Ep. #304: My Interview with Lacey Dunn on Starting a Business, Book Publishing, and More

Mike: Hello, Meine Freunde, Mike Matthews here, Muscle for Life podcast. Welcome. Welcome. This episode is a change of pace because it’s an interview that I did with a personal trainer, blogger, and soon to become a registered dietitian, Lacey. Who was kind enough to have me on her show to talk about how I got started in the fitness industry and the story behind my books and Legion athletics and more.

And the reason why I thought you might like this is I am often asked to talk about these things. And so when I go on other podcasts and talk about things that I haven’t already talked about and posted on my own podcast, I figure it is worth putting it out there. So instead of drilling deep down into one topic, Lacey and I cover a number of different topics related to the hard lessons I’ve learned growing multiple businesses while also raising a family what I’ve learned about the ins and outs of the supplement industry, and also the most important rule that I’ve learned about success along the way.

My number one tip for getting extraordinary results in any area of your life. I hope you enjoy the interview. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I’m not 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 body. bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 1, 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 www. bitly. com. Slash 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.

All righty, that is enough shameless plugging. For now at least let’s get to the show. 

Lacey: Hey guys, I’m super excited. I have Mike Matthews on board. He is the owner of Muscle for Life. He has written two amazing books. He also has his own podcast and he’s done a bunch of different things in life. So I’m super excited to have him here.

Mike, why don’t you introduce yourself, tell my listeners who you are, what you do, and we can dive into the topics from there. 

Mike: Sure. Thanks first for having me on. I really appreciate it. And yeah, so I’m Mike and, the long story short, so when people ask me what do I do, I’m like, eh, I do health and fitness things.

Like I have some books and some websites and supplements and stuff like, Oh, that’s cool. I’m like, yeah, that’s basically it. No. But yeah, I’d say first and foremost, I’m primarily a writer. So I’ve written a number of books. I’ve sold over a million books now over the last five or six years. And I also, I’ve done a lot of writing on my blogs at muscle for life and then Legion athletics.

I’ve, I think at this point published over a million words. Yeah. And between two of those blogs, hundreds and hundreds of articles. And then in addition to that, sure. I have a podcast and run a couple of businesses and I don’t know things. Yeah, that’s me. I’ll just pass the ball back to you and ask you, where do you want to go specifically?

Lacey: Yeah. So I would love to talk about the biggest hoops that you had to jump through in order to start your business to get going in regards to your supplements. 

Mike: The supplement business was pretty straightforward in terms of starting. It was just a pain in the ass. So I remember I have a partner, his name’s Jeremy and we’ve known each other for a long time.

So we’re also very good friends. Jeremy came on early. I had written published bigger than you’re stronger. That was the first thing that I had done in the health and fitness space period was write and publish that book. And I self published it cause I was like, yeah, it’s not worth trying to get a traditional book deal.

Because I know that traditional publishers are very. Uninterested in people who aren’t proven quantities. They want to know that now they’re interested in talking, but years ago they wouldn’t have been. And even if I would have gotten a deal, it would have been a shit deal. So I was like, I’ll just self publish it.

So that was the first thing that I did. And then that was in 2012 and I had another business and another life at that time. And it was a nights and weekends thing. I didn’t even know if anybody would care. I think bigger than you’re stronger sold like 20 copies in the first month. And I was like, Oh, that’s cool.

Somebody bought my book and. But people liked it, and just through word of mouth, cause I didn’t have, when I first started, I mean I had no following, I had no network, I had no allies in the space, I had nobody promoting my stuff, I literally just wrote a book, published it on Amazon, and I just wanted to see if anybody would give a shit.

Just through word of mouth. And through Amazon’s internal promotional algorithms and so forth, but nothing really in terms of marketing or advertising on my end within, let’s say by the end of the year, by the end of 2012, it was selling several thousand copies per month. I had also at that point received a lot of emails from readers who really liked it, had questions, suggestions, and I had been keeping notes like people brought up good points.

I didn’t think of that. Oh, I should clarify that. Yeah. I probably should add information on that. Yeah. Okay. I also put up a couple other smaller books as trial balloons to see what people would think. At that point, I saw that there was a real opportunity to build a business and it’s something that interested me more than what I was doing previously.

And so I recruited Jeremy to work with me and actually initially we wanted to do a publishing company. I wanted to take what I had learned about selling books and particularly. I would be strong, even stronger now, but I knew it even at that time, I’d be strong in an editorial role just because over the years, I’ve always been a good student.

I’ve always been into reading things and I know, and I’m any better in this regard now, but I know what’s good and what’s not. And I know in terms of content, like my own personal standard on the stuff that I read is very high. So if basically if somebody can impress me with their writing.

They’re really fucking good. And that was the case back then. It’s even more the case now. But so we want to actually wanted to do a publishing company specifically because I did not want to get into the fitness space. I remember telling Jeremy, I was like, dude, I don’t want to be a fitness expert guru guy.

I don’t like this space. I don’t like these people. I don’t like this culture. I don’t like this community. So let’s just do that. And he was like, sure. So we were going to do that. And then. In looking at it in terms of opportunity, I was like, okay that’s true. There are a lot of things I don’t like about health and fitness, honestly more collectively.

I like it personally, individually. I like what it can do for people. And I like that I’ve been able to establish a relationship individually with a lot of people and help a lot of people directly. But that was my conditions going in where I was like, okay, I actually, I could do the fitness thing if I’m, if I can do it my way and my way is going to be, we focused on content because that’s something I’m good at, but I want to produce not just products, but I want to produce things that I can give directly to the consumers, directly to the people that are going to use them.

And I don’t want to have to go through the normal kind of rigmarole of sucking up to random People, neurotic, narcissistic, weird people, that I not only do I not want to like, have to suck up to them, I don’t even care to know them. I’m not, I’m still to this day not very networked.

I’ve picked and chosen my people that I’ve met along the way, who I like, who are actually normal, cool people. Then we pivoted it away from the the publishing company and toward back into fitness. And that was the end of, that was basically 2013 and we decided, okay, let’s start with a website and let’s just start getting more content going up.

At the time, the, I’d say the content is particularly in the article writing space, the competition was really weak. Now it’s a lot stiffer, especially for well written, researched long form content. There really wasn’t that much going up at that time. And that’s still the case now, but it’s definitely, there are a number of other websites, not just me and my stuff, but a number of other people out there that are putting in the time and work to do that.

And so we started there with muscle for life and that’s muscle for life. com and it took off very quickly, I think because it was just good timing at that time, book sales were skyrocketing and YouTube came after. So it wasn’t even that. Yeah. It was just. There definitely was a bit of, if I’m going to chalk anything up to luck, it was good timing.

It just happened. Yeah sure. There’s always it’s trendy also in the entrepreneur space in particular, just to downplay any sort of the downplay causation and just be like, Oh, I just got really lucky. Nah, not really. But I definitely got, I’d say where the luck was is on the timing.

If I were starting over today, I could still do it. Certainly. But it would just be more difficult. It would take not necessarily even more time, it would take more effort, not just personal effort, but it would require ultimately more money because I’d have to come into it with a team of content writers.

If I were going to grow another health and fitness website as quickly as, or if it was going to follow the same trajectory of as muscle for life, I probably would have to come out of the gates, probably publishing one long form. That means 2000 plus word article per day, seven articles a week. And would have to know really what I’m doing and have a budget for link building.

Yeah, so it’s just more difficult like again I can’t we came into it at a good time and I put a lot of time into it and I continued to write more books Supplements were an obvious extension of hey, what else could we do? But again, it was like if we’re gonna do supplements though I don’t want to do it the standard way, which is just create bullshit products spend nothing on them And pay a bunch of drugged up idiots to pretend like these pills and powders actually do anything.

Lacey: Which is about half of the industry. 

Mike: Nah, more like 90 percent plus. But the majority, the vast majority of supplement companies and supplements out there are utter bullshit. They just don’t even waste your money. And that was actually in the beginning people would ask me, Hey, what supplements do you take?

What do you use? And I would tell them, I was like, Here are a few things I use. Here’s a pre workout. At the time, I didn’t even like coffee, so I was like, if I liked coffee, I would just drink coffee instead. Because I know that this pre workout doesn’t really do anything other than give me a caffeine kick.

The little pixie dust dosages of beta alanine and citrulline and whatever are not going to do anything. 

Lacey: No. 

Mike: And I was like, eh, here’s a multivitamin. I take it just to cover my bases, even though my diet is good. It’s not a very good multivitamin in the scheme of things. If I were making a multivitamin, mine would be a lot better.

That’s basically how it came about, where people kept on asking about supplements. And no, you don’t need supplements. By definition, they are supplementary. But if you are going to spend money on them, if you have the budget or the inclination, yeah, sure. There are a few things. There are some, Muscle building and fat burning, you’re obviously limited.

There aren’t really that many things that are going to make a difference. There are a few but when you start expanding out into general health or even get a bit, just take from a top down kind of approach, take general health and then get more specific to like joint health, for example, or skin health, or there are things that, that actually, if you can get them in the right dosages, that can make a difference.

So when we looked at supplementation, that was our vision was, Okay. So one, let’s spend real money on these products. Like for example, my greens product cost me almost 20 a bottle to make my multivitamin cost me almost 15 a bottle to make. And so what that means is because I’m, it’s a direct to consumer e commerce business, our margins are fine for running a business.

In the end what you want with a business, right? Is you want something, you want at least 40 percent gross profit and you should be able to work that down to at least 10%. And if you can get up to 15%, you have a very good business. All right, fine. If you have those fundamentals in place, you can make the financials work.

And so that’s really we worked it back in that way saying what’s the most we can spend on products and still have a business that isn’t shit. Because top love line revenue, like revenues, great people throw around revenue numbers. Like I don’t talk about legions specific revenues, but it’s an eight figure.

So it does eight figures in sales per year. All right. That sounds cool. Let’s just say the number is 20 million a year. That sounds great, but what’s the net? What’s the EBIT on that, that, that business was netting 2%. Who cares? It’s not a good business and it’s not sustainable. It can’t grow. It can’t fund its own growth.

If you have deep VC pockets that are willing to just continue to pour money into your business until the end of time, then sure. Fuck net. Who cares? Just just put up numbers and. track your cash burn which is actually what they do. So we were like, what’s the most we can spend on these products?

Okay. So that turns out to be a lot more than a lot of these other companies are spending. That’s a good beginning. And then who are we going to work with on the formulations? I’m knowledgeable when it comes to supplementation, but I’m not nearly as knowledgeable as the person that I found who is, his name is Curtis Frank and he’s actually the co founder of examine.

com, which is a website you’re wow. 

Lacey: That’s amazing. 

Mike: Yeah, so this dude knows supplements better than anybody I will ever meet again in my life. He’s essentially a pharm a dee in terms of his understanding of supplementation and also nutrition too. It’s not just supplementation, but he really knows the body as far as nutrition goes as well.

And so earlier, that was right? early on, I got Curtis to work at the time he was working exclusively with examine. And so it was okay for him to do it. It was just, I was under NDA that I couldn’t say it was Curtis working on these products because of examines, they’re non biased, they’re not affiliated.

So Curtis wasn’t going to tell anybody that he was working on formulations and I wasn’t allowed to tell anybody people would ask, Hey, who comes up with these formulations? If you pull up the multivitamin, pull up the greens product, pull up any of our products, and you’ll see that not only do we spend a lot of money on them, we spend the money intelligently.

Like the money is put into good ingredients that have good science and good dosages, which of course just goes hand in hand with the end result of a, of an effective product. And so we’re court recruited Curtis early on, and now he just works with me full time actually. So he’s still, he continues the formulation work along with the the other people who are on my scientific advisory board have some other really smart people like Menno Henselman’s Eric Helms, James Krieger, Spencer Nadolsky, Brad Dieter, Danny Lennon.

I may be forgetting one or two others, I’m sorry. They all work together, and there’s pretty interesting conversations. There was a whole long email thread about The, is there any reason at all to have a BCAA or EAA product at all? Because so many people want it. So many people buy it. That’s not a reason to make one.

Is there an actual physiological reason for one? And in the end it was like, nah, those supplements are always shit under all we, under all circumstances. And the only potential use might be like, if someone’s, really into fasting basically, but even then. They’re better off just having five grams of whey and skipping the BCAAs and EAAs are even more worthless than BCAAs.

So anyway, so I have a lot of smart people now. And when you take people like that and you’re like, Hey, so we’re working on a stim free pre workout because a lot of people want that. And that’s actually a worthwhile product. It’s great to have someone like Curtis plus all these other people have this brain trust where we can go, Hey, We have X dollars to spend on this, which is more than enough to make a great product.

How do we make this product as good as possible? And so that, that’s like the culmination of the original vision was like, get really smart, actual, I want people that are scientists and that could care less about the marketing side of things, care less about the business side of things.

I want to be able to go to somebody and say, Hey, I want to make a green supplement. Make me the best green supplement you can possibly make me. And ironically, so when Curtis did that, the original formulation was going to cost me 70 a bottle. And obviously that doesn’t work unless people are going to spend 200 a bottle or something on greens.

But I don’t think that’s going to happen. So So what happens then is we look at it and go, Okay, so what’s driving the costs on this product? And it turns out, for example, he wanted anthocyanins, which is like the pigment in fruits. Which is great, but that alone, I think it was, we needed 500 mg per serving.

That alone was going to be 30 a bottle. 

Lacey: Yeah, that’s an expensive extract to have to get. 

Mike: Yes. So that, that gets cut. We go, okay we’re not because we will not pixie dust any of our products and we’re not doing it just to say something’s on the label. It’s a clinically effective dosage or it’s nothing.

In that case, it was nothing. But in other cases, we’ve been able to go, okay, ideally, I believe in it with our nootropic that we recently launched. I believe with alpha GPC, he was like, ideally we would have this much, but considering these other things, we could have less, we could go down to this.

And I still would stand by it as in anybody that would want to challenge me on that dosage. Curtis would explain this is why he believes this is really a legitimate dosage. And in that case, okay, that’s all right. But anywhere where it’s nah, we just get too low. And that’s unfortunate because we’ve had to mix a number of ingredients from products that it would have been great.

For us to be able to include but unfortunately as of right now, they’re just too expensive so so that’s the story of how legion came about and then Fast forwarding a little bit to today in terms of our usp and what makes us different And so in the beginning, honestly, it was just the logistics.

It’s like anything It was just a pain in the ass and I was telling jeremy in the beginning I was like if we’re gonna do it This is how I think we should do it and it’s gonna be a pain in the fucking ass. It’s gonna be Even just the administrative side of okay, going from nothing, going from an idea to just having our first four products to launch.

And, but from there it’s really, there’s no secret to it. It’s you have to be, if you’re gonna do anything like that you have to be willing. It’s not even that you have to be great at planning because planning really isn’t that hard. You just have to be willing to confront planning because a lot of people, for some reason, and I find this not just in business, but in life, don’t really have that.

in the way of anything at all. And that doesn’t work. If you’re going to go into something as intricate as building a business, you need to be able to sit down and really think about, okay, you have to estimate what are all the moving pieces here and There’s a book called The Checklist Manifesto, which actually I don’t recommend.

Just read the article that he wrote. I think it was in the New Yorker or the Atlantic or something like that, that got him that book deal, because the book was simply like him endlessly expounding on that article. But the philosophy is make sure that you get all the key things that need to be done.

You don’t necessarily have to break it down into every little micro task and get so OCD that You know, it’s like the paralysis by analysis, but you have to be, you have to be able to take something big and break it down into a bunch of smaller, actionable chunks. And again, milestones, the key things that need to get done and you break it down more and more until you have a very clear roadmap of how you go from where you are to where you want to be.

And then I’d say if it’s something new, you could just get going on it. What I’m getting at is now we go a bit further and. Really need to make an estimation of effort on things because in the beginning when you don’t have anything You have nothing to lose other than your time and your energy and your effort who cares about that shit’s not worth anything Anyway, when you don’t even have anything, so you’re really like, oh, I’m you know If I if even if you put a bunch of time into something it goes nowhere one You’re gonna have learned things too.

You’re going to have you know At least conditioned yourself to work hard on something and three What would you have done with that time anyway? Just fucking hung out and watch Netflix? Yeah, who cares? So that, that’s worthless. But when you have something there, now there’s an opportunity cost associated with time where if we’re going to put time into one thing, that’s time that we cannot be putting into other things.

So I’d say, from there, it’s a lesson we’ve had to learn is really estimating the amount of effort that it’s going to take to do things and weigh that against the potential reward or outcome. And then think with alternative uses for that, for those resources as well, so yeah, again, back to the beginning, I’d say really wasn’t that difficult.

It was just laying out what are all the obvious things that need to get done to put this company there and see how it can do. And we just did that, and it did very well. Legion did, I want to say, if I remember correctly, 1. 1 million in sales in its first year. 

Lacey: Wow, that’s incredible.

Mike: Yeah. In the sports nutrition space what we’re doing is pretty unique in the supplement space. Eh, I know I’ve just met people now that have put up absurd numbers come from nothing. Now, again, these people started with very big platforms. I started with a decent platform, whatever it was four years ago, I know some people that have started with platforms that are probably legitimately 10 times the size of my current, maybe not that big, like five times the size of my current platform and in the same time frame have gone to have gone from zero to 100 million a year in sales.

So I hear stuff like that. I’m like, damn, and then I look what I’m doing. I’m like womp. But. No, it’s cool. 

Lacey: Yeah, I really can’t compare, especially like it’s all about in the long run, like not who’s going to just spike up and then just disappear out of nowhere. 

Mike: Yes, that’s true. And that in the sports nutrition space, especially like company like shreds, are they still even around?

Do they, cause they, they had that big spike with with social media when they were like probably the company really to first use influencer marketing as their sole source of revenue and really well for a while, of course, or at least for a year or two. But I haven’t seen much. 

Lacey: I haven’t seen much about them.

There’s certain companies I saw at the Arnold that I was like, wow, they’re still alive. Like pro subs and VP exports. I was like, what are you guys doing here? I thought you died. 

Mike: That’s true. Maybe they have Retail and also international can be 

Lacey: like, 

Mike: but it can, yeah, not necessarily like retail.

You’d be surprised some of these companies that are around that do very well because of their retail and especially their international, there’s some things that. are I probably shouldn’t say cause I don’t know if I’m supposed to know some of this stuff, but there’s some big brands that you wouldn’t necessarily know.

You’d hear their big revenue number. You’d be like, wow, but what you don’t realize is like almost half of that is international. For example big supplement companies can do tens of millions of dollars a year just in international sales alone. And that’s just working through distributors. That’s theoretically a very easy.

Once it’s all established and running it’s easier to just fulfill orders for distributors who then take care of everything else than it is to build an e commerce business, for example. But the commerce business is much, is a much stronger business. Like an e commerce supplement company doing 50 million a year is worth a lot more than a traditional retail dependent supplement company doing 50 million a year.

You know what I mean? 

Lacey: Yeah. Wow. That’s crazy. 

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. So 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 Muscle4Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle4Life, and Facebook at Muscle4Life Fitness. 

Lacey: Hands down planning is the key to anything in life. I am one of those planners.

I have my planner out. If I’m going to start something, there’s going to be an exact science to it. So no doubt for you, that’s what had to be done. And that’s amazing that you have trustworthy, dependable people helping to formulate your products because that is the key. 

Mike: Yeah, you know what the funny thing is with supplements is I think it’s actually probably a bit more of it’s just like a point of Integrity because you can make plenty of money selling bullshit products.

A lot of people do it and 

Lacey: That’s not success to me 

Mike: No, yeah, I agree. It’s success by most people’s standards though. A lot of people, you have to also realize that it’s not like people, a lot of the people that get in, especially the supplement game, these aren’t people that are going to be winning Nobel prizes in their lifetimes.

These are people that a lot of people that are like staggeringly stupid and who just want money. That’s all I care about. And so it’s whatever it takes to get there. And then, so you see a lot of these people that have done, that have had some success and they’re obsessed with showing it off and, their cars, like my cars and, my bling and all that shit.

So again, I really don’t like, I really don’t like the fitness space. I’ll see sometimes videos. I’m like this, it makes me feel worse about myself. I’m like, this is. The industry that this is my industry like this. These are my peers. 

Lacey: You’re like, this is who people correlate me with. 

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

It’s like when people oh, you’re one of those guys. Yeah. Yeah, these are my peeps, that might sound arrogant But it’s just i’ve had so many odd experiences in this industry that i’m extremely jaded and cynical at this point What I like is Again, it’s come back to, I like, my crowd is great, because my crowd is not necessarily those people.

My crowd actually, primarily, is just everyday people that want to get into good shape, and that I like. And I’ve met a lot of very cool people. That I’ve just read, read my books or read articles or watch videos and just went, Hey, I’ll do that. I’ll try that and got good results. And so that’s what keeps me going in terms of the, I guess the social side of it is more, I like to hear from the people that and it’s not because they like my work, but it’s cause I actually honestly can relate more to a dad or a mom who.

works long hours and has kids and has let themselves go out since college because they’ve just been, life’s been crazy and now they just want to get into really good shape. That person makes more sense to me than some of the other people. 

Lacey: Oh yeah. And I’m in the same exact boat. I’m all about those lifestyle clients and I can relate so much to the college students, not necessarily the parents cause I don’t have any kids.

But that type of person, customer client is the person that’s typically going to be 100 percent loyal to a product or a brand or a service. 

Mike: That’s very true. My best customers have come from, The books like there’s no question, even though we’ve acquired a lot of customers from a lot of avenues, but books have been number one and it’s exactly that point where like they found something that works and they stick to it.

And they then have found everything else and they’re like, Oh, I really like this stuff. And it gave them, it just gives them everything that they need because they’re not trying to become bodybuilders per se. And they’re not even necessarily concerned with squeezing every last ounce of their muscle building or of their potential physique out of their bodies.

They just want to be in really good shape. They want to be healthy. They want to look good. And they want to be able to do that with, they need to be able to do that in three to five hours a week. 

Lacey: Oh yeah. You can’t expect people like that to be in the gym for three hours a day. That’s ridiculous.

Mike: Or even two hours a day. 

I used to do back in the day when I had nothing better to do. 

Lacey: How was your transition? From writing books to now and being on top of a variety of content. 

Mike: Do you 

Lacey: prefer to be in the writing world? 

Mike: Yeah, for sure. Like the work that I enjoy the most is the researching and writing.

Podcasting is cool. Although I like the researching and writing more recording YouTube videos is annoying because for some reason I’m just not very good at it. I don’t like it takes, maybe it’s just cause I’m too OCD about wanting to make sure that I say everything the way exactly I want it to be said.

Whereas with writing it’s. That’s just the nature of writing. If you say something, if you write something that doesn’t sound right, you just fix it. Exactly. But yeah I enjoy the researching and writing the most and I’m happy to get back to a lot of it this year, actually. So I have a number of, so I have three shorter books that I’m going to be self publishing.

I’m going to be doing my first traditional book deal, which I’m excited about. And so I’m going to have to write that manuscript like I put in the proposal that I’ll deliver the manuscript within six months. So I’m assuming we’ll probably have a deal done by the end of the month and that’ll give me basically till the end of the year to deliver that manuscript.

And I’m still writing on my blogs, although I have a few people now that help, which is great. And it has been very hard to find people up to the standards that I want for, because I feel like I have established a certain Bar in terms of quality of content for those websites. Cause I’ve had, I have a lot of people that have been following me really since the beginning.

And if not from the beginning for one, two, three plus years now. And I can’t just turn muscle for life into like a breaking muscle, which just, where the content is all over the place and some of it’s okay. And some of it’s terrible. And I just don’t want to do that. But I’ve put in a lot of work to find a few people That are not only very knowledgeable in terms of health and fitness, but also good writers.

And then of course, I’m in an editorial role. So that’s, I’ve come back to the work that I enjoy the most, even though it’s funny because like previously for the last year and a half, I’ve been focused. I’ve just, I just got bogged down in a lot of, Logistical and administrative things related to running the businesses and hiring people and shit just has to get done There’s and I couldn’t justify taking time away from that to just write more articles or write another book When again, I had to weigh like what’s the opportunity cost of if I neglect this other stuff How is that likely to play out over the next few years?

Cause I have very, ambitious goals for myself over the next three to five years. And how do I best get there? Okay. That means that something, I only have so much time and I work a fair amount now. I worked even more previously. I have two kids now but I still, I don’t know. My average work week is probably 55 or 60 hours.

And sure. I can work more. I don’t give a shit. I’m someone that, I don’t know, I’ve just been like that, for a while, where I can work more, but then my family, that would be what I’d sacrifice. I’d be, essentially, am I willing to sacrifice my relationship with my wife and basically my kids and never see them.

And I don’t think that’s smart. Like I know quite a few people that have done that and have achieved a lot of financial success, a lot of professional success. But I’ve also spoken with them now on the other side of it. And that’s one of the most common regrets that some of these people, at least that I’ve known.

Had is like they’re like, yeah, I mean it’s cool It’s fulfilling that they really achieved something they wanted to achieve, but they wish They didn’t lose their families in the process of it So anyways, that was the last year and a half or so I was still working on content but not nearly as much as I would have liked to have been And it’s nice to get back to that now again and get back to writing books and get back to writing articles and not feel like it’s a guilty pleasure.

Like I’m just like, I’m taking time away from the real work I should be doing because I feel like writing articles again, the transition has been away from it was annoying, but understandable. Like I did it willingly. It was my own choice and I thought it was the right choice. It’s nice to come back to it.

And it’s also nice to come back to it now with a few people I can really rely on who write. Really good content. Curtis being one of them, Curtis writes over at the Legion blog and His he’s great. Like he’s a good writer. He’s also a quirky guy and he has a funny sense of humor. Like he’s gotta love that.

He’s one. Yeah. He grew up on the internet, so he just has that internet edge to him that you can’t, you either have it or you don’t, and so that, that comes through in his writing and his jokes and stuff. So he makes it, I think it some ways he’s better than I am in that regard.

Where he makes, his articles are not only informative and accurate and factual, they’re also fun to read just because, he’ll say things. You just have to laugh like who the fuck says that who thinks of that who is this guy And that’s what 

Lacey: makes a good article. That’s something I struggle with is you know Creating that connection that humor connection I’m, very factual in my writings like straightforward scientific.

Mike: Honestly, I’m the same. 

Lacey: Okay, you understand? 

Mike: Yeah, I mean I can do like I can do it I think decently it doesn’t come 

Lacey: second nature. 

Mike: Yeah. When I’m writing that, like I go into that how to mode, and where I’ve also just ingrained it into myself to always strive for clarity, like brevity and clarity.

Those are the two things that matter the most. And I’ve focused a lot on that in my writing and really focused to try to improve on those things as a writer. at the expense of style or personality, which you can get away with this type of writing because ultimately people just want to know what the fuck do I do?

Hey I’m searching for how to lose weight and I’m going to read your article on how to lose weight. It better be clear and it better make sense. And if I do what you say, it better work. And so if you can check those boxes, then you’re, I think, honestly, 80 percent done. There if you can also make them laugh or just make them feel good along or along the way then that’s that Additional just puts it over the top where people can just read something and immediately just feel a connection and be like I really like this person I get a sense of their personality and they know what they’re talking about and they’re helping me Like I’m gonna get on this person’s email list or I’m gonna buy this person’s book or something.

So I know what you mean. I think it’s a matter of also giving it, giving yourself the time. Cause I’ve run into that where I’m time crunched on I need to make sure this article is done by tonight. Cause I have other shit I have to do tomorrow. If it doesn’t come naturally in the flow of writing it, then you have to insert it and you can do that.

You just have to give yourself the time. Like you have to really, when you’re done writing it and when you’re editing, look through it and be like, Okay. Get into that more creative kind of mindset, get yourself, I don’t know, maybe watch some standup routines or something. Just get out of the, get out of the analytical left brained OCD mindset and more just into the creative.

I’m just going to have fun with this and see, can I make this more fun or more funny? And that’s worked for me. I don’t always do it though, honestly, because again, still sometimes, like I published a, it was like a 5, 000 word article on supersets last week. And by the time I was done with it, I’m like, fuck this article.

Like I need to do other things. I 

Lacey: hate it. Go away. 

Mike: That’s the, that’s like everything that who is it? Picasso said that art’s never finished. It’s only abandoned or whatever. And same thing with books like this book that I’m getting ready to publish. It’s going to be June probably. And you’re getting to that point when you’re like, I don’t want to see, I can’t do another edit.

I, I just think this needs to go away at this point. 

Lacey: Oh, that’s how I feel. I have to write these like 30 page papers on different disease states. And by the time I am done, I never want to hear about that disease state ever again in my life. 

Mike: Exactly. That’s good though. That means you’re doing good work.

Lacey: It does make you totally understand the disease, how to treat it, the pathology, but it definitely does make you, Want to die slowly. 

Mike: Yeah, that’s that’s the writing process though. It never changes even as some no, that’s not just me saying that but go just read stuff from enough writers and you’ll see that it’s very much like in i’m glad that I can at least say that I enjoy writing a lot of writers don’t even enjoy it They just enjoy having written and I understand that there’s some things where you plod through something and it’s a pain in the ass and then it’s done.

And you’re like, all right I actually feel satisfied now. That was a pain in the ass, but I did it. So at least I can be thankful that for the most part, and that’s not always the case, but I enjoy the process of writing. I enjoy the process of putting things together and making them sound good.

At least there’s that. 

Lacey: Yeah, that’s super important. Now, I think I don’t want to take too much of your time. So I just want to ask you two more questions. One, I want to ask you how do you attempt to balance your family and your life and your business? So we’ll start with that question. 

Mike: Sure I would say I’m like, I’m actually just recorded a podcast on this.

I don’t, I’m not a big believer in kind of work life balance because you can’t have everything in balance. Even if you’re like, Oh, what is it? The four burners theory, you have your health and your work and your family and your friends. And you can’t have all those burners on max all the time.

And fine. It’s like a silly little analogy, but I think there’s actually some to it. Even though I would say there’s more to life than even just Those things, what about your society? What about things that are going on outside of the sphere of your immediate influence that if someone has to give a shit about or not, but even if you start there, you can’t keep all those things in balance without having a very mediocre. life without having a mediocre work, mediocre friendships, mediocre, love relationships, mediocre health, because we only have so much time. Yeah, if we didn’t have to sleep, you probably actually could just go hard as fuck and, take, even if we just said those four areas, if you could give each of those areas six hours a day of like intense effort and you needed no sleep and you needed no You never had energy lulls, and you never needed any down 

Lacey: yeah, a lot of people get caught.

Mike: Totally, and you didn’t need any down time. Yeah, then maybe you could actually have, be all cylinders firing, but I just don’t, that’s obviously, that’s just reducing it to the absurd but, bring it back down to reality, I think that you have to choose, if you want extraordinary results, and by extraordinary I just mean the dictionary definition of Something beyond the average or the ordinary you’re going it’s going to require some sort of imbalance in your life you’re going to have to sacrifice a lot more than you probably think going into it in the way of time and energy and effort and also just fun and Maybe not fun as funds.

Maybe not the word but spontaneity And just doing, whatever it is that you want to do, whatever some part of us the lizard brain tells us to do at any given point of any day. Cause there’s definitely a part of us that just wants to, it’s just a tumbleweed. And it doesn’t really want to think.

And maybe it’s an evolutionary thing because not too long ago, we couldn’t even conceive of working for a carrot that takes. 10 years to achieve or something like that. Cause we were so preoccupied with like, how am I going to get food to survive to tomorrow? And then tomorrow, how am I going to get food and shelter to serve?

So I don’t get, so don’t die in, make it another day. And so there’s a part of us that resists that more analytical, What do they call it? The system two type of thinking the slow down and reasoning type of thinking, whereas the more intuitive side of us leads us astray, I think a lot.

And so coming back to, to, to your point or to your question. Yeah. I don’t, my life is imbalanced for the most part. And I don’t see that changing. And so again, what I’ve chosen to sacrifice are my, I haven’t sacrificed my health. I didn’t want to do that. So I still make time to work out, even though I go early in the morning and I don’t spend more than an hour or so in the gym, five days per week.

And that’s enough though, that plus proper dieting. I do a little bit of cardio on the weekends is enough to stay in great shape and in great health which I’ve. even recently had to measure objectively cause I got life insurance. So I haven’t sacrificed there, but where I’ve sacrifices friends, I don’t have a social life at all and I don’t care like at all actually, because I can always do that if I want to.

And right now I’m focused on primarily my work and my family. So I’ve made mistakes and like moving too far in the direction of sacrificing my family and my relationship with my wife. And she’s very good in that she’s very understanding of what I’m doing, why I’m doing it. She knows also just my personality and I like to work and I don’t like just doing random shit that has no purpose.

I just don’t like it. I was a little bit more Maybe laissez faire when I was younger and but I was also a bit more deliberate about that because I knew I hadn’t started on my in my life yet like my wife’s german and so she’s from germany And so we did long distance for two and a half years And I used to travel over there every so often and she would come and visit me sometimes But I would go over there more often because it’s more fun going to europe at that time Yeah, I wasn’t as driven as I am now or I wasn’t as focused as I am now But I also I would say that I that was intentional and I knew that like I’m gonna enjoy this for now But this is not life this is going to end and I’m gonna have to get serious so to speak about doing something with my life I am I’m not just going to Yeah, whatever.

I could have, my dad is a successful business person, entrepreneur, and I could have just dirtled around for a while, basically, and not really had to do anything. And I was a different person in some ways at that, in that time of my life. But then once it was like, okay, it’s time to really work and figure out my life and make something of myself, that side of me is gone basically.

, because I just it doesn’t, it just doesn’t fit anymore. I can’t have vibrant relationships, friendships that, that take time. You have to invest time and work into a friendship. It doesn’t just magic do. Absolutely. It doesn’t just magically create itself. And so I intentionally was like, that’s done now.

Go back five years. By the time I’m 40, this is how I want to be. This is how I want myself to be set up in terms of my life. And what am I going to sacrifice? I don’t want to sacrifice my health. A lot of people do that. Like where they’ll, they don’t want to sacrifice, let’s say much in the way of their social lives.

So they will not exercise. That’s an hour a day. Cool. They don’t need that. They’ll just work instead. And they’ll intentionally like sleep deprived themselves. So they’ll go, okay, maybe I can save two hours a day just by not sleeping enough, which I’ve played with not to the point of being reckless, but I generally don’t need, if I get six to seven hours of sleep, six, six and a half, something like that’s totally fine.

Like I naturally will wake up after I’ve tried to work that down and it just doesn’t work. I’ve tried it, again, I know people And no, like they do not feel good on five hours of sleep a night, but I would die. 

Lacey: I die on six. 

Mike: Yeah. I understand. I needed more sleep when I was younger.

Maybe it’s just because I’m old now. So maybe that’s why that’s then they go, okay I’ll just sleep five hours a night and I’m just going to pound stimulants. And then, at some point then that turns into oh shit, now I need drugs also to fall asleep. And so those are the, again, sacrifices that people make.

And I didn’t want to make those sacrifices. So I don’t have a social life really to speak of. Maybe I’ll see a friend once a week. Also I do work with my friends, so there is that, but we also are very much, we’re here to work, like we’re all cool and we have fun, but we’re not here to just hang out.

There’s really not much hanging out going on. It’s working. And So outside of work, maybe I’ll see somebody once a week or something. And it’s the weather’s getting nicer. So I’m going to golf probably on, I liked the old white man sport, a buddy of mine will play once a week or something.

So yeah, I just don’t, I think that you have to be okay with your life. becoming imbalanced and then you have to be aware of where the imbalances are and how extreme they are and what it takes to bring things back into balance before they all fall apart. And again, I’ve experienced that more with my relationship with my wife, where I’ve gone for days with just work, and not had very much in the way of interactions with her.

Sure. I had some conversations, but you only can do that so much and so often before the relationship just starts to feel almost like a yeah, exactly. I never had a roommate. I think what’s the word, like not a partner, but yeah, exactly. A roommate who, who happens to raise at the time, it was just our son happens to raise my kid.

So I’ve learned that lesson though. And now I’m better in that regard, but yeah, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having an imbalanced life so long as it’s a decision that you’ve made deliberately and. And you’re aware of it and you are aware of the downsides and the consequences and you’re and you Have worked out.

How are you going to prevent catastrophe? I guess 

Lacey: Yeah, as long as you know where you’re going you’re putting effort into what’s a priority for you And that you’re happy and you’re stepping towards where you’re going to be happy not stepping towards, you know A downward spiral so totally thank you so much for that.

And one last question What is your Biggest piece of advice for success in life. 

Mike: This is good timing because this book that I’m wrapping up is it’s, I’m calling it the Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Hopefully, I’m trying to do something that is going to be interesting and not just, It’s the same old tired cliches that we read in like Instagram captions, and I’m trying to do something that has at least a little bit more, I don’t know, weight or substance to it.

And I also hope that people are not only find it motivating for, their health and fitness goals, but also all their other goals and areas of their lives where they want to improve. And I would say. The number one tip, and this is taken from even from this book, and the thing that this is, and this is me being totally selfish, me just sharing what resonates most with me, period, and this maybe is just a consequence of my personality, which tends to be brusque, and I don’t know, I’m an acquired taste, I think, but it’s basically the ability to suffer, to be able to do things That you really don’t want to do regardless of how you feel about them.

And to be able to just take more pain and more discomfort than the other guy or the other girl that in the end, I think is really what sets apart great performance and great achievement from mediocrity, I think you don’t need to be able to take all that much to get okay at something or to produce okay results, but.

to really do well in anything. And of course, fitness is a simple analogy or a simple metaphor for this. As someone who has, who competes I’m assuming I’ve seen your pictures. I don’t know if you still have people you have. Yeah. That’s a game of suffering. That’s all that is.

It take endurance sports. This is, there’ve been a bunch of quotes from like endurance cyclists and stuff that, and runners, long distance runners who are saying that, yeah, there’s a certain level of physical capability that It gets you in the door. That’s your ticket. That’s the price of admission.

In the end, the people that win are the people that can just suffer the most. And I know that sounds kind of morbid, but honestly, that’s something that I would say one of the things that I’ve gotten good at is doing the stuff that needs to be done regardless of whether I like it or not, or regardless of whether I want to do it or not, or how I feel about it.

And that’s a great 

Lacey: quality to have. 

Mike: Sure. But it’s not necessarily. If you can learn to like that’s like superpower. Basically. If you can learn to enjoy doing things that otherwise, like you really, you actually don’t really enjoy it, but you can find some joy in it because you have a purpose and because it serves, , it’s gonna help you get to where you want to be.

Then that’s I think a fundamental prerequisite to success really in any area. of life again, because no matter what it is, no matter how into it, you might be going into something where you’re like, Oh, I’m, I really enjoy blah. And when you get to that point though, where it’s no longer, you’re no longer looking to dabble or be a dilettante, you want to become a true professional at something, which is when you’re saying achieve success, that’s the implication, right?

It’s the, is reaching that professional level of success. Look at it in the same context of. Okay. Someone wants to become, they want to reach the professional level of success in business and entrepreneurship. So what is that? That’s I guess becoming a millionaire, right? Or at least, some certain level of income that is very impressive or a certain amount of Revenue for a business or market share or however you want to measure it.

It’s more quantitative in that regard That’s the equivalent of a professional athlete who gets signed. That’s why they get paid that money there’s there’s definitely some a likeness there in that. What does it take to become a professional athlete? These are the people who are always so good at their sports They were just always the best that’s the story of most pro athletes from the past First time they ever kicked a soccer ball.

Someone was like, wow, you’re pretty good at that. And then they quickly became the absolute best player on the team. And they were the best player on the team for the rest of their lives. And now they play professionally and a lot of them still don’t even make it. And so similarly though, in other areas of life, when somebody says, I want to be a millionaire, that’s what you’re saying, I want to be the professional basketball player.

Now, of course, yeah, sure. There’s some physicality that applies in sports. It doesn’t apply elsewhere. But my point with that is. Is what you’re saying is you’ve set a very high bar for yourself and even with competing and fit in fitness, I’ve never competed but I have worked with a number of people who have, and I’ve also spoken with a number of people who had said they wanted to compete, but didn’t really realize what that meant.

And that’s 

Lacey: something you have to know before you get into it. 

Mike: I agree. I agree. But if you don’t, you go into it thinking, Oh, essentially that it’s going to be a lot easier than it really is going to be. And so getting into something and saying, I want to be really successful in this. I honestly, I’m coming back to get ready to.

Suffer then that’s and if you don’t suffer. It’s there are going to be points where it’s going to be very uncomfortable It’s been very difficult You’re gonna have to keep showing up even though you don’t want to you’re gonna have to keep pushing and working on things you don’t Want to work on and do things you don’t want to do if it doesn’t get to the point of suffering where you wouldn’t say If it gets if it never gets to that point where you’re like this sucks really like I really do not feel good at All this is painful, this is psychologically and spiritually painful.

If it doesn’t get to that, count yourself lucky. If, again, if you really want to go far figure going into it, that’s going to go there, I dunno, maybe read Marcus Aurelius’s meditations or something, get ready for it. If you can maybe steal yourself with some pop stoicism or something, I dunno, but it’s coming.

And that I’d say is maybe not a very palatable tip for success, but It’s at least one I think is real 

Lacey: but that’s your thoughts and I definitely I’m going to put some faith in here God tells us not to be idle. We’re not meant to live easy lives so we can just embrace The hard parts and embrace the struggle because that is what’s truly gonna bring us Success and happiness and going to get us to our purpose in life.

So thank you for that. If you could tell my listeners where they can find you, your social media handles, your website, of course, muscle for life, that would be great. And then we are good to go. Thank you so much for your time, Mike. 

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. And just to that last point, I completely agree. And I would say that your life is going to come with problems and struggles and pain.

One way or another. And if you can choose those problems and those struggles and pain, that’s great. And if, cause if you don’t choose them, somebody is going to choose them for you 

Lacey: and you 

Mike: might not like the choices that are made. So you might as well make your own choices and find something that’s worth struggling for.

So anyways, to finish with the plug, yeah muscleforlife. com just spelled out. That’s like the hub where you can find all my stuff. Legionathletics. com is the supplement, the sports nutrition, whatever, the supplement company. And again, check out the blogs on both of those websites.

If you like long form, researched and hopefully I would say well written and informative and also entertaining content. And so on social media, honestly, I’m on social media. I spend very little time on it because I don’t like it, but Instagram is most for life fitness. Twitter, I think is most for life.

And I. Facebook is muscle for life. I’d say 80 percent of the time I spend on social media is just answering DMS I don’t really spend much time posting or I don’t do anything to try to grow my following But I do respond to people that communicate to me because I figure that’s at least a productive use of it So if people want to follow me on social media, I appreciate it and you’re not gonna see very many things But if you want to reach out If you have questions or anything, I’m happy to help.

Lacey: Okay, at least you’re honest. 

Mike: So I just want to say thank you. I just want to say thank you for having me as well. I appreciate the opportunity and I appreciate you taking your time. 

Lacey: Oh no, you’re so welcome. I hope you have a fabulous rest of your day. Yeah, just thank you so much again. And I will hopefully meet you one time or speak with you later.

But I hope you have a great day. 

Mike: 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.

This not only convinces people that they should check the show out. It also increases its search visibility. So 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 muscle for life. 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. All right, 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, 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. 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 me Thousands of women build their best bodies ever, which is why I currently has over 1, 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 www.bitlybitly.com/free ts 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.