Adam Schafer: The #1 Organic Sales Strategy Entrepreneurs Overlook on Social Media | E339

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0:01:32 I had people banging down my door asking to advertise, but we agreed that we may never
0:01:33 take advertising.
0:01:38 Adam Schaefer, co-founder of Mind Pump Media and one of the co-hosts of the popular Mind
0:01:39 Pump podcast.
0:01:43 And they’ve built multiple seven and eight figure businesses within Mind Pump.
0:01:48 We have a lot of brands that we are their number one advertising partner over Joe Rogan.
0:01:52 And that’s because those 40,000 people that have listened to us more than anything else
0:01:55 on their pockets, they buy almost anything that we recommend.
0:01:57 And so we were very careful to protect that.
0:02:02 We wrote a multi-million dollar business before Instagram even hit 50,000 followers.
0:02:08 You do not need millions of people looking at you on Instagram or YouTube or whatever.
0:02:08 What you need to do is.
0:02:30 Yeah, fam, last week I had one of the best conversations of the year where I spoke with
0:02:33 Adam Schaefer, the co-founder of Mind Pump.
0:02:38 We ended up talking for nearly two hours and that’s because he was just such a wealth
0:02:38 of knowledge.
0:02:40 I loved learning from him.
0:02:41 I loved hearing his stories.
0:02:44 And if you haven’t heard part one yet, go back and check that out now.
0:02:50 We talk about his rags to riches story and the way that he didn’t let himself be a
0:02:52 victim, even though he grew up with so much adversity.
0:02:57 He was able to push himself and become the incredible entrepreneur that he is today.
0:03:01 In part two of this episode, we’re really focused on the Mind Pump business.
0:03:04 Now, Adam is really the business guy in Mind Pump.
0:03:07 And although they talk a lot about fitness advice, he’s actually one of the
0:03:12 most accomplished and knowledgeable entrepreneurs that I’ve ever come across.
0:03:15 And we talk about everything in this episode, their marketing message,
0:03:17 how they work together as partners.
0:03:22 We talk about how they approach social media versus podcast versus email.
0:03:24 We even talk about sponsorships.
0:03:26 I love the content in this episode.
0:03:27 It’s so interesting.
0:03:30 If you’re a creator entrepreneur, which so many of us are right now,
0:03:35 we all need to have some sort of way to connect with our audience online.
0:03:37 You are not going to want to miss this episode.
0:03:42 Without further delay, here’s my incredible conversation with Adam Schafer.
0:03:45 Adam, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.
0:03:45 Thank you.
0:03:46 I’m excited to be here.
0:03:50 So I want to talk about marketing and your marketing message,
0:03:53 because I know that one of the ways that you differentiate in the fitness industry
0:03:57 is by telling the truth, at least how you started.
0:04:02 So talk to us about how intentional you are about your marketing messaging
0:04:06 and how you think about the way that you communicate with your audience
0:04:07 and the things that you tell them.
0:04:12 I think that we were so intentional about it that I think it was nine years ago
0:04:16 when I bought the trademark, Stay Authentic for our clothing line.
0:04:20 What we saw when we got into this space was how fake a lot of it was.
0:04:22 It’s gotten better, but it still is.
0:04:27 I’m sure you know how many people are fake successful, fake fit.
0:04:29 It’s just so much of that.
0:04:31 And we quickly saw it right away.
0:04:34 And we’re like, man, this may be working for these people right now,
0:04:36 but eventually they’re going to be found out.
0:04:39 Eventually the customer will get smarter.
0:04:43 And eventually the messaging will be about authenticity, about being yourself.
0:04:45 And that will be the only way to win.
0:04:47 So much that we decided to go out and trademark, Stay Authentic,
0:04:51 because we believe that that wasn’t a buzz term when we trademarked that almost 10 years ago.
0:04:54 It was, we believe that that was the direction, that comment.
0:04:55 And you hear that now everywhere.
0:05:00 Anybody who’s successful like yourself in here that communicate things that are important.
0:05:02 I’ve heard you say it on your show multiple times too.
0:05:05 Authenticity is so, so important to the brand.
0:05:06 That’s what we led with.
0:05:08 We really did that from the very beginning.
0:05:12 And it was a slower game because it’s not as sexy.
0:05:13 It’s not as cool.
0:05:13 It’s not as trendy.
0:05:16 It doesn’t go viral, but it’s authentic.
0:05:17 It’s real.
0:05:22 And I think that there’s a big mistake in the social media game that people make that,
0:05:24 again, we were lucky that we did brick and mortar first.
0:05:28 And I use the analogy of, if I had just started my brick and mortar gym,
0:05:30 and I’d turn the lights on, it’s day one.
0:05:34 And five customers, well, potential customers walked in.
0:05:35 How would I treat them?
0:05:36 And how would I be?
0:05:37 What would I be like?
0:05:37 And what would I do?
0:05:41 Oh man, first five people paid attention to my big, like,
0:05:44 I’m over there greeting them and talking to them and excited.
0:05:45 I mean, I found out all about that.
0:05:48 I’m making those five people my best friends because I got all the time in the world.
0:05:49 I got no customers.
0:05:51 He was the only five potential customers I have.
0:05:55 And so it’s wild to me because that’s like, that’s like rules of business.
0:05:58 Like any good business person 20, 30 years ago would say, of course,
0:05:59 of course you would do that.
0:06:02 Well, then why do so many people treat it differently on social media?
0:06:05 Why are they looking for so much, so many eyeballs?
0:06:08 They want to go viral and have a million people paying attention to them.
0:06:13 But then they don’t even respond to the one comment or they don’t DM and talk to the people.
0:06:16 It was like, so I think the strategy that people were doing early on to get famous
0:06:20 and get attention was a terrible strategy for a long-term business.
0:06:23 And there was kind of this, what’s the term I’m looking for?
0:06:27 Where they get their, it was, it’s a false perception of what reality is for them.
0:06:30 Like meaning they had a million followers.
0:06:33 And if you’ve got a million eyeballs on you, I guess you could start a t-shirt line
0:06:36 and by default you could make a few hundred thousand dollars initially,
0:06:39 just because you got a million eyeballs.
0:06:40 But that’s not a really successful business.
0:06:43 Like it’s just because you have that many and by default,
0:06:46 one, a half a percent of them bought something from them.
0:06:48 It’s like, that’s not, and we weren’t looking for that.
0:06:50 And we knew that and we didn’t want to get into that game.
0:06:54 We were like, I don’t want to try and compete with all these people doing that.
0:06:55 Let’s go help five people.
0:06:57 Let’s go change five lives.
0:07:01 And this is again, something that we were taught in building a trainer business
0:07:06 was I realized how powerful, now granted, it’s great to get leads.
0:07:09 It’s great to get all these potential customers looking at you
0:07:11 or coming into your gym or anything like that.
0:07:14 But nothing was more powerful than changing that one life.
0:07:16 I changed that one life.
0:07:19 And that lady, 20 years later, is still talking about me.
0:07:23 And I still get people that find me from her 20 years ago
0:07:24 because I changed her life.
0:07:28 Like, holy, the ROI on that is crazy.
0:07:33 How many people has she turned on to me and what I do because I put so much in.
0:07:36 And so we approached even the social media game the same way.
0:07:39 Let’s not try and over complicate this and try and go viral
0:07:41 and figure out what all the trendy stuff is.
0:07:43 Let’s go change five lives.
0:07:46 Let’s go find our people that need our help and just really focus.
0:07:49 Because none of us knew what the hell we were doing in the marketing space
0:07:49 of social media.
0:07:52 Like we didn’t know, but we knew that about business.
0:07:54 We knew the power and the value of that.
0:07:57 And we just looked at it as like, oh, this is cool that we’re in this place
0:08:01 where this is this ability to do it for free and people could find us online.
0:08:04 Like that’s a really powerful, unique tool.
0:08:08 But let’s not over complicate it with and measure it by how many followers
0:08:10 we have is this business itself.
0:08:15 And we were a multi-million dollar business before Instagram even hit 50,000 followers.
0:08:19 And so I tell this to people all the time, you do not need hundreds of thousands,
0:08:24 definitely not millions of people looking at you on Instagram or YouTube or whatever.
0:08:25 You don’t.
0:08:28 What you need to do is go find your thousand loyal customers.
0:08:31 And I forget what book that is or who wrote that.
0:08:32 That’s a great read.
0:08:33 Seth Godin.
0:08:34 Yes.
0:08:34 Thank you.
0:08:36 Your thousand tribe or whatever, right?
0:08:39 So once you, and so that was it was like, we’re on this mission.
0:08:42 Let’s go find a thousand people that we can.
0:08:46 And I think that’s such a, it’s such a good number because I really did think
0:08:49 I felt right around a thousand loyal customers.
0:08:51 It was like the business was rocking and rolling.
0:08:55 I mean, it was just, because at that time, once you reach that point where you’ve changed
0:08:59 a thousand, you’ve got a thousand people out there marketing and advertising for you.
0:09:02 And let’s say obviously not all thousand people are out there walking with signs
0:09:04 saying, listen to my public, of course not.
0:09:07 But there’s enough of them at all times always doing that.
0:09:13 They are constantly talking to a family or a friend and that lead is so much more valuable
0:09:17 than any paid lead you could ever potentially get in this game.
0:09:21 And I’ve, I’ve spent tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of dollars now
0:09:26 in all the different ways that we can advertise on Google and Facebook and Instagram.
0:09:28 And we’ve always ran these campaigns.
0:09:31 And then at the end of the day, we come back to organic traffic
0:09:37 because those customers are so much better than the lead that I paid all this money to
0:09:41 get them to convert right away who don’t have a relationship with me.
0:09:45 Don’t know who I am, but because they got hit with this ad or whatever they converted.
0:09:47 Like those actually end up being the worst customers.
0:09:49 They’re the most difficult to deal with.
0:09:53 A lot of times if you have any sort of refunds or cancels, it’s coming from those people.
0:09:54 They complain the most.
0:09:57 Like they are the hardest customer and it costs me so much to get them.
0:10:03 Versus if I put out a good piece of content with the intent of helping somebody for free
0:10:08 and giving them something super valuable that I learned over my decades of training clients.
0:10:13 If I can impact them with one piece of content that goes out and helps like five people,
0:10:18 those five people that I help for free on that Instagram post or that YouTube clip
0:10:20 or that podcast episode, those five potential leads.
0:10:26 Oh my God, those people are so much more valuable than the thousand people I just added
0:10:30 on Instagram because I paid for some post to go to be pushed out there to a bunch.
0:10:33 And I just don’t think a lot of people realize that.
0:10:37 I don’t think they think that the game is volume and it’s like, no.
0:10:41 And in fact, I actually think that that sometimes can convolute what you’re doing really well
0:10:44 because you might be getting all this attention.
0:10:46 And so you get this idea like, oh, we’re doing really good.
0:10:49 But it’s like, you’re not even attracting your true customers.
0:10:51 You’re just getting eyeballs and random people.
0:10:53 And that just causes more headaches and confusion.
0:10:56 So yeah, the people that are, you might be doing the right things in your business
0:10:58 because you’re so focused on attention.
0:11:01 You’re getting steered in these wrong directions because you have a bunch of random
0:11:04 malooki loose who don’t even know who you are to, oh, that sucks.
0:11:05 Or I don’t like that.
0:11:06 Or why don’t you do more of this?
0:11:07 And then you start, we had to be careful of this.
0:11:13 So remember early on, like not allowing that noise to steer our mission.
0:11:14 Like we know what the goal is.
0:11:15 We know what the mission is.
0:11:17 Like of course, there’s going to be some haters or some people who don’t know us
0:11:18 that are going to hop in there.
0:11:20 You’re just going to make some comment about us.
0:11:22 Like you can’t let that deter your mission.
0:11:26 And so I do think that’s the problem with a lot of entrepreneurs
0:11:30 that are trying to build on these social platforms is they get so hung up
0:11:31 in the race to followers game.
0:11:36 And it’s like, no, you can build a million dollar plus business off of thousand people.
0:11:40 You do not need tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands to build.
0:11:43 And those people, the lifetime value of those customers.
0:11:47 Like, and so that’s kind of like, even how we’ve scaled this business
0:11:51 and with all these arms, what we look at is our best customers.
0:11:55 And then we ask ourselves, what are those 10,000 people have in common?
0:11:58 What are other things that we can serve them, that community?
0:12:02 Because we’ve already, we’ve already won them over on the value.
0:12:03 We’ve already provided them.
0:12:06 I bet you there’s something in common with those 10,000 people.
0:12:08 And what are we not doing to provide that?
0:12:11 Because they’re already bought into us and what we’re doing.
0:12:14 If I can now find a way to service the most common thing,
0:12:16 those 10,000 people have to service them, I’ve got another business.
0:12:21 And so that’s kind of how we’ve continued to stack the business is looking at our customers.
0:12:25 And we started that way, even when there’s just a handful of them of,
0:12:28 what are these five people have in common that we can give to them
0:12:31 and then build and letting that steer the direction of the company.
0:12:36 And even though we had that one program, and that was initially how we monetized
0:12:39 every program thereafter and every revenue stream thereafter
0:12:41 has really been steered by the consumer.
0:12:44 It’s never been, and I always tell people that are trying to build a business like,
0:12:47 it’s important that you, you love your ideas.
0:12:50 And because it’s important to be passionate about your ideas,
0:12:53 but don’t marry them and be okay with pivoting.
0:12:58 And I do think that that is some of the most common traits of really, really successful people
0:13:03 is their, their speed and their ability to pivot and to not hold on to a bad idea
0:13:05 or a bad direction because that’s what they wanted to do.
0:13:08 It’s like, okay, I think this is what everybody wants.
0:13:09 Let me go put it out there and test it.
0:13:10 It’s like, oh, shit, nobody cares about that.
0:13:13 It’s like, okay, how quick can I let go of that
0:13:15 and move in the direction that I think they all want?
0:13:17 Like that’s a, that’s an important skill set.
0:13:20 And really most of all the revenue streams after the very first product
0:13:24 have been steered that way of us listening to our already customers
0:13:28 and finding how can we continue to add value and serve them,
0:13:30 let allow the business to come to us like that.
0:13:33 – Oh my gosh, you just dropped so many gems.
0:13:35 There’s a couple of things that I want to add to this.
0:13:41 So I interviewed Gary Vee in person, Mel Robbins in person.
0:13:45 And those are two extremely, extremely successful people
0:13:49 and they are of the same mindset of you, speak to one person.
0:13:53 They’re not only kind to their following and want to provide value.
0:13:55 And like that’s their main concern is like providing value
0:13:57 and helping people live better lives.
0:14:00 Even in person, they’re shaking the videographers hand,
0:14:02 they’re thinking everybody, they’re kind.
0:14:05 The most successful people that I’ve met are kind
0:14:06 and they want to help other people.
0:14:08 They didn’t get to where they are
0:14:10 by being an asshole to everyone, right?
0:14:11 They actually want to help people
0:14:14 and you can see that in all their content
0:14:15 and everything that they do.
0:14:17 So I feel like it’s so smart that you were like,
0:14:19 let’s just focus on five people.
0:14:21 So you were able to sort of niche down
0:14:24 who the perfect client would be for you.
0:14:26 And then you listen to them, what do they want?
0:14:27 What do they want from you?
0:14:30 How can I add more value, grow the LTV,
0:14:32 the lifetime value of this customer?
0:14:34 So they buy a course and then maybe they do something
0:14:36 more expensive and then they tell their friends.
0:14:38 And it’s this like flywheel effect
0:14:39 that you’ve basically created with your audience.
0:14:41 So I think that’s just so super cool.
0:14:44 My question for you is you’ve got this podcast,
0:14:48 you’ve got social, you guys have an incredible email list.
0:14:52 I heard you say that your podcast and email subscribers
0:14:55 are way more valuable than your social followers.
0:14:57 Oh, by far, we could shut off.
0:15:00 We can, when we tested this back when Sal got kicked off.
0:15:03 So this was about two years ago.
0:15:05 It was right in the heart, like right in the thick
0:15:07 of the COVID stuff that was going on.
0:15:10 And Sal sometimes can say stuff politically.
0:15:13 And at that time, that was a very dangerous thing
0:15:14 to do on social media.
0:15:16 He has the, I don’t give a shit attitude.
0:15:18 And so do all of us who were like, go for it.
0:15:19 Say what you want to say, do what you want to do.
0:15:21 And he was removed.
0:15:22 So he was kicked off of Facebook or Facebook
0:15:25 and Instagram multiple times.
0:15:29 And we had our best revenue run at that time.
0:15:31 We didn’t feel an ounce of that.
0:15:33 He had the biggest Instagram page.
0:15:34 He had the most engagement.
0:15:37 So he had the most powerful Instagram out of all of us
0:15:37 at that time.
0:15:41 And he was completely removed off of it for six months,
0:15:42 eight months, something like that.
0:15:45 And we continued to scale during that entire time.
0:15:49 And so it was, it really made us realize that these assets
0:15:51 are good and are powerful and a tool,
0:15:55 but they’re not necessary for us because we had a very strong
0:15:58 foundation from the podcast, from the email list,
0:15:59 from building these customers.
0:16:01 This whole conversation you and I have been having,
0:16:04 if you truly change the lives of a thousand people like that,
0:16:05 they’ll follow you.
0:16:06 They’ll find you.
0:16:07 They will.
0:16:10 You could shut down all, and I believe that from us right now.
0:16:11 We could turn everything off,
0:16:13 go to some other random platform no one’s ever heard of.
0:16:17 And maybe not everybody, but a good portion of people,
0:16:18 they will find us.
0:16:21 I mean, we just did the Spotify raps that come out,
0:16:22 and that just came out.
0:16:24 I love when those come out because it gives me,
0:16:26 I get to peer into some more insight that I don’t get to see,
0:16:28 and I love data, numbers like that.
0:16:33 And for 40,000, over 40,000 people,
0:16:37 we were the number one thing they listened to all year on Spotify.
0:16:38 And that’s just Spotify.
0:16:40 And that’s one of our smallest platforms.
0:16:43 We are significantly bigger on iTunes,
0:16:46 and about the same in the podcast on YouTube.
0:16:50 And so to think that 40,000 people for an entire year
0:16:53 listened to Mindput more than anything else in their ears
0:16:54 is crazy to think that.
0:16:56 And I confidently believe that,
0:16:59 so at least 40,000 of those people would find us
0:17:00 no matter where we’re at.
0:17:02 And 40,000 people listening to me every single day
0:17:04 is more than enough people to build a livelihood
0:17:06 for all of us here, right?
0:17:10 So social, I think, is a great tool to have,
0:17:13 and a compliment, another way to connect with your audience,
0:17:15 another way to tell your story,
0:17:18 kind of like a little bit of a business card, too.
0:17:20 Like, so it has its place and it’s valuable,
0:17:23 but we don’t place a lot of value on a single thing.
0:17:25 And this was, again, intentful, right?
0:17:29 Like, we always agreed that we wanted to own our audience.
0:17:30 Like, we didn’t want to,
0:17:32 because I had never heard of horror stories
0:17:34 of people that I knew that were making really big money
0:17:35 on Facebook or Snapchat.
0:17:37 And then all of a sudden, the algorithm changed,
0:17:39 and they were losing tens of thousands of dollars,
0:17:40 like overnight.
0:17:41 And we knew that early on.
0:17:42 So we were always like,
0:17:45 “Listen, we have to find ways to connect to our people
0:17:47 “on so many different platforms
0:17:49 “and build a relationship so well
0:17:51 “that it didn’t matter if these platforms got weird
0:17:52 “or shut down or like that.
0:17:54 “Like, we want to control.”
0:17:56 And so we were mindful of that early.
0:17:57 And so we built it.
0:17:59 Although I will admit that I was naive,
0:18:02 and for the first two years, did not build an email list,
0:18:04 I’d say this is the biggest regret
0:18:06 or mistake that Mindplum ever made,
0:18:08 and I’m responsible for this.
0:18:11 I actually thought, and this was a learning curve for me,
0:18:14 I thought that social media replaced email marketing.
0:18:17 I thought that that was what we were seeing happening.
0:18:18 I couldn’t have been further from the truth.
0:18:21 What I have realized over all these years of doing this now
0:18:22 is that they’re different.
0:18:25 They’re different monsters, and every medium is that way too.
0:18:27 So for the people that are entrepreneurs that are listening,
0:18:31 it’s very, very clear that I have a Spotify audience,
0:18:33 I have a YouTube audience, I have an Instagram audience,
0:18:35 I have an email audience.
0:18:37 Now, there is definitely a crossover
0:18:38 on all of these platforms.
0:18:40 There’s a problem, and if I had to put a number on it,
0:18:42 I’d say five or 10% of these people
0:18:44 maybe crossover all platforms.
0:18:47 But for the most part, most people stick to the platform,
0:18:49 they consume all their content out,
0:18:51 and that’s, they would consider themselves a YouTube person
0:18:53 or an Instagram person.
0:18:57 And so it’s important to learn your voice on each platform
0:18:59 and know how you communicate on email
0:19:01 is a little bit different than how you communicate on the podcast.
0:19:03 I remember when we first learned this mistake,
0:19:04 when we started the YouTube channel,
0:19:07 we’d already been doing pretty well with the podcast.
0:19:10 We weren’t on YouTube yet because we kind of thought,
0:19:14 who the hell wants to watch three idiots talk in a chair,
0:19:15 fitness for an hour and a half?
0:19:17 So we were like, that’s ridiculous, we won’t do that.
0:19:19 But we did go, well, we are personal trainers,
0:19:21 and so we can give out exercise videos.
0:19:23 That and that add value, right?
0:19:24 How do we add value to our listeners already?
0:19:27 Let’s teach them visually like exercises.
0:19:29 That’s a good way to bolster the business, agreed.
0:19:30 Okay, we all did.
0:19:31 Well, this worked for the podcast,
0:19:33 so let’s do this on the YouTube channel.
0:19:35 So if you go back on our YouTube channel,
0:19:38 you’ll see how we used to start every YouTube episode
0:19:40 on the exercise channel.
0:19:43 And it was literally the three of us making jokes
0:19:46 and talking all silly and goofy and being ourselves,
0:19:47 and Doug would swoop in with the camera.
0:19:51 And the first, I don’t know, two minutes of the YouTube video,
0:19:54 which is supposed to be exercise tutorial videos,
0:19:57 was us joshing each other and having fun and teasing
0:20:00 and kind of like talking, telling a story.
0:20:02 And then we would get into the exercise demo.
0:20:04 And we just thought, because that was the formula
0:20:06 for the podcast, that okay, it’ll work on YouTube.
0:20:08 It kept falling on its face.
0:20:11 And people were commenting like crazy, this is stupid.
0:20:12 Who are these idiots?
0:20:13 I don’t get to the exercise.
0:20:14 Tell us how to do this.
0:20:17 And we kind of ignored that for a while.
0:20:18 And it took a while before we realized like,
0:20:20 oh, wait a second.
0:20:21 It was funny because when I look back,
0:20:22 it was so obvious, right?
0:20:24 It’s like, how do I use YouTube?
0:20:26 If I want to learn how to bake a cake,
0:20:28 and I YouTube that recipe,
0:20:30 do I want the person to be talking five minutes
0:20:32 about jokes and their personal life before they get to it?
0:20:34 I’m going to skip and I’m going to go right,
0:20:35 give me the guy or the girl.
0:20:37 It gets right to the recipe and teaches me.
0:20:38 That’s why I searched for this.
0:20:40 What are these idiots doing talking?
0:20:41 And why do I need all three of them?
0:20:43 Like, I mean, looking back, I go like, oh, of course.
0:20:44 But we didn’t know that.
0:20:46 And I didn’t know that until we tried that.
0:20:48 And we realized like, oh, okay.
0:20:50 Wow, these platforms are really different.
0:20:53 And everybody uses it in different ways.
0:20:56 And so learning how to take your overall
0:20:59 arching mission and voice and shape it
0:21:02 into whatever medium that you are using,
0:21:05 how we write long form content like white papers
0:21:08 is so different to how we do short form emails
0:21:11 is so different to how we do one minute reels
0:21:14 is so different to how we do hour and a half long podcasts.
0:21:17 And it took a while to kind of really figure out
0:21:21 how we change those, but yet stay on brand authentic
0:21:23 to who we are and continue to communicate
0:21:24 the message that we’re trying to do.
0:21:27 But understanding that on each platform,
0:21:29 we’re speaking from a different voice.
0:21:31 But to this day, the email marketing,
0:21:33 which I thought was dead is responsible
0:21:37 for about 40% of Maps Fitness products revenue
0:21:39 every single month, which is hundreds of thousands
0:21:42 of dollars every single month that I thought was dead.
0:21:44 And so we were a little bit behind
0:21:47 when we started actually capturing emails.
0:21:49 – Yeah, I love email so much.
0:21:51 I’m like obsessed with writing newsletters.
0:21:53 And I just feel like it’s such a great tool.
0:21:57 I think it has like 30 times more ROI than social media.
0:21:59 So I think that you’re smart.
0:22:02 Let’s hold that thought and take a quick break
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0:23:08 Yeah, fam, when I first started this podcast,
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0:24:48 What’s up, busy young-in-profiters?
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0:26:29 I relate to audio being so much different to YouTube
0:26:30 because YouTube,
0:26:32 every video is sort of like its own thing.
0:26:34 Like it could go off by itself,
0:26:35 people can find a random video,
0:26:37 and so they’re not your fans.
0:26:39 And so they’re a lot meaner in the comments,
0:26:41 whereas like my reviews on my podcast,
0:26:42 everybody loves it.
0:26:43 “Oh, how it changed my life.
0:26:44 I love her so much.”
0:26:45 On YouTube, it’s like,
0:26:46 “Do you hear your own voice?
0:26:48 You have the worst voice.”
0:26:50 They’re like, “Stop wearing so much lip gloss.”
0:26:51 I’m like, “These are not my fans.”
0:26:54 YouTube is, I tell people like,
0:26:56 before you get into YouTube,
0:26:57 you better have some thick skin
0:27:01 because it’s a bunch of teenage boys on there.
0:27:02 That’s like 80% of the platform.
0:27:04 It’s about the teenage mean ass boys
0:27:06 sitting at home in their basement with their mom,
0:27:08 just trying to talk shit and troll people.
0:27:09 So I tell people like,
0:27:10 before you get on YouTube,
0:27:11 you better have thick skin
0:27:13 because it is just like you.
0:27:13 We had like,
0:27:15 if I want to get emotional
0:27:17 and feel really good about what we’re doing,
0:27:19 I’ll go on and I’ll read iTunes reviews.
0:27:21 Exactly, Apple reviews.
0:27:22 They’re so nice.
0:27:25 Oh yeah, we have thousands of reviews
0:27:27 that will bring a tear to your eye,
0:27:29 the stuff that people say about us.
0:27:33 And I mean, it’s literally like 99.99% five star.
0:27:35 That’s like how awesome the podcast reviews are.
0:27:36 So I used to go on there all the time
0:27:37 when I want to feel good about myself,
0:27:39 like, “Oh, I’ll read those reviews for the day.”
0:27:40 YouTube, complete opposite.
0:27:43 Like, if I want to ruin my day and be upset,
0:27:45 all I got to do is go to the latest YouTube video
0:27:46 and just read comments
0:27:48 because rarely ever are those comments
0:27:50 even close to what the comments we get.
0:27:51 So it is true.
0:27:53 You have to learn the mediums
0:27:54 and how people use them
0:27:56 and understand what the game you’re kind of playing
0:27:57 with those people.
0:27:59 And so, and you can’t let it bother you.
0:28:01 You really have to be okay with like,
0:28:02 that’s just the nature of the beast is,
0:28:04 I’m communicating this to people
0:28:06 that aren’t necessarily the people that I’ve,
0:28:08 I’ve put a lot of work into building value with.
0:28:11 These are people that literally just randomly found me today,
0:28:12 have no idea who I am.
0:28:13 They don’t know my character.
0:28:15 They don’t know where I come from.
0:28:16 They don’t know any of that stuff.
0:28:18 And they’re just going to say shit to say shit.
0:28:19 So you got to be careful
0:28:20 if you let those things get to you.
0:28:21 – Totally.
0:28:24 So as we’re talking about all this,
0:28:25 and you’re saying, you know,
0:28:28 we got to figure out how we sound like on Instagram
0:28:31 versus email versus YouTube versus podcast.
0:28:32 As an entrepreneur nowadays,
0:28:34 you really got to be online.
0:28:36 Like, you really can’t do it,
0:28:37 especially if you’re an online entrepreneur, right?
0:28:39 You’ve got to have some sort of personal brand,
0:28:40 some sort of presence.
0:28:42 We’re also running companies.
0:28:45 If somebody’s overwhelmed,
0:28:46 where do they start?
0:28:48 What advice do you have for them?
0:28:48 – Great question.
0:28:50 And I love to answer this question
0:28:53 because I do think that it can be overwhelming at first.
0:28:55 Like, oh my God, everyone’s telling me,
0:28:56 Gary Vee has a good saying too,
0:28:59 of like looking at like real estate assets
0:29:00 and you just want to start,
0:29:01 you want to acquire all these things
0:29:03 and allow it to organically grow over time.
0:29:06 And, but like, it could still be like daunting of like,
0:29:06 where do I start?
0:29:07 What do I do?
0:29:10 The advice that I give is most people,
0:29:12 hopefully, especially if you’re an entrepreneurship,
0:29:13 know this about yourself,
0:29:17 enough to know that what you like doing the most,
0:29:18 meaning like,
0:29:21 so I can’t put three sentences together.
0:29:24 Grammatically, I just am the worst of all of us.
0:29:25 So I do not touch copy.
0:29:27 I do not write emails.
0:29:28 Like, I would be the worst for that.
0:29:30 So being an E like,
0:29:32 I would be a horrible person to write our emails.
0:29:33 I would be a horrible person
0:29:35 to write our 5,000 word documents
0:29:36 that we give out for free.
0:29:38 Like, I can’t, that would be a term.
0:29:40 And if I was doing this all by myself,
0:29:41 that’s not the first place I would,
0:29:42 I would go to.
0:29:43 And eventually what I’d probably do
0:29:45 is build the other businesses up
0:29:47 and then hire somebody
0:29:49 who is that skill set better than me.
0:29:51 So I tell people to lean into
0:29:53 what you like doing best
0:29:54 or what you know that you do best.
0:29:56 And so you might not know what you do best yet,
0:29:58 but probably that’s going to be where you like,
0:29:58 where you like.
0:30:00 So if you, if you do really well
0:30:02 with talking for an hour and a half
0:30:03 and you have a lot to say
0:30:05 and you have a lot of experience in that,
0:30:07 I think podcasting is really good,
0:30:08 but podcasting will kill you
0:30:10 if you’re relatively new,
0:30:12 you don’t have a lot of information,
0:30:13 you don’t articulate really well,
0:30:15 you can’t story tell.
0:30:16 If you can’t do those things
0:30:18 and like podcasting is a surefire way
0:30:20 for you to tank right away.
0:30:22 Maybe you’re really good
0:30:24 at like very poignant things.
0:30:25 One minute I can,
0:30:27 I can drop some knowledge on somebody
0:30:28 in one minute or give them a tip
0:30:29 that’s super valuable.
0:30:31 Oh, then maybe like Instagram Reels
0:30:33 or TikTok is a really good place
0:30:34 for you to start.
0:30:35 Maybe you’re somebody who’s like
0:30:37 really good with like a camera
0:30:38 and you understand lighting
0:30:40 and you take really aesthetically pleasing pictures
0:30:42 and, you know, you can write witty captions
0:30:43 and you’re really good at like
0:30:45 tying like something that’s fun
0:30:46 and informative like it together
0:30:48 and you can write an Instagram caption.
0:30:49 Maybe Instagram is the place
0:30:50 that you lean into, right?
0:30:52 So maybe you’re really good
0:30:53 about talking one-on-one
0:30:56 to a camera vlog style on YouTube.
0:30:58 And so you do like vlogging on YouTube.
0:31:00 But I would, my recommendation is,
0:31:02 is decide what that is for you,
0:31:04 whether you, you try it all out
0:31:04 and kind of figure out,
0:31:05 oh, this is what I’m better at
0:31:07 or you already know that about yourself.
0:31:10 Like I obviously knew I’m not the person to write.
0:31:11 I didn’t need to go try that.
0:31:12 It was just like, that I’m not good.
0:31:12 That’s not a strength.
0:31:14 Let’s lean, let’s go somewhere else.
0:31:17 So my advice is to lean into the thing
0:31:18 that you feel most comfortable with
0:31:20 because every one of those mediums,
0:31:20 like I said before,
0:31:22 is like a different business for us.
0:31:24 So you can be successful
0:31:26 at whatever it is that you have to offer
0:31:27 on any one of those mediums.
0:31:29 And you’re most likely to be successful
0:31:31 on the one that you like doing
0:31:32 and that you’re good at.
0:31:35 And so instead of like spreading yourself thin
0:31:37 and trying to do a little bit of all of it
0:31:39 and kind of being like a jack of all trades
0:31:39 instead of an ace of one,
0:31:42 like literally hone in on the one
0:31:44 or two things that you communicate best on
0:31:48 and really double and triple down on figuring that out
0:31:50 because I think you could build a sustainable business
0:31:50 on one platform.
0:31:52 Although I think there’s tremendous value
0:31:54 in being on all of them.
0:31:55 Stay in your lane first,
0:31:56 get really good at it.
0:31:59 And then if you are like me,
0:32:01 you learn to outsource and you outsource that
0:32:03 or you learn those other platforms over time
0:32:05 and you’ll learn a lot
0:32:08 just by growing a community on one of them first.
0:32:10 So that’s typically what I recommend to people.
0:32:11 Such good advice.
0:32:13 Last question on business.
0:32:16 I know that there’s a lot of creator entrepreneurs
0:32:17 out there right now.
0:32:18 This is the world that we live in.
0:32:21 So a lot of entrepreneurs also have a large following
0:32:23 which means that they’re probably getting brands
0:32:25 approaching them for sponsorships.
0:32:27 So would love to understand
0:32:29 if you guys are taking sponsorships
0:32:32 and how you go about thinking about
0:32:34 the brand partnerships that you go with.
0:32:36 I love that we got here
0:32:39 because one of the things I’m most proud of
0:32:41 that we did was I think we really disrupted
0:32:44 the advertising space on podcast.
0:32:46 So 10 years ago when we came in this,
0:32:47 this is relatively new.
0:32:50 No big brands are advertising on podcast yet.
0:32:53 Very few people realize what a powerful medium it is.
0:32:55 So the companies are pretty sparse.
0:32:56 Although in the fitness space,
0:32:58 there was a lot of like supplement companies
0:33:00 and a lot of these companies were there.
0:33:02 They were figuring this out early on.
0:33:04 And what was really good was that
0:33:07 we were so protective of the brand
0:33:10 and our branding and our voice
0:33:12 that we didn’t want to convolut it with
0:33:15 other brands and other people’s voice
0:33:16 and direction and vision.
0:33:19 So we agreed that we may never take advertising.
0:33:20 So we said that early on.
0:33:21 We said, you know what?
0:33:22 We can build a successful business
0:33:24 and we don’t need to take on
0:33:26 advertising sponsorship money from any.
0:33:28 And it obviously is when we hit new and noteworthy
0:33:29 and we were getting out there,
0:33:30 we are getting approached right away.
0:33:32 And of course there’s a temptation
0:33:34 when you’re making no money and someone says,
0:33:36 I’ll give you $1,000 to do a commercial
0:33:37 on your show every day or what like that.
0:33:39 Would you take it like, oh wow, 1,000 bucks.
0:33:40 We’re making no money.
0:33:41 That’s money.
0:33:41 Like let’s do it.
0:33:42 It’s reoccurring.
0:33:43 But we agreed no way.
0:33:45 Like this is not an end.
0:33:47 And we did that for several years.
0:33:49 So we were getting actually kind of bombarded
0:33:49 by a lot of company.
0:33:51 I mean, it’s not like Nike was coming up to us
0:33:53 and these brands and we’d be like,
0:33:53 I mean, if that would have happened,
0:33:55 I’m sure we would have been over the moon.
0:33:55 But that ain’t happening.
0:33:56 If you’re just building your business
0:33:58 and you’re just getting started,
0:34:00 those huge companies are not going after
0:34:02 the small entrepreneur
0:34:03 that’s getting their first thousand listeners.
0:34:06 What you’re getting is a lot of other startup companies,
0:34:07 a lot of their supplement companies,
0:34:09 small brands that know
0:34:11 that they could probably offer you a couple hundred bucks
0:34:12 because to you that’s a lot of money
0:34:13 because you’re just getting started.
0:34:15 And so it’s appealing and it’s great for them
0:34:17 because if they can spend a couple hundred bucks
0:34:20 to get a thousand or a few thousand people
0:34:21 to hear about their brand,
0:34:22 it’s great ROI for them.
0:34:24 So it is very selfish on there.
0:34:25 And it’s a completely motivated by that.
0:34:26 It’s a numbers game.
0:34:27 Plus at that time,
0:34:30 so I was here before people realized
0:34:31 how powerful podcasting was.
0:34:32 And I’ve been here after,
0:34:34 the companies were really taking advantage
0:34:35 of a lot of the podcasting.
0:34:37 And I actually, luckily,
0:34:39 I had enough of business acumen
0:34:40 to recognize that right away.
0:34:41 Wait, wait, wait a second.
0:34:44 You’re going to pay me just based off of listens?
0:34:45 The same.
0:34:46 So let me get this straight.
0:34:50 You have three guys have a marketing sales background.
0:34:52 We pride ourselves on being really good at that.
0:34:54 We’ve built an incredibly community.
0:34:55 Our community might be small.
0:34:56 It might only be 5,000 people right now.
0:34:58 But you’re going to pay me the exact same amount of money
0:35:00 as this other just random person
0:35:02 who might not have a relationship,
0:35:03 might not have any sales skills.
0:35:05 The same just based off of CPMs.
0:35:06 Just off of downloads.
0:35:09 That’s how you decide how much you’re like, no way.
0:35:10 No way.
0:35:13 I know how valuable even my five customers are
0:35:14 because those five customers,
0:35:15 they’ll go do,
0:35:16 they’ll go buy anything I tell them to
0:35:18 because I’ve already built that relationship with them.
0:35:21 So you can use for the audience.
0:35:23 Let me tell you how important and powerful this is.
0:35:25 We have a lot of brands that we work with,
0:35:27 that work with someone like Joe Rogan.
0:35:30 And Joe Rogan obviously is way bigger than us.
0:35:34 We are their number one advertising partner over Joe Rogan.
0:35:38 And that’s not because we’re anywhere close to as big as he is,
0:35:40 but it’s because the relationship that we have built
0:35:41 with our community,
0:35:44 those 40,000 people that have listened to us
0:35:46 more than anything else on their pockets,
0:35:48 those are like real customers.
0:35:50 They buy almost anything that we remember.
0:35:52 And so we were very careful to protect that.
0:35:55 We didn’t want to just to make a couple extra bucks here or there.
0:35:57 We didn’t want to take advantage of that.
0:36:00 So, and we actually told that story on the podcast
0:36:01 while we were growing.
0:36:03 So if you go back far enough,
0:36:05 you can hear me share on the podcast,
0:36:07 oh yeah, this company tried to get us to sponsor them
0:36:09 and we would talk about it on the show.
0:36:10 And we tell them, no way.
0:36:12 We’re not going to send our people that way and this and that.
0:36:14 And oh, you’re just another supplement company doing this.
0:36:15 And we vetted them and they’re,
0:36:18 and we would like openly talk about
0:36:19 potentially taking on advertisers
0:36:22 and saying no to people for a very long time.
0:36:25 So the small audience that got to hear that
0:36:28 and the ones that were coming on could hear it for a long,
0:36:30 and then when we started to take partnerships on,
0:36:32 they weren’t people that were reaching out to us.
0:36:35 I began to go after companies that I was interested in.
0:36:37 If it was a product or a clothing line
0:36:39 or something that I liked,
0:36:41 I used the guys all love.
0:36:42 I’m like, you know what, let me reach out to them.
0:36:43 They don’t know who we are.
0:36:45 We’re not big enough for them to be on their radar.
0:36:47 But let me get on the phone with them.
0:36:48 And so I would reach out to these companies
0:36:51 and the initial conversation would be like,
0:36:52 “Oh, who are you? What do you do?”
0:36:55 And I’d have to sell them on how big our audience is,
0:36:57 even though it was still pretty small at that time
0:36:59 and what we do and our mission.
0:37:02 And most would be, “Okay, we’d hit it off relationship-wise.”
0:37:03 And then it’d come down to money, like,
0:37:05 “Wait, I don’t know if we’re going to pay you guys that much.
0:37:07 We don’t know what the ROI on that is.”
0:37:09 And so if it was a brand that I believed in,
0:37:11 that I liked, that I wanted a partnership,
0:37:13 one of the ways that I would lead with them is to say,
0:37:14 “Hey, listen, this is my commitment to you.
0:37:16 I like your brand so much.
0:37:19 I don’t want just an advertising deal with you guys.
0:37:21 I want to build a partnership and a relationship.”
0:37:24 So we don’t do advertising, affiliate-type deals.
0:37:26 We build partnerships and relationships.
0:37:29 And this is how much I’m committed to that with you.
0:37:31 So we have the podcast, which is our biggest medium,
0:37:33 where we get probably the best ROI.
0:37:36 And also, this is how much I think our commercials are worth.
0:37:38 And if you do not make that money back,
0:37:39 I will guarantee you to get it.
0:37:41 Because what I’ll do is I’ll use my email list.
0:37:43 I’ll use my Instagram.
0:37:44 I’ll use Facebook.
0:37:47 I’ll use all my other platforms to make good on that deal.
0:37:48 And they were like, “Really?”
0:37:50 I said, “Yeah, so it’s zero risk for you.
0:37:52 You spend $5,000 with me.
0:37:54 I will guarantee you $5,000 back.”
0:37:55 I think the podcast will do it.
0:37:58 But if the podcast doesn’t, you communicate with my team.
0:38:00 Weekly, I have a person on point who does this.
0:38:02 Every Monday, you talk to her.
0:38:03 You let her know.
0:38:05 If we’re underperforming on numbers,
0:38:07 then our job will be then to make sure
0:38:09 that we bring those up using our other social media platforms.
0:38:12 So we never sold any other medium.
0:38:13 We only sold the podcast.
0:38:17 And then I would agree to them that I will deliver on our ROI.
0:38:18 We built a reputation around that.
0:38:20 And then before long, we were the podcast
0:38:22 that everybody was like, “Go work with Mind Pump
0:38:24 ’cause you’re guaranteed not to lose.”
0:38:27 And so then I had people banging down my door,
0:38:28 asking to advertise.
0:38:30 And so then I got to be very picky and choosy
0:38:32 with the brands that aligned that I love,
0:38:34 that I wanted to work with.
0:38:36 And it was less about the exact dollar amount.
0:38:38 It was more about building that relationship
0:38:39 with brands that align with us
0:38:41 and that our customers we thought would like.
0:38:44 And so at first, what do we do the first year?
0:38:48 $60,000 or something in advertising, something like that.
0:38:51 It’ll do over $5 million in advertising now.
0:38:53 But it started as this small revenue stream
0:38:55 that we didn’t need that we said,
0:38:57 “Hey, let’s go build it this way.”
0:38:59 And I didn’t see anybody else
0:39:01 making promises like that in the space.
0:39:03 The conversations I had were awesome.
0:39:05 They would go, “Oh my God, like nobody is doing that.
0:39:06 You guys are gonna guarantee it.”
0:39:07 I said, “Yeah, I’m gonna guarantee you.”
0:39:10 Because my goal is to present you a price
0:39:13 that I’m pretty confident that we can deliver on the podcast.
0:39:14 And my goal is to not use it
0:39:17 ’cause I don’t want to convolut my message on social media.
0:39:19 So if you go through my social media,
0:39:21 you won’t see any brands, you won’t see any promotion.
0:39:23 I don’t do any of that stuff, especially on my personal page.
0:39:25 None of that stuff happens because I don’t want to do that.
0:39:27 But I care enough about the relationship
0:39:29 that if I needed to bring that brand up
0:39:33 to show them to make good on a deal like that, then I would.
0:39:35 And so now when you fast forward,
0:39:37 what is it, seven years or so later when we start them,
0:39:41 I go into 2025, by August of this year,
0:39:45 we have all advertising locked out completely for 2025.
0:39:49 Contract signed, there’s no opt-out, there’s no negotiation,
0:39:50 there’s no minimum marks, there’s no nothing.
0:39:54 It’s, this is what it costs, this is where the spots are,
0:39:56 you’re paid for the year, and then we deliver.
0:40:00 And so we’ve built that reputation with brands that,
0:40:02 it’s cool now, it was work, the beginning,
0:40:04 it was a lot of work to build those relationships,
0:40:06 to find those companies, to prove that to them.
0:40:08 But now we have a reputation.
0:40:09 We have a reputation in the space
0:40:10 that you want to work with us.
0:40:13 And so now it’s cool, like I had a last year,
0:40:15 I don’t know if you’re familiar with the brand,
0:40:18 Chile or Ulurs, they’re their sleep bedpads, whatever.
0:40:19 That business went under last year,
0:40:22 we were partners with them for like two or three years,
0:40:25 working with that company, and we found out,
0:40:27 we didn’t know that their business was going under.
0:40:30 The way we found out was through their competitor,
0:40:33 Aidsleep, had been wanting to work with us for so long,
0:40:35 had been watching the market,
0:40:37 knew that that company was going under,
0:40:38 before we knew they were going under,
0:40:39 they were still under contract with us
0:40:40 and still paying their bills.
0:40:41 So we didn’t, we weren’t the wiser,
0:40:43 but they were about to go under,
0:40:44 they reach out to us and say,
0:40:46 “Hey, they’re not going to be able
0:40:47 “to continue sponsorship next year.
0:40:49 “We know how long of a wait list you guys have,
0:40:50 “we want in on next year.
0:40:52 “We’re willing to put money down right now
0:40:55 “to guarantee that we can advertise with you guys,
0:40:56 “because we know that you’re not going to be able
0:40:56 “to sponsor to them.
0:40:58 “We’re a better product, we’ll send you,
0:41:00 “let us send you a couple mattresses right now
0:41:02 “so you can try the product ahead of time.”
0:41:03 That’s the type of relationship building
0:41:04 that we’ve done with partners,
0:41:06 and that’s how bad people want to work with the company.
0:41:08 But it wasn’t built overnight,
0:41:11 it was built over years of building relationships.
0:41:14 And being very careful and meticulous
0:41:16 about who we work with as a sponsorship
0:41:19 and a partnership on the show.
0:41:20 And if you chase the,
0:41:22 the a little bit of initial money you might get,
0:41:25 it could really tarnish a brand
0:41:27 and a relationship that you have with your customers.
0:41:29 Whereas now, because our,
0:41:32 and we took our audience along with that journey,
0:41:33 they know, like if we,
0:41:34 if there’s a new company we’re working with
0:41:36 and we drop it, like people go run and buy it
0:41:38 before they even think twice about it.
0:41:40 They don’t, they know that we did all that vetting
0:41:43 and they know we wouldn’t represent them
0:41:45 if they weren’t a brand that’s awesome
0:41:47 or that aligns with our community.
0:41:50 And so that’s really served us today.
0:41:52 And now it’s one of the most powerful revenue streams
0:41:54 that we have that we didn’t intend on having.
0:41:57 I love to hear about this
0:41:59 because this is what I do for a living.
0:42:01 I own a podcast network.
0:42:03 So I represent like Jenna Kutcher
0:42:05 and Amy Porterfield and John Lee Dumas
0:42:07 and all these top business podcasts.
0:42:08 And I get them sponsorships.
0:42:10 And so it’s just so cool to hear from like somebody
0:42:13 who’s been in the game for even longer than me
0:42:14 and it has like pioneered.
0:42:17 We’re doing, we have a lot of similarities
0:42:19 in the terms, in terms of like how we sell,
0:42:21 the fact that you were including other channels
0:42:23 to guarantee and all that cool stuff.
0:42:25 So for me, that was awesome to just hear somebody
0:42:27 like you share all that insight.
0:42:28 So thank you so much.
0:42:31 We’ll be right back after a quick break
0:42:32 from our sponsors.
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0:47:06 Before we go, one question about fitness.
0:47:07 We didn’t talk about fitness at all
0:47:09 because you have so much business acumen.
0:47:12 You’re the business guy of Mind Pump.
0:47:13 What is one piece of fitness advice
0:47:16 that you could give to entrepreneurs specifically?
0:47:19 I think in this, and this goes for entrepreneurs
0:47:23 and just people in general when it comes to working out
0:47:25 and fitness is that we over complicate it
0:47:28 because there’s so much noise and what’s the best
0:47:29 exercise program?
0:47:30 What’s the best diet?
0:47:30 What’s the best this?
0:47:33 And it’s like, honestly, if you lift weights
0:47:37 two hours to three hours tops a week, that’s it.
0:47:41 Strength train, focus on the big lifts, squat,
0:47:43 deadlift, bench, overhead press.
0:47:47 That by itself and approach working out, like a skill,
0:47:49 not a punishment.
0:47:52 You don’t go into your workout trying to get a crazy sweat.
0:47:54 You’re not trying to chase being super sore.
0:47:56 Go in, practice those movements, get good at them,
0:47:59 get strong and slowly do that.
0:48:02 Just and consistency matters more than anything else.
0:48:05 That’s the first thing related to like what to do exercise wise.
0:48:08 Don’t over complicate it, focus on those things.
0:48:09 Exercise is not a form of punishment.
0:48:12 The biggest mistake people make is over applying intensity
0:48:13 and volume.
0:48:16 It takes very little to elicit that change
0:48:19 and to get the body adapting to want to build muscle
0:48:20 and then feed it properly,
0:48:21 would make sure you’re hit your protein intake.
0:48:23 That’s the simple advice.
0:48:25 Why you want to do this as an entrepreneur?
0:48:28 And I’m reminded of this every time I fall off the wagon
0:48:31 or I’m on an off streak of say 30 days
0:48:32 where I might not have lifted or something like that
0:48:33 because I’m busy.
0:48:35 And I tell myself this, the same excuse like,
0:48:37 “Oh my God, I’m so busy.
0:48:39 I can’t get to my working workout.”
0:48:40 Or, “Oh, I don’t have time at this time.
0:48:41 I’ve got all this going this and that.”
0:48:46 It is wild how much more time you get when you work out.
0:48:48 You are a, you’re a better husband.
0:48:49 You’re a better wife.
0:48:50 You’re a better business partner.
0:48:51 You’re a better entrepreneur.
0:48:53 You have more energy.
0:48:54 You have more stamina.
0:48:55 You sleep better.
0:48:55 You’re sharper.
0:48:57 You have more cognitive.
0:48:59 I mean, you are just better
0:49:01 when you are a healthier version of yourself.
0:49:04 So if you really care about being very successful
0:49:07 in entrepreneurship and you, which the skill sets are,
0:49:10 speed, stamina, like your acumen,
0:49:11 your cognitive function,
0:49:13 like these things all matter
0:49:14 when you want to be successful.
0:49:16 The healthier, stronger version of you
0:49:19 is better on all those attributes.
0:49:20 All of them, they all come up.
0:49:23 And you even get more time in the day.
0:49:24 I know that sounds weird.
0:49:25 Like, wait, how does that make sense?
0:49:26 You’re telling me that I work out for an hour
0:49:29 and I get more, yes, because it’s wild what happens.
0:49:32 Like, and then why that is is because every minute
0:49:34 of your day is slightly more productive
0:49:36 than it would be if you’re not working out.
0:49:38 And those minutes in the day or the entire day
0:49:40 add up way more than the 50 minutes
0:49:42 that you committed to that workout.
0:49:43 And so do it.
0:49:46 Your future successful entrepreneurial self
0:49:49 will thank you because you’ve made time to do that.
0:49:50 And you will get the time back
0:49:53 and you’ll get the return on investment 10 fold,
0:49:55 being a healthier, stronger version of yourself.
0:49:56 So good.
0:49:58 Adam, this has been an incredible conversation.
0:50:00 I really, really enjoyed it.
0:50:02 I usually don’t go almost two hours as my guest.
0:50:04 So thank you for your time.
0:50:06 It’s been an hour and 45 minutes, but it’s been awesome.
0:50:10 You are like so knowledgeable, just so impressed with you.
0:50:11 I end my show with two questions.
0:50:13 We can be quick with them.
0:50:16 What is one actionable thing my young and profitors can do today
0:50:18 to become more profitable tomorrow?
0:50:20 To become more profitable.
0:50:21 Here’s what I’m going to lean into.
0:50:24 And that because it didn’t hit me till I was 26.
0:50:27 And that was the pursuit of daily growth.
0:50:30 I wasn’t, I didn’t come from a big family of reading.
0:50:33 And I didn’t think of that as something as something
0:50:34 that would return on my investment.
0:50:36 But holy crap is that.
0:50:39 And I know that Alex Hermosi, right, says this a lot too,
0:50:41 talks about like, I love the way he talks about
0:50:44 when someone asks him how to invest $10,000.
0:50:46 When they would, you know, how do I do this?
0:50:47 I’m 20 years old, I have $10,000.
0:50:49 And he’s like, reinvest in yourself.
0:50:52 Go grow your skill sets in the marketplace
0:50:55 because nothing is going to give you a greater return
0:50:58 on your investment than improving who you are.
0:51:00 Get better, get growing.
0:51:03 And hold yourself accountable that on a daily, on a daily.
0:51:05 Like go ask yourself at the end of every day,
0:51:07 what did I learn today?
0:51:09 How did I get better at my craft?
0:51:11 How did I become a better person?
0:51:12 What did I read and learn?
0:51:14 And if you are, you’re stringing days together
0:51:16 where you don’t have an answer to that,
0:51:18 that’s your first thing to go do right now
0:51:21 is don’t let a day go by that you’re not growing
0:51:23 and learning and improving yourself
0:51:25 because that shit starts to compound.
0:51:27 And when you’ll look back five years later,
0:51:29 and boy, will you be so much more valuable
0:51:31 in the marketplace five years later
0:51:33 of doing that every single day.
0:51:35 Then if you just kind of half-hazardly go about it.
0:51:37 So true.
0:51:39 And what is your secret to profiting life?
0:51:41 This can go beyond business, beyond finance,
0:51:43 can go beyond what we even talked about today.
0:51:45 So the single best piece of advice
0:51:47 that was ever given to me changed my life.
0:51:49 I’ll tell you the short version of it.
0:51:54 I had just finished crushing goal at my gym, 110% of goal.
0:51:56 The boss came in, I was proud of myself, I was excited.
0:51:58 I thought he was coming in to tell me how great I was.
0:52:00 And he came in and he picked me apart,
0:52:02 told me I was all the things I was doing wrong
0:52:04 unless that it just, it broke my heart inside.
0:52:05 But that’s not who I am.
0:52:06 What did I do?
0:52:07 Work harder.
0:52:08 So I was in the back just working all these things,
0:52:09 getting my paperwork work,
0:52:11 being better of all the things that he said.
0:52:14 And my later on, who became a best friend of mine,
0:52:15 who was the manager at that time,
0:52:17 comes back and he sees me on the desk working on stuff.
0:52:19 He goes, what the eff are you doing?
0:52:20 He wipes everything on the table.
0:52:22 And I looked at him and the boss came in,
0:52:23 he told me I’m not doing this.
0:52:25 He says, Adam, listen, you’re in the position that you’re in
0:52:27 at this young of an age for a reason.
0:52:30 Stop focusing on the things that you’re not good at.
0:52:33 Focus on what you’re good at and be fucking great.
0:52:34 And that just hit me like a ton of bricks.
0:52:37 And it’s just like, he’s like, go be great at what you’re at.
0:52:39 And so I tell people, like, don’t get hung up
0:52:42 on your weaknesses and the things that you’re not so good at.
0:52:45 Lean into the things that you love and that you’re good at
0:52:48 and become an expert and become great at those things.
0:52:49 That will serve you so much more.
0:52:51 Such a good story.
0:52:53 Adam, where can everybody learn more about you
0:52:54 and everything that you do?
0:52:56 Look up Mind Pump.
0:52:58 I love to send people to mindpumpfree.com
0:53:01 because that’s a lot of where our free resources are.
0:53:05 You can find the show on any platform out there.
0:53:06 Don’t buy anything from me.
0:53:09 Go listen to all the free, valuable content I have first
0:53:10 and then hopefully become a listener too.
0:53:14 Amazing. Adam, you are welcome back whenever you’d like.
0:53:17 Thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.
0:53:17 Thank you, Hala.
0:53:26 Well, that wraps up my two-part interview with Adam Schaefer.
0:53:28 And there was so much here to take away from his approach
0:53:30 to marketing and audience building.
0:53:32 It was a masterclass.
0:53:36 And I think the one big thing that I really took away
0:53:39 from this conversation is that so many entrepreneurs
0:53:42 and businesses, they’re chasing followers.
0:53:45 They’re chasing trends on social media.
0:53:49 And it ends up that they lose sight of their true audience.
0:53:52 It becomes just like a pure numbers game.
0:53:55 But remember that getting eyeballs is way different
0:53:57 than getting customers.
0:53:59 And if you focus too much energy
0:54:01 on getting people’s attention online
0:54:04 by going viral and following algorithms and trends,
0:54:07 you could get steered in the wrong direction
0:54:09 and away from actually helping people
0:54:12 and the people that need your help the most.
0:54:14 So if you’re getting started
0:54:18 and you feel overwhelmed by the world of online marketing,
0:54:19 then do what Adam did.
0:54:23 Go help that one person who values your particular expertise,
0:54:25 skill, or product.
0:54:27 Help them change their life for the better.
0:54:31 Then once you help that person, go help five other people.
0:54:33 Like Adam said, the return on investment
0:54:35 from changing a life is worth so much more
0:54:38 than views, clicks, or paid advertising.
0:54:41 And if you build that loyal following organically,
0:54:46 break by brick, follower by follower by providing value,
0:54:51 then that audience will follow you across platforms
0:54:53 and to other products and services.
0:54:57 You’ve built yourself an audience-based business.
0:55:00 And if one platform changes its algorithm,
0:55:02 you won’t be stuck trying to rebuild
0:55:04 or relocate your audience.
0:55:08 Thank you for being a loyal follower of this podcast.
0:55:11 If you listen, learned, and profited from this conversation,
0:55:12 then help us spread the word
0:55:14 about Young and Profiting Podcast
0:55:16 and share this episode with somebody else.
0:55:19 And if you did enjoy the show and you learned something
0:55:22 and you’re a loyal listener, a loyal subscriber,
0:55:25 then drop us a five-star review on Apple Podcast.
0:55:27 If you’re a new listener, let me know what you thought
0:55:29 about the show and make sure you don’t forget
0:55:32 to subscribe so you never miss an episode.
0:55:34 If you want to watch all of our podcasts on videos,
0:55:36 you can find us on YouTube.
0:55:39 My YouTube channel is growing really fast.
0:55:40 I think you guys are going to love it.
0:55:44 You can also find me on Instagram @yappathala
0:55:45 or LinkedIn by searching my name.
0:55:46 It’s Halla Taha.
0:55:48 And of course, I got to take a moment
0:55:53 to thank my Young and Profiting Podcast team at Yapp Media.
0:55:55 You guys are absolute rock stars.
0:55:57 It takes a whole village to put on this show.
0:56:00 We’ve got producers, video editors, audio editors,
0:56:03 bookings team, sponsorship coordinators.
0:56:05 You guys are so amazing.
0:56:08 You make this podcast an incredible show.
0:56:10 And it’s really thanks to all your hard work.
0:56:11 I couldn’t do it without you.
0:56:13 This is your host, Halla Taha,
0:56:16 aka the Podcast Princess, signing off.
0:56:19 (upbeat music)
0:56:21 (upbeat music)
0:56:24 (upbeat music)
0:56:27 (upbeat music)
0:56:29 (upbeat music)
0:56:38 [BLANK_AUDIO]