Marcus Filly - The Modern Content Creator

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over three years and running. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Please stop by futurefitness.co to subscribe and learn more. Hey friends, I couldn't be more proud and excited to announce that today's episode is powered by workout, the ultimate tool for modern fitness professionals just like you. There is one thing that fires me up: it's elevating the personal training and coaching industry. For that, the Workout app is an absolute game changer. No more promoting top brands without compensation or dealing with confusing social media links. In just a few clicks, Workout's user-friendly app lets top trainers and coaches curate and share the world's most sought-after fitness brands like Hyperite, Vega, and more. Product lines covering everything from fitness equipment to supplements and apparel. Save time and boost your earnings with generous commissions and bonuses every time your client purchases the products you already endorse. Do not wait. Maximize your income and streamline your business with store by workout. Discover more at workout.com. That's wrk.com. Just 1-0. Go get it. All right, we're live. Marcus Philly, welcome back to the future of fitness. It's been a little while, man. Yeah, you said it was four years. It's that is feels like a lifetime in my in my book. That's it's bananas. It's and it's the COVID light year, right? They kind of just accelerate everything through.

But you know, I have a four I have a four-year-old daughter, so that to me is like that is somebody's lifetime.

Yeah, it's uh it's it's been a while a few years. I I I thought about this because I was talking to Jim over at the Sage House, which you I know you you work with intimately and have known for quite some time. And I'm like, God man, it's been a long time since I talked to Marcus. And I was going through some of my older podcasts too, and I was, whoa, I like stopped at your number. I'm like, people really dug what Marcus had to say. And uh maybe it's about time we we get him back on. So great, it's good to have you back. And as always, I think for people maybe who haven't caught you uh um on this podcast in the last you know three, four years, you start with a little bit of your background, and then we'll get into functional bodybuilding, what you're doing with the add-on platform, all that exciting modern stuff. But I'd love to hear uh a little bit more of your backstory. Sure, yeah.

Well, um the backstory, I guess, as it relates to where I'm at in my life now with a as a you know, career fitness-wise, is um really a uh young athlete who was really into to movement, but uh took 10 years of playing competitive sports or more to realize that what I loved most about the sports was the the physicality and the movement of it, not the sport itself. The only sport I really fell in love with was golf. Um, but I played collegiate soccer, I played higher level, you know, physical team sports um because I just loved the fitness aspect of it. So, you know, my my second sport I fell in love with was the sport of movement or fitness, right? Crossfit. I really became passionate about that. So that was like really my upbringing and my internal drive to just be moving and challenge myself physically, was then matched with like a a sort of an academic skill set in the in the maths and math and science world and uh an interest in biology and physiology, which I think was sparked mostly by my training in the gym, wanting to know how to train better and eat better to get more muscle and blah, blah, blah. But that sort of led down like physiology, understanding of the body, understanding of wellness, disease. So I kind of had these two kind of passions and interests going through college. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna go to uh allopathic medical school to get, you know, to basically enter into the healthcare system and then change, you know, be part of a paradigm change in like delivering healthcare, which was gonna be movement, nutrition, you know, conventional medicine, all kind of intertwined. Um and you got to think this was back in like 2006 when I graduated from UC Berkeley and I was applying to medical school. So 15, you know, 16 years ago, there was not really like a functional medicine world. Like there wasn't these things didn't really exist the way they exist today. Um, they were sort of infancy or pre-infancy. And so I sort of went into medical school without like a a vision of how I was gonna practice. And my time in medical school was really challenging. You know, I I was excelling from an academic standpoint, gr great grades, great testing. You know, I was a I was as good a student as there could be, but I didn't see a lot of I didn't have a lot of passion for the pursuit of of the tr like traditional uh fields in medicine. Um, and I wasn't really in a place where I was being supported by mentors that were like, yeah, let's go do this functional medicine thing. Let's change, you know, the face of medicine and let's bring health care and wellness and preventative care and movement and eating like into the mainstream of like how we deliver medicine. Um, so I just sort of I I felt like I needed to be in a different environment. I wanted to be in the fitness environment, less so the sick care environment. And I I dropped out of medical school to go and explore that. And that led me down the path of um coaching fitness, just becoming a personal trainer, becoming a group fitness trainer, joining the CrossFit, you know, the big CrossFit movement in 2009, 2010, and riding that wave for really six, seven years. And I became a CrossFit gym athlete, excuse me, a CrossFit athlete, a CrossFit gym owner, a CrossFit coach. You know, my whole life was sort of intertwined with this brand's, you know, exponential rise uh over that period of time, which uh got me a lot of um experience. I grew in a ton of ways, I learned a lot, um, and I got a lot of uh, you know, a decent amount of notoriety around my ex how well I had done as an athlete, which then I was able to translate into some type of business success or or credibility where I was now like a credible coach. And people were following me, not only for the inspiring fitness content, but for the coaching advice. And that combination allowed me really from 2016 onward to build a very big online business as opposed to just an in-person brick and mortar coaching business. Um and so with the bit with the growth of an online business, you know, just came a whole new learning curve and a whole new journey. And so I started over, I I feel like I started my second career in a way, or my second, you know, chapter as a as an as a professional coach in 2016, 2017, which has led me to where we're at today in, you know, an online fitness company and brand called Functional Bodybuilding, which delivers all of the stuff I've learned over the past 20 years of fitness in sort of a uh a hybrid model of like we we do functional training like CrossFit and we do bodybuilding and and a lot of things in between. We're we're sort of a there's there's principles that make sense in all of these different worlds that can sit in the same, you know, program, in the same physical space. And I think people really have resonated with that message a lot.

I and you know, it's it's such a cool brand, like the kind people are into fitness too when you think about the bodybuilding world versus the functional fitness world, right? It's just they lock horns all the time. Yeah. I mean, it was I we made a living out of when I first started my CrossFit affiliate of just bashing on bodybuilding. And then, you know, and and I I had that coaching learning curve where I learned a little bit and I thought I knew everything, and then I learned a little bit more and I realized I knew nothing. And then I started learning more and more about you know the the benefits of bodybuilding. And James Fitzgerald, of course, which I know is a huge influence in in your life as a coach, you know, he taught me a lot of things about how to, you know, get bodybuilding into it and the value of it. And I think there's so much, I mean, you can't deny the the decades of knowledge that come out of bodybuilding and then this new, you know, um exciting thing called functional fitness and crossfit and how those can intertwine. So I think it's a really cool like combination of things you did. And I I want to, you know, when you talk about CrossFit and how it was something a sport, you know, golf and CrossFit are two things that you found to be passionate about. What was it about CrossFit? Because when I think about CrossFit, I think about training hard, suffering, right? Sure. Um, it's very uncomfortable, especially doing it at the level that you're you did it at. You know, what what exactly was it about that you felt you fell in love with when it's you know mostly just you know, constantly feels like you're just throwing yourself down a flight of stairs.

Well, I I loved the you're right. When I started out, it did feel like that. And my early competitions felt like, you know, like a roll of the dice. Like, I don't know what's gonna happen. They're gonna say three, two, one, go, and I could black out and this could go well, I could win, I could, you know, vomit. Like, who knows how this is gonna go. Um, and I think, I think because I met James Fitzgerald early, um, and I got I became aware of what he was he was teaching and preaching. Um, I kind of started to see, I think early on there was like a light bulb that was like, hey, you know what? This CrossFit thing, it doesn't have to just be a suffer fest every day. In fact, it it could be that we just don't know how to do it yet. Like there's a way to approach it more thoughtfully. Like there's maybe a skill to this thing, or there's like an approach to training that could make it be less uncomfortable and more, you know, like uh precise in how we execute it. Um, you know, fast forward later, even towards the end of my career, it was like, yeah, the hard, sucky workouts always sucked and they never got easier. But I started to learn early on that like if I dedicated time and had a very, you know, clear training uh plan and progression, and I built the fundamental skills and capacities for the sport that I could I could become, you know, I could make the uncomfortable more comfortable, and I could see very steady progress. You know, I had control over the progress that I could make in the sport. And time equaled, you know, because I was doing the right things at the right time, more time investment got me better returns. And so it was just like, oh, I love, I love this thing. I also love fitness, I love muscles, I love moving my body, I love the whole thing. But I I love the idea that I could just devote to a process and and see return, you know, like that's probably why I love math and science as a as a kid, was or I was drawn to that more than you know, language arts or social studies, was that there was a formula. It was like organic chemistry was enjoyable to me. It's like I just need to figure out these reactions and this sequence of reactions, and I will solve the organic chemistry, you know, equations. Like that's great. Okay, give me this the formula to become a better CrossFitter. Oh, it's build aerobic capacity, build maximal strength, work skills, build volume on those skills, put pieces together, and then when it's time, learn how to suffer a little bit. Okay, the suffer part sucks, but the other parts are highly enjoyable. You know, it's like, you know, learning how to get better at a snatch and putting in aerobic, you know, training sets, and that stuff was great. I loved that. You know, I didn't love doing, you know, uh row burpee till I'm blue in the blue on the lips, you know, but that was not that was not the majority of the time.

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And uh it has a forage. Go ahead. And that's how we and that's those are the elements of CrossFit that we include in functional bodybuilding. It's like, look, you you could do mixed modal training, you know, where you're breathing, you're lifting weights, you're, you know, doing some calisthenics, you're doing some bodyweight stuff, and you can do it in a way that's um more on the enjoyable side of the spectrum and feels good and and is hard work and gives you that sense of satisfaction, uh, and come and you know, and like you achieve something that day, but doesn't you know doesn't crush your soul. We don't we're not here to crush people's souls unless they are truly that's what they want, right? Which most people think they need that. They don't want it. They just think, oh, if I don't crush my soul, I can't make progress. It's like, no, you you actually can. We're gonna show you how.

Yeah, that's great. And you know, certainly in in the cross of world, uh you know, you did accumulate quite a following, and and obviously not just due to cross, but due to your own efforts and putting yourself out there. But I was just checking this morning. I mean, 852,000 followers on Instagram, uh, 148,000 followers on YouTube. I mean, that's you've got an audience, dude. Um, did you ever think that was gonna happen? That you're gonna like at some point in your athletic career and business career, you'd have close to a million followers on social media. I mean, what is what is that like? I I like no one follows me on social except for LinkedIn. So what is that like from a personal standpoint? Do you feel like you can still have um a certain level of privacy in your life? Do you feel um I don't know, yeah, explain explain what that's like.

Yeah, well, um it's been a journey of like learning how to have a relationship with social media because it at various points in the business has been very integral to our growth and to our revenue. It's like that's our biggest lead generation, you know, it's Instagram organic reach. Like um, you know, we've I've learned over the years through the help of my business partner and marketing partner, um, Satya Khan, to you know, the importance of diversifying all of our acquisition channels and making sure we have lots of different ways that we can reach people. So that should Instagram ban us for three days or close our account, or you know, we our content strategy is not really resonating with the people out there and nobody's seeing our stuff, like that we have other ways to communicate with the audience. Um we've done a good job of that. But at times, you know, like the some of these platforms, Instagram in particular, it's like I feel like we're living and dying by this thing. So, and you know, which is great because we have followers and and it's helping us in a trim tremendous way. Um but that also means, okay, now it's like you're I'm not gonna say a slave to this thing. It's like, no, this is a tool and we're using it to to our benefit, and it's a great thing, but it's like we gotta put in work and it's also not something that we own. You know, we don't own the algorithm. We can't we can't it, we we can't anticipate changes, like we just have to keep doing our best with what's in front of us. And um, and then on the personal side of it, it's like people I know certainly with creators that I follow, like when I get to see behind the curtain, like it makes me feel connected to that brand and that person and what they're doing. And I like to watch that. I mean, I'm more interested in looking at someone's story than I am like necessarily reading, you know, the depths of each one of their captions on their content. So with that said, it's like, okay, I've gotta, I gotta make story content, personal story content. Like, what are the boundaries to that? You know, do I am I just walking around with my phone up and just you know talking to the camera? Like oftentimes I am, you know, and I'm with my kids, I'm like, oh, I gotta, I sometimes I say to my wife, I'm like, I gotta go feed the beast. Like, it's like I gotta go make some content, I gotta get something out there, I gotta keep, you know, keep at the top of everyone's feed, you know. If uh especially like recently we had um a viral uh you know reel that went and I think it reached 2.5 million accounts, two million of which were new followers, like people that don't follow us rather. And we got a we got, you know, probably 4,000 new people over the course of like two weeks, which is pretty big growth for us as of lately. You know, historically we've gotten growth like that without even trying, and now this is like a big thing. So it's like, okay, I got 4,000 new people that said I want to see more of you. Now I got to get on stories every day and give them something so that they can get to know me, you know. And there's some days I I literally will like drop my daughter off at school and I always go for a walk in the neighborhood right after I drop her off. And I'm like, I got the camera out, I'm walking in the neighborhood. People might see me, and I'm just talking to the camera, or I'm like filming, you know, on my video, uh, and I'm like on my 12th take. I'm like, I don't even know what the hell I'm trying to say right now. I'm just trying to make some content to connect with the people on the other end of this. And I'm on take number 12. I've been at it for 15 minutes, and I got nothing. And I'm like, ah, I got nothing. I just put it away. So it's like, you know, it doesn't always flow super well. It's a, it's, it's, I would say it's it's some somewhat of a strength of mine, like being on camera, but you know, not everyone feels like being in front of the camera 24-7. Like you want to take a break, you know, and sometimes you just uh when I you mentioned Kelly being, you know, a frequent guest and somebody you you connect with, it's like when I love how Kelly has said it to me, he's like, it's like my dream is to just one day just kind of drift away into the shadows and nobody, I don't, I'm not a public, you know, facing like I don't I don't ever have to make another piece of I don't have to make another piece of content ever if I don't want to. You know, it's like there's kind of I think after you make enough content, you might get to that point where you're like, yeah, this is amazing. I have this, you know, really, really, I'm grateful for the opportunity to use this to grow a business and to be able to do this, like it's flexible, it's fun, but also eventually you're like, eh, that's like, yeah, you're just now you're a content creator. That's what you're doing. You're making content. And there's there's days you want to do it and days you don't.

And I mean, the uh the nature of of Instagram too is is so um you know temporal. Like when you talk about stories and things like that, you throw it out there. I mean it's still out there, right? I mean, my uh nephew, he's 24, he was just visiting me this week and he's like, hey, you know, I'm like, yeah, check out my my story from this weekend. I'm like, oh, how the fuck do you do that? Like she had to show me like where to find it because it was you know from the past. And like, you know, how many people go through that? And I think it's uh it's it's it's very different. I mean, I'm I'm I like the podcast medium so much because I put it out there and it just continues to collect, right? True, yeah.

Um that's how we feel about that's how we felt about YouTube lately, you know, or not lately, but just you know, about a year, a little over a year ago, we like, okay, we're gonna commit to this platform and putting content here where people can search for it, you know, we can put a little bit more time and long form content together that you know, if somebody people who really want to hear what we have to say, like and have like people that go to YouTube, like they have longer attention spans than two seconds generally. Um and it's very searchable.

I mean, I go to YouTube to define specific. Things like uh, you know, how to unclog a toilet, right? That's like where people go, or you know, what what's the best proteins for post, you know, post-training, right? Stuff that you the questions you probably heard a million times. And then if you're ranking, you you get up there. And um, you know, I want to touch on this because it is like to to stay consistent with content uh is so challenging. I mean, I years ago, I just wanted to try it out. So I did a live video for 30 days every day um on Facebook, and I was like, holy shit, this is hard. Like I was like, I don't know what I like. I'm just talking, it was just me and my dog walking, and I called it Deep Thoughts with River was my dog's name. Uh rest in peace. And he, you know, we would just walk and I would just talk about stuff. I'm like, oh my God, I don't like how do people do this? Um when you look at that, like who do you go to for inspiration? Like you mentioned other content creators, like who who do you look to and you admire and and give you ideas and kind of energize you in this process?

I mean, uh I could I probably could pull open my feed right now and just sort of rattle off some names um of people who I just tune into every day, but I really look for like it's it's less about like what's the content that they're creating. It's just more of like the style that people create content in, the the energy that they bring to it, you know, what feels compelling about what they're saying, um, how they weave, you know, a common thread to into their story day after day after day. Um, you know, one person that I'll just talk about is um Brian Johnson, the liver king. So, you know, in the last I I mean, this story goes all the way back to I think October of 2021. Um, I got an email from Brian Johnson, the liver king, who I at that point didn't really know of, you know, I kind of had just seen him pop up on social media. And you know, he uh he he was kind of at the beginning of his big, you know, rise in in popularity. Um, anyhow, he had he asked if I wanted to participate in one of his like challenges. Hey, will you do the Liver King press challenge, which was, you know, 10 reps at 45 pounds, 10 reps of 55, 65, 75, up to 105, and then back down to 45. You got to do each set unbroken. So I was like, you know, he's like, uh I was like, you know, I'm I'm my shoulder's kind of injured right now, so I can't I can't do that. Um, sorry, but it looks fun. And I had seen like Josh Bridges or somebody else, another, you know, CrossFitter that I knew competing with had done it. And I was like, oh, I'm all game for doing stuff like that. But I I said something to him like, hey, my shoulder bothered me. And he just came in with just like this over-the-top just generosity and like, you know, hey, oh, okay. Well, let's get you feeling better. Let me send you this, that, and the other thing. You know, he's, I mean, natty or not, steroid accusations and his whole thing around how much he used or didn't use and blah, blah, blah. Like aside, he was like, he's a firm believer in the ancestral life, you know, and he's like, let me get you these, you know, these different supplements that are going to help get you some really good animal, you know, collagen, get you some, you know, really good cartilage uh healing tissue stuff for your shoulder. We'll get you some bone marrow, let me get you some liver, let me any like this care package ships out to me overnight, you know, and I'm I'm like, oh, look at this. Like this guy's helped me out. And I'm like, thank you. And, you know, is there any are there any resources that you got for me to go read about kind of what you're what you're promoting? And he wrote me this super long, detailed email with like a a book list and hey, Mamma, check this out. And it was just like over the top, like, I want to help you out. And um, you know, it had a really positive impression on me. And of course, like from that day forward, probably until this day, I don't think I've ever like missed a liver king story on Instagram or missed a you know, missed something that he's doing. Like I followed it all. And I started following it because not because I was like, this is the way to be in life. It was like, this guy's really smart and he's really committed, and he is he's got charisma and he's got energy, and he's got, you know, and there's some things I don't love about his, you know, the way he approaches his messaging and his marketing, but there's just there's something there. And I have something I could learn by watching how he does this, and I could have I can learn some things that I don't want to replicate, but I became sort of just like uh, you know, captivated by his approach and his message and and not just like the you know viral, sort of provoking in your face like energy that he brings to one platform, but like, hey, I heard you on this podcast, and man, you got deep and real and you were vulnerable, and and then on this other side you're doing this, and so I don't know, that's just one particular person who you know I was like, okay, I'm I am I I'm captivated by how you've presented and I want to learn more. And there are there are a handful of other people like that who I kind of look as look at as as good teachers for me, not like I need to learn the ancestral lifestyle, which I took time to really understand and learn and get as much out of it as I could and implement things into my own life and experiment. But beyond that, it was like, okay, this is a you know, this is a business, this is the company. He's the he's the face of it, he's the content creator, he's the marketing department, he's you know, the CEO, he's he's wearing a lot of hats, and he's this is how he's doing it. And and I know the weight of it. You know, I know how much that that uh how much you you have to hold when you have to wear all those hats. And um, anyhow, so that's just one.

Well, I I appreciate that choice because I think it's an it's an interesting dichotomy that that represents too. Is like he he he's been bagged on so many times in so many different forums for you know um the steroid scandal and and all the things that he did and how he presented himself. Um, but I I think a lot of times, and this is just a really good reminder for myself too, is we hear things about thing about people, right? Like we hear things about the liver king, or you know, I've I've heard things about like someone in the industry like Alex Hermozy, but then you know, people have actually I've never met these people, yeah, never had a conversation with them. And people I know like Stu Browers had a conversation with Alex Hermozy, and he's like, you know, that guy's great. I learned a ton from him. You know, he's so generous, right?

Yeah, I've been fortunate in the last year to sit down for dinner with Alex and Layla at a a meet uh a dinner in Vegas and like have private conversations with them, and you know, like okay, you guys are the real deal. And the same thing goes for Barbara and Brian Johnson. I sat down at a dinner table with them, with my wife, at their ranch. They were the gracious most gracious hosts. We laughed, we cried, we shared like intimate moments, like you know, vulnerable. And I was like, this is uh these are real people, and they are they have there's some really good stuff inside of these people, and so you know, it's hard when that there's this like media portrayal, and of course, like you know, my one-on-one experience with him does not like absolve him of mistakes that he's made around you know the steroid scandal and how he portrayed certain things and maybe misled um customers or his audience, but it's like yeah, you you don't know until you actually sit down in a room with somebody and um doesn't mean you have to agree with everything they do.

Yeah, yeah. I I it's it's it's an excellent point. And I want to make sure um we get some time to talk about what you're doing with functional bodybuilding. Let's let's start with this. Um Marcus, when we talk about functional bodybuilding, what what is the client experience like? Like what what what do they get out of the program?

Yeah, well, uh the goal has always been to provide all of as much as we can through our, you know, well, sorry, the goal has not always been this. We've gone through many iterations of this, but what started as a this is a kind of a training method or an approach that Marcus is taking with his training, um, how do I get my hands on that? Well, you we got you get your hands on it by buying one of our programs, which originally were all sold as ebooks, and some were sold like you know, the first functional bodybuilding ebooks that we ever sold were um quarterly released, and there was a very, you know, uh discrete window of time where you could purchase them, and we would put people through these, like these cohorts of people through the functional bodybuilding program. Um, and this was how we like originally built you know the foundations of our company and and got a lot of awareness. Um, and then over time it just became something that we wanted to transition into more of like an ongoing subscription service where somebody would subscribe and rather than buying an ebook every three months, it was hey, you're a you're functional bodybuilding subscriber and you get a training program that is constantly being updated with our methods. And so today, what that looks like is um this umbrella term or or name we call Persist. So Persist is the functional bodybuilding subscription. When you're a Persist member, you get access to you know our training programs, you know, our nutrition, uh nutritional resources, and basically like the FBB food philosophy. Um, and it's all, you know, we're doing whatever we can to deliver the best experience for a customer once they subscribe to Persist. You can still buy an ebook from us, you can still, you know, it join a challenge periodically that we offer and not be a subscriber, but the subscribers get the best possible access to all the information we have and sort of done for you here. Follow this and you can have success. The training, you know, what started as one functional bodybuilding program that was released every 12 weeks, now there's five training tracks inside of Persist. So there's options for people with minimal equipment that want to do body weight, that want to follow something that's a 60-minute workout four days a week. Somebody who wants to do something that looks a little bit more like CrossFit would follow perform. Somebody who wants to do something that looks a little bit more bodybuilding would follow pump. So there's options, and that's been built out of the needs and the desires that we've heard from our customers over the years, right? We explored lots of different ebook iterations, and the ones that were the most popular became training tracks within Persist, and now people could follow them in perpetuity, really. So um, and what we uh what we aim to do in the next year is, you know, how do we make the customer experience, once they get the app and they open it, how do we make those first, you know, 10 to 30 workouts like seamless? And that's partnering with the right software company. Um, how do we solve more customer problems? Hey, I only want to train three days a week, or I only have this type of equipment, or hey, I work out in a globo gym. How do I make these workouts work there? We're working on solutions to those problems so that no matter who comes in and wants to do FBB, they can do it with minimal friction. And I think the the other big thing that we're really moving towards is, you know, I've always been outspoken and very connected to the importance of nutrition as it's you know related to my success as a CrossFit athlete, my, you know, my post-CrossFit career success uh in fitness or body composition and health and wellness. And, you know, I've dedicated a lot of years to probably as much, if not more time, to the study of nutrition than than I have to the study of exercise science and and program design. And I've never really had a way to like create a deliverable or a product that people can leverage that knowledge and that the that food philosophy. Um and so we're like, we're gonna put that inside of our our subscription, our app, where people are gonna have a real way to have actionable, accountable measures to follow a plan that gives them the same kind of guidance that a daily training program gives them. And that to me is, you know, that's a powerful combination. And I know a lot of people are trying to solve that problem too, but I know we're gonna do it in a way that really resonates with our audience and resonates with my values and and the company values around nutrition. Um, and and so yeah, all of that's happening. You mentioned it earlier, but through through our, you know, our new pop partner, which is Adam, uh the training app that we're working with.

Yeah, that that made uh, you know, at least in my world, it was big news earlier this year when when you made that announcement, you guys were on the platform. I mean, that's uh that's a really big partnership when you were look at, you know, the the type of um, I guess, content-fueled membership programs. I don't know if that's a category, I just made it up. Um but give me some uh give me some insights. Like what in that decision-making process to move over to Adam and partner with them, you know, how how did that look? And you know, what what are the benefits and what do you think about the how the opportunities open up in the future through that type of partnership?

Yeah, well, our you know, we prior to working with Adam, we we had another tech solution to our program delivery, and that was um another company called TrueCoach, which we had worked with for years. And TrueCoach uh was a was a software platform that was built for one-to-one coaching. Um basically, I'd say their ideal customer was like a coach like myself who had 30 to 50 clients and was coaching remotely or in person, but wanted a place to sort of put all of one client's information, their program, their notes, nutrition benchmarks, goals, have a way of communicating with that person, you know, to really expand the personal training, the individual coaching capabilities, and um centralized things. So, like the coach like me, who was emailing a customer program, having phone calls with them, writing nutrition plans and in Excel and doing that, like it just centralized everything. So great, great product, uh great, great platform, but not really built for you know delivering a program to thousands of people in a a group model like what Persist became. So we we we put out these customer surveys on a regular basis to sort of understand, you know, customer satisfaction. And unfortunately, the the the software part of it, the software questions, the true coach questions always always scored the lowest. We knew that there was obstacles on the customer side. Hey, this doesn't isn't ideal, this doesn't work best for me, this isn't great, um, this is frustrating. And from like a business perspective, like there were obstacles there as well, like to delivering the program. So we're just out there trying to solve for this for a long time. And when we were going through the list of like, well, what's what's going to make the next software platform work for us? Well, we had to get through, you know, customer experience had to be better. And we had to feel confident that we were going to be able with this new partner to have some say in how the customer experience went. You know, if we signed up with a company that already had 2,000 creators on it, we're just one in a big sea of people, and we might not have much say, which is how we end, you know, we felt with TrueCoach was like we didn't have much say about any changes, even despite being one of the biggest accounts that they had. Um it it was we were not their bread and butter for business. So we didn't want to get ourselves into a relationship where we couldn't uh inspire change or kind of guide and direct the changes that we needed. Um, and then we also really wanted to, you know, work with a company that was gonna open up new acquisition channels for us. It's like, hey, what what in what way is this gonna help us grow by being on your platform outside of us just having a better customer experience and software solution? Um, you know, are are you connected with do you have good connections yourself? Do you have a good, you know, marketing and customer acquisition channel yourself? Like what yeah, what new partnerships might come out of this new relationship, you know, with a company like Adam? Um, and really a lot of those boxes started to get checked when we kind of started to look more closely at the relationship to Adam, which was interesting because they had approached me uh over almost two years ago to sort of pitch the idea, but it was a different model back then. And they they had changed their model and their approach, and they were open to kind of a new way of partnering, and that sort of made it a viable option for us. Um, and so that's how, you know, the so what excites me is number one, like even in the first three months of working with them, there has been so much development that has happened in the way of new features, and basically the the what the customer sees has dramatically upgraded already in in a very short amount of time. And our current like director of operations for functional bodybuilding um was a former customers, customer service like director at TrueCoach. So he has like a lot of experience working on the tech side of things. And you know, he has been um, you know, he's he's very he reminds us like, hey, things are moving very quickly relative to how these things tend to move for these types of companies. So that part of the relationship has gone great. Um, there's also you know lots of opportunities to take multiple parts of our business that have all been disjointed, like we sell ebooks and we have persist, and then we have, you know, we want to develop a nutrition deliverable and coaching service. Like we have the opportunity to bring these all into one place. So if we're acquiring a customer by the sale of an ebook, right, the goal with that customer is to get them to graduate and and continue with us with Persist. But if they're reading a PDF and there's a little link at the bottom that says go get persist at the end of it, you know, there's a lot of friction points to get them into the subscription. Whereas if they're doing that ebook, you know, they buy the ebook and boom, you're in Adam and you're doing the training experience and you're there. And, you know, on week five of six, like uh pop up, hey, you know, looks like you're doing great with your training, you're almost done. Like join persist, like, you know, that is gonna be a much lower friction point. There's a lot more opportunities for upsells and sort of migration into the actual persist platform. Plus, um, you know, the the same owners that own Adam own RPM Training Company. RPM Training Company is, you know, a very well-known brand in the functional fitness world, certainly the CrossFit world, and they have a great reputation. And their sort of brand and their their image, I think, goes really well with functional bodybuilding. And there's lots of, you know, I think there's lots of good opportunities to, you know, partner with them on the marketing front to really get in front of their audience in that on that side of their business and appeal to people who are looking for functional bodybuilding. So that's all, you know, all baked into this. Why would we go with this company and what were we looking for? Check just a lot of a lot of boxes for us.

Yeah, I would imagine too, Marcus, that allows you to focus more on what your kind of core competencies are, which are, you know, the content, the coaching, the, you know, the creative process behind it and the, you know, the support that goes with it. I mean, is that is that a fair statement?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we we want, I think we've always been, we've always had ideas on how to improve and how to implement, you know, or excuse me, how to improve our customer experience, but like implementation is meant we go to our true coach and we ask them for upgrades, or do we consider building our own app or you know, or do we actually find somebody that wants to kind of work with us and you know, sort of like treat us special, like we're a we're an important customer to them. Like we want to make this work for FBB because that means good things for our our business.

Yeah. Um, you know, I I'm gonna respect your time because I know we're starting to butt up, but I do have a question that I would imagine, and um some people might be asking whether they know it or not. The uh, I mean, I kind of look at you right and what you built and other people. Um, you know, we talked about Kelly Starrett and uh, you know, uh the Red Estate, which used to be Mobility Water or Shane Farmer with Dark Horse Rowing. You know, people have taken, you know, content creation in the fitness and health space and really built a business behind it. And they kind of found a brand and an identity. And um, I guess the question I'm trying to articulate well is like, how did you know that functioning functional bodybuilding was a hit? Like it was a differentiator, right? It was the mechanism that you could use to scale. Like, when did you know that? Because there's a lot of people out there probably listening, they're creating content, but there's no specific direction. They don't really have a unique, you know, thing to sell people. Like, how how did you know?

Yeah, I got kind of a similar question. I think it's a similar question. Um recently on another um interview, but it was like, you know, hey, uh what if somebody wants to get into online coaching or build an online fitness company, you know, what are the first steps? It's like, well, like have something that people want, and you gotta know they want it because you have good evidence to support that, right? Now, in the case of functional bodybuilding, right? When I had more people asking for functional bodybuilding than I could actually service with my previous product, which was one-to-one coaching, I thought, okay, well, there's something here. We gotta this has got to be something to go and explore. Or it's it's something to potentially explore. You know, obviously there could be trade-offs like maybe exploring this means bad lifestyle, or I don't get to, you know, do the thing I'm passionate about or whatever, right? But first make sure that there's just a thing that people want. And and in my case, it was that. It was I started posting content about a training, like the way I was training, which looked very different than it did the six months prior. People were saying, like, hey, that's that we what are you doing? That's like different than the CrossFit Games training you were doing. And I did I did like there was a specific day, like October 18th of 2016 or something. I don't know. It was around that time where I I I used the I used the term functional bodybuilding to describe, you know, in my caption of my workout. And then I started to use that hashtag for a period of time thereafter, and then it was then it became just part of the the vocabulary and how people were asking me questions and messaging me. And so then it was how do I do functional body? I want to do functional bodybuilding. So people were asking for functional bodybuilding. I couldn't, you know, I I had 60 clients, individual clients at the time. I had two coaches that I'd kind of like sort of hired to like take an overflow of individual clients that wanted to come in that I couldn't service myself. That was kind of growing, but like even still, I had too many people and a number of people that were like, I'm not interested in the the $300 plus dollar a month pro service. I want I want something else. You got anything else for me? Um, so that was really the time in life that was telling me there was something there. Not to mention, and I don't want to take all the credit for that. I had, you know, this uh woman approach me, Satya Khan, who I mentioned already. She's my business partner and and has run marketing for me from the beginning, where she said, Hey, I think there's something here, like, you know, let's let's do something together. Let's collaborate on a project, let's build a program. I've done some online programs before. She was trying to get involved, like she was getting gaining interest in functional fitness herself. She was a CrossFitter who was just kind of like at an inflection point in her career looking to kind of make a move into this space with her marketing and sort of tech background. Um, I was like, okay, well, I'm not really about the group stuff. Like, I kind of just sold my CrossFit gym to kind of build like a one-to-one coaching business, but I hear what you're saying. Let's I'm open to it, but uh, you know, I want to be really thoughtful and mindful about how we go about it. And so, you know, we've developed a product, and I wasn't all in on like this is the scaling thing, right? This is a multiple stage process to be like, okay, there's a demand. Okay, that's enough demand to make us think it's a good idea to go create something. Then we create something and we sell it one time, and it does well. Like at the time, it was like, you know, the course of seven days, there was, you know, $30,000, $40,000 in our pocket. I was like, holy shit, like that's incredible. Like, what? That's like months and months and months of coaching. You know, I didn't, that's crazy. Um, maybe it was more than that. I don't even know. It was a it was a good chunk of money. And I was like, okay, well, that's still not, you know, enough evidence for me to go all in on something. It's like, that's well, that was cool, but that's probably never going to happen again. So let's just get back to doing the the daily grind, what we do, uh, you know, grow the one-to-one business. But then then the customer feedback from people who are purchased stuff. So you have feedback from people who are getting free content and they're like, hey, I want to try it. Now we're getting feedback from people who have paid. And that feedback is very positive and very encouraging and very like, I need the next thing, Marcus. What's the next thing? Or like, hey, I saw you sold that thing. I I want to buy it. It's like, well, registration's closed. It's like it's not open for another three months. Like, sorry, you know, they're like, come on. You know, it's like, well, we're gonna, you know, it and it we hadn't even decided if we would do it again, but you know, within weeks, we're like, oh, we got to do this again. You know, we gotta we gotta build number two. And so we built number two, and then that second release was like, you know, boom, like even bigger. You know, it's like, oh wow, like, and so once they're paying for something and giving you positive feedback and wanting more, okay, then you deliver more. And it's like after the third or fourth iteration of that, where it was like every time it got bigger and bigger and the positive feedback was coming through and the endless, like, you know, positive testimonials piling up. Um, I think it wasn't probably until like the third or fourth, probably the fourth release, like you know, almost a year later, where I was like, let's go all in on a big marketing push. Let's really, you know, let's get this in for like, you know, let's we hired like a videographer who's gonna come in and like do more content and you know, but it took nine months to really like start to feel like this is this is really the thing to go. Now, I move maybe slower than most people. And in hindsight, if I had go back and do it again, I probably would have poured more gasoline on the fire early and I would have gotten into paid cont like paid ads, and I would have just, you know, if I could go back and do it again, I'd I would have burned, you know, an ad spend that was huge because it was really easy to do, but easier to do back then if we had a compelling product, um, you know, or maybe I I don't know. At least I there's things I could have done differently because I I kind of was slow to adopt that this could really work. Um, but you know, I've always been a bit more on the conservative side of like, hey, I'm not gonna get away from my core competency, which at the time was individual coaching. I'd been doing that for years. I had a gym, you know, that I was wanting to open and and kind of redesign and and have a different model. Um, I was still moving in that direction. So um, but yeah, there's there's there has to be you know demand. And uh, you know, don't just head out and just start to build a product, you know, where you have no no market research to actually support that this is uh people people want this thing.

Yeah. I mean, as soon as I heard the term, and obviously I come from no, it's not obvious, but I I come from the CrossFit world, you know, being a gym owner and uh slightly meteorically above average CrossFitter, that you know, when I heard functional bodybuilding put together, I was like, bing, like something went off. I was like, oh, I get it, right? And and then I started following and I was like, this is this is gonna be good. Because a lot of people, especially people, you know, like myself who maybe like the functional fitness standpoint, but just, you know, maybe let's be honest, you get injured doing CrossFit high speed, right? And joints don't always take it. You're not always people aren't ready to do that and they haven't built the prerequisite strength and um and structural balances in order to do that kind of work. So it just makes a ton of sense. Well, yeah.

And then on the other side, the bodybuilding side, people do a lot of bodybuilding, like they don't feel functional, you know, or many people start to feel like limited in what they can do. And and that's not to say bodybuilding it in and of itself isn't functional, it is very functional, but people don't, they don't feel that always because they don't train appropriately. Um and I just think that uh, you know, yes, the term functional bodybuilding had been used before I started using it, but it it was used like in the the articles go back into like a while, you know, you can search functional bodybuilding T-Nation and T-Nation has an article written by um, I forget the author, but it was like, you know, maybe in 2004 or maybe sometime in the 2000s or 2010, called functional bodybuilding. Let's make bodybuilding more functional. But this was all pre-CrossFit. Like, so when now it's like, okay, Marcus says functional bodybuilding in 2016 or 2017, there's now new context. Like functional is CrossFit, and bodybuilding is what everyone knows it's always been. And so now we're talking about the the marriage between two different disciplines that people are all liking, versus when it was kind of first talked about in 2004, it was like, this is how you can have a more functional approach to how you bodybuild, which made a lot of sense. So, you know, I wasn't the first person to use it, but certainly I was the first person to use it in the context of what we all came out of, which was this CrossFit world. And yeah, it was like a light bulb for a lot of people. And I remember doing a podcast with um with Ryan Fisher, who is probably this the other biggest name in the programming world to come out of CrossFit, who really has a training platform that offers bodybuilding, like functional bodybuilding, essentially. I mean, he's he's you know, we're we're we're very friendly, we have a good relationship, but he's a direct competitor to FBB for sure, chalk performance training. But I remember doing that my first podcast with him, this was years ago, and he came in and he's like, Man, when I saw that name, I was just like, fuck, that's a perfect name. Like, I wish I had that name, you know. And he was like, he, it was, it was good. It's good, it's a good name. And I mean, it it just says it right there, you know. So um, but anyhow, that's just a funny story to like think, you know, when you when something resonates and it it clicks, like um, you'll get you'll get you'll get all the feedback you need to let you know. Um, and you know, so you have a gut sense of something and you want to test it, test it and see what people say. For me, my testing in proving grounds was just social media. Whatever I said in my captions, the way I spoke, the way I talked about my training, I that's all social media was for me for many years. Was just a place to just put my thoughts out there and to just explore what my own voice, my coaching mind, my personal journey, and and hear, and and just hear back from people. I mean, it started with a blog in 2010 that I don't know how many viewers it had or how many readers it had or whatever, but it had enough that I ended up getting probably 20 of my first remote coaching clients from that blog. And it was just me sharing my training journey and talking about what my thoughts are on fitness. And then Instagram became a thing in 2013 for me. And so I started to just that was an easier blog. It was an easier way to make content. I didn't have to like use WordPress to do this thing and have a website, and you know, that was clunky. It was like, oh, boom, content's up, wrote a caption. We'll see what people say in the comments, what people message me, and then you know, so and so forth. And it wasn't until 2017 or 2016 where I was like, I'm actually gonna use this to try and sell a product. Up until that point, I was just like, here's my training, here are my thoughts, I'm growing followers, this is cool, like whatever, you know. And um, and then it became a real, you know, a real tool to obviously continue to do that, provide a lot of free content and value to people, but also, you know, now I have your attention and you want and you want something potentially more from me. Here's the thing and give it a try.

Oh, that's great. Well, it's it's uh it's awesome just to follow the the success from a distance and also you know, swim in somewhat same circles and hear how you're doing over there. It's it's great and um great lessons, great insights, great stories, man. Um, from all that. I think there's a lot of people out there who, you know, will get a couple aha moments from this interview, I hope.

I hope so too. Yeah. That's kind of the whole point of it. Yeah, that is, right? Well, thanks for putting it together and thanks for uh yeah, thanks for your questions and your insights and having me on the on the podcast again. And I hope this round gets as much interest as as the last one. Awesome. And where where would you like people to go, Marcus, if they're listening? Um, yeah, if you're if you're if you're connected to your browser right now, jump on to uh functional-bodybuilding.com and yeah, sign up for our newsletter. That's that's the thing that I love people to do. If they're interested to know more about functional bodybuilding, um, I think all of our content is good, but that's that's some of the best content that we put out. And um it's just a it's a real real good chance to connect with our uh the values of training and nutrition in our company. So a lot of good information goes out every single week.

Right on. I'll go join it right now. Well, Marcus, appreciate your time, man. And uh yeah, it's it's it's always really good. Ladies and gentlemen, Marcus Philly. Thanks, Eric. 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.