My Weird But Wonderful Journey in the Fitness Space (feat. Josiah Novak)

Mike Matthews: [00:00:00] Probably spent between me and Jeremy is probably eight months. Like from the decision to do it where I remember talking with Jeremy, I was like, we can do this. I think there’s an opportunity again, like what I was saying to just scratch your own itch and make really good products that we ourselves wish somebody else would make.

Hey, there it is. Mike Matthews back with another episode of the podcast. And this time doing something a little bit different because instead of me just babbling about something about myself, I am going to be babbling with Josiah Novak from the fit man podcast. Seriously, though, Josiah was kind enough to interview me for his podcast.

And I thought all of you all out there might like it. So I’m reposting it for your listening pleasure, as you will see our discussion kind of wanders all over the place. But if you want to hear the rather unusual story of how [00:01:00] I got into the fitness industry in the first place, and then found a niche that I could Excel in Which is writing in particular, and then moved into supplements and all the rest of it, then you should give this episode a listen.

I think you will find it interesting. We also discuss some of what has worked well for me in terms of maintaining at least a semblance of a work life balance, managing priorities, and other things work related. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills. 

But I’m not 

Mike Matthews: big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in.

So instead I’m just going to quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my fitness book for women, thinner, leaner, stronger. Now this book has sold over 150, 000 copies in the last several years. And it has helped thousands of women build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 1, [00:02:00] 200 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average.

So if you want to know the biggest lies and myths that keep women from ever achieving the lean, sexy, strong, and healthy bodies they truly desire. And if you want to learn the simple science of building the ultimate female body, then you want to read Thinner, Leaner, Stronger. Today, which you can find on all major online retailers like audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google play.

Now, speaking of audible, I should also mention that you can actually get the audio book 100 percent free when you sign up for an audible account, which I highly recommend that you do. If you’re not currently listening to audio books, I myself love them because they let me make the time that I spend doing things like commuting, prepping food, walking my dog and so forth.

Into more valuable and productive activities. So if you want to take Audible up on this offer and get my book for free, simply go to [00:03:00] www.bitlybitly.com/free tls book, and that will take you to Audible and then you just have to click the sign up today and save button, create your account, and voila, you get to listen to Thinner, leaner, stronger for Free.

Josiah Novak: I actually wanted to have you on the show for a while. I have to give props where props are due because back in my younger, I call it my crazy days in my twenties. I read bigger leaner, stronger. Actually, you probably were the first person to really convince me that I could eat a little bit more flexible of a diet.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, it’s like one of those aha, watershed moments. You’re like, I can eat a three, three spoons of ice cream a day and not get fat. 

Josiah Novak: Yeah, a tablespoon actually no, but yeah, it was, I actually distinctively remember, I don’t know if it was the exact wording or not, but it was something about how you ate like chocolate gelato or something like [00:04:00] that every night.

And I was like, holy shit, man. Like I might actually, this might actually be real. 

Mike Matthews: There’s hope. 

Josiah Novak: Yeah, it’s 

Mike Matthews: funny. I don’t have, I don’t know if you’ve had that experience, but I definitely had, especially, I guess I’ve never really been, I’ve never had trouble with food. I’ve never really had a weird relationship with food, even growing up.

Like I played a lot of sports and I ate the stuff my mom would cook and otherwise would have some shit at my friend’s house. Here and there or whatever, but especially now, I guess my focus personally now is more on longevity. And I want to be able to continue doing what I’m doing now and continue to look and perform the way that I look and look perform now, 10 years from now.

If you actually look at my diet, it looks like your typical quote, unquote, Clean eater as opposed to, I just don’t get into the macro gymnastics of trying to basically look good, but have a shitty diet. You know what I mean? 

Josiah Novak: Yeah, no, totally. And in other words, we’re just getting old. Yeah, basically.

We’re [00:05:00] dads now. We actually have to be responsible. Yeah. No yeah. Totally. Totally. I I’ve gone from, I had a brief period, like you mentioned the macro gymnastics. I said, okay how creative can I get? How insane can I make my meals? But then I was like, you know what?

This shit’s making me feel like crap anyway. Exactly. So let me just stick to the yeah, it’s funny. We come full circle, but yeah. So you’ve done a lot of things, man. I feel like you’re one of those people that, Can do a lot of things really well. But I want to talk about where this whole thing started.

Where did you begin the fitness journey and how did you realize, Hey, like I’m actually going to create something here that’s going to change the world in a sense. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. It was just one of those, I really have to say. to say that luck with anything, like luck always plays a role. And this was a kind of a, just a, one of those strange stories of serendipity, because like I had mentioned, I grew up playing sports played baseball and then got into hockey and then really liked hockey and just stuck with that and played a lot of roller hockey, a lot of ice hockey.

That was up until I was like 17 ish. And I never [00:06:00] intended on trying to. Go all the way with sports just because I felt like while I enjoyed it, I wasn’t willing to dedicate my life to it. And I knew that. That’s what it takes. It takes absolute obsession. Even if you look at it from the perspective of if you’re trying to.

athlete or a high level athlete you can push yourself to the point of burnout. And that’s one type of obsession that’s more of the harmful obsession. But if you look at examples of how top performers have been able to stay at the top of their game for a long time, their lives still revolve around maximizing their performance.

Performance in their respective sports. It’s just, they’ve been smart about factoring in recovery. And that can be physical recovery, mental recovery, emotional recovery. So that might entail making sure, let’s say they sleep sleeping 10 hours a night, right? Which there was some research. It’s most people that follow this kind of stuff.

I’ve heard about this. It was, I think it was done with college basketball players remember correctly and 10 hours a [00:07:00] night, like markedly improved their accuracy and just made them better basketball players. So still, yeah. And that means you’re taking less time. You’re not sleeping five hours so you can wake up at the crack of dawn and get and start your, six hours of workouts for the day.

You’re sleeping more, but you’re still doing it because you want to get better at your sport. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so it still requires a pretty, I think singular obsessive type of mindset where you’re optimizing your life and you’re aligning everything toward So I didn’t see myself really wanting to do that and I figured if I wasn’t going to be like that, what’s the point?

Because that’s really what it takes. So I wanted to continue doing stuff with my body. So I got into weightlifting and also girls like muscles. So I was like, that works too. I like girls. So I’m going to, I’m going to, Yeah, I’m going to, I’m going to, I’m going to get some muscle, right? So I started recruiting a couple of friends and, we picked up some bodybuilding magazines and just started doing, what now I look back at are just nonsensical workouts where you’re sitting in the gym for two, two and a [00:08:00] half hours a day.

And that might be like, that might be an arms day, like two hours of arms and abs, right? Just 

Josiah Novak: crushing it. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. That makes any sense. Maybe it’s just. Pecs and it’s not even it’s mostly, 

Josiah Novak: yeah, you call it pecs. Yeah, that’s when you know, it’s totally fucked up.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And and of course, that was my first in playing sports. I hadn’t really done any resistance training, especially hockey. It’s not really. do. I remember seeing recently there was a, there was some guy he was drafted first round NHL and he couldn’t do a pull up like he couldn’t do one pull up.

I’m pretty sure my nine month pregnant wife can do a pull up. I’m pretty sure. Pretty sure. 

Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: So and then she’s not a weightlifter, she does she does yoga, she does Pilates. So that was my, my, my real problem. Introduction to weightlifting and newbie gains being what, that’s a real thing.

And when you start doing any sort of resistance training, your body is hyper responsive to it. So I made some progress in that first year of basically just putting in a lot of work. I didn’t, if you look at how much [00:09:00] time, if I would have known what I was doing, I probably could have spent probably a third of the time that I spent in the gym to get.

Ultimately get better results, it was something it was fun to do. It was time with my friends. And I also just really came to not the results in terms of how my body was changing. I like that, but also I came to enjoy working out and it was something new and I liked how I felt after and whatever.

That was the first year. Maybe I gained I don’t know, 10 or 15 pounds of muscle in that first year, which again, isn’t very good, especially not considering how much. Time I put in and I stuck with it over the years. And I knew that I didn’t really know all that much. It was more just, I didn’t care all that much about it.

It was something that I did cause I enjoyed it and I knew it was good for my body. And at the time I was happy with, I didn’t look at my body and be like, Oh, I wish I were leaner. I wish I were bigger or stronger. 

I was fine. I was out. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: I was fine and I was just had my attention on other things and whatever.

And but then along the way I had, I tried to [00:10:00] remember exactly what the turning point was. There were, I remember clearly one of the, one of the kind of light bulb moments was I had met this bodybuilder and power lifter and I didn’t really know. That world I also didn’t know how prevalent steroids were, and I didn’t also know how to spot steroid use because again, I just, these are things I never looked into.

I never cared and I wasn’t exposed to it much either because I don’t know if it was just because of the gyms that I always would work out in these like small kind of boutique private gyms and at weird hours, like for a long time, I’d work out at 11 p. m. And so there was, I remember one Dude in particular who was super drugged up, but on the whole, I wasn’t really exposed to it.

So anyway, so I’m, so I meet this a bodybuilder and he was prepping for a show, super fucking lean, obviously. And I was just talking to him. So like, how do you look like that? You know what I mean? What are you doing? And he was the first person to turn me on to a flexible dieting actually.

And then just heavy compound weight lifting. That’s basically what I should be looking at. And I was like, Oh, interesting. So then from there, I decided that I wanted to educate myself, [00:11:00] which, I’ve always been a good student. I think it’s one of my top priorities. Strengths is that I’m good at learning things.

I want to learn more about what this guy was talking about. And so I then I didn’t go to magazines or random websites just because I knew that those are just not very reliable, not very good sources of information in terms of training. I went to starting strength was one of the first places I looked cause I was, I’d heard of this and I knew that it had been around, for 30 years and that Ripto is a respected dude and blah, blah, blah.

So I, I started reading a bit. In the, on strength training and then from there also went into scientific literature and on the diet side of things, I really just went to scientific literature because at the time, I didn’t know of any book that I could read that really broke it down and did a good job explaining the fundamentals.

So I, I just applied myself to learning. Really, we’re just talking about the basics of diet and resistance training and, muscle hypertrophy and strength progression, blah, blah, blah. And then just apply it to myself in the gym. And yeah. And saw great results and other people started seeing it and started [00:12:00] asking about it.

And I continued to educate myself just because now I was more interested. And so I bring people, bring friends to the gym with me and just run them through. These are my workouts. Welcome to a squat, welcome, welcome to a deadlift. See that shit? Pick it up. Yeah. It’s hard, right? And explaining, the goal, really my goal is to progress on these lifts.

And then I have some accessory work around. And the reason here’s why I’m doing this, the accessory work. And as I got more educated, it was more looking at, frequency intensity volume, which is something that I don’t really spend all that much time talking about, especially in like bigger, leaner, stronger, thinner, leaner, stronger, because quite frankly, those books are really how bigger, leaner, stronger came about was, that was the book that I wish I had back when I started lifting weights.

You don’t need to know any of that shit. In the beginning, you just don’t. I would say in one of my next passes, one of my next additions of both of those books, I’m going to see if I can shorten them. It’s not really a complaint that I get, but I just know that there are a bit on the longer side right now.

So that just creates more friction for a reader. I have some feedback from readers on something. [00:13:00] There are some areas that might be able to just cut down on the words. But the first edition was like the, Quite short. I don’t remember the exact word count, but I wanna say maybe 60, 50, 60,000 words, whereas the current edition is actually twice that.

And, I didn’t try to I didn’t really try to go into it as a marketer which I had at the time. I had some marketing experience, copywriting experience, whatever. I really just wanted to, okay, in the beginning of the book, get the person hyped up. Promise of benefits. Imagine this is what your life could be like.

Yes, it’s possible. And then let’s just get right down to it and let’s dispel some myths. And then let’s just learn how to like, here’s some stuff you probably believe right now. That’s not true. And then let’s get down to how to do it. Here’s how you do it. Yeah. If you’re skeptical, I understand.

Just go do it for a month. That’s all you have to do. And then. From there, you’ll know. So anyways, that, that book came about because throughout just with helping people, funny enough, one of my friends at the time, this is when I had gotten really lean for the first time. And I looked good, but I felt like I was small just because that’s what happens.

You start getting below 10 percent and you’re like, Jeez, [00:14:00] I’m small, 

Josiah Novak: natural shredding days. Yeah, exactly. 

Mike Matthews: And where people, I remember, yeah, I remember one time seven or a couple of things, not that I cared. I thought it was funny. So I was pretty lean. I was probably about 7 percent and I was wearing like a long sleeve shirt that was loose.

It wasn’t, I’m not, I wasn’t, it wasn’t like, you know how some people, they try to shrink wrap themselves in their clothes or everybody knows that they lift. I don’t really care about that. So I remember one person, he was like, they hadn’t seen me in a while. He’s so you stopped working out?

Like what’s what happened? Did you get hurt or something? And then I was like, bitch, look at my abs. That’s what are you talking about? 

Yeah, exactly. And then somebody else was like, wow. Like it was the same type of thing wearing that type of clothes. You do. Are you a swimmer? You have that’s been a, now a joke, like an inside joke with my friends ever since.

I thought that’s good. And so at that time though, again, objectively speaking with my take my shirt off and do a few pushups. I look pretty good. So a friend of mine was like, you should just go on YouTube and take your shirt off and sell shit. And I was like, yeah, nah, that doesn’t sound very interesting.[00:15:00] 

And so he kept on Harping on this point of you need to take your physique and sell something, right? And so I was thinking, all right, I think there probably is an opportunity here, but what do I actually want to do? What would I be interested in? I’m not interested in just shilling. At the time, social media shilling wasn’t new.

I don’t know. I wasn’t really on social media much, so maybe it was a thing, but it was definitely not as much of a thing as it is now. I always liked to read and I was, I think at that time, a decent writer. I was in my previous life, I was building employee training programs for companies.

There’s a lot of, there’s quite a bit of carry over actually in terms of skills and just experience having to take. Complex jobs in that case and break them down into training that can take someone that really knows nothing to like being able to do the job, depending on what it is, it could be in a couple of weeks or it might take as much as a couple months, but regardless, there needs to be a, you need to be able to break something down so it can be learned on an easy gradient.

You’re not making huge jumps in terms of now they’re just completely confused. I don’t know what to do. So I was like, all right, what I’ll do is I’ll write a [00:16:00] book because I also, at the time Amazon’s KDP platform was gaining a lot. Of traction in the news because there’s dude, there’s this guy named John Locke, who was like the first self published author on their platform to sell a million books.

He had a cool story. He was like, he made a bunch of money in the insurance business. He had one business, built it up, sold it and did it again and sold that for, I don’t know, 30, 40, 50 million or something. And he was like, all right, I’m done with money. What do I actually want to do? And this is what he decided.

He always had wanted to write books. Novels. So he started doing that and he priced them at 99 cents. Cause he didn’t care about the money. He just wanted to see if anybody would care about his work and it blew up for him. And now he’s he was their golden boy. And they use that to attract other writers and saying, Hey, if you can write good shit, we have a platform here and we have a lot of readers and here it is.

So that’s why I wrote the book initially and did it as a book and put it up on Amazon as opposed to trying to have it as a PDF and doing the whole. Yeah, exactly. I was like, I’m just curious to see how [00:17:00] Amazon plays out. So that was the beginning. And I published it in 2012. And I think the first month, maybe 20 copies were sold.

I was just like, ah, cool. Somebody bought my book. And then it grew exponentially from there. And I put my email address in the book just in case people want to set up a domain, build healthy muscle, which was just a domain. And there’s not even any website. And, Encourage people to reach out and let me know what they thought of the book, if they have any questions or whatever.

And so I would just answer emails and take down notes on people if they had good ideas and how the book could be improved. And also where, based on the questions that I was getting, where I could, Beef up the book. And I was like, yeah, that’s a good point. I should probably like, it would be better if that information were in there.

Yeah. So by the end of the year, it was selling a few thousand copies a month. And that’s when I was looking at it going, okay, this is a real opportunity. I have this other business and it does well and I make money, but it doesn’t have I was ambivalent about it. There were things I liked about it, things I didn’t like about it.

And it didn’t have. The anywhere near the upside [00:18:00] in terms of potential reach and potential impact and also potential revenue as the health and fitness space. There, I don’t know if there aren’t very many industries that you can just jump into that do, at that time, though, I actually didn’t want to become like a health and fitness expert or guru, so to speak not that I consider myself either, honestly I’m not a scientist.

I don’t play one on the Internet again. I think my strength is I’m good at learning things. I like to study interpreting them and making them understandable to the layman, basically. And that’s really how that really has been my focus. I guess I would maybe consider myself A researcher, an educator, but at that time I was like, I don’t like the fitness space.

I don’t like fitness people in a lot of what I would honestly, 

Josiah Novak: I’m with you on that. 

Mike Matthews: I’ve had that discussion with people and they’re a little bit taken aback. Now is that a, have 

Josiah Novak: you been to the Arnold classic? 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. No shit. Yeah. I was at these 

Josiah Novak: expos. Yeah. Good luck. Exactly. 

Mike Matthews: Exactly. I was at a family wedding over the weekend and there were a few people.

I don’t [00:19:00] like to talk about myself at all on a scene, but like when people ask, it’s just standard thing. What do you do? Oh, health and fitness things like, oh, so what do you mean? Like a personal trainer? Yeah not, yeah, not exactly. I usually, my thing is I have some books that are popular and have some websites and supplements and shit.

And that’s it. But in having that discussion with people, the few people were they thought that was funny where they knew about me cause they, they like Legion and shit. Cause they’re in the family. And so my cousins have talked, I think it’s cool. That’s always funny to them where I’m like, yeah, they’re like they think fitness people, they think it’s just, you there’s a lot of neurosis and it’s just a weird space.

And I’m like, yeah, absolutely. I’m not very well networked in the space cause I don’t like a lot of the people in the space legitimately just don’t like them. 

Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: So I didn’t want to really go into it. And I was thinking initially that what I would do is start a publishing company and just apply what I had learned.

With selling my own books to selling other people’s books, and it wouldn’t just have to be health and fitness stuff. That opportunity is actually still there because traditional publishers have [00:20:00] distribution on their side. Absolutely, but they’re pretty weak on the marketing side of things. They move very slowly, and they can’t take as many gambles anymore on unknown authors, or they just don’t want to.

They want people like me. Now for example, I’ve sold close to a million books just online. I’m not even in bookstores since 2012. My websites get about 2 million visits a month between the two of them, 400, 000 people on email lists, whatever on social media, blah, blah, blah. So I’m working on a new book and I’m going to go traditional because I want to do New York times campaign.

And that’s the safest way to, because there’s like politics involved with NYT if, for sure. If there’s a book that’s self published, even if it sells very well, they may not admit it to the list. And I just don’t want to take that risk. So I’d rather just go traditional. That’s like how I was looking at it at that time.

And I was going to publish other people’s stuff and build up this publishing company. So I started, I recruited a friend of mine to work with me. And we started putting it together, but then we looked at it and said, okay, the real opportunity here is in health and fitness. So I guess I’ll do it, but I’m just going to do it in [00:21:00] my own way.

Fast forward. And again, I’ve sold a bunch of books and I’ve written obviously a number more and I’m continuing. That’s always going to be a thing cause I just enjoy it and supplements and an app and blah, blah, blah. The app description is health and fitness things. 

Josiah Novak: So you, you skipped over the supplement stuff, but I was curious to know.

So you wrote a book, you’ve written a few books now, you’re selling a ton of copies. What made you get into the supplement space? I’m just curious. I, before you answer, I will say that you were one of the first. Brands. Legion was one of the first brands that I at least came across. I’m not a big supplement guy at all, but I came across and I was interested in it because of the health aspect, right?

Because of some of the direction you took when it came to actually creating quality products versus just, Hey, I got another creatine or here’s another pre workout like, all right, dude, like we’ve seen this story a hundred times, but with you, it was more of Hey, I just want to make products that are actually quality and that are going to make you healthier, but why did you decide to do that?

Was it just, Hey, this is the next step in the business. Or was it something you had self interest in? 

Mike Matthews: Basically, I’m just really greedy. [00:22:00] So no, it’s just fucking cash, bro. Like Lambos and Rolexes and bitches. No. So I’ve taken a bunch of supplements over the years because you’d, I’d go to GNC. That was like part of the thing when you, especially when you’re in the magazine world.

And if I rewind to the first couple of years of my exploits in the. weightlifting space where, yeah, you try all different kinds of supplements. So I’d go to GNC and try, test boosters and GH boosters and pre workouts and post workouts, everything. I’d spend 400 a month on crap.

And and then obviously throughout the process of getting educated, I learned that Oh, so like basically all that stuff does nothing. All right I’ll stop wasting money on that. And but still would use protein powder. And I would, I did a pre workout. If for nothing else than just by that time I was working out early in the morning.

So it was nice. It was nice to feel fully awake and have, if it’s just caffeine, it just before work, it does make a difference if you have enough. And so I [00:23:00] saw an opportunity, it was, I guess it was twofold one, it was selfish and then I wanted to scratch my own itch and make products that I myself wished someone else was making essentially.

And that’s how it started. Okay. So once I understood a bit more about supplement industry and how shitty most of these products are, the question was why doesn’t someone just make a good product? What’s the problem? Is it just pure greed? Is that really what it is? And where, basically you have all the big players, almost like it’s a cartel to say, all right, guys, let’s just make, let’s just keep all of our costs collectively.

Let’s keep our cost of goods as low as possible so we can have Lambos, Rolexes and bitches. And it’s that, but it’s also, unfortunately for the supplement companies that are reliant on retail is the, just the, how the hierarchy is set up. It pretty much precludes quality products. You can’t because when you take into account the margins that the supplement companies themselves need be mainly because of how much marketing money they have to spend.

It’s not uncommon. And I know. [00:24:00] For various supplement companies that are, eight figure companies that have to spend 30 ish percent of revenue on marketing, even as high as 40 or 50 with some of these direct to consumer kind of e commerce supplement companies. So they have to spend all that money just to keep the revenue where it needs to be.

And they also churn through customers at an alarming rate. So they have to constantly be acquiring new customers, which is very expensive to do because. It just, anyone in business knows that’s that it’s tremendously and that exactly. That’s like the never ending headache is how to acquire more customers, less expensively.

And they’re not equipped, especially the supplement companies. Many of them are not equipped or they’re not focusing on retaining their existing customers. So it’s just that churn game. And then you have the wholesalers and distributors, they need their cuts. And then you have the retailers need their cuts.

And in some cases. The retailers, they want big cuts like GNC had reached out a couple of years ago and they wanted a 70 percent margin themselves, meaning they wanted to more than double markup. And it [00:25:00] was just like, yeah, that doesn’t work. But so yeah, exactly. So that’s where I was looking at it going, okay, so I have a platform here.

I’ve sold a lot of books at this point by the time, Legion, we started, let’s see, when did this is legions fourth year. So we had launched in, I believe it was like we did a pre order and. November of 2013, and then it went officially live in, yeah, for you. Exactly. Then it went, like we started shipping product in 2014 and a lot of 2013 was, probably spent between me and Jeremy, it was probably eight months, like from the decision to do it, where I remember talking to Jeremy, I was We can do this.

I think there’s an opportunity again, like what I was saying to just scratch our own itch and make really good products that we ourselves wish somebody else would make. And then also take advantage of, I think there’s a gap in the marketplace. I think there is a legit opportunity to do like naturally sweetened, naturally flavored products, transparent formulations backed by sound science that we also will be fully transparent with, we, I had recruited a couple of people, one person in [00:26:00] particular who is very smart with this stuff and on the same.

Wavelength in terms of what is actually a good product and what products are worth making and what products aren’t like, I don’t have a hormone product whatsoever. Not because, if I just liked money, I would absolutely just make one. We get asked about it all the time, especially testosterone in men.

It’s just. more and more of a, it’s a growing concern. And just because, I understand testosterone levels on a population basis have been declining for decades now to a point where it just really impacts quality of life. But we have not made one and I don’t see us. The only way we’d ever make one is there have to be some advances in terms of research because we just don’t see how we can make a product worth selling essentially.

And so we, that, that was the Genesis of Legion was just that I want to make things that I just want to stop having to take inferior supplements myself, which are probably they’re better than nothing, but they’re not very good. And I want to take my own, I just want to make what products I wish I had.

And then hopefully other people like the idea [00:27:00] too and want to buy them. And so that’s how it started. And yeah, it’s gone very well. Again, this is legions fourth year and it’s going to, it’s going to do eight figures in revenue this year. It’s pretty cool. 

Josiah Novak: And so you do a lot of things.

You, outside of the fitness stuff, right? You’re a dad now you’re expecting baby number two, you’re married. I’m curious because I talked to different people in different walks of life. Some people are past the whole I call it like the grind phase of okay, I have a million things going on.

I’m trying to be great at all of them. And then some people are just starting. And then some people are, in the midst of it. I feel like we’re in the midst of those working years. So how do you balance it all? You seem to be, really good at so many things, but it’s like for someone like me, I have a podcast, I have a coaching business, I have another business unrelated to fitness, I also have two little boys under the age of three.

And so it’s sometimes I feel like my brain is going to explode, right? So how do you do it? What are some of the best practices you have with keeping everything in balance, keeping what’s important at the forefront of what you do as well? 

Mike Matthews: I guess if I’m on a, if you zoom in, you’re probably the same way.

Routine and habit are big for [00:28:00] sure. And that means for me, I wake up fairly early. I get my workouts done early and get to the office and just work. And, I would say that if I look back over the last let’s say five years or whatever my life has been pretty imbalanced, but I’m okay with that where my focus has obviously been on work.

And then really any time away from work has been spent with my family and I haven’t spent much time. Like I don’t, really hang out that much. With friends. Or at least I haven’t all that much. I’ve had a few hobbies where I’d go out on Sunday afternoons and play some golf or go play hockey.

I started playing hockey again when I was here in Florida, just for fun. But I think that’s fine. I think the, I, the idea that you should try to keep everything balanced, especially in the beginning of any sort of entrepreneurial endeavor is bad advice, actually, especially if there’s an opportunity there because speed, this is It’s something that I’ve come across actually more just in reading historical stuff and biographies and stuff.

And more from a military context, right? Speed is everything. That was Napoleon’s whole thing, right? [00:29:00] Is what careful and deliberate deliberation, swift and execution or whatever. And one of the reasons why he was such a great military commander is he moved so quickly, like his army was able to move so quickly and they were able to, Get in positions that made no sense and they would throw their opponents off, whatever.

So in business though, that there’s also a lot to be said for speed of execution and going too slow. Can it just, one, it’s psychologically, it’s just demoralizing, but two, the more time you add. The more chances there that something can go wrong and that can, that could be, there’s so many things that, I think if you look at in terms of a medicine, success is not just about making things go right.

Yes, it is. There are plenty of things that you have to do and have to go well, but it’s also not having a lot of bad things happen that could happen in some cases. Seem very much out of your control. The mistake can simply be adding too much time. You could be doing the right things. You’re just doing them too slowly.

And then just like that, it could be that the opportunity evaporates because someone else has been working on it as well, and they come to their first to market, they have more money. They have [00:30:00] some huge competitive advantages that now just make you irrelevant. Or it could be internally with personnel, something goes wrong and some key person that has been.

Working on some project is out of commission for one reason, another are gone or whatever. So that’s been something that I just, that’s why I have. Worked, probably on average, it’s a little bit less now than it was back then, but then it was, I don’t know, maybe on average 70 or ish hours a week or something, just because I wanted to, I knew the opportunity was there and I wanted to do everything that I could to capitalize on it and not miss out.

Due to this idea that I, my life has to be quote unquote balanced. And also what the idea of balance someone else’s idea on, what’s important and what’s not important. So that was intentional. And now things are a little bit different. I still work a lot and it’s still a major focus of mine, but I have.

I guess I also had to experience it personally to wanting to change that operating basis [00:31:00] and not just spend more time like with my family. And because, my relationship with my wife has always been good, but of course it suffers a little bit if I’m working so much, it’s different when previously, if we have more time together and whatever she’s always been great in that regard and very supportive and very almost stoic in a sense.

But just what I would tend to. Push it. You know what I mean? Because again, I’m just going and I’m thinking with, I’m putting something here. It’s not just about making money. It’s more, especially with having a family, putting something there that is gonna allow me to provide for my family and give them a good life and good education and so I was very much driven also from that perspective, but now again, like I look at it and go, okay, so there’s really an endless number of things that can be done.

And I do have big plans for Legion in terms of, you can boil it down to revenue because that’s just an easy proxy for the influence of that, of what, and the impact that I think it can have. [00:32:00] And also with muscle for life, we’re doing a whole overhaul. We’re gonna do a whole bunch of digital courses.

So I have a lot of things that I want to do. It’s just, I had to experience that the real pay that you get in life is. Yeah. Money is good. And we all know the research on terms of what is it about 80, 000 a year is when you start, most people start experiencing the diminishing returns of where like for most people, that’s the point where they know they don’t really have financial pressures anymore. And the money that they make beyond that. Is great, but it doesn’t mean as much, as it does getting, it doesn’t going from, let’s say 40, 000 a year to 80, 000 a year for most people doesn’t mean as much, or sorry, that means a lot more than going from 80 to 160 for example, or 160 to 320 and so forth.

Just because unless you have some compulsion to just live very extravagantly, there’s a point where. I would say, you take pretty much anybody and you give them a few hundred thousand dollars a year. And now they’re just like, I’m good financially, I can have a nice house. I can drive a nice car.

If [00:33:00] I’m with someone, I can, exactly. I’ve experienced that, which has been a good experience, but also had to experience just that the real pay that you get, in life, what makes life worth living. Yes. Enthusiasm over goals. Yes. Activity. Yes. Forward motion. Yes. Cooperative endeavor. But then there’s also something we said for connections with other people and relationships and sensation and things that, I intentionally neglected to build businesses.

So now I would say my life is, has more balance in that. In that way, but even still, I’m very much, like I said, I’m very much a routine person. I wake up early, do the same stuff every day in terms of like my schedule. And I stick very much to that. Otherwise it’s just giving as much importance to some other, these other aspects of my life.

As I do my work, which previously I, again, I didn’t really do. It was just yeah, intellectually, I knew that. Sure. We’re social creatures and there’s a lot of pleasure to be had and joy and satisfaction to be had [00:34:00] outside of it’s for me, it’s not about making money. I don’t care so much about that, especially now it’s more just about, I like doing things.

I like coming up with ideas and making them a reality and like seeing them work and just it. That’s really what I like. Yes. I think that is one of, if we’re coming back to this pay of life metaphor, I think that is one of the main, for sure. That’s enthusiasm. That’s what makes you feel alive and energetic and whatever.

But, I had to experience the actual, like emotionally had to experience the absence of. I think really what are probably the more important types of pay in life or in the end, a bank account doesn’t really measure much in terms of how much they’re really living and had to experience that and not again, not so much from a financial perspective has never been like a very money motivated person.

And I don’t have sure. I have nice things and I have a nice house. And as I. Continue to go, if everything continues to go well, and then we just continue on the trajectory that we’re on, that’s not going to change. It’ll only improve, but I don’t care that [00:35:00] much about it. You know what I mean?

Josiah Novak: Yeah.

Mike Matthews: 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. 

Josiah Novak: How do you choose which things to say yes to? Because you have a lot of ideas.

And you have a lot of things that probably come on onto your desk and people are probably hounding you for ideas and opportunities. But how do you choose what to say yes to? 

Mike Matthews: That’s a good question. That’s something i’ve had to learn because in the beginning it was yes to everything, [00:36:00] right? I mean it was yes to let me just write a book.

No one knows who the fuck I am. I have no Network, no connections, no website, literally nothing. I’m just going to write a book and see if it can do well on its own merits, basically. And so that’s just from there to, okay, let’s say yes to, I’m going to try a different book, just trial balloons, different ideas.

Let’s see how this one does. Let’s see how that one does, whatever. And then now, I’ve had to flip that around where I say no. To a lot more things than yes. And that’s also to myself. I am approach. I don’t have any trouble saying no to a lot of the random ideas that are floated my way from other people.

It’s harder for me to say no to my own ideas, especially where I know they’re good ideas. That’s something I. You know what I mean? Where similar to Legion in the beginning, I knew that was a good idea. I was able to, I was willing to stake a lot of time and effort. And at that time, a lot of money on the belief that this is a good idea.

This is going to work. And there are other things now, especially given the kind of the ecosystem that my team and I have put together. And we have [00:37:00] this like growing conglomerate. There are other product lines and services and stuff that would work guaranteed, but I’ve had to. Step back from that ledge several times because I don’t have, I can only myself do so much.

The solution for me is not I’ll just not do those things. It’s actually now I’m just like, I’m doing a whole round of hiring again and bringing on more people. And that’s really going to be, that’s the bottleneck. At that point in the business where the bottleneck is actually getting enough, really good people that are smart, hardworking, that have initiative and can take things and just own them and figure them out and make shit happen and really don’t need their hand hands to be held all that much.

And that might sound bad, but anyone that is. In business. And if you have more than 15 or 20 employees, you know exactly what I’m talking about. On the whole, yes, people are great and they’re well intentioned, but when it comes down to like brass tacks execution, doing things well, that’s hard to find.

So that’s more what I’m looking at now is like what I’m saying yes to are the things that like. There’s an opportunity [00:38:00] cost is what you’re getting at. Of course to, to anything. So any time or money that I put into project a is time and money that I can’t put into project B or C or whatever.

So what I have, and this is something that I’ve spoken quite a bit with my team and my business partner. And I’ve offloaded various tasks and things that I’ve been doing to free up time for what I think is the highest and best use of me. And that is content creation and type of content that only I can do.

So that means books. That means to some degree articles I’m bringing on some writers and I’ll have a team of people and the stuff that is going to be. Published under my name is always going to be either going through me like I’m fine getting initial research or first drafts But I just I’m not willing to compromise on the quality of my stuff just because I’ve I mean I’ve written I’ve probably published over a million words of just Blog articles like myself, 

Josiah Novak: you have a ton of blogs.

I see them all over the place. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And that’s not including [00:39:00] books and right. Whatever else. So high quality written content still does very well. Yes, it’s very competitive. And if anybody out there is considering getting into that, Into the health and fitness blog space.

Yes, you can do well, but just know that you’re up against there’s always room for someone that can produce stuff that is very different or very high quality. Like Greg Knuckles is a great example of that. His stuff is very dense. It’s very scientific. It’s very technical. It’s not for the layman.

It’s not for everybody. But I don’t know of anybody else. I think there are a few people that could do what he’s doing. Like Lyle used to be more in the blogging space and he can produce content of that caliber, but he just doesn’t. If you can bring something truly unique, like Greg has done, then that’s a huge competitive advantage.

But. If you’re going to just jump into the gen fit space you’re up against some very good writers. You’re up against people with very large budgets in terms of some, behind the scenes, SEO stuff. And it’s just not the same as when I, I started most for life in 2013 and it grew very quickly, but it wouldn’t have grown as [00:40:00] quickly if I would have launched it, a year or two later.

Because by that time, the space already was very saturated. Fortunately, I already staked out my ground. Yeah. So writing content is still going to be something that I think is a great use of my time. Writing books, definitely a great use of my time and something that I’m going to be doing a lot more of.

I have. Some simple plans and ideas that I know are going to do very well to just dramatically increase reach through, through book channels, because that was intentional from the beginning. Cause I’ve done several revisions of my books and spent quite a bit of time and money actually taking bigger, leaner, stronger from where it started to where it is now.

And the reason why I’ve done, I did that is because when I like it, I just have a natural, I just have an affinity for books and for reading. I know it’s just, I guess it’s fulfilling in that regard, but also it’s invariably are my best customers, you could say, or my most loyal or enthusiastic followers tribe, right?

Yeah. Has have read at least one of my books. It’s pretty much always. And that’s for obvious reasons. And then there’s also, I think some non obvious reasons that people don’t necessarily [00:41:00] consider. And that’s one that. Most people don’t read. If somebody reads, let’s just say it’s just one book a month.

That just means they chip away at a book. That’s far above average in terms of, I think it says something about who they are as a person, right? So you have people out there that are, they’re regularly trying to better themselves. And, they’ve been called like transformational consumers is one, little marketing term that’s been applied to them.

But these are people that, They’re not, yes, like they’re interested in health and fitness, but also they’re interested in just improving themselves in general. And I think that those people are a cut above the average person in that the average person, and it sounds bad, but they look at it by their actions.

The average person doesn’t, it seems they just shamble their way through life and without much thought of anything and where, they don’t have much in the way of like. Goals and visions and of where they want their lives to be and how they’re going to get there. And they don’t work very hard to make those things a reality.

And and again, that’s not really a, I don’t say that from a place of, Oh, cause I think I’m so [00:42:00] superior. I’m just really just speaking from statistics, honestly. 

Josiah Novak: It’s reality. 

Mike Matthews: It’s just reality, right? That’s the average person’s very overweight. They spend what four hours a day watching TV.

They have a rather low IQ. They don’t read at all. They spend a lot of time on video games and social media and stuff. And that just, unfortunately it just is what it is. That’s not a, that’s not a good place to be. I think, we all have our little vices and of course nobody’s perfect, but too many vices make for a rather unhappy existence, I think.

So we’ve gotten, I think, a very high caliber following by. Putting so much attention on writing good content, because again, the average person that’s willing to read 130, 000 page book and go do something with it. The person that will do that is not the average person. And you’ll see that like in our demographics, if you check, I don’t know if they’re public, but we have our Quantcast demographics from FL and Legion.

And we have, it’s, mainly it’s about 60, 40 men to women. It’s 25 to 35 or overrepresented college educated, largely overrepresented a [00:43:00] hundred K plus a year, 150 K plus a year, largely overrepresented diversity in terms of race as well. A lot of Asians, a lot of African Americans, a lot of Latino.

That is not your typical health and fitness crowd. Like your average YouTuber, the demographics are very different. 

Josiah Novak: I was going to say, yeah, I think Some of the big names that I know in the YouTube space, their demographic, there’s no customers there for me, right? Exactly. That’s it. Exactly.

I’m a 32, 32 year old guy with two kids who tells people how to balance their health and fitness routine. That’s not the YouTube crowd. That’s just not. Exactly. That’s not who they are. And 

Mike Matthews: that’s one of the reasons why I haven’t, just speaking to your original question, why I haven’t put very much time into YouTube because now I’m going to be bringing on like a full time videographer and bring on some more people to work in marketing and social media and stuff.

So I probably will get more active on YouTube, but it’s just not going to take much of my time. It’s going to take a lot of other people’s time. And, but I myself have not put much time into it because again, when I look at the pillars of [00:44:00] The, my businesses books and long form content, you can just sum it up as that long form content, whether it’s podcasts like this long form articles, books are a huge part of why I’ve gotten to where I am.

And that’s going to be an on, that’s pretty much, I think that plus as things continue to grow. Grow, maybe getting more involved in outward facing stuff, publicity, possibly speaking tours, things that just get me more out there and introduce more and more people to me and my work on larger and larger scales will also make sense.

Otherwise it’s no to most everything else. And I don’t really see that changing because again, I think my role in that regard, pretty much that’s the pinnacle in terms of how I can Most accelerate growth, right? It’s just create more and more good stuff that gets out there more and just get my face out there and My voice out there more and more 

Josiah Novak: Makes a ton of sense.

What about so habits and routines? You know You got to have a couple strong habits and routines each day that just keep things [00:45:00] in line Keep things moving forward. What are yours? What are your most valuable habits and routines? 

Mike Matthews: So I’d say Waking up early because and then I go straight, I go to the gym first thing in the morning, get my workout workouts out.

How early 

Josiah Novak: do 

Mike Matthews: you wake up? My alarm is six 15, but I usually wake up before sure. It could, depending on when I go to bed. It could be anywhere from, I don’t know, five 30 to six. One, I just like it. I don’t, when I was younger, I used to stay up late and do hang out with friends and I was in, I had a phase where I was really into poker, so I’d play a poker for many hours online.

Dude, me too. , I was so into it. I had read every book I had. I was getting coaching. I was serious about it. It’s a great game. I actually miss it. To be honest. It’s such a great game too. 

Josiah Novak: I dude I played it professionally for my entire college existence. Yeah. That’s how I paid my way through college.

You played limit or no limit. I played no limit online. Like for 10 hours a day, pretty much every day just crushing it on. I do, multi tables. I’d be like, I’d have 30 tables going at once. Oh yeah. Cause I, I played [00:46:00] under I think it was pocket fives, had a coaching program or something like that.

And the guy who coached me was like this extreme multi table guy had this whole strategy. And you know what, to be honest, I made really good money. I’m not going to lie. I made really good money. But it became so unhealthy. And after I was done with my sessions, it would just dude, like the feeling of being after a bad day was like, so bad, right?

I just wanted to sprint through my window, man. I was just like, I’m out of here. This shit sucks. But yeah, so I played for a long time. I played in Vegas. Actually had a fake I. D. And luck my way into a couple big tournaments out there. And Yeah, it’s crazy. But 

Mike Matthews: yeah, the good old days, the good old days, exactly.

But now, especially having kids, I have one kid on the way it’s just, there’s a complete change and I enjoy waking up early. So but I think there’s also going to be said for the momentum that you show you’re up early. This is, I don’t know how valuable this habit is in the grand scheme of things, but I do the cold shower thing just because it wakes me up.

I like that. I don’t really necessarily have trouble waking up, but I definitely feel [00:47:00] like fully awake after it. And also I know we know that it improves circulation for sure, which is just good, right? That’s going to help with a minimally, just giving all of your tissues in your body, all, getting more nutrients to them, which can also possibly help a little bit with recovery.

And it may also improve immune function, which is cool. I hate getting sick. So anything that. May help with that. That is no cost like that. We’re just sure. Take a cold shower. I’m in and we’ll see what comes out of as they continue to do more research on this. Thanks to obviously Wim Hof is hugely popularized cold exposure and some of the stuff that he’s been able to do with his body and also teach other people to do is absurd.

And so there’s that. And then, going to the gym, getting a workout done right away is One, I think it’s a great start to the day where no matter what happens from there, like you have some, it just gives you forward motion. I think. Yeah. It’s low 

Josiah Novak: hanging fruit. It’s like a quick way. 

Mike Matthews: It’s like the, little exact where even the, even what is the lowest hanging fruit is what right.

Make your bed. That’s like a 

Josiah Novak: Navy field 

Mike Matthews: guy 

Josiah Novak: or 

Mike Matthews: whatever. Yeah. That’s, I don’t [00:48:00] know. I don’t get any satisfaction from making my bed, but I do get some satisfaction from from going in and getting my workout done. And then also functionally, it’s just better. I feel.

More mentally alert throughout the day when I do it that way and just more energetic throughout the day, especially if I didn’t sleep enough the night before it helps a lot. And then there’s nothing that can get in the way of it later. So if I was planning on going at 6 PM, who knows something can get in the way of that.

If I get it done first thing it’s done. So there’s that. And then there’s just in terms of work habits, I’m not big on. Pomodoro or anything in particular. Just because I don’t know, I don’t, I just don’t feel the need for it. I don’t get mentally depleted very easily. If ever, really, it’s the only times I really feel it is if I really didn’t sleep enough and come the end of the night, I’m just tired.

It’s not mental depletion. It’s just whole body depletion. And so it’s not never something I’ve been strong. I’ve really struggled with, even if that means that I, I can go through. Cool. A few hours of deep work that requires a lot of concentration, wrap it up and then go to the bathroom [00:49:00] and come back.

And I feel like ready to go. I’m not, I don’t feel like I need to take some downtime, which I understand. I know that’s not normal. And many people do. So I think that is definitely, the idea of working in sprints and then just, Backing off for five or 10 minutes and letting yourself recover, basically makes a lot of sense.

I’ve not really had to do that, but I do the standard stuff of prioritizing my tasks. Spend the beginning of my day. What do I need to get done today? What are the high priority things? And then if I have more time, what are the things I can do after? If not, those can get bumped to the next day. The stuff, if people listening, if they haven’t read the book, the one thing, the simple tools that are just laid out in that book.

Book Short, simple book. I recommended a lot. It has, I really liked it ’cause it was better than I was expecting. I thought it was gonna be similar, like when I read The Art of War, I thought it was gonna be no, the War of Art . I thought, yeah, war of Art. Favorite book. Sorry. War of Art. Yeah, exactly. I thought it was gonna be just like self-help junk food.

But actually it was a lot more profound than I expected and I had the same experience with the one thing as well. Have you read the one thing? 

Josiah Novak: I haven’t, and Oh, you should read it. I don’t know [00:50:00] why I haven’t, but yeah, I just took a note to, to read that. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, you’ll like it. You’ll like it.

Josiah Novak: War of Art’s my favorite book. It’s actually inspired me to write a book about being a young dad. But yeah it’s solid, man. It’s so simple and which is I think the mark of genius, right? It’s like you take something and you so simple to understand, but also so powerful. It’s yeah, that’s like the damn moment.

Like it’s just, it’s really dope. But no, what other books do 

Mike Matthews: you like? There’s so many and I read, so I like work through a rotation of marketing and business books to biographies or historical books. Here, let me pull up my, I’ll pull up my little spreadsheet and I’m like OCD about it.

I take a bunch of highlights and notes and then I pull them all out and I put them into Google docs and cause then I can actually easily review any book that I’ve read. Basically. I have a Google doc with all of my highlights, all of my notes. And also, I know that helps with just. retention of the information.

So you’re reading it once, doing highlights, marginalia, and then going through them again, reading them again, pulling them out. It really helps a lot. So let’s see. I [00:51:00] recently read, I’m in the middle of a book called peak right now, which I’m liking well, written very easy to read and we’ll see, I haven’t, I’m only, Maybe 40 pages in.

So they haven’t gotten to, I’ve maybe made like one or two highlights, but I’m expecting, the information, the good information is coming. They’ve usually the first 50 pages, 30 to 50 is they’re just trying to hook you. So yeah, I’m in the middle of peak. I like that. Band of brothers was one of the last ones I really liked.

Big fan of the show, but hadn’t read the book. The e myth, I recommend that book for just general business like entrepreneurship. It’s very much about kind of the core of the messages, systematizing your business and codifying the individual jobs in your business so it can scale, which is also just very relevant to where I’m at right now.

Like I was saying earlier, there’s seven, what do we have 17 or 18 of us now to, I think to get things to like where I want them to be, I’ll probably need a It’s a total of 50 to 70 people would be my guess. And that requires a lot of working on the business instead of in the business. So it was just also relevant [00:52:00] to me and my team and where we’re at right now and where we need to go from there.

Getting things done. I read again recently. I’d read it a while ago. Pretty good. I like on the whole, I do use, I use my own version of some of his ideas, or he probably just took the ideas from someone else to be honest. But like for example, getting everything out of your head. And I, Keep lists on all kinds of things.

Like I really don’t, I use my calendar for, I don’t want to, I want to use my mental energy and my cognitive capacities for figuring things out and creating things and, doing valuable work, not trying to remember trivial shit that I can just put into a system. You know what I mean? That was big.

Let’s see. You can just edit this also, by the way, as I’m looking through, if you want to just yeah going through here. Let’s see I’m pretty much going 

Josiah Novak: to cut out everything. You said no, 

Mike Matthews: perfect. I’m not going to publish this episode actually, because this is never going to see the light of day.

I’ve basically been asleep the whole time. So who is this? [00:53:00] Yeah. Yeah. All right. Cool, man. Got to go. But I’ll just say also if people are just generally starting out in business, lean startup is I think a great 

Josiah Novak: book. That’s a great book. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Particularly obviously the concept of a minimum viable product, which is something that like I did well with the books.

That’s very much what bigger, leaner, stronger was that first edition was very much an MVP and I did well with Legion I probably could have launched, we launched with three Four products probably could have done with less, but that’s not too bad. And I didn’t do well with my workout app. So like quick story there is, I went into that thinking how hard can this really be, right?

It’s not it’s not a fucking rocket, it’s a workout app. And I had some ideas and so the initial quote I got was like $50,000, four months of development. And I was like, sure, why not? Even if it goes nowhere. I don’t know. I think there’s an opportunity, right? That’s how I was thinking about it.

Essentially that turned into a year plus of development. I had to switch companies and I don’t know if I put in 250, 000 by now which was just a misestimation of effort on my part. And I was, again, that was me being stupid and [00:54:00] not, I hadn’t, unfortunately I read lean startup after I started that whole project where I would have gone about it very differently, but, so I recommend that.

People interested in business read that book from a marketing perspective. And when you have to read, I would say scientific advertising, the classics, right? Scientific advertising, read a Eugene Schwartz’s breakthrough advertising, read Sheldini’s influence read persuasion as well as new book. It’s not as groundbreaking as influence was, but still a very good book.

I liked a lot of the ideas in persuasion. Have you read a 

Josiah Novak: oversubscribed? 

Mike Matthews: No. You gotta read that one. You have to read that one. 

Josiah Novak: Yeah. That one along with the war of art, those two I’d say probably had two of the biggest influences on me. I think from where, for where you’re headed with some of the things that you’re thinking about just with personal brand and just some of the things you want to do outside of the company.

I think that would be. A great book, just because it does talk about a lot of things in regards to, filling up things that you decide to do. So you say, Hey, I’m going to put on a speaking event or I’m going to [00:55:00] start doing more work in the community or whatever it is.

It’s you want to fill those things up in a way that it creates scarcity right up front. But also creates a loyal following in different avenues. So like you might have a loyal following that reads all your books, right? But nobody thinks of you as a speaker, right? Yet it’s like how that might, you’re what’s worked with the book may not work for the speaker, but it might, right?

But it’s just the book itself is phenomenal. It just talks about having a tribe that just jumps at basically anything you put out there, right? So it’s Hey, I’m doing a world tour, right? I’m going to go speak in all different countries and you’re going to sell it out like just right away, right?

Because you have this group of people, but it’s a phenomenal book. If you like the books, you talked about so far, you would love oversubscribed. It’s a phenomenal. I just pulled it up 

Mike Matthews: on Amazon after working into my, I’m going to, I’m going to, I’m going to die with a long. To be read list, but what I’m looking for now, like it’s it’s also, there’s an opportunity cost to reading books, right?

Cause they take time, especially, I like to, I don’t just read, I would say it’s more along, maybe along the lines of [00:56:00] study. Like for example, I look up in a dictionary, any words that I don’t know. And I’ve. done been doing this since I was 12 years old. So I guess that has contributed to my vocabulary, but it’s also has contributed to my understanding of the subtleties of words.

Cause the English language is massive. It’s what a million plus words and words have explicit and implicit meanings. meanings and connotations. This is one of the things that it was just in persuasion that I already knew myself, but it was just a good point of that. A lot of people they underestimate the power of the right words.

There are many different ways to say things, and especially in the English language, you can communicate a single concept in many different ways. But, Certain ways are far more persuasive and interesting than others. And a lot of that comes down to what words not just mean, in a simple sense, but what they can note and what associations people have with words.

I’ve experienced that quite a bit in naming products actually. So with Legion, [00:57:00] we don’t just choose product names throw shit out there. We survey. And what I do is I go through. Yeah, I go through word lists and the sources and just rack my brain and come up with a number of options for a product for the name of product.

And then we email to our customer list and ask them to rate the options on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being I hate it, 5 being I love it. And we give them an option to also like. Any suggestions or whatever. So for example, for my joint product, which is called fortify, I didn’t really like that name. I thought it’s too it’s too obvious, right?

It’s too top of mind. And also the, it for me, it brings up an image of a fortress, right? Or like stone. And I don’t want my joints to be stone. I want it to be the opposite. So for me, but just cause I didn’t like the name doesn’t really, I put, I still put it on the survey and the name I, if I were just choosing myself, the name I really liked was halo.

And cause it’s short word, it’s simple. It’s a two syllables. And it has, for [00:58:00] me, the connotation in it was protective. And also it just sounds cool. And I just like the word, as a writer, there are some words. I’m just like, that’s a cool word. Like I keep a spreadsheet of it’s called great words, phrases, sayings, et cetera.

So when I’m reading books, I’ll highlight in a different color words that I like. And I’ll add them to my little spreadsheets, like my own personal. Thesaurus or dictionary basically but we survey and halo surveys terribly. I think it averaged like two out of five, right? Average. And I was like, what the fuck?

Why? And so I’m reading the comments and it’s because of the religious connotation. That’s why people didn’t like it. I 

wouldn’t have thought of 

Mike Matthews: that. I, of course I know, but yeah, that to me, that wasn’t, that’s not one. It’s not a negative thing to me. I’m not anti religion. Not that those people even necessarily anti religion.

I don’t think I have as many. For as many bad votes as that got, I don’t, it’s not like I have a bunch of raging atheists that are, in my customers for some reason, though, I actually think I have on the flip side. I think I have a fair amount of religious people. So maybe they thought it was a little bit blasphemous or something.

I [00:59:00] don’t know, but that was why, right? So Halo loses, Fortify wins. Fortify wins. Fortify does very well. People like it. And so we go with Fortify, even though I was like I don’t really like it, but Hey, who cares what I like? And then, so it comes around to the green supplement, surveying names and Genesis is in there.

I think it’s a great, right? It’s a little bit long, three, three syllables. 

I know but it 

Mike Matthews: sounds it’s a good word. The connotation is perfect, right? I think for the product and it’s, it just sounds, it’s one of those interesting sounding words. Yeah, and it flows well. It’s easy to say it surveys really well.

One of our best surveying that and probably Pulse were the two best surveyed names. Yeah. So there’s another example where Pulse, I was like, that’s a great name surveyed. That’s the name. And we’ve also, you have to work around trademarks and shit, which is annoying because sometimes great stuff is taken, obviously.

But Genesis surveys amazingly well, why with the same crowd of people? Why that one didn’t have the, for some reason, halo negative, surveyed very poorly. And there were a lot of people that didn’t like the religious [01:00:00] connotation Genesis. They loved, what does that mean? I don’t know. But. You would, you just don’t know that.

You just don’t know that stuff unless you survey. So anyways, that’s just from this persuasion concept of the right words makes such a big difference in terms of how communication is received. Anyways, I don’t even know how we got on that tangent, but here we are. 

Josiah Novak: No, at the end of the day, it’s such a, that’s the beauty of what we do, right?

There’s no, people talk about science and there is exact science with certain things, but then there’s not exact science with a lot of things like. You think the same person who’d say, Oh, I don’t like halo because of the religious connotations. You think that same person would say the exact same thing about Genesis?

Absolutely. But then they’re like, no, I, the name’s phenomenal. You’re like, what the fuck is wrong with you? It makes no sense. But our brains are, we’re such a complicated race, man. At the end of the day, it’s you can try to simplify and talk about exact sciences and process. But at the end of the day, sometimes things are just random, dude.

Really? And I think also you 

Mike Matthews: don’t want to, you don’t want to discount your own ability to generate. You could say, working truths, I guess you could say where you just cause something just because [01:01:00] there’s no science available on something or you can’t find any scientific evidence of something that you’ve observed doesn’t mean you should discount what you’ve observed.

The greatest advances in, in any area of science that we’ve had are started as someone’s observation, or in some cases. We don’t even know where how did, it’s almost like a divinely inspired hypothesis. It just came out of nowhere. We were like, how did this person even come up with this idea, let alone have it pan out?

You know what I mean? That’s one of those things. Absolutely. Where we shouldn’t be so deferential to science where we get to the point where we think we can’t really know anything. We have to wait for the authority to give it to us. Down to us. You know what I mean? 

Josiah Novak: Yeah. No, it makes perfect sense.

Yeah. It’s take some initiative, right? 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. 

Willing to try things and see how things go. And again that’s at the heart, of course, of the scientific method, right? Is, 

yeah, 

Mike Matthews: is reproducing findings and observing, Yeah. Observing effects and trying to control for variables and blah, blah, blah.

It’s 

Josiah Novak: incredible. I 

Mike Matthews: think I will say, by the way, I recommend to anyone listening from marketing is the 22 immutable laws of marketing. [01:02:00] Very good book, simple short very actionable. And I’d say it lays out a lot of the big levers that you need to be able to pull if you’re going to be successful.

Josiah Novak: Perfect. Yeah, I’m going to put these in the show notes for those listening to We have a lot of business people who listen to the show A lot of people who are interested in starting business, too people who are just taking a dab at the online business. I know it’s a sexy thing right now, but There’s, there’s a lot of work and a lot of study that goes into it.

If you see successful businesses, it wasn’t, by chance it was a lot of research, a lot of work. And obviously you’re proof of that. So dude, I, thanks so much for coming on the show, man. I know your time is super valuable. You have a baby on the way, you got business to handle and you’re all over the place, man, but your time is valuable.

Thanks for taking some with us. 

Mike Matthews: Absolutely. Thanks a lot for having me. 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, [01:03:00] then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you’re listening from.

This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility. And thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won’t miss out on any of the new goodies.

Lastly, If you didn’t like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at Mike at MuscleForLife. com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I’m always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. Alright, that’s it.

Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though. Bye for now. I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in, so instead I’m going to just quickly tell you about something of mine.

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