Adam Schafer - Beyond the Fake: Mind Pump on Trust, Truth, and Industry Snake Oil

Hey friends, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness and wellness industry podcast for over five years and running. I'm your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the honor of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. If you like the show, we'd love it if you took three minutes of your day to leave us a nice supporter review wherever you consume your podcasts. If you're interested in staying up to date with the future of fitness, go to futurofitness.co to subscribe and get weekly summaries dropped into your inbox. Now on to the show. Perfect Gym isn't just another gym management system. They are part of the Sport Alliance Group, Europe's leading fitness software company that has officially entered the US market. Now, I've seen this movie before, but here's the difference. They've opened up a U.S. headquarters in Boston because they understand that the American market deserves dedicated, localized support. After digging into the platform, one benefit especially stood out. They are simplifying the nightmare that keeps business owners up at night migrations. These guys were able to migrate one mega client with more than 250 locations in six different countries in just 20 days between two payment runs. No disrupting operations, no member loss, one seamless operation that simply works. Now, if you have ever switched platforms, you know how terrifying that process can be and how truly impressive that feat is. At a high level, here's their secret sauce. They give the power back to the operator. Instead of forcing you into their closed ecosystem, their Perfect Gym Marketplace connects with over 120 integration partners. So want to use your own app, your preferred payment processor, class pass for booking, no problem. Whether you're running a single studio or managing a multi-location enterprise, Perfect Gym was built from the ground up for multi-club operations. They've invested a ton into this platform, and now they're bringing that European engineering excellence to America. The migration experts have arrived. Check out perfectgym.com where enterprise level sophistication meets operator freedom. Today's episode of The Future of Fitness is brought to you by Flex, the only HSA FSA payments infrastructure built specifically for leading fitness and wellness brands. I have been so impressed with the Flex team and their vision to transform how people pay for fitness. They built a platform that makes HSA and FSA spending seamless, unlocking a new revenue stream for brands and giving consumers easier access to the products and services that keep them healthy. Here's why this matters. Flex helps fitness brands increase average order value by up to 50% and boost checkout conversion by 30%. That is not just incremental growth, that is transformational revenue powered by consumer dollars that are already set aside for health and wellness. What excites me the most is that Flex is changing the game for the entire industry. They're bridging the gap between healthcare and fitness by making it simple for consumers to spend their pre-tax dollars on the products and services that help them feel and perform their best. Flex works with fitness leaders like iFit, Johnson Fitness, Tempo, and Allo Moves. Honestly, this is a no-brainer, and I rarely say that. If you want to see how Flex can drive growth for your fitness brand, visit with Flex.com. That is with Flex.com. Now onto the show. All right, we are live. Adam Schaefer. Welcome to the future of fitness, man.

Hey, how you doing, Eric?

Doing great. I'm doing great. Thanks for doing this. You know, I we were just talking pre-recording. I had Sal on last year. Um, huge fan of Mind Pump, what you guys have built. I'm always kind of keeping an eye on you know how you build an empire around podcast content uh specifically. Uh I like to own one someday, uh maybe, but you know, obviously I picked the the B2B route, which is very difficult and challenging, but so is yours. Uh difficult and challenging still.

Uh I'm not sure which one's easier. I don't know if one's easier.

I don't know. I don't know. We'll find out maybe in this conversation. But uh so many things to talk with you about. I mean, you like you stated, you're the the business mind behind Mind Pump, and you guys have a very successful business that you guys have built. And I know it hasn't been easy, it hasn't been a short run. You guys have been doing this for a long time, and there's a lot of things to talk about from your business philosophy to how to scale content business, all of the avenues that you guys have as far as revenue coming in. Um, you've built something truly unique. So uh and we're gonna talk about the industry overall, man. I mean, you have a really good perspective on especially how the consumers are reacting to information, um, products, things like that. And I know you you guys really stand up for truth. And one of the things that consumers are finding, and even in the space that I talk to, is everyone's frustrated with how much misinformation, bad information there is. Consumers are confused, they're losing trust, especially in the wellness category, like fast, right? There's a lot of snake oil. So um, with all that being said, let's start with this Adam. Give us a little bit of your background, man. I know you're an IFBV pro, you you've done a lot of competition, you've updated operating gyms, you got a unique background that led you here. So give us that.

Yeah, so I mean, there's four of us that have built this thing, and uh, I think the reason why we have had the success is because we're all so unique and different. As much, even though we came together and became pretty good buddies, uh, we all have different strengths. Um of the four of us, I I Doug's not wasn't a trainer background, but I only spent a small time being an actual personal trainer. A majority of my time was training trainers. So uh what I got pretty good at pretty early was developing and leading other personal trainers. And so, and I had just uh I just loved the business side um even more than the actual training client. In fact, I remember early on feeling kind of burnt out of the training the one-on-one, just the energy it suck it takes to train eight, ten clients a day and the different personalities. But I did really love uh the industry and where that was going and being a part of that. I was lucky enough to be a part of 24 Hour Fitness in its heyday when it was a multi-billion dollar chain and one of the biggest in the world. And so that was a lot of my schooling, was that was just getting uh getting uh my experience being a personal trainer and leading there. And so that's kind of my background. Then you have Sal who's like super science heavy, and then you have Justin who's like a functional personal trainer, like definitely into unconventional type of lifts. And then you have Doug who had like a finance background and insurance sales and a lot of like the techie stuff. And so it just made for this incredible looking back now. It looks like, I mean, we just kind of hit it off. Uh I I didn't really realize that was going to be everybody's kind of strengths and why it would do well, but that's really why the podcast I think did so well is because each of us brought something unique uh to the table. We all knew enough about fitness um that we we agreed on a lot of things, but we didn't actually agree on everything. And I think that's also part of the dynamic of the content that we create is it's not this echo chamber. You know, there's this open discussion and debate, and uh I think people enjoy that authenticity. I think they really enjoy, these aren't these guys that are just preaching their way, everybody else is wrong. It's like this dialogue that we're having. And really what we saw was this opportunity to have the conversations that we were all having with our clients. When I looked at the kind of the landscape 10 years ago at the podcast space, nobody was really, I felt like there was like two big extremes, either like pure entertainment or like really, really high science, where you're you kind of be kind of a fitness nerd to want to listen to it, but nobody was kind of having the conversations like we were having with our clients. And since our clients are what we thought the major consumers of personal training and anything fitness related, it kind of felt like there was a small percentage of people that were really trying to speak to the majority. And that was kind of the desired outcome was okay, can we put together a podcast that emulates the conversations that we had with our clients? And uh, you know, we thought with our experience, we had a lot to offer. And uh, you know, would if we went out there, we were terrible too. We weren't good at we really weren't at all, at all. Um, but we we also didn't believe we were. So I think we we we agreed that hey, we don't have any experience in this media background. But what we had was experience in fitness. We understood the consumer uh pretty well because of our experience training so many clients for so many years. And it's like, let's just go talk to them. We have so much to say and give to them. Let's lead from that and then let's see if it gets some sort of traction. And we really didn't have this elaborate business plan and said, oh, we're gonna scale to this, and it's gonna look, it was like we have this thing, we believe we did believe in podcasting so before early, and I think uh before a lot of people knew what it was. Matter of fact, I remember a time, you know, when we were two years in, even and starting to do well. Uh, I people asked me what I did, and it was so difficult for me to explain. I just default back to I'm a I'm a personal trainer uh because nobody knew what a podcast was. Yeah. And so I do believe that we we timed the market, which you you know and business is so important, at a really good time when not a lot of people were having a lot of conversations on podcasts in comparison to where we're at today. And uh yeah, the conversation just took off. I think people were drawn to it. I think to your point, um, about just being real and honest, like that was that was the formula was this we're gonna you know pull the curtain back on the industry and and share how most people make money, what's successful, what's not, uh, all of our flaws, all the things that we were incorrect about. And we just kind of led with that foot. And uh, I think it served us really well. I think it it connected with a lot of uh your average consumers and it just grew up. But it was a very slow process. It wasn't an overnight, you know, success or explosion. It was just incremental growth month over month, year over year, and uh and that we and we saw that. And we all, and over time, you know, over yeah, like we never sat down and even said, hey, you're the CEO, you're the CMO. It was just like, hey, the four of us, we have this idea, we think we have a lot to give and value. Let's lead from that, and then we'll see what it kind of manifests into. And sure enough, like we all kind of fell into our natural roles and then uh began really building this thing. And so I'd say by about year three, it was at a level where everybody could leave anything else that they were doing business-wise and go all in full-time. And you know, looking back now, we're approaching 11 years and 25 full full-time employees where they all have full 401k benefits, you know, and it's uh it's quite the machine now.

Does that ever do you ever stop and think about that and think like, holy shit, I got 25 employees now? Like we just started like recording a podcast, and and not just you know, the excitement around that and the vanity numbers, but also like that's a responsibility, dude. Like you, you, you are responsible for people's livelihoods now.

You just hit something that's been heavy on my heart uh just in the last three months a lot. So we've this has become one of the 11 years, for 10 of it, we literally grew small, incremental, but month over month, year over year, quarter over quarter, for 10 years straight. This last year has been the most challenging year we've ever had. Simultaneously, I've been expanding and hiring. And so the the pressure and the responsibility of the team weighs on me like it never has before. When it was just the four of us, and we all, everybody's pretty good with their with their finances, invested well, set themselves up pretty well. And so this the pressure that I feel today is so different than what it felt, say 10, 15 years ago when it was just myself that I was responsible for. But I also like that. Um, it if it gives me a kind of a different purpose. Like what drives me every day is not, can I add another zero to my bank account or the oral? But it's just like, hey, there's there's 25 kids out there that rely on me and my partners to continue to keep this thing going. And and I like that. But it does add a little bit of extra pressure when you're in a situation like we are right now where I'm expanding and also seeing revenue go down. That makes it, but I also think that it also brings the best of us out. Um, we've seen this over a decade of doing this business. We have, like most businesses, kind of peaks and valleys. And, you know, what when when I see the best of my partners, it is when we're challenged. When things are going great and everything's growing and we're high-fiving and winning, yeah, it's not the best version of us. It's not. It might be one of the funnest times for us. Like we're having a good time, but the best version of us comes out when uh kind of in these oh shit moments that I feel like we're in in the business right now. And so it does give me a different, a different purpose. It's a different lens that I look through than I ever did. Um, but I love it. I love that. I love that challenge. It it gives me the drive that I think I need to be able to maintain or scale something of this size. Because if it was just about myself, yeah, I would have, it would, I would have been done already. We would have just, we would have chalked it up at four or five employees and said, hey, we can just run the sponsorship money that we get from the podcast and what we make the on just on an evergreen content that's out there and live the same lifestyle that we live currently now. But really a lot of the motivation today is is the people. And and I do like that. I do really, really enjoy that.

It's it's it's why business and entrepreneurship is so closely tied to personal development, right? It's like you um and I've seen this before. It's it's hard to believe when you're in the moment. Like when you get through these these valleys, right? Your back's against the wall, you gotta make some changes, you gotta do something, right? You gotta I I've seen it time and time again where I truly believe that those are the moments where growth, where growth actually initiates again. But when you're in the moment, it's really freaking hard to believe that, right? Like that's why it's easier I can coach someone or mentor someone through and be like, hey, you're not gonna believe me when I tell you this, but you're gonna be just fine. You're actually gonna be better. Yeah, but it's gonna suck. So how do you keep yeah, how do you keep your mindset strong as you go through these periods and keep faith? Is it is it confidence? Is it support? Like what what is it, what does that mean to you?

Uh well, I'd say there's there's two two big things there. Confidence, because um, like you, you've seen it in enough times that it's not the first time you've been there, right? It's not the first time that you've been in that position. And so believing and trusting in the process is is so important that you you have an ultimate vision. Um, it you expect it to be difficult along the way. And then I I do think having a good support system. So the fact that I've got three other partners that I strongly believe in. I've got a wife that's uh integrated into the business and plays a very intricate part to the success of mind pump, and I go home to her every single day. Um, she's a great reminder of that and and telling me you're doing the right thing. Don't worry, stay the course, you know what you're doing. You know, and so I I don't think I could do it without them. I I know I couldn't. There's no way uh I build this to the size that it is uh or have the success that I've had without my partners or without my wife. Just I I know I couldn't. I mean, I I I would have been successful and done okay all just fine on my own. But I really believe to build something as sophisticated as this business is and that kind of success, uh I had to have the wife I had, and I had to have those partners that I had. Um, and so yeah, I I rely heavily on we have every day we do the guys and I go for a walk. And that walk is no phones, it's a 10, 20 minute walk. Right. We just kind of yeah, it's and I tell you, it's been uh it's very therapeutic. Uh it's that kind of that time where we we just organically have a lot of dialogue around that. And, you know, and we're it's just the four of us, so this is where we do express our stress. It's like, son of a bitch, I can't believe that's going on right now, and oh, I'm just so frustrated. And then the other guy's like, hey, it's all right, you know, what we're doing is the right thing. I can feel it. I can feel the energy of the staff, I can feel the way our customers are responding to us. We're doing the right things, just stay the course. And so, yeah, having that, having those partners, if I was all on a ship all by myself and and feeling all the emotions of the and the rockiness of the business in in those times, and I didn't have that, oh, I mean, it it'd be tough. It takes a special human being to do that uh by yourself. And so I I am very blessed that I have that. I think uh if you don't, if you're a if you're a solo entrepreneur, I I do believe that seeking out that type of mentorship or relationships, even if they're not a part of the business, I think it's paramount to continue like to your point, how similar this is to personal growth. Like you, I think uh you stop growing as a person, I think your business will stop growing also. And so fostering those relationships, or even if you got to pay to be in some of those groups, I've done that before where I was a part of those, you know, groups like Hampton and you know, why comment, those type of groups where I've got other successful people that can mentor and bounce conversations off of. Yeah, I think that's so important when scaling something like this.

Yeah, man. Well, let's get into your business. And uh, I mean, just in the research I see from you know the multiple revenue streams that you guys have, right? You have the the advertising and sponsorship, right? Um how many downloads are you guys at? It was like 350 million plus or more, or like what Oh, yeah.

Well, we're way over that now. That hasn't been updated in a long in a long time. We I think the last time Doug looked, we're approaching a half a billion or we're over a half a billion. So it's it's up there. It averages it between all platforms, because now we're so uh diversified with Spotify, YouTube. Used to be 90% iTunes, but as the other competitors like Spotify and YouTube have come along, it's really diversified where the listens are happening now. Um so it's about 10 million listens a month, is what we average between the main platforms. Um and the advertising side is as of right now, this has changed throughout years, like depending on what's doing the best. The advertising is right now the strongest uh part of the business. So uh up until a year ago, uh Maps Fitness Products, which is the personal training programs that we sell that are digital programs on your phone, um, that has been uh that is what built this business. So before we even had advertising, Maps Fitness Products, which is the sister company to Mind Pump Media and produces all the programs, and we have over 25 digital programs and mods and things that go with that, those assets uh have carried the business for 10 years and we're always the greatest uh driver. But this last year, and then what I'm talking about, you know, I'm I'm probably gonna lose close to three million this year in revenue from that. That is normally very, very consistent. And so for the business to lose that kind of revenue, uh, we're having to make it up in other departments. So now advertising is number one, and then right underneath that would now be Maps Fitness Products. But it it's flipped because in previous years it's always been the other way around.

Yeah, I want to get some insights into you on why. And um, you know, when I when we talk about your revenue streams, I think it's really um it's notable for people to pay attention that I think when a lot of people, at least the podcasters I talk to, they start a podcast, it's very linear in thought. Like I'm gonna start a podcast, I'm gonna build an audience, people are gonna pay me for sponsorship. Yes, that's one way to do it. Maybe. But the fastest way to monetizing is actually backing up services and products and things that you own or things like that. So you you have you know, podcast advertising, you guys have training programs, you have personal training, you have education and coaching, you have affiliate partnerships, you got a lot of different things. So talk about this, the robustness of the revenue streams you guys have created and um how did you select those revenue streams over time? Did you try new things and they didn't work? Or yeah, walk us through the streams.

Great, great question, and I love leading it with the kind of the point you were alluding to with the sponsorship. I so I get a lot of questions around the starting a podcast, obviously, and and building a business around it. And you're right. The two most common things I hear are uh, you know, I'm gonna build this thing and get advertising money, or I'm gonna build this thing and sell t-shirts. Both horrible ideas. Horrible ideas. I just want to I just want anyone listening right now that's thinking about doing a horrible idea. Uh yet I say that it's one of our biggest revenue producers, but we didn't build the business on the back of that because what the CPMs that advertisers pay, so which is the the basically the formula that they use to determine how much money they're gonna give for your podcast, is really low. I mean, you have to have a pretty large following before you get a decent amount of revenue from advertising. And by the time you're that big, had you created your own product or own offer, uh you would have made significantly more. So, my recommendations for people, and I don't actually recommend to do that before the business. I'm a firm believer in allowing your customer to tell you. So I I I teach or tell people like, go if you believe that you can start a podcast, I'm assuming that you either think you're really entertaining or you have something valuable to give to people. Go prove that first. Go out, go put produce content that you believe is valuable, that people will listen to it. And listen, if they won't even listen. To you for free, good luck trying to sell them or make money off them. So that that's already a hard hurdle. That's already a lot of work is figuring out what do people want to hear from me? What do I have to give that's really valuable? Go do that. And then once you do that, and you can actually garner the attention of hundreds or maybe thousands or tens of thousands, if you're lucky, of people, then listen to your community. What are they liking that you're talking about? What are they asking you questions about? There's where lies the business. And I think that's going to be so unique and different to every single person. And for us, when we were putting out content like that, we were talking a lot about programming. And at that time, we were talking about we didn't uh we uh weren't fans of the way CrossFit was doing programming way back in the days. Uh we talked about Beachbody, which was a multi-billion dollar business where most people were buying online and they were telling how terrible the programming was. And so uh naturally it caused people to say, Well, what would you guys do? And what would I mean, I like CrossFit, so if I like that type of workouts, how would you program it? Or, you know, you guys are talking about how you don't like what Beach Body does, but I want to work out, I want a digital program. What does it look like? Okay, incomes maps fitness products. And so we allowed the consumer to really steer the direction of the products and the offers that we would create. And I think a lot of people do it backwards. I think a lot of people say, I have this thing to sell, I want to go build a podcast, and they go build a podcast, and you know, which is difficult in itself, but then the consumer may not even be interested in the thing that they want to sell. This is why I think the t-shirt thing is so terrible. Like, I by no means do I think I'm a fashion designer or have, I mean, I think I could dress myself barely, but I don't think I can create something that millions of people want to buy. And so, you know, that that side of our business we treat is is like advertising, is like it's basically a wash. The amount of money we put into producing the shirts and shipping the shirts and paying the person to oversee all of it, you know, basically covers the overhead and we give away a bunch. And so it's like that business is a loss. And and then we're a good size. So imagine getting 10 million listens a month, but still I I can't sell enough t-shirts to to turn in a real solid profit to hire more than two people. So um, yeah, that's uh I don't know where I where I was going with that ramble with you, but it's it was the create it was the creation of the the business around media, you know, around content.

And it's um, you know, my personal journey, like doing a B2B podcast, is you know, my my audience will never be humongous. It's it's gonna be a certain size. You know, I can incrementally grow it um for sure, and I do, but you know, I've I've found multiple ways where if you looked at just the revenue I have from sponsorship and advertising, I'm extremely grateful for our presenting sponsors, Sport Alliance and Perfect Gym and um eGym and uh all of you guys. I love you guys. Um, and I this is more money than I actually thought I would make from sponsorships and advertising, to be honest with you.

Yeah, yeah.

But everything else around it, like how it drives my business and lead generation and partnerships and all those things is is incredibly unique in it's and I everything comes from the podcast, man. It's all that's what drives everything that I do. And it takes a little bit of creativity and noticing the advantages that you have. A lot of people just blindly keep recording content, but they're not really stepping back and be like, where's the value here? Right. What is it?

You just said something that I think is so important too, is that like you don't need a huge audience to build a very successful business. You need a core group of people that you serve really well, that you provide value for. So in your case with B2B, of course, you're not gonna get the average consumer, you're gonna get a lot of business operators that are interested in business stuff. I mean, so having uh, and let's go, I would compare this to like uh someone like Joe Rogan, who's gets tens of millions or more views for us, but his views are very different than the views that we get. We have a very specific community that we're serving. And so even though we're a fraction um of what the the cut the size of his, so so and I'll give you an example. I actually have a partner, um, ButcherBox, who advertises with Joe Rogan, advertised with us. We're their most valued uh partnership. Yeah, why? And it's yeah, oh yeah. And it's but it's because that's so in line with our audience who we serve. We we talk about organic, grass-fed food all the time, and we're serving people that are trying to watch their diet, get healthy, make good food choices. I mean, it is a lot right in line with the people. Where Joe is like, you know, you listen to Joe based off of who he's interviewing, like it's oh, it's Jordan Pearson, so I'm gonna listen to that one, or it's oh, somebody's on here. I'm gonna let so you listen based off of who he's interviewing. And yes, he's getting millions and millions and millions more views than we are, but we serve a very specific community. And if you find partnerships and businesses or can create products or offers that align really well with that business, it doesn't take millions of people. It takes a thousand. I'm a big believer in the I forget what book that was. It talks about your your thousand tribe. You know, if you get it, if you can get a thousand people that you are you have got listening to you and you're providing value for it, you're sitting on a million-dollar business. I 100% believe you're on a million-dollar business. If you have a thousand people that are consistently consuming your content, opening your emails, engaging with you, just a thousand, which is not a when you think about the with the where we're at now with YouTube and Instagram and the ability to reach a lot of people, but I think the the the metric that people they look at is just the views, the likes, and the attention. And you would rather have 1,000 people that are very specific to what you're talking about than 10 million people that are looky-loose because you make viral content. It's it's literally that dramatic of a difference. And so I think if content creators or business operators approached it from that lens, they would probably make better content. It's like, hey, and this is how we make content. We're not trying to, we don't sit in a meeting and go, hey, let's do this. It'll go viral. We go, hey, this is the client we want to speak to. There's a lot of people that struggle with this. Let's go make an episode for that person, or let's go write a program for that person, or let's go create a free white paper for that person. And so, and it may only get a few hundred downloads, but the few hundred that that white paper got downloaded, and we just now captured those 300 emails, are very specific to that thing we wrote about because it was a very specific piece of content that we wrote to attract them. And then now I kind of have an idea of who that customer is, or at least a much better idea of who they were if they were just paying attention to my podcast. And now I can set up email sequencing to those people that is very specific to their needs, which then leads them to potentially being a real customer of mine down the road. Uh, your much better strategy of trying to build a podcast business than trying to think that you're going to compete with the mega podcasts that have got millions of views. And you honestly, you don't really necessarily want to. It's not an advantage to be millions of people paying attention to you because you do viral content, you're better off serving your small community people really well, and you'll have a much more successful business than just going viral.

Adam, when you look at the the business of Mind Pump, is there anything that you've done that's been surprisingly successful that you wished you had done earlier?

Yeah. Um recording the podcast visually on YouTube. I we I remember the very first studio we made. Um, I mean, we have a bunch of sound stuff everywhere, and we like we staple gunned it. It was all like balled up and like terrible looking. And because we were like, we'll never record this. People, no one's ever gonna want to watch us talk. Like this it I couldn't even fathom that possibility. And that's actually one of the fastest growing spaces right now is podcasting on YouTube, enough that all these other platforms are competing with it, and uh it's but it blows my mind. And I and I even catch my own behavior now that I if I have an opportunity, if I'm sitting at home, I throw it on the TV now and watch it instead of just listening to it.

That's that's how I prep for this interview. I watch a couple of your YouTubes. Yeah.

And so um I'm I was late to the party. We were very late on on YouTube. Another thing I was wrong and really late on, uh, this is embarrassing to admit today. Uh, when we first started, the first two years, we didn't capture a single email. I thought email marketing was over. I thought I I really believed that, like, oh, the the whole social media world has taken over email marketing, and that's where I need to be focusing. Oh, was I so wrong with that? I mean, that's a that's a multi-million dollar revenue stream for this business, is our email marketing. So the fact that I missed on that for the first couple of years, so that's embarrassing, you know. So those are just a couple of the ones that I was late to the party, wish I would have started earlier, and actually, and and then and learn that. Like, you know, I I read all the dot-com secrets and and books that Russell wrote. And so I had somewhat of an understanding of how to do email marketing, but it's a difference between reading it and then going and applying it and applying it to your business and then the reps it takes to get good at it. I mean, I feel like we're barely still getting there right now because I was late to that party. So those are two big misses that I think if I could go back and do it over again, I would have put a lot more energy into early on.

That's hysterical. Uh, I was recent I asked that question because I was recently asked that question. Um and they're exactly the same thing. I'm like, I'm just now in 2025 investing in my YouTube, and it's a slow grow. Um and also my email lists. Like I just I probably probably year three is when I was like, oh, maybe I'll start capturing some emails or organize the guests that I've had been on an email list. And um, you know, since I started doing that, I've reaped a lot of benefits from that for sure. Um that's funny. When you uh one of the things we were talking about is that the consumer is losing trust rapidly in in in fitness, in wellness, in health. And a couple things I know you guys are really, you know, standing out in front and and providing trust to them. What is driving that? Like it's it's coming up a lot. And I'm just not talking about like oh last year, I'm talking like in recent months and weeks of how, especially in the wellness category, people are losing trust because there's so many products being slanged at them. They don't know what's real, like hydrogen water. I don't know how you feel about that, but you know, something their topic, right?

Moot moot points. Yeah.

So stuff, you know, like what is what is driving all of this? And where what do you think? Uh what do you think is the underlying solution if there is one?

So I have a lot of thoughts around this. I think it's rooted. So I don't know where you stand or believe on this, but I believe most of us that got into the fitness space um were originally motivated by probably some insecurity. I'm not big enough, I'm too, I'm too fat, I don't like the way I look. Uh, probably drove us to our first gym membership and our beginning of our obsession of working out and trying to change that. And I believe that a lot of people are still on that journey of figuring that insecurity out and working through that insecurity. And so, and some of these people get a lot of attention and fame before they're even close to figuring this part out. And when you are massively insecure and you are creating an image online that attracts people, you begin to become something that you're really not. And so you're more susceptible to probably push out product that you don't 100% believe in or care. And at that point you're maybe chasing the dollar, uh, or maybe you're just unaware and uneducated and you just you rose to fame and and and people before you probably should have. But I think that's it's rooted from that place because I know what why the show did so well was because we all know that about ourselves and very aware of those insecure. And we uh were vulnerable and we shared a lot of that. We shared a lot of uh, and that's how we would connect with clients, would be would be vulnerable like that because the average client that hires a personal trainer, they think we're we're in two different worlds. They they see this fit, young, you know, guy or girl, and here they are, overweight, insecure, and they they they think we have nothing in common. But one of the things that made you a really good personal trainer was to help your clients understand how similar we actually are. Just our struggles and our insecurities might be a little bit different, but I I battle the same thing too. Our ability to do that when we were just personal trainers is what made us really good personal trainers. Our ability to grow the podcast the way we've grown the podcast is the same way, is we've led with that authenticity, that humility, vulnerability. And uh, I think what you see online is a lot of people that are still working through that process that got a lot of attention. And it's really tough when one of your insecurities is with your body and you've got yourself in incredible shape, and that's also what made you get famous. And all these people are telling you, wow, you look so good. I want to be like you. And you're still in the thick of working all that out personally, real tough to pivot or move from that. And so, and then and then you build this whole brand around yourself and your body. And then maybe you start to mature five, 10. Maybe you're in this game for 10 plus years, and now you're starting to realize, like, man, this is I'm I don't feel authentic. I don't feel myself. How do I get out of this? I don't know if I can get out of this because this is my livelihood. And if they found out that, you know, I eat carbs, you know, or they found out I really don't look like that year round, oh my goodness. Or I'm if they see that I'm not really that strong, or whatever the thing is that you identify with in the fitness space so strongly with, and you've now built this entire brand around, um, that's a really challenging place. And so then you just become somebody who's willing to, and you're already not being honest with yourself. It's not a hard leap to not be that honest with the customers. Listen, I'm already pretending to be something I'm really not. Who cares if I'm selling this, you know, hydrogen water or I'm selling this Elixir or this, because at this point I'm doing it just to make money and have a successful business. Um, I think that's where a lot of this comes from. I mean, we I felt so strongly about this that nine years ago, we we trademarked stay authentic because I believed, we believed, that the future of all this type of content would people were gonna be so thirsty for real people. Because when I at that point, when we looked around at the landscape, it really did feel like everybody we meet is not who they portray themselves to be online. It was rare that I connected with somebody and went, like, man, yeah, he's a he's a real dude. Like they all were characters. And so we were like, well, this is not uh, we're not like that. We're just we're just who we are. And you know, not very good at it, kind of terrible, but at least we were real and we were authentic. And I think that's what people were attracted to. And we believe that as all this stuff kind of washes out over a decade, and you start seeing more of these influencers that are lying and faking and selling BS, the consumer will start to get smarter. It's it worked for a good decade or so of people being naive, but the consumer is getting smarter and smarter and smarter. And so that's where a lot of this stuff is starting to fall out, or why we have you know an influencer that was famous for five years and then all of a sudden you don't hear about them anymore. Is I think we're seeing a lot of that turnover happening right now. And I think people are thirsty for authenticity, real connection, less edit, more real uh type of a uh a message. And we've just stayed true to that since the beginning. And I think it's paid off in the long run. We didn't get viral early, uh, we didn't make as much money early. But when I look back at how sustainable this thing is that we built, I definitely attribute it to us being very authentic, humble, uh, vulnerable, and uh and and leading from our places of insecurity and telling people that, hey, we struggle with this stuff too. That's I think that's directly connected to what you're saying with these bullshit products and things like that, because those companies prey on those people that are not being true to themselves already. So it's really easy to get those people to market their stuff.

Yeah, well said. And you know, the the podcast medium lends itself to authenticity really well, right? Because you know, that you just get to know people. Like your listeners have a relationship with you guys, even though you've never met them in person. Totally. I'm sure there's multiple times when you've met one of your listeners and they're like, they talk to you like they know you really well, right? 100%. And the um, you know, I was so who is that? Oh, Troy Taylor. So Troy's the uh VP of performance at Tonal. And we are at an event this year and we end up sharing a cab uh from the airport because we were on the same flight and uh he was first class, I wasn't, but the uh it doesn't really matter. Um it matters. We were talking about like this issue, right? And it's I think you you look at people who are uh building their online persona, and it's really easy. Like they at first they're they're truth, and you know, this is the honest, this this is it. And then at one point, like they start to see, okay, my numbers are climbing. Maybe this is my window to make money. Yes, and if I get a little loose, a little loose with the science, right? It's a big number coming in my bank account, right? And then it just it's just this cycle that it doesn't end well because eventually that stuff comes out. Um, so then they have to so it's short-lived, right? So it's hard to keep that pat, but it's so it's human nature. Like we all sell out on something in our lives, if not multiple things, right? So I don't blame anyone. I think people want to point the fingers and say, like, oh, charlatan, liar, you know, misleading people. I'm like, well, no, they're just being human, right? And I think that's part of it.

I think it's it starts very similar to what you said. It's one, you know, I don't know if you watched the documentary on the liver king.

Oh, yeah.

But you know, you're right, right. Let's so let's talk about like one of the biggest charlatans we know on the fitness space right now is that guy. But if you listen to how the story unfolded, it was it was just exactly that was the marketing team and him were creating clips and he did some things that went viral. And so, you know, he became more of that person and did it again, and that went viral. And then before you know it, this guy who was maybe really authentic in himself uh when he first started started to figure out when I'm a little more like this, or I say it like that, um, I get way more attention. And so before what you what you end up doing is you start molding yourself into this character that's further and further away from your real identity identity. And I do think it is a gradual thing. I d uh, I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's some people that are just pure charlatans that are like, here's a great way to take care of uh take advantage of people. I'm gonna go do it, make my money and get out. Like there's definitely there's definitely snakes like that. But I actually think for most people, it doesn't start that way. I think they they come from probably a good place when they first start and they start putting the content out, and then they start getting in the algorithm game and trying to be famous versus serving a community and adding value. And when they're chasing that, a couple things start to work, and then they realize, oh, when I act silly or talk in that voice, people tend to resonate. And so they they start becoming this thing that is less and less of them every day. And the less and less they are of themselves, the easier it's going to be for them to peddle the things that they don't really identify with. Because honestly, this whole character I've built online isn't really me anyway. So who cares what he's peddling? It's not really me. You know, I really believe the psychological game that's happening is like that, and it is a very gradual slope uh that that people slip uh slip on for sure.

You know what's really interesting about that too? And it it is it is such a good case study into the influencer world, right? It it's incredible. I mean, it's it's it's so many storylines that you can go on on that one. But uh the thing that got me about that when I watched it was that how many people were like, they knew he was on $10,000 per month of you know anabolics, right? They knew it. It was obvious. Everyone knew it. Anyone who who took a look at him be like, dude, that guy, that guy's pumped, right? And yet they they always said, Well, I had no idea. I had no idea, right? I'm like, no, you're so full of shit. Like everyone knew, and at the end, just because you're on a documentary, you have to say at the end, well, no, he lied to me and he broke my trust. Be like, dude, you know how much money were you making off this guy?

Yeah, right.

Like you pushed him forward. It wasn't your, you know, it wasn't your reputation, it wasn't anything. Totally. And uh, so I think there's part of that too. It's like once you become a business, then there's other stakeholders.

Oh, you you're you're touching on something that not a lot of people we I mean, we mention it every now and then in in passing, but we don't talk a lot about this on the on the show because it's more business related. But we for nine years, there is an internal battle between my marketing team and the four founders because that the their marketing team, we hired them as a company to go out and help us make more money. And so that's they're in the business that, which is what I want. I want them thinking that way, but we constantly have to rein them back in and go, yeah, no, we're not okay with that. Yeah, no, that doesn't align with us. And it is really difficult for them because they'll come back and be like, listen, this is how everybody does it. This is tremendously successful. We we want to we want to position it like this, and we go, no, we're not okay with that. We've said it since day one. And so we have constantly butted heads uh with our marketing team like that since day one, because what will make us more money sometimes does not align with our values and where we're at. And I and I understand how tempting that can be for the average. I mean, um you're scaling your business, and you know, first couple of years you're barely making any money at all. Then you finally get a little bit of revenue, and then the marketing team tells you, Hey, if you do it like this, we'll attract a lot more people. And it's like, oh. Oh man, I could really use that extra income to pay the bills or to get it hired another person. And so, and it's like, uh, it's not, we're not lying, we're not doing the else, but it's like, but if it doesn't align with your values, uh, and our integrity is really important to us. And so there's been a lot of things that we've sacrificed. I mean, I've turned down huge partnerships that we just say, hey, you know, cool product, but we've come out openly and talked against a lot of that stuff. And so I don't feel comfortable with even talking about it. So, you know, best of luck to you. Well, what if we pay you this much? And no, it says doesn't align with us. So we've had to do that since day one. We still do that on a on a monthly basis. There is something that the marketing team presents that we go, no, not like that. You know, find another way, or you know, we we've got to change it a little. Like I can't say it that way, we won't say it that way. And so, yeah, that's and and so if you don't have that integrity to say, this is these are my morals, these are my values. I and and and you allow the temptation of, well, you can make a little bit more money if you do it this way. Oh, that that gets presented to us on a very regular basis. And it and I mean, like I we started this podcast, I told you we're going through a tough time right now. You know, it's easy to turn it down when we're winning and making more money and everyone's high-fiving, but when we're struggling and it's like, oh my gosh, we need to spend, then it's even easy to kind of wrap it in like, well, this isn't for me, this is for my team and my staff. We should do and even then it's terrible.

Yeah, totally. Yep. Yeah, but here's the thing about content it's forever. Yeah.

So that's right. That's right.

So I was like, uh realized the other day I could never run for office uh if I ever want to get into politics.

But yeah, you and me both.

So the the dip that you guys are seeing, I'm curious, is that what are the reasons do you think that's happening? Is that an industry trend? Is it uh the way money is flowing? Like what is it that our industry can learn from that right now?

So a couple things. Uh absolutely those things are factors. I think economy, I think we're, I think uh the introduction of AI uh is playing uh a role in that. I think the number one role is that we we oversaturated our audience pretty fast. Something we quickly figured out was that the average person that buys one of our programs and goes to actually goes through that program will buy like three to five more. So, you know, and that's and this is true in most businesses, buyers are buyers. Um, and so and so if we have the opportunity to get one program in their hands, they'll most likely buy three to five more. Well, our programs are three months long. So what ended up happening was as we grew that pretty large buyer audience, we and I'd say when I noticed it was about two and a half years ago. What I had noticed was about two and a half years ago, the podcast was maintaining its numbers, meaning we probably were losing 5,000 listeners a month and gaining 5,000. It was just this, which was an a tur enough turn to keep the business sustaining, but we weren't just growing. And so what had happened was the marketing team really started to retarget those people and sell them program four, program five, program six. And so we did that really aggressively to keep the growth trajectory that we were doing year over year, two and a half years ago, which is why we started building other things because I kind of saw where that was going. It's like, hey, we uh we better start building some other uh other businesses attached to this because this is slowly gonna die off. And um, and it didn't fall off a cliff. It was this kind of plateau and this real gradual dip down. Now, recently it's really started to fall off, but luckily we had built uh those other businesses. But why while this was happening, um, you know, the marketing team was ramping up how many times, and then before you knew it, the let's just say, you know, 10,000 buyers that we have that buy our programs now own like nine of our programs. They're set for the next three years of working out because they've been targeted so many times on sales for the next program they should follow. And we did all kinds of creative ways to figure out what person was going to do next and to sell that to them. And then once they bought, now we're purely relying on just the new people that come in. And that number is so low in comparison to what our entire audience was that were buyers. And so that is seen, we've seen a massive hip of that. And then you factor in the things that you said also. I think the time, I think AI too. I mean, we're at we're at a time right now where you can prompt AI to write you a program pretty, pretty well, especially if you know how to prompt it well. And so, you know, why why buy a program from us? Honestly, the the reason why I think anybody buys programs so from us is out of support. I really believe most of our audience, and this is it was like this when we started. I remember when we first launched the very first program, um, you know, we sold a few hundred. But I remember in our forum, our private community, a lot of people were like, oh, I already have another program, or you know, I'm not even gonna follow it, but I just wanted to support the guys. I love their message. I love what they're they're they help me so much. I just so they they actually bought it just for those reasons. And I think we have a lot of customers that still buy from us purely out of support, not because of necessity or they feel like, oh, I need this program. They could probably prompt Chat GBT to produce it for them, but it's more out of loyalty and support to us. And unfortunately, that number of just loyalty and support is not enough to sustain the level of growth that we were, that we were hitting. And so, yeah, we had and I saw it about two and a half years ago. It was starting to peak, and I saw the way we were aggressively ramping up our sales that were going out like crazy. And right now we're in a we could we fired the marketing team, hired a whole new marketing team. We're revamping all the email sequences, and we're getting back to kind of how this conversation started, which is building value, right? And so we got even got away from that a little bit with our email marketing. Our email list got so big that all we'd have to do is throw a sale out and it would generate tens of thousands of dollars every time we did that. And so there was no need to nurture and to build value. It was like, hey, we could just throw a sale out there and keep doing this thing. And we did that for a lot longer than what we should have. And here I am now trying to fix all of that. And the process of fixing all that is not an overnight thing, it's a three to six, maybe nine month process. And so I'm in the middle of it right now trying to fix that while also scale the other businesses that we we started in the last two years to make up for the lost revenue. And so that's a lot of the juggle that I'm going through uh currently right now. Wow.

Well, man, I I would have so many follow-up questions on that if we had more time. And I would love to talk to you at some point too about AI's effect on content creation. You know, I think that's um a very real thing. Like the barrier to entry to creating content is almost nil nil. Like this.

Have you heard of have you have you heard of uh the dead internet theory?

No.

So the dead internet theory next rabbit hole. Yeah, yeah, definitely go down that rabbit hole. So the and it's uh to the point you're starting to make right now, um, AI content is getting so good because it understands the algorithm that we're we're a short time away from when everything you see is AI generated. And it'll it's going to drown out the real content. Now, unless you start to see, like I don't know if you saw what YouTube did, was YouTube started to uh take any AI created content, and it's uh you they put real creators above that, even though because they the AI was getting so good that it was going viral, and that was hurting so many of the actual real content creators. And so YouTube stepped in and said, okay, here's the deal. If it's AI generated, it can't jump over the real content creators. But we're at it, we're coming into a place right now where it's getting so good, people are making that, that you're probably gonna have a handful of mega machines that have the tools and resources to make tens of thousands of pieces of content with AI, and they'll own all the attention. And so, unless we have some somebody step in and regulate some of that or put some some boundaries on how that how AI is being set out, if it continues the way it is right now, it'll get to the dead internet, which will be everything you read and see is all AI generated and no real consumers, nothing will populate high enough because the AI has figured out so well how to feed people the content they want, and everything you're gonna be reading and seeing will be AI generated and not from real people. Chew on that for a while.

I will tell them you have no idea what she just did to me next week. I'm interviewing. Wild. All right. Well, thanks, man, for that. Um thanks for the whole interview. Like this, this is awesome. And uh, you know, I always enjoy my conversations with you guys, and um, especially this one was super relevant, I think, to our industry and everything about it. If there, if there's um, here's the last question I always ask, Adam is like, what do you need help with? Like if people are listening to this and you want them to reach out with something, like what uh what can we help you with?

Oh man, you know, I think the thing that and it's what I sign off with a lot of people is like, you know, don't buy anything from me. Go take advantage of all the free content we have. And so um, one of the most valuable things that we built a few years ago, um, askmindpump.com. It's our AI tool, which is built within our ecosystem, which takes people. So let's say you're hearing me for the first time, and then you go look at our content, that can be overwhelming, right? Almost 3,000 episodes, I mean, uh tens of thousands of blogs and white paper. So we built an AI tool that combs all of that and then answers like in our voice. So if you have a question, anything related to health and fitness, um, go to askmindpump.com and not only will it answer it as if it's one of us answering it, it'll also link you all the pieces of content that we have created that are long form, short form, uh, posts, clips, white papers that uh we've created in regards to that topic. And so take advantage of that. And if it helps you, share it with a family member or a friend. That's what that's how you can help support what we do here is take advantage of the free content that we create. If it helps you, share it with a family member or friend. That's the best way that we continue to do what we do.

Awesome. Adam, thank you for joining me, man. This is uh it's been an absolute pleasure. And uh hopefully I can get you back in a year and we'll and the internet won't be dead.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We'll do it again. We'll do it again, Eric, for sure.

Ladies and gentlemen, Adam Schaefer.

Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minute. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it and we want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more, get in touch with me, simply go to the futureoffitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the future of fitness. Have a great day.