The Godfather of Fitness Marketing Has Returned - Ryan Lee

It's better to be different than better, right? Everyone's just trying to be better. Well, I have I have a 10-week kettlebell program with 100 exercises. Well, mine's eight weeks with 400 exercises. Well, that's better. It's not necessarily different though. So, and that's where the real magic lies is figuring out how is how we're gonna make this the product or at least the positioning of it different.

What is up, fitness fans? Welcome back to the future fitness podcast and interview series. This is your host, Eric Malzone. And this is episode number one one four. I talked to Ryan Lee. Do you know that name? He's been around. He's been around for a long time. He's uh been in the fitness industry. He is what we deemed the godfather of marketing uh within the fitness profession. So um started using funnels before funnels were a thing, and uh there's a lot of great wealth in here. I mean, he talks about his story, and and Ryan's kind of got a little dark as far as the fitness industry uh for a little span of time, but he's back, and I'm really excited to get him on the show and uh highlight his experience, what he's up to now. And his stories are great. I mean, he's a really good storyteller, um, which is half of marketing, right? Being able to tell great stories. Um, but just the history, the progression of how marketing has gone through the industry and um the trends that he sees now and what needs to change and what needs to take place to really push the industry into the next level. So it's it was really, really cool. Um I really enjoyed my conversation with Ryan. He also was on the uh the Fitness Plits Radio podcast uh earlier this year. No, sorry, this is 2019. Uh about summer spring last year. So anyway, go look it up. And uh to my promise, uh, I do have a new review here that I'd like to read out. So Kite Chica. I don't know, no idea if I'm saying that right. Right? She says, What I appreciate about the Future of Fitness podcast is the genuine people Eric interviews, like Ryan Lee. It's not about how many followers you have or how high in the ranks you are, it's about what is happening at every level in the culture of fitness and companies around it. Authentic advice and unique perspectives in each episode. Thank you so much, Kai Chica. You know what? Um yeah, I don't always look for the biggest names, although Ryan is a big name. Um what I do look for is things that are gonna really benefit the fitness industry, health industry, wellness industry, things that you can take actionable items from, uh inspiring stories, and apply right away. And one of the reasons we have Fitness Blitz Radio is it actually allows me to find people um who maybe have amazing stories and a lot of extreme amount of value to offer, but maybe they're just not found yet. And that brings me a lot of pleasure. So uh Kai Chica, thank you for the great review. If you haven't reviewed uh and subscribed to our podcast, please do so. Go to iTunes or wherever you're listening to this, subscribe, and then go leave us a nice review. Um, just like this, I will uh definitely read it on air when I see them come through. And maybe you're next. So without further ado, let's get on to it. Episode number 114 with Ryan Lee, the godfather of marketing, has returned, people. Enjoy. And we're live.

Ryan Lee, welcome back, man. I appreciate it. It's good to be back. I think it was it was around six or seven months ago. Yeah. So when we did it, I we were I was probably just launching this new company, Rewind. I mean, if it if if it went live, it had probably been only a couple of weeks. So uh yeah, it's I guess we could see kind of how things go seven months later. Am I still in business? Is it growing? Uh, you know, do I practice what I preach? Um so I I'm looking forward to just kind of coming back on and and having a good talk. And I felt bad because we were supposed to do this twice, and I kept postponing because every time, yeah, when you start something new, everyone talks about entrepreneurship is so easy and just oh, you just do it. It's you know, oh, push a button. Man, every day there's a challenge, but uh you just got to keep going through it. So I I love it. It's fun, and now I'm excited to uh to catch up with you and just to try to deliver as much value to your listeners as possible.

Yeah, absolutely, man. And for those listening, um, the interview that we we did about six or seven months ago is on the Fitness Blitz podcast. So you can go to Fitness Professional Online, you can find that. And it was uh yeah, I I was just listening to it again this morning and you you had just started rewind. In fact, you had just kind of re-entered into the fitness and health industry after uh a hiatus and uh long one. And if if there's a competition for best office slash studio, man, you're winning.

Can everyone hear every everyone who's can they all see this or is it something?

If people, if you can't see his backdrop, uh go to the YouTube version of this interview. And and uh yeah, if I space out, it's because I'm looking at the back of future uh poster, uh the rampage game behind you. Uh yeah, he's got old school video games. Yeah, yeah. It's a cool space.

Yeah, it was mine as a kid too.

Yeah, once I settle a little bit into an area, I think I'm gonna build out something like that. But uh man, let's let's do this. For Ryan, for people who don't who don't know who you are, um, because you've been in the industry for a long time. Um you've consulted so many people. You have um really kind of shifted the landscape of marketing within the industry as well. Um give us give us some of your backstory.

Um yeah, shift I I've shifted in good and then I guess in some ways bad. Um I started uh back in, I don't know how much this was covered previous, but I'll I'll assume no one's ever heard of me or listened to the past one. Um I started when I graduated college and I started working in a children's hospital in 1994. And uh I worked in it was um physical rehabilitation and I started doing fitness with them and adapted aquatics, but on the side, I was doing private training for young athletes. That was my specialty. And all through college, I was I ran on the track team, I was captain of my track team, and I love training. So I I specialize mostly in speed too, like speed and agility training. And I was working out at gyms and I was hustling. I mean, I was hustling before there was hustle, uh, doing going to figure skating places. I was training these elite figure skaters. I still don't even know how to skate. I don't know how I got away with that one. Um luckily it was all off ice. Um I trained USTA tennis tennis players. Um I I I'd go to gyms and set up sports, sports training programs. And on the side, so this was now, I was doing this for a few years. Fast forward to about end of 98, early 1999, like, you know what? I'm doing these little private speed clinics. Maybe I could have a website set up to promote my training. And you know, this is 20 years ago. You it's not like it is now. There was no Facebook, there was no social media, it was nothing. So I had to get a page built. I I bought from page 98, which was like 200 bucks at the time. Took me two weeks. I still couldn't even set the damn thing up. I gave my little 12-year-old neighbor Jonathan $20 and he helped me set it up. And I was off to the races. It was one of the first sites in the world to talk about sports training. And that's why I figured I I kind of had this intuitive marketing brain where I'm like, let me just write articles. You couldn't do videos at the time, and everyone had dial-up. Even pictures were too slow. So I started writing a lot of articles, and things just started happening. I started getting emails. I'll never forget, I got an email like a week after I launched a site from an athlete in Japan saying, could you write me a training program? So to make money, I started selling sports training equipment. I had a deal with a company called Kitech. We sold um medicine balls, resistance trainers, all this kind of stuff. I would get the order through the internet. This is how long ago it is, Eric. I'd get the order. It's insane. I to I got a free shopping cart. I'd get the order, I'd print it out. Um, I went to the bank and the bank gave me, remember those machines with the carbon where you go you kind of ring it through. Yeah, the carbon slider thing.

Yeah, yeah.

I had that in my house. And I'd do that. I'd get the carbon copy, I'd go to the bank, deposit it, it would be in my account two days later, and then I would ship the products out. I would call the company, I'd say, here's the order, and then they would ship it out. Bizarre uh how it worked. And it it did well. And I and then I made a connection with the NSCA, the National Strength Conditioning Association, and I said, Hey, I'm in the NSCA, uh, I'm I'm a CSCS. Can I host a web page for the state chapters on my site? Because there's no, you know, there was no sites, no one even had email addresses at this time. Yeah. And they said, sure. And I started hosting sites, started making connections with all these strength coaches, and and that was like the very, very beginning. And then I hired a young trainer out of Canada who was helping me design all these training programs because I couldn't do it all myself. And he's become pretty well known, Craig Ballantine. Um, so things just started to grow from there, and I about uh a couple I made some money here and there. A couple years later, I I took all that content, made it a paid membership site, and that's where things really took off. And then I started speaking at Performed Better, um, started really connecting with all these amazing strength and conditioning coaches from Mike Boyle and Alan Cosgrove from the beginning and Eric Cressy when he was still in college. And then everyone's asking me, Well, Ryan, you've done all this great stuff online. Could you teach me the business? I'm like, sure, I'll talk about business, that's fine. And then, you know, a few years later, all of a sudden I'm known as like the fitness marketing guy, which that wasn't my intention. And, you know, I just kind of rolled with it. And then I started teaching general entrepreneurship. And now, um, so I left kind of teaching fitness stuff at least a decade ago. Uh, by the time I had my fourth kid, you know, the extra chicken fingers uh off the plates start adding up. Um and and just a lot of things, a lot of stuff, like good stuff, a lot of bad stuff happened, and my health started to decline. I got diagnosed with autoimmune disorder. I'm like, I can't teach fitness anymore. And I finally a couple years ago turned it around and I'm like, I'm down to the same weight I was in high school and college, the same waist size. I'm like, I could do this, I could help other people my age. And now after a decade, I'm back. I I just sold my I had a big entrepreneurial training company called Freedom, F-R-E-E-D-Y-M. I just sold that as of this recording uh three weeks ago. So I don't have any entrepreneurial programs now. I'm just I'm just back doing fitness and and talking about health and have a nutrition bar and just I'm just playing again. So uh here we are. Yeah.

Wow. That's really good. So so going through all that, I mean, I I'd be curious to hear how you overcame the autoimmune. Was it, you know, was it more rest, changes in nutrition? Like how how did you Yes, yes and yes.

It was um the well, it was no one really knows, right? And it took it took months to get diagnosed. I went to every doctor, I went to physical therapist, and I I was getting pain in my feet. So I went to a podiatrist, I went to an orthopedic guy, I went to my general practitioner, went to chiropractors. No one could figure it out until the um the rheumatologist looked and immediately knew it. Uh it was called, it's called um uh psoriatic arthritis. And he wanted to immediately put me on chemotherapy. And I said, No. Yeah, this methotrexate, which is a really powerful drug. And I said, No, well, I knew autoimmune. I mean my master's exercise physiology, I have a baseline knowledge of this stuff. I'm like, well, it's all it's it's inflammation. It's gotta be something's causing it. He said, nope we don't know what causes it. We just have to kill basically all your cells. I said, no, that's not an option. I'm gonna figure it out. Um, so I knew with inflammation, the big things were gonna be stress and nutrition. And that's what I really focused on is trying to simplify everything, simplify my routine. I stopped immediately, I stopped traveling, no more traveling. I haven't I don't speak at events. I used to speak all the time. People used to ask me to speak and said, I don't do any of that. I haven't done that in years. Um and just start to simplify my business and and really focus on my wife and my kids and and nutritionally, just really paying attention to what I'm eating. And starting with the morning, I knew I'm busy and in the morning I don't have a lot of time for stuff. I tried smoothies, I don't have freaking time for smoothies. So that's that's what set me to create a bar. I couldn't find a good bar. Every bar had a lot of them had whey protein, and the whey with the dairy can cause inflammation. A lot of them had sugar or sugar alcohol, which I didn't want, or artificial sweeteners. So that was it. I mean, I I just created this to kind of help me, and gradually the symptoms started to go away. And um this it's this is years ago, and I feel I feel amazing now. Am I a hundred percent? No. Sometimes it's weird. I could I could sense when the weather's coming, when the rain's coming, I start to feel it in my joints a little bit. Um and sometimes my joints feel a little stiff if I'll have a little if I'll have some pizza one night, the gluten sometimes it kind of bothers me, but better than being on the drugs, and I I feel great. So uh I'm I'm probably at like a 90%, I would never say I'm 100%, but I'm like 95%. So uh yeah, I just I just found a way.

That that's great, man. I mean, it's the autoimmune issues are so frustrating because um, you know, they're not really fully understood. No, we know it it comes down to kind of the basic fundamentals of of you know good lifestyle hygiene uh for the most part is a good place to start. But you know, you get frustrated because you bust, you just go from doctor to doctor to doctor, and uh and they don't know.

And and they don't know the problem is the drug that they want to give me just treats the symptoms. Yes. But okay, but what about what's causing it? And it's like, and I and I I I don't blame the doctors because that's what they're t I mean, they're doing what they're taught. They're taught, here's this, here's the thing. What do you prescribe to get rid of their pain? They're not taught, well, here's the thing, what's causing it? Um so I don't blame them. I'm not angry with that, I'm not one of these, you know, all the doctors are trying to kill you. They're not, you're trying to help, but they're just they're not kind of in tune with this. And they don't take nutrition courses. Um I remember with my master's degree, I took a bunch of nutrition courses, and I would, I worked at the children's hospital. I had doctors, I'll never forget this. I had one of the doctors there, um, one of the physicians, she was a physical medicine doctor, an MD, and was asking me about nutrition. And I'm like, and I here I was like a 25-year-old. I'm like, what do you mean? You're you're a doctor. She's like, we don't learn any of this stuff. Really? Nothing. Uh no idea. Uh, and that was really eye-opening at the time. But yeah, the food still is the best medicine. Um, and we know, like everyone listening to this is is a health, a fitness, a wellness professional in some way. It's really, it's really, really simple. It's not easy, but it's simple. Um, and one of my longtime friends, one of my very first clients, Alan Cosgrove, who I still stay in touch with, I'll never forget this. It had to be 15, 20 years ago. We're talking about nutrition. And I said, Well, what's what's the secret? He said, He said, if everyone just had like a good piece of seafood with lots of fresh vegetables for like every meal, all the sickness and illness would go away. Yeah. You know what? You're right. Like you're you're you're absolutely right. Um, so I'm just trying, I'm just trying to help people. I'm not uh preaching one thing or another, and everyone's gonna do their own thing. And there are some people like, I'm keto, or I hate keto, or I do this. I do like, what if something works for you and you're happy and healthy, you can stick to it, you feel good, that's great. Like, cool. Do you want to have my bars? Great. If you don't, that's fine too. Whatever works for you makes you happy. Because that's what uh, you know, if we're talking about kind of the business or positioning, what you don't want to do is go in there and be this aggressive, you're wrong, this is what you're doing is wrong. Because then people just resist and they push back, especially with with fitness and nutrition. My God, it's uh it's right up there with with politics. Yeah, you almost, you know, people get very defensive about what they're doing. Uh and if you like that, if you want to have cold water, if you want to have a glass of cold water in the morning, great. If you want to have warm water in the morning, it works for you, great. Like, cool.

Yeah, yeah, it's whatever it's the dogma, right? I mean, it's it's this dogmatic thing that you feel like you have to, and and you know, I've talked about this on previous shows. Like I came in as a CrossFit guy. So, you know, if you asked me my first five years within my fitness and health career, uh I would have told you CrossFit and Paleo will fix everything, and that's all you need. And it was funny because I was bantering a little bit online with uh Rob Wolfe, and he I remember when uh I held a seminar at Paleo, I had a I held a paleo seminar at my gym, and it was a challenge and all these things. And uh I remember there was a vegan there. And uh everything I said, he was raising his hand and just shooting me down. I I and I was like, God, you know, I didn't really have good answers for those questions. So I back this was like 2009. So I I messaged Rob Wolf. I was like, hey, uh, I'm like, what do what do I do? And he gave me the answers and he's he's like, but just understand, and I'll probably tick off some people on this. He's like, vegans are like the jihadists of the nutrition world, right? That's always stuck with me. But then I was like, well, that's just dogma. It's just one dogma versus the other, right? It's necessary. We all want the same thing. We want better health, we want people to find something sustainable, right, and correct for them.

Yeah, and you can't, and here's the thing, and we and we've all done, we've all gone down this road as health and fitness professionals, we try to argue it. And here's here's what I've learned in doing this for 24, 25 years now. God, 25 years, um, is that you can't win. Because no matter what you say, no matter what you do, they're going to find something, and someone who thinks they know it all too is gonna find a study and they're gonna cherry pick and they're gonna say, well, you know, vegan and this, and and and then someone's gonna say, well, you shouldn't, you shouldn't go vegan because it actually is worse for the environment, and say, Well, according to this study, it's uh you you can't win. You you you absolutely cannot because you can always find a counter argument for everything. I'm convinced of that. Double blind perceived. I don't care. Take your research and shove it. It doesn't matter. Hey, if vegan works for you and you're happy, that's great. Go go with it. Cool. I'm not gonna try to convince you otherwise. You just take that position and people stop being so angry. When we do our our Facebook ads for our bars, or it's it's crazy because our bars are vegan, they're gluten-free, there's no artificial sweeteners, um, no artificial flavors, no fillers, non-GMO. It's made with real greens and fruit, it's all this good stuff. I'm like who what are you gonna say, right? Yeah, right. Who's gonna argue about it? Yeah. Well, man, was I wrong. You know, first, first, the keto people. Well, it's too many carbs. It's gonna do this, it's gonna off-balance, and one person gets angry. I can't believe you put strawberries in there. I'm allergic to strawberries.

What? Like what?

I don't want cashews, I want to be healthier. I you you just cannot win, so you do the best you can. I say, sorry you don't like cashews. This is what it is. And it we're just not right for you. That's cool. Go find something else or find someone else. That's fine. Um, and then they just go instead of fighting back. Um, it's it's so much easier. And you know, we talk about positioning and all, you know, yeah, the the CrossFit, there's that old thing, you know, how do you know if someone's CrossFit? If they don't do CrossFit, well, don't worry, they're gonna tell you in the next 20 years. Yeah, yeah. And I remember when CrossFit first came out online, when Glassman came out with this thing. I'm like, oh, what's this? This is interesting. Um, and if you love it, it works for you, cool. And if not, that's fine too. But uh you can't just everyone relax. You you do your thing and you talk about what you love and what's great, but when you start putting down the other stuff and the other people, there there's something to be said, okay, you want you draw the line and saying this is what we believe in, this is what we don't, but I think focus more on what you believe in and why you like it, as opposed to trying to always attack the other side. And I've been guilty of that. Sometimes we go overboard and we attack the other side. When the more I've done this, the more I've learned it just doesn't work. All it does is upset the other people. So don't even worry about them. Just focus on the people who get it and and state your point. Uh, you don't have to say it's better than anything else. Say this is what we believe. We believe this works, we believe our transformation system or our program or our kettlebell system or our nutrition or our paleo or keto, this works, this works for us, this works for our tribe. You want to come in, join, cool. And if not, there's some other people that you can go follow, and that's good. Yeah. It takes all the pressure off. It takes, it takes, it takes um you out of the having to outhype everybody else and having to outdo them and overdo them because everyone's screaming, ours is the best, ours is the best, everything else sucks. And then you just sound like Archie Bunker. Yeah. If anyone can remember Archie Bunker.

Yeah. I think uh, Ryan, I and I realized this a while ago, is that the more you learn, the more you educate yourself within this field, you know the more you realize that you don't know shit. And that kind of, you know, there's like too much to know. So it's almost like when you learn your ego gets smaller, you're like, ah, you know what? Maybe the only crash, the only real good answer to most questions is, well, it depends.

And and and that's the answer to life, too, right? Um everything the answer almost always with everything is somewhere in the middle. It it always is. Uh there's always there's always a way to to spin things, and but it it it really it really does depend on so many factors. Like we can all agree on certain things. Like if you're every morning you're freaking chasing down a line of cocaine with a bottle of whiskey, probably not the best thing for your health, right? Um we can there's some things we we kind of know for sure. Uh but for for the little things, um and being back, you know, now since our talk six or seven months ago, to now being six or seven months in a deep and really back in this space and seeing the response and and having thousands and thousands of new customers and interacting with them on a daily basis and seeing all their responses, it reminds me of um kind of where the general population is and how much also right now the kind of general tone, at least in states, is very everyone's like on edge. It's almost like this kind of civil war going on. So just trying to be the the the voice of reason. Um I mean, my whole our whole nutritional philosophy that I have, it's as you can see behind me, everything is like kind of fun and retro in 80s. It's just it's the 1980s philosophy. It's eat the good stuff 80% of the time and 20% do whatever the heck you want. Just do that like the 80-20 Pareto's principle. Just do that and you'll be fine. Like don't stress about it. That's that's our overall philosophy. And um, it sense to work for us, it takes the pressure off and it works for our people. And if you don't believe in that, and if you want to be 100% strict and you say I'm Paleo, I could never have something that they didn't have in the Paleolithic era, although I doubt they had donuts in the Paleo because I've seen Paleo donuts. I don't think they had a donut shop in the Paleo era, but hey, if that's your thing, cool. Um and you want to be a hundred percent and be really, really strict and you could stick with it and you love it, yeah, great. Um but that's not us.

Yeah. Awesome. And and so Ryan, I'm you are the marketing guy. I mean, you you've been known as the marketing guy within the industry. And I've actually seen really good people uh leave the industry in the lap in the past few years and just kind of go into something else because their frustration of what the marketing is nowadays, you know, how it's evolved and all that. So I mean, I can't imagine a better person to ask than you of you know, having gotten started literally when it was just called internet marketing and you know there was no cell phones, right? That was kind of when you got started. No email campaigns, no nothing. We had beepers. You've seen it change, right? And what do you how give us some insights on your thoughts on the evolution of marketing within the fitness industry? And then, you know, what's your take on it now?

Well, yeah, so when I first started, it was it was essentially taking old school direct marketing methods and just putting them online. So it was what used to work in old direct marketing, Gary Halbert era, if anyone knows who that is, um, was a long form sales letter. You get a sales letter, you have a big bold headline, you'd you'd fold it up, you put it in an envelope, you send it out, and hopefully 1% of the people respond, then you get rich. So what we did online, because there was no video and none of that stuff, you that's that's exactly what we did. We took a long-form sales letter and put it online. And for a long time that worked. And then from there, from that general framework, we started adding a technology. Well, now you can do audio, and there was a thing called audio generator, and you could add a little audio button and you could hear things. Oh my god, and that improved conversion. Then YouTube came out, and then you could do video and embed video. And now people have um you know, high-speed internet. Now they could watch a video, that improved. And then forget the copy, let's do a video sales letter, and that improved. And then not just do a video sales letter with PowerPoint, let's do one with animated showings, and that and everything just kind of kept going and going and going. But what happens is, and I used to teach a lot of those methods. I mean, that's what I did, that's what we all did because there was nothing else to do, really. Um but what happened was those stopped working because the market starts becoming more sophisticated. Because back then, you saw that, and there was no social media. And if you saw someone say, hey, how to get bulletproof abs in six days, you kind of believed it. Um some people, even if they know it's not true, they want to believe it anyway. But you couldn't go on Facebook, you couldn't look up the person, you couldn't find anything. You so you didn't know if it was real, legit, or a scam or what it was. Um but what happened was I think first a bunch of marketers started to look at it as a game and they started to forget about the human beings buying it, and it was just about the money and the numbers and what's your CPA, how much are you making per click, and they they forgot about the human beings on the other side of it. Um and I think people started feeling like they were being taken advantage of. Um, yeah, okay, as a marketer, so so the trend was you get as much as you can right there in the sale. So you you sell a low-priced product and then you crush them with upsells. Upsell, upsell, downsell, downsell, upsell, downsell, and then you get them on a list, and then you have all your buddies in this circle, and everyone's promoting each other. You promote me, I promote you. So now they get on this list and they see you every day, you're promoting another program. Well, buy Eric's program, buy Joe's program, buy John's program. It's better, and then they don't believe you anymore, they don't trust you. And everyone started to do that. And then everyone's like skeptical now. I don't believe anyone. So the trend now is getting away from that because what happens, you burn out your list, you burn out the relationship, and the trend now is just getting back to get rid of all that crap and just be a real human being. Just stop trying to do this, stop trying to be all the all the hype stuff. And it here's it was really, really interesting. So last week I did a mastermind, and it was a it was a small group, there was like six or seven of us, and three of the guys were in the fitness industry, and they all for the past two years had been doing that method of aggressive sales copy. One one guy, and he's like the sweetest guy, and I see this copy, it's like your m, you know, your wife looks like crap because after the baby, blah, blah, blah, like, oh, so I'm talking, I'm like, you wrote this? Like, this isn't you know, because what happened is they got these initial spike of sales, and then everything starts going down because they have to promote everyone else, and it's this endless cycle, and people don't believe them anymore. So they came to me to like Brian, just we need you to help us fix it. So I got rid of it, I said basically, first thing you gotta do is take down all that crap. And I told them ahead of time, you're not coming to spend a couple days with me until you agree that we're gonna change everything because I can't work with you ethically to sell that stuff. So we said, we're scrapping all that, let's start with the top and build a brand. Let's build a real brand, a real sustainable brand. Let's have all the products fall underneath that, and let's stop with all the bull and let's just start getting real, start telling people the truth, and let's transform this. So that thankfully, there's a new crop of people that are trying that are kind of going in that way. And the people who are most successful are doing that now. And the old school people who are still holding on to the old ways of doing things, the the hardcore affiliate stuff and 100% commissions and upsells and upsells, they make a little bit of money short term, but they never last long term because the churn is too high. So they're either going to have to evolve or they're gonna leave. And a lot of them, as you said, have left because they can't make money anymore, because it's getting it's getting more expensive to acquire customers and they're not building long-term value. Because what happens is what when it used to cost five dollars to acquire a customer, now it's twenty dollars. So if it used to cost five and you could squeeze 18 out of them, um, okay, short term, so you make a little bit of money, but now when it costs 20 and you could squeeze 18 and they're never buying stuff again, you're losing money and they're gone. And the health and fitness is too competitive. Um the reason we so for every dollar we spend right now, we get back a dollar seventy. It's because we're not we're not killing them. We're just taking care of them, and and we have 75% of our customers who's coming back and buying more because we're just treating them the right way. And it's just it's so simple. So I've seen the evolution. So, and hopefully the ones who are the old school aggressive start to kind of die off because people see through it, the the markets become more sophisticated, they're onto their games, and the new breed, the people who are just I'm just gonna give and share and here to serve people are gonna succeed, and especially long term. That's the reason why still I'm around you know 20 years from 20 years later, and a lot of my can my I guess competitors or colleagues at the time, they're gone. I don't some of them, I don't even know if they're still I don't know what happened to them. I really don't know, because you look them up and they've disappeared. Yeah. Um so that's I I I I think if you're not being real and honest and the word is so overused, authentic, but it just means don't be a don't be a D, right? Just that's it. Just be a real person. Um, even here, we do all our fulfillment from this from this facility here, and we film real videos, we show them our inventory. We're not hiding anything. And when we do Facebook ads, I answer every single comment, good and bad. I don't delete anything. Nothing. Uh and so few people do that. They're they're because they because they build everything on a bed of lies and hype. And thankfully, Facebook and Google is they're catching on, and they're they're not allowing those people to play anymore either. Um, I was actually, I spoke at a high-level mastermind event, and the guy spoke right before me. And he's a guy I've known for a long time. He's one of my clients 15 years ago, and now he's just kind of charges 25 grand and sales letters, and his whole thing is, you know, oh, Facebook is banning all of us, so now our ads have to be really boring and vanilla. Like, no, now they're human. Like Facebook, they just want to deliver, they don't want people to feel like feel bad about it. They don't want people to come on. The old Dan Kennedy way of sales copy and twisting the knife. Facebook doesn't allow that anymore. So you can't do that. Um, so you have to find alternative traffic sources. So just do the right thing anyway. Um, so much easier. And you get better people. Um, even if you don't get as many, you get better, better loyal people. So that's yeah, that's where I see it going.

And it it but that takes work, right? It takes time. It's no client, it takes uh you know, it's not 90 days.

It's it's to build a long-term rel to build okay, um, to build a long-term relationship takes longer. Yes. Um yes and well, yes, it does, but if you if you are um if you're consistent with your messaging, it actually isn't that long. I mean, we've only we've only we only launched this brand seven months ago. We have thousands and thousands of loyal customers, people that are wearing our t-shirts, um loving the brand, when are you coming out with new bars? They're voting on flavors, like they are all in with Rewind. It it hasn't taken us years. Um, because from the from every single email, every message is always the same consistency. Our brand is fun. It's just they feel like I've never let them down, and I never all of a sudden said, Oh, you gotta buy this guy's six-pack abs program because I owe him or I'm getting a better commission. Um, so we're doing it the right way. So it it does take a little bit of time, but it's actually um it's actually much easier because you don't have to overthink. So I'll give you an example. Probably my most successful student, his name is Jeff Cav Cavalier. Um, a lot of people know him, he created a company called Athlene X. And he has now seven million subscribers, eight-figure business. He's he started me about eight, nine years ago in a small mastermind group. We came up with Athlene X and kind of building out, and from the beginning, it's like it's gonna be one brand. He is not gonna do the affiliate game, he's not gonna do hype. And even yet, he came to my little mastermind here and gave a talk a couple days ago and said, Um, I don't do any of those crazy funnels. None. So it I never did and I never will. He's like, I have the video on YouTube, and for anyone, whatever they're marketing it, maybe it's a YouTube video, maybe it's Instagram, maybe it's Facebook, maybe it's a podcast, whatever that marketing thing is, getting them to your site, and here's my product. And that's it. That's been his whole funnel. He doesn't go to all these crazy hack funnel events, and you got to do 15 videos, and oh, the video, you know, you have to do this 75 sequence if they watch eight minutes of your video, but if they watch nine minutes, it means they're much more interested. So do these 17 videos. People, the marketers do that to overwhelm you. So you're like, oh my God, I don't know what to do. And they go, well, 25 grand, you join my mastermind, we'll show you everything. Um you know that's not true. They don't anyway. You get 30 seconds on the hot seat. Um, and they say basically promote everyone else. So, but the reality is when you do it right, we don't have a complex funnel at all. It's you come into our world, if you if you try some of our bars for free and you pay a small shipping fee, we have one upsell. Hey, do you want a box at a discount? Yes, cool. If not, no, there's no downsell. That's fine. Now you're on our list, and now I email our list a couple times a week. Always upbeat, motivational, fun, personal. It's never like about what to eat, what not to eat. It's just inspirational stuff. And that's it. That's our funnel, that's our system. That's the whole thing. And it's really, really simple. It is. You just got to keep going and you gotta be consistent. And knowing that, even now, I know the profits really aren't gonna come for a while, but I'm okay with that. Like right now, we're just building and building and establishing relationships. Um, and it does you, but you do have to definitely have to look at it long term. I probably could have made more money short term if I immediately came out with and things I'll never do is a fat burning pill. You know, oh, we we went to this mountain in the Appalachian Mountains, and we we found a tribe, and every person was 180 years old, and it was because this magic herb. So we slaughtered the tribe just to give you these pills. $59 a month. Um, you could probably make more money with Garcina, Cambodia, like all this crap. Um, but I'll never do that. And my audience knows I'll never do that and sell them out and and lie to them for money. So we could have probably made another $300,000 doing that, but I would never do it. And I'm sacri I'm willing to sacrifice short-term for the long-term brand.

You know, it's it's funny. I'm listening to you talk, and you would never guess that you're talking about a product, right? That you're talking about a bar. You would think you're talking about like this community, this, you know, almost like a service or you know, high-ticket item. But so talk to me about that.

So three dollar bar.

Yeah. How do you how what is the client experience like with your product?

Well, it's not just with, it's not even about us and our product. It's that whatever it is you do, your company, your brand, it's a feel, it's a vibe. And whatever you're selling, whatever the product is, that's all that's that's like the surface level. That's not really the thing. Especially if you're selling a lot of fitness professionals are selling. They want to sell digital ebooks to do online trading. Yeah. It's it's gotta go beyond it's an eight-week program, it's a four-week program, it's a kettlebell program, it's a pale program. It's gotta go beyond that and and go levels deeper. And um, and that's what we're trying to do. We're we're here to impact we're we're the company, we're not a nutrition company or a health bar company or any of it. We're just we're a happiness company. We want people to be happy and feel better. Like that's all we're trying to do. So the bar is just one way. And if it wasn't if the bar didn't work, it would have been another product. Maybe it was a skincare product, maybe it was a supplement, maybe it was um a green drink. It it it almost doesn't matter in a way. Um and I think what happened, if we're if we're kind of taking a step back for a minute, what happened with the whole online marketing space is I think fitness professionals along the way started to confuse a product with a company. Right? Um a product, so six-week abs is a product. It's not really a company. Um, the six-week, eight-week transformation is a product, it's not a company. What's the c so Jeff Cavalier, the company, the brand is Athlene X. AX1 is this is one program. AX2, Beast, what like these are programs and products under the brand. And what happened is we cre we started creating 50 different products, and every product had its own URL. And then what happened is well, all the social media. Now every URL has to have its own social media. And now I have to do Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest for one brand, for two brands, for three products, for four, and all of a sudden you're you're running like a chicken with your head cut off, and you're listening to Gary Vaynerchuk, oh, you gotta be everywhere, you gotta keep grinding, and then you burn out, you get no traction because it's really hard to get traction now. It's just a lot of noise. Yeah. So you gotta go deeper than just buy my product or six-pack ads. It's gotta go deeper than that. And and I think sometimes all of our messages are about the product. And you have to think, what else do people do? Who's your audience? Right? Our audience um tends to be it, we we're mostly 35 to about 60, um, probably about 70% female. Um, so we know that's our audience. So what do we talk about? What else do they like to do? Well, a lot of them have kids, a lot of them have families, so what else can we talk about? The daily stuff going on. What if you're if you're 45 like me, well, I'm gonna be 47, but you kind of grew up in the 80s. Like if I if I mentioned, you see the posters behind me, back to the future. Everyone in my age demographic knows what I'm talking about. So knowing who you're talking to and talking about things beyond just the product. I think that's where you have to get beyond. And that's why it's working well for us because we're really building a community and highlighting our members. Every email is not just about Ryan and how great he is, although there is. Um, but it's it's not about that. It's all we do is highlight, we have a reminder of the day, and we take all of our testimonials and we we highlight one of our members in our community, and we're talking to them, interacting, and they're part of the company, and they know, and we're always taking them along along the journey. Even with our next bar flavor, we put a whole survey in our private Facebook group. What flavor do you want next? And one flavor that I put in there, I kind of did it as a throwaway. I said, Coconut chocolate chip, because that's what I would like. Yeah, and I'm like, uh, that's not gonna be number one. I mean, that was number one by far. And that's the flavor with, and we just got our second uh round of test products, and it's amazing, and people cannot wait because they felt like they were part of the process. Um just man, treat everyone on your list. It's they are they're treat them like your family, your tribe. Um, even my my whole family, my my dad, my sister, my cousins, people I went to high school with that I've known my whole life, they're all on my email list. So when I write an email, I'm not writing an email, I'm writing a letter. That's it. Um and that's that's where you have to get to. And when you can when you take that combination of your heart and truly, truly creating stuff to serve people, and you combine it with the smarts, the marketing, okay, what's gonna be a good headline, what's gonna be a good hook, what's a good call to action, um, what's a good pricing model and strategy? When you combine the two, you can't lose. Unfortunately, most marketers are only taught or teaching the funnel stuff. And they're forgetting the heart's almost an after, you know. Ah, don't worry about that. That's you know, forget that. And then because the sexy stuff is oh, you hear about that new countdown clock? Oh my god, you could bet it in email and it, you know, and if someone clicks on it, the link expires automatically and blah, blah. What? No, that's not, that's not, you don't need that stuff. If you're doing it the right way, you don't need any of that. And that's not stuff you should be focusing on at all. Yeah.

I mean, ultimately you have to solve a problem too. I mean, the value has to be there. And that's uh and that's that's the biggest thing. Absolutely skip right over that. It's like, you know, I'm so tired, Ryan, of of the 90-day whatever, 90-day anything, right? It's like well transformations. Transformations, you know. My gosh, seven figures. Yeah, yeah. I know seven-figure funnel, the eight-figure funnel, the yeah, all these things. And uh, you know, I'm I'm really keen on just relationships in general. You know, just actually having conversations with people, find out what they want, what they need, what their problems are, how you can help them, and just going out and offering value. I I think, you know, for me personally, this is my journey, you know, since selling my gym, you know, I was a little bit lost for the first year. I'm like, I didn't know what I was gonna do in the fitness industry. I know I want to stand, I know I want to have a bigger role, right? I didn't know how that value is gonna come in. And I I did all the same things, you know. I started a digital marketing agency that we still have, it's boutique, but we start, you know, start doing funnels, start doing all these things. And uh, but it always felt off, right? Like you know in your gut when something feels a bit off. And I think people need to follow their gut a little more often. And one thing I always found was like, you know, if I'm talking to enough people, um, I'm understanding what the problems are, um, and I'm just building relationships. There you can't go wrong there. And uh that's just listen.

Just yes, just listen, even on our Facebook ads. Um, so when we're reformulating, so we have our flavor original, and then we're doing our second flavor. So the initial, so you have to listen and pivot, right? You have to be willing to pivot, and you can't get emotionally attached to one thing in one idea. Perfect example. So that and that's why I was so excited to build this new company because I could I could build again and roll up my sleeves. I guess ego-wise, I'm like, I want to prove that I still got the chops, but I really wanted to do something that was gonna serve and something that was gonna be fun. Um, but coming in, the idea, my initial idea was we'll have one bar, one nutritional supplement, one thing, like just it was gonna be very focused, but it was only gonna be one bar. That was the idea. We created the super bar, you can't get any better than that. But we kept getting emails, messages. I love it, but I want a little change of pace. Do you have a new flavor? New flavor. We kept getting that over and over. Any more at the end of the flavors, we'd love to see a new flavor. I'm like, okay, they want a new flavor. And the other thing we were getting back was the people who didn't buy it was too many carbs. Too many carbs, too much sugar. You because now sugar is, I guess, poison. I guess if you have one gram of sugar, you're automatically gonna like die and and be you know 750 pounds. Because we can't, I guess our our human beings cannot process even they we can't even look at sugar, uh, you know, and and they use that, oh, it's like mice, it's it's like cocaine. That's ridiculous. Come on. Um so but but we're listening, okay. So we re- so we said we're gonna come up with a new flavor, and as we're doing it, we we lowered the sugar count. So right now, the the new flavor, it's only gonna have four grams. Um, because we're listening to people, and we're smart enough to say, we're just gonna give people what they want, we're not gonna compromise our values, and it's fine if we and we were figured out a way to lower the sugar and to change some of the ingredients, to change the formulation and change the thing. So um being not getting too tied to one idea and being smart enough to move fast and pivot when you have to. And that's the key, and and overcoming the resistance, because there's always gonna be resistance, even with this new flavor. We were getting, we had it. The way a bar works is you do it, you you do a test kitchen, you get the samples, if everything goes well, nutritional facts, texture, taste, everything's good, then you you go again and then you run it through the larger equipment because you do hundreds of thousands of bars at a time, so you can't do it in a kitchen. So then, and that's the final test. So everything was great, everything worked, and then we did it just, we just got the email actually yesterday through the big final test. It it was it was because we used too many with dates, the it was a little wet, the bar, so we need to kind of reformulate again. So it throws us off three or four weeks. So, what do you do? Do you just give up? Oh, you get annoyed for two seconds, like, all right, that's cool. What do we have to do next? And you just have to keep moving through that resistance. And most entrepreneurs get upset, they get angry, or they put their head, they stick their head in the sand where you just got to be prepared for it physically, mentally, emotionally. It's like training for a championship boxing match. You have to be ready for it, and you have to be ready to take the hits because it's going to come, it's going to be hard. And you have to be resilient. That's it. You have to move with conviction and be resilient.

Yeah. I I I love it. And you know, ultimately people want that tactic, right? That's going to change everything. But it's not. It's just it's fortitude, it's consistency, it's persistency through that time and just believing in what you're doing. And if you make enough mistakes, as long as you learn from them, it's a surefire way to win. You just have to move through them. Yeah, don't repeat, don't repeat the mistakes.

Um I will I will tell you that it is everything, especially Health and Fitness Online, is getting so much more competitive. Um and if I if I'm going to give you one piece of advice in terms of branding or positioning, at this day and age, it's better to be different than better. If that makes sense. It's better to be different than better, right? Everyone's just trying to be better. Well, I have I have a 10-week kettlebell program with 100 exercises. Well, mine's eight weeks with 400 exercises. Well, that's better. It's not necessarily different, though. So, and that's where the real magic lies, is is figuring out how is how are we going to make this the product or at least the positioning of it different, right? How is it going to stand out and and get some attention and still solve problems and still have profit margins and all the other stuff? But that's that that's where the trial and error comes in because we don't know. We we don't know until we get it out there and put it out there. But if you wait for it to be perfect, it's never gonna get out there anyway. So you gotta get something out that that's really good, try it, move, pivot, keep trying new things, and eventually you're gonna keep going until you get it. You're like, that's the thing. Like that's it. And even when that works, then eventually it stops working, okay, what's the other thing? And just you keep moving forward and uh you don't get stuck.

Yeah. So you we just touched on it really briefly, and I'm I'm dying because you've you know you've seen this evolution, especially in the online space of what fitness is and health and wellness. Um, you've seen that the technology, and you mentioned it used to be like uh, you know, dropping letters in the mail, then you had a website, that was revolutionary. Then you started email marketing, that was revolutionary, right? Um, things are changing so fast. I mean, it's not just fitness, it's just our lives, right? I mean, you look at, you know, we talk about, oh, well, when AI comes, no, AI is here, it's actually in your phone. You talk to it probably a couple of times a day, right? Um, but if you could, and I I'm gonna put a shorter term on this because it's I do believe it's let's say five years from now, man. Um how is the fitness industry gonna look different, in your opinion? Have you I'm sure you think about this stuff, right? Like how is the technology? How is it, you know, is it obviously applications, AI? Who who is gonna benefit and who has to be where?

I you know, I think we've reached a point with in technology where look, think there's always gonna be new technology and new AI. Um, but I I think we've reached a point where we know, like here, with well, people can't see. I'm holding up my phone, right? My iPhone. Um we know on this phone we've reached a point we could know we pretty much get anything we need on it, right? All the music we ever wanted, all the books, you know, ebooks, apps, maps, all that kind of stuff. All right, we get it. Um so I think we've already reached that point. Now it's like now how can I I think people are just almost craving an analog world. There's a reason physical book sales are up. There's a reason people are collecting records again, and not just a gen expert like me. I mean, my kids buy records. It's I I think we've reached that tipping point where like, okay, we get it, the digital stuff is cool, but I want a real connection. And I think there's always going to be a space, and I don't know where it's gonna go with AI, but what I see is that the stuff that works is still having is is kind of combining some of the technology if you need to, but still having the human connection. So I'll give you an example. You think of the hottest fitness product right now, it's Paladin, or have you however you pronounce it, Paladin. And they do, they started with the bike, then they have the treadmill, now they have just regular workout stuff. It's not about the bike or the app or the treadmill. They're like, oh, that's cool. If you actually listen to all of the testimonials and all of the people, and if you listen to interviews with the owner, and what and one of my friends is a private equity guy and invested about 20 or 30 million in the company. Um, if you actually listen, it's the people that that rave about it talk about their instructor. Oh my God. I I I went on because Johnny is the best. And Johnny called me out and he said my name or Mary, and she wore, she, you know, she mentioned my name and she said my birthday. It's we are never going to lose that human touch and that connection. And that's why it works. And that's why Palatin pays those instructors so much money, and they don't just have a revolving, nameless, fameless, faceless instructor. It's real human beings, and that's because otherwise it wouldn't work. If it was just artificial, I remember when I was a trainer in in a gym 20 years ago, they had one of these bikes, and it was like you ride the bike and it is a simulated, you're, and it looks like on the screen you're riding through the Alps or on a street thing, and people go on, it's like, oh, it's cool, it's a novelty, but it's it never really, really took off. All that stuff I saw, oh, it's gonna, you you put this DVD and it's like you're running back, that never really took off. Palatin is the thing, I think it's working. I really think the big reason why it's working is because it's the human being, it's the instructor, and you feel like you're connected. So I think what's going to happen is the the fitness and health pros who double down on their personality and the relationship and the connection are going to win. And I think if you can start to combine that with some of the technology, um, even better, but not necessarily. So and as long as the technology is easy to use, and I think sometimes we make it so complicated. And I remember going through all that phase and seeing all these guys, oh my God, you gotta do this. And then there's 17 things you have to download and upload and all that. I'm like, people just want simple. So if I I I think we're almost kind of coming back, we're gonna layer some of the technology on it, but I still think we're coming back to that relationship. When I first started, the big things that the online plays were, it was called e-fitness, e-nutrition, e-diets. It was like these big nameless, fameless, faceless things. Pod fitness didn't work because it what because the personalities weren't there. The things that work really well, like Athle X with Jeff, it's because Jeff is the personality behind it. So as long as we don't lose touch of that, even if we build a brand and a company and an umbrella company, there should be a name and a face and a personality. And writing real emails and real messages and real connections and not just the good and not just the annoying pictures of you with your shirt off and showing your abs, but this is this is me on a bad day, and man, I I haven't worked out in two days and I feel like crap. How about you? I'm just like you. That's the stuff that people resonate with. Like, that's my guy, that's my girl, that's the person I relate with, and that's the person who I want to hang with.

Yeah. Uh well done. Well done. I'm gonna leave it right. That was beautiful. So, Ryan, I know we're we're cutting short on time here and you gotta run soon. So give us some insights, man. Um, just real quick, like I want to know where where do you see your business going uh in the next few years? Uh what's what's the hope for it? And then where do people find more about you?

Yeah, um, where does it go in the next few years? You know, I don't know. Uh and this is where I I personally struggle because there's a part, and all my friends, I I live here in New Canaan, Connecticut, everyone's you know, investment bankers, private equity, all this. Oh, you've got to have an exit point. You have to have your five-year goal. And then I I'm in this little mastermind that I formed with three or uh three of my good friends, and they said, Don't like don't even just go and do what feels right and just build something that that you enjoy building. So, because right now, my wife and my four kids are my priority, so I'm gonna build it around that. I don't know where it's gonna go. I do have an idea, I know what products we're gonna create. I have an idea what we're gonna do for marketing um in terms of specific revenue. I have no idea. Um, and I'm not I'm not even thinking about it because every time you try to do a five-year plan, especially in today's environment, who knows? I mean, I don't know where I'm gonna be five hours from now. I'm probably carpooling somewhere, but five years from now, I don't know. So I'm just gonna keep growing and having fun. One of my clients, guy Justin, who's a brilliant 26-year-old entrepreneur, already has two multi-million dollar companies. Um, he had a great quote. We have lunch together. And I said, What do you like to do? He said, I just want to chase the fun. Chase the fun. And I say that every day, all day. Whenever we're like, what should we do? Should we do this? I said, let's just chase the fun. And that's all I'm doing is chasing the fun and building. Of course, I'm gonna keep an eye on the numbers. I'm gonna look at the spreadsheets every day and look at the stuff, but we'll see where it goes. I just want to impact as many lives as possible, build a profitable company and feel good about it and have something that my kids they love coming here and working and wearing the rewind t-shirts and being part of it. So it's all good. Uh, if people do want to come and check it out, it's rewindtoday.com. Very simple. And on Facebook, Instagram at rewindoday.com. And then um, and you can just connect with me. I do a daily email, um, a daily business marketing email, my insights and all this like kind of quick hit stuff at Ryanlee.com. And there's a you could find a link there. I gave a talk at an event recently for a couple hundred entrepreneurs, all about how to build this this eight-figure product line and brand. So that's R-Y-A-N-L-E-E.com. Very simple.

Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Ryan, thank you so much, man. Thank you for spending this hour uh with me and the listeners. And uh I learned a lot. It was great perspective, and yeah, you inspired me quite a bit today. Well, I appreciate it.

No, it it was fun, and uh, I just made everything up. So I hope everyone found value. Thanks, Eric. Right on, ladies and gentlemen, right.

Hey fitness fans, don't leave yet. It's your host, Eric Malzone, and I have a quick favor to ask. Actually, three favors. So, number one, if you're a fan of our show, I ask you to do something that takes under three minutes. Go to iTunes, please, and subscribe to our show. Please, please, please. It means so much to us. It's so important. And then give us a favorable review. We would really, really appreciate it. And uh I can't tell you how much it means and helps us out. So I know it takes two minutes of your day, and uh it means a lot to us. So please do that. Number two, go to our YouTube channel or Fitness Marketing Alliance, and uh please subscribe to our YouTube channel there. Number three, if you like this episode or any of the episodes that we've released, share it on social. That's huge. That's a big deal for us. And when we put a lot of work into these episodes uh trying to give you great actionable content uh for the fitness industry. So that would mean a lot. And that's it. So we have some big plans coming up for this show. I'll be talking about that in the next couple episodes. But thank you so much for listening. It means so much. And uh if you have any questions, please reach out to me. I love to hear from everybody. Eric, E R I C at Fitness Marketing Alliance.com