and it’s appreciated.

So when I hear I have friends, exactly the same thing out in California, people I’ve known in a couple of cases since I was 16, 17, and they’re busy and we talk now and then, and that’s totally cool. And. It’s understandable that I don’t, I’m not upset that I didn’t, get happy birthday wish because I, it’s I get it.

Adam: I get it too. It’s challenging though. It’s, and it’s important. It’s important to me. I always feel like it’s, I’ve had a lot of success by leading that way. Much of the things that have come my way in business have been because of networking with so many people. I definitely also come from the camp of like Henry Ford of surrounding myself with other men and women that are Far more talented and smarter than I am.

And because of that, I’ve been able to have a lot of success. And we’re now in a place where I find that more challenging that I’ve ever felt in my life. But the one thing that I think you’re right is the relationships that probably matter the most. The ones that I care about the most and the ones that I like are also the ones that are most forgiving about themselves.

The loss of contact for a little while, I already, we’ve already forged a relationship. We like each other. We both respect that we’re both building something big and it takes a lot of energy and effort. Because I didn’t hear, like you said, I haven’t heard from you for my birthday or whatever that I’m not sweating somebody, 

Mike: yeah, exactly. All right, man. I think I have to pee really bad. So I think this is a great place to to wrap it up. Do you want to finish with just, is there anything new and exciting? Anything cool you want to let everybody know about? Obviously everybody can. Find you and all your sound.

Justin and Doug over at mindpump media. 

Adam: Yeah. I’m pretty sure most of your, I’m sure we have a lot of crossover between us. Probably know where to go. Fine. 

Mike: You know what to do. 

Adam: Yeah. Just go give him your fucking money so he can buy a lot of water, dude, but I do, we are doing something this year.

We’re probably going to get out more this year than we did the previous year. We’re trying to do some, so maybe I can bug your audience to bug you more to do this is I’d like to do like a, mind pump tour and friends where like we go to different states and cities. And for example, if we were in your neck of the woods yeah, I’m in dude.

Mike: I’m in. We’ll plan something like that. You just got it. Let’s give me a heads up though, so I can announce I want to let people know this is, in advance because I’m sure quite a few people would come. That’d be fun. 

Adam: No, I will. In fact you’ll be hearing from Taylor soon because Taylor’s the one who’s organizing it with Rachel, but I’ll try and get something lined up to where we can come in your backyard.

So it’ll be more convenient. And then, have you drop in and surprise and say hi to everybody. 

Mike: Yeah, that’d be fun. Cool. 

Adam: Always 

Mike: good time with you, bro. Yeah, same. Thanks for taking the time. Hey there. It is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did and don’t mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you’re listening from.

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