#1 Ranked Fitness Podcaster: Creating a Team That Grows Your Business From the Bottom Up

Welcome to Allie and you the Business Success and lifestyle show. I'm Alison Maslin, my friends call me Allie. I'm a serial entrepreneur. I'm a life and business mentor. Now let me ask you, what do you do when you are trying to break through to the next level of your business but you don't see a clear path ahead of you? Well, what you do is you tune into this show, Ali and you and we are going to give you the winning strategies, the direction, the answers that you've been looking for. I'm also going to highlight some amazing entrepreneurs, talents, athletes, artists that are going to share with you their triumphs and their trials when they were willing to hang in there when the going got tough. So speaking of those extraordinary individuals, I have someone really special special guest with me today on the show that I'm super excited to introduce. Our guest today is Doug Larson and Doug is the co owner of Barbell Shrugged, which is the number one rated fitness podcast on iTunes. They have millions of YouTube views. Millions. He is also the host of Barbara Barbell Business podcast, a show devoted to gym owners and he's also the creator of the YouTube fitness series Technique Wad. He has dug his own two CrossFit gyms in Memphis, Tennessee and he has created a series of very successful digital products. He's an incredible entrepreneur. He has thousands of athletes and coaches and gym owners across the around the world that are following him and he's got an amazing story to share. So I'm super excited to have Doug on the show. Welcome.

Thank you. Good to be here.

Yeah. So, you know, my goodness, your accomplishments are varied and you are a worldwide fitness expert, you're an online guru, you've built a multi million dollar business. So what I think is most brilliant is that you're doing something that you absolutely love.

I am. I was really fortunate growing up to get involved in gymnastics and then competitive weightlifting, both of which are not big sports in America. Gymnastics is kind of like something that's on the fringe, especially for guys. It's not like a big high school sport. Competitive weightlifting like in the Olympics, like you would see in the Olympics, is not a big sport, not like basketball or football or anything like that. And I was lucky enough to be involved in both of those two sports. And then when this new kind of CrossFit movement came around, which is basically a combination of gymnastics and weightlifting, I had that background and then I had also had the back science based background to complement it. And so I was a natural fit to be a coach when that new CrossFit movement, you know, kind of rose up in the last four or five or six years. So we started a gym. And if you know anything about CrossFit, it's nothing. It has really nothing to do with, like, having a really fancy, expensive gym, which means the barrier to entry to start a gym is very, very low. You could get. You get a warehouse and you could have. I think we start with $17,000, which isn't that much money as far as starting a business goes. And we got this, this warehouse that was. It was damn near falling down. It was, it was.

It was in Memphis.

It was pretty shitty, to be honest with you. It was in Memphis, Tennessee, and it was in a bad part of town. And it just got us off the ground. We weren't making any money. We barely had any clients, but it was something. It was something. We didn't have anything and we just had something. And that really was the big first step was just being in business.

That earlier time.

Yeah.

What was that like for you?

Truth be told, I had no aspirations when the gym first started to be a business owner. My current business partner, we've been together now for eight years or so. At the time, he came to me and said, hey, do you want to start a gym? And I was in graduate school still, and I was going to move to Australia after graduate school. And I said, I can't really commit to running a gym right now. I'm tied up, doing my thesis and getting ready to graduate, and then I'm going to move across the world. That's just not something I can do at the moment. So you're welcome to go do it if you want to. I'll kind of help out. But I can't commit to being an owner because I'm about to go to Australia, which I did. It was fantastic. And then when I came back, I told him, hey, you know, now that I'm back, I will buy in as an owner and run it with you full time. But so credit to my business partner, Mike, Mike Bledsoe. He did it totally without me at first. And so he kind of went through, like, the really, really hard part of really just getting off the ground. And then when I came back from Australia, he hadn't gone out of business yet, which was great. This was about a year later. But he wasn't making any money. He didn't have systems, he wasn't organized. He was doing everything himself. He was damn near burnt out at that point. You know, gym business is kind of an early morning or Late at night type thing where you have 5:00am clients, and then, like, your big rush is in the evening after people get off work. So you're up training people at five, and then you're up till seven or eight or nine o' clock at night training people in the evening. If you can get a nap during the day, that's awesome. But unlikely.

That's all the things that have to happen at the end of the day to close out the gym. So he's probably there.

Yeah. So, yeah, he's training people. And then he's trying to do all the business stuff, too. Needless to say, a lot of balls are being dropped and he just. He was ready for some help. So at that point, I came in, and lucky for the two of us, because we didn't really realize this at the time, not the way that we realize it today, we are polar opposites, the total opposite in almost every way. Like, all of our personality type testing scores are the total opposite. Myers, Briggs. We're the total opposite. The Colby test, we're total opposites. We're very opposite in many ways. And so that means that we're complementary.

Right.

And so one of the biggest lessons that I've ever learned in business is that if you can get a complementary business partner, it makes your life so much easier. Everything I don't want to do, he loves to do, and everything he doesn't want to do, I love to do, which makes for just a beautiful relationship.

Yeah, that is great advice, because I think sometimes we're looking for someone like us. Right. Because you want them to match your opinion and do things the way that you do, but really you want someone to compliment you. So one of you is the big picture and one of you is more of the detail.

Yeah, he's more of an outside the business person. He's always looking for new opportunities to do in the future. And I'm more of an inside the business person where I'm taking the ideas that we. That we come up with, and I'm going to select the ones that I really think are the good ones, and I'm going to put systems in place to run them, and I'm going to help them scale, and I'm going to kind of milk them for all they're worth until we get that next big idea, and then I'll drive that home. So the way that we describe it is that he's, you know, he's very. He's very proactive, he's a good starter, and I'm a really Good finisher. And so he always comes up with new ideas constantly. And I'm good about taking the one best idea and staying focused on that best idea and making something real out of it. And that doesn't mean I don't have ideas, and it doesn't mean that he doesn't ever finish anything. We're kind of stereotyping here, but that's been the model so far.

Well, I think that's great advice because I know a lot of business owners, myself included, will have all kinds of ideas, great ideas, but it doesn't mean anything unless it's implemented and it's followed through and completed.

Right. And so, yeah, a Type E entrepreneur, like someone who's kind of more stereotyped entrepreneur, kind of more like you and less like me. Which again, doesn't mean I can't be an entrepreneur. Not being a Type E entrepreneur is what I call them, which actually, I think Evan Pagan, a mutual friend of ours, was the person that introduced me to that term. A Type E entrepreneur would be a person who does have lots of ideas, and they have an idea and they're so excited about it in the moment, and then tomorrow they've totally forgotten about it and it's gone. And now they have a new idea and they're so excited about it, and then the next day it's gone and they're on to the next big thing. And so if you can have a team around you that can take your idea. The most recent model we've been working with is you have this big idea from the entrepreneur themselves, and then you give that to a project manager, and the project manager will help build it. And then you dish that off to a process manager who will manage that for the long term and make sure that it continues to run the way that it's supposed to be run. And having that model and understanding that model, understanding that the entrepreneur is not the person who's supposed to be managing it, is a huge relief in many cases to the entrepreneur themselves. Because a lot of times entrepreneurs don't like to manage things. They love having the idea and they love coming up with new things. But then again, the next day they're like, I'm kind of bored with that now. And they want to go on to the next thing. And so if you have someone you can dish it off to that can build it, and then someone that can manage it, refine it, perfect it, make it more efficient, optimize it for the long term, if you have all these people in place to do those things, Then now you can start to build some bigger systems, some sales funnels that will run for a long time. And people to manage the. I'm not going to get all the details of how sales funnels work, but someone to manage the traffic and the ad spend and split testing and optimization. And some people love to do that, and that's all they want to do. And they don't want to have the burden of trying to figure out the next big thing to do. Well, perfect. In our company, what we try to do is try to keep everyone only doing the things that they both love to do. They're very passionate about it, and they also happen to be uniquely talented or gifted at that one specific thing. So we call that your unique ability to steal from Dan Sullivan. You're good at it and you like doing it, and if you aren't good at it and you don't like to do it, then you're almost not allowed to do it. You have to want to do both. When you're first getting started and you're all by yourself, well, you kind of got to just grind through it until you get some team members. But once you have some support, you've hired some people. That's really what, I guess I shouldn't say you are shooting for. That's what I'm shooting for, and I definitely recommend it because it works very well. It creates an amazing company culture. Everyone is happy all the time, and truth be told, the work gets done faster and it gets done better because you're doing something that you enjoy and you're good at it.

Yeah.

It just makes sense.

I agree 1000%. In fact, we've moved people around in our company. When I have found that where they were really gifted, that I wasn't aware of these talents and move them into that position. I call it finding your shine factor. Where you shine, you know, where people come to you and say, hey, Doug, you are just so good at that. You light up when you do that, you know, and if you're. If you're in that vibration all of the time, it completely changes your life, of course. And it's going to support you as a business owner. When you have a happy, happy team members and they're doing what they love.

Yeah.

So when you stepped into this, you know, and this was a new experience for you, what was going on in your mind? Were you thinking, you know what? I know this is going to be successful, or were you, let's give this a try?

Well, when I first started, actually here, I'll Back up. I always wanted to do the online thing. Even when I was in graduate school. I was watching digital products of people that I now know as friends and they would have their videos that they were selling online and I'd watch their videos and I think I already knew all that stuff. I could totally make a video like this because I was again, very fortunate growing up to have this incredible background in fitness nutrition. I had coaching my whole life, basically for free. I've been to conferences once every couple months since I was a teenager. Basically. I was really fortunate to have a deep background in fitness while I was in graduate school. I'm looking at these products, I'm thinking I could totally make those products. I'm going to try and make my own products and sell them online. I tried that all by myself, not knowing anything about business, and it didn't really work very well. I made a few sales on affiliate products and things like that and it didn't really take off though. And then my friend came to me and said, I want to start this gym. And so I said okay, eventually. And I bought it as an owner. And again, that was a very natural fit. It was like, I totally know how to do everything. Like I can coach all the classes and I know how to do the tactical technical stuff, the in the business stuff, but I didn't know anything about running the business side of things. So I felt very good about when someone came in. Like I could totally take that new client or customer through a great experience. And because I could take them through a great experience, I was very confident in my ability to train them, give them results and give them a good experience where they're very happy. I felt confident that the business could succeed. And luckily at the time, we were the very first CrossFit gym in Memphis, Tennessee. So we had zero competition, which was fantastic because if we had any competition, we probably got out of business because we didn't know what we were doing.

Right. And there are two. There's the business of your fitness part, taking care of your clients, doing cutting edge work in fitness and nutrition. And then there is the business of running the business, which is where most of the people that have a certain expertise, that's where they fall short. I mean, even MDs in medical school, you know, they don't. They're not learning business, they're learning to become a great doctor.

Right, exactly. So yeah, we didn't know anything about marketing and advertising and management and accounting and dealing with lawyers and contracts and, you know, negotiating and the list goes on. And on and on all the business y things. So that was trial by fire in a lot of ways. And because we were the very first gym in Memphis of that type, we didn't have any competition. We were very lucky. We could make a lot of mistakes and not go out of business. And then, as I said earlier, the barrier to entry is very low, which means that it just wasn't a very expensive business to run. So we didn't need a lot of capital up front either, which let us get away with a lot of mistakes as well.

Well, speaking, you know, we'll talk about success, but I think we should talk about failure too, a little bit, because success comes with those missteps. And can you tell us some of those mistakes that you made early on that were some big aha's and lessons for you?

Yeah. So at the gym, when we're first getting started, you know, we. I eventually came on and me and Mike were these complimentary partners and that worked very well. When we first tried to take that next step and we hired our first person, right. I didn't think about like, really, who are we hiring? There was a girl at the gym who, who now actually owns a gym herself and is a very good friend of ours. And she's fantastic. But when we first hired her, we did a very poor job of putting her in the right role. We didn't understand when you hire somebody that you need to put them in the right role for them. If I take a slight tangent for a second, I think it makes sense in the physical world that people are naturally built to be a certain type of athlete. I wouldn't hire you and say, okay, you're going to be an NFL quarterback. Like, you're just not built to be a quarterback. You're not 6 foot 5 and 300 pounds. Right. You're just not. You're not that person. You don't have to be that person. Right. And so it's like that in business too. You don't want to hire somebody and then try to put them in the totally wrong role that they are not built for. Mentally, emotionally, physically, it doesn't matter. So in this case, we hired a girl who. She's a great people person, awesome people person. Everyone loves her, gets along with everybody, and is just passionate about talking to people, helping people and giving them results. And she's great, but she's not very analytical, she's not very data driven. She doesn't like Excel spreadsheets and math and things like that. It's just not who she Is. So we ended up putting her in a position where she was supposed to track metrics and I tried to offload a bunch of my very tedious, repetitive type work to her. And she's a person that likes new stuff and likes to be very creative and have lots of very unique ideas that would keep her excited day in and day out. She likes variety and that's not the job we gave her at all. We said, okay, you're going to email people these email templates, you're going to copy and paste them and here's your scripts and things like that. Some people love to do that, but she didn't love to do that. I put her in the wrong role for years. I, you know, really, this happened for years and I didn't, I didn't know. I thought I was training her poorly or like, I just, I just need to like, explain it to her better or maybe I just need to tweak the system or. I kept thinking it was my fault and it was my fault, but it wasn't my fault for explaining to her poorly. It's my fault for trying to get the wrong person to do that job. Right. So the way we tend to think of it now is that there's two models for business. There's the McDonald's model, which is, you know, build unbeatable systems, hire very low skilled labor that anyone could follow, teach them exactly what to do, don't let them deviate whatsoever, and they can run the system no matter who they are. And then there's the Harvard model, which is the total opposite. It's just hire the best in the world and just let them do whatever the hell they want. Right. And so in the case of this girl that we hired first, we tried to do the McDonald's method with her. We hired someone who, who we're just going to give a system to and we're going to make her do it. And we should have just gone with more of our current model, which is they have to be passionate and good at. It's more of a Harvard model and just hired her and said, hey, what do you want to help out with? You know, what do you see at the gym that could be better? And I'll keep doing this. I was actually good at it.

Creativity.

Yeah. Let her work within her strength, right? Yeah. Let her work in her strength and let her turn that strength into a real talent or turn that talent into a real strength, strength, however you want to look at it.

And that's a big mistake, really, your business, I mean, it takes time in your business to really understand the different components of your business and where you're going to need that support. So there are a lot of people watching the show that are at different levels of their business, and many would love to have a successful online business. As you have done, what do you feel separates you from your competition online?

Quite a few things. So probably one of the biggest things is that we have a very edutainment focused model where it's very much like this, where it's conversational. So that's key. Conversational is very easy to follow, much easier to follow than a monologue. If I was just sitting all by myself teaching, we weren't having a conversation. Conversation is so much easier to follow. So we try to make everything conversational, even. Even when we're doing something that's not usually conversational, like a sales letter. Right. We try to make that conversational as well.

Very relatable.

Yeah. And in our case, we run multiple podcasts. Like you said earlier, we're the number one rated film, fitness and nutrition podcast on itunes. And that podcast is usually three or four people on the show at the same time. Not structured at all. Usually we're just drinking scotch, having a conversation. And so you have the opportunity now to just kind of be a fly on the wall and just hear what we would probably normally talk about anyway. And that's something that wasn't really possible for anyone 30 years ago. You had to get a book and you had to read the book, and the book was organized in a certain way, and it was. It wasn't what that person would really be like today. Right.

So people can connect with you more. It feels more authentic.

Right. To get people to know, like, and trust you. Just letting them listen to a very casual conversation, not so dissimilar to what we're doing right now, really lets you get to know what that person's more really like than reading their book or reading their blog post. Their blog post with a picture of them that's all staged and perfect, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. But this being able to hear the conversation just is so much easier. And it's easier to make the content if you're gonna make a lot of content. It's just easier to sit there and have a conversation.

Right. And so through that. So give me a little bit of history with that. How long has the podcast been going? How many episodes have you done?

I think we posted 168 yesterday. And that's kind of. Our main podcast is called Barbell Shrugged. And that's a video podcast where we travel around the world and we meet with fitness experts and pro athletes and especially in the CrossFit and the weightlifting space and strength conditioning space. And so we post that every Wednesday and then we post another episode of each week called Barbell Business where we. Same thing, we just have a conversation mostly with gym owners. And then I have my other series that's how to do exercises correctly, how to lift weights correctly, how to do gymnastics movements correctly, push ups, pull ups, squats, deadlifts, things like that. Basics, for the most part. And that's called Technique Wad, and that's just a free YouTube series. So if you want to learn how to lift weights, you can go look that up and I'll just show you how to correctly do weightlifting on YouTube. And, you know, like for pull ups, how to make them easier if you need to make them easier or how to make it harder if you need to make it harder, depending on your level of athleticism and ability. But we post an episode pretty much every single Wednesday for the main show and then the other shows usually once a week. We're not quite as, like, consistent with those shows as the. The main show, but. 168 for the main show.

That's great.

Yeah.

You know, I'm actually pretty good at pull ups.

Yeah.

Yeah, we did gymnastics.

Didn't you?

I did gymnastics. And you know what I think is that you actually get muscle memory in your hands even, and through here, like I can. I can do pull ups just like the best. The guys in the gym there. Yeah, yeah. So. And I do think that was from gymnastics. So I'm sure your gymnastics background.

Oh, yeah. In the CrossFit space, all the girls that did gymnastics growing up, they are always the best athletes.

Really?

Yeah.

That's cool.

Yeah.

Speaking of gymnastics, I mean, the thing, the core things that you get from when you're younger or that you're born with, do you. Do you think. Because this is something that I think about, do you feel that the entrepreneurial drive is something that can be taught, or do you feel like that's something that you're just born with or you learn from growing up?

I'm going to say yes to both. I do think that you are born with a big chunk of it. Some people are naturally more likely to be, like I said earlier, a type of entrepreneur than others. And that doesn't mean that people aren't born like, that can't be entrepreneurs. But I definitely think that there is really Something to innate abilities. And again, that doesn't mean that you can't. If you're not a person that was born with that innate ability, that doesn't mean you can't turn into someone that is great. You certainly can. But again, back to like the football analogy. Like if you wanted to be an NFL player, anything, basically, then you're basically shit out of luck because you're just not a person that can be 350 pounds of solid muscle, not you. Doesn't mean you couldn't get better at football. No. But it does mean that you might want to choose something else. And so I think really the smartest thing to do is to figure out what you are naturally good at because you can't change what you were born with. Just figure out what you are naturally good at. Then you want to try to stay again within that very narrow role and then try to partner or build a team with everyone who is complementary to you. So in my case, again, I'm not a type E entrepreneur. So I'm actually a great example of someone who. I have been very successful. I have multiple businesses. Never had a business fail in the last eight years or so. And we, we start new things all the time. They're always successful because we figure out what needs to happen, who's the best person to do that, make sure they really want to do it and they enjoy doing it, and then we let them do it. I don't have to do everything. I just need to find out who, who needs to do, who wants to.

Do it and that wants it that you have to let go of being a control freak.

You know you do.

And a lot of entrepreneurs are that way because they're perfectionists and they want the work done. But if you're trying to micromanage everything, then it really holds back your growth.

Yeah, in a lot of cases you'll see something being done. This happens all the time. You'll see something being done and you'll think if I did that I would do it better. And you would, because you're the one in charge in a lot of cases. And you might have decades more experience than some of the people that you hire in some cases. But since we're in the coaching industry, we have athletes come to us that want to get in better shape. We coach them to get better. We tend to take that same mentality with the rest of our team. I'll see something being done that I know isn't that great. And I think, okay, when I hire somebody, I'm Hiring this person forever, right? It's an investment in the business. I'm not hiring this person temporarily. I'm hiring this person for the rest of our lives. Okay? And so if I want to bring that person on the team, I have to understand that that person is going to have tremendous growth while they're with us, and I have to facilitate that growth. So if someone isn't doing something very well either, they're simply in the wrong role. And that was my fault for giving that to them. And I'll go to them and say, hey, do you want to do that anymore? Is that frustrating? Do you really not enjoy that? Let's give it to somebody else. And they know they're not going to get in trouble. So they'll tell me, because no one gets in trouble in our business. If they did something wrong, then we realized that it wasn't the right thing to give them. We'll give somebody else. No big deal. We don't yell at them. They're not in trouble. Right?

Right.

And there's no threat of, like, you're in big trouble. You're gonna be fired soon. This is. This is your first warning of three, and you're out of here. It's not like that at all. So, number one, if it's the wrong role for them, we'll just give it to somebody else. Or if it is the right role for them, but we understand that it's that next level of difficulty and they just need some more experience, then we just try to help them. Here's some resources. Listen to these audios. Read this book. Right?

There's a class you can take.

Yeah, let's do it together. Like, you do it. You watch me do it, and then we do it together. And then you try it on your own with critique, and then you're released, cut free, and you can do it on your own from there on out. And so this, the role of being an entrepreneur, as you get into a bigger and bigger and bigger company becomes you not only managing your staff, but facilitating the growth of your staff. How can you help that person get better?

How can you empower them? And that means you're in the role of being a leader and inspiring them. Which leads me to my next question is where do you go for your inspiration? What. What inspires you? Because it takes a lot of energy to run a business. Right. And sometimes there's those days where, you know, you're hitting the wall and you're like, why am I doing this? I'm exhausted. This is so much Work. Because it can be a lot of work.

Yeah.

So where do you go for that inspiration?

So we run a podcast and you count this as a podcast? Is that how you refer to this? It's a show.

Well, it's a video podcast.

Okay, so video podcast. Perfect. So in part, we run a video podcast because we think that's really cool. And so obviously we listen to and watch a lot of other podcasts and we consume a lot of audio style content. I don't have my headphones in. I took them off for the video, but I typically have my iPhone hooked up to headphones that just hang out of my shirt pretty much everywhere I go all the time. And I'm always listening to something constantly. I consume an enormous amount of content like conferences, recordings of conferences, audio books, podcasts, interviews.

So you're always growing, you're always wanting to. And to me, that's the fun part of running a business, is that you don't want to be doing the same thing over and over because you get bored.

Yeah, we definitely get bored. We get bored a lot, actually. Getting bored is natural, but you have to fight that in a way because it's been my experience that if you can't stay focused on one thing and really kind of drive it home, then it's hard to really make big money. But yeah, I definitely can't get bored if I'm not constantly learning. So my own personal evolution really comes down to always learning and getting better. And the easiest way for me to learn on a very regular, systematic basis is to have headphones with me. That way I can get in my car on the drive over here. It was a 20 minute drive. I was listening to content the whole time. I'll be making food, listening to content the whole time, going to the bathroom, doing my laundry or doing anything. I don't actually do my laundry. I have other people do it for me. Which actually is a very good point as well. You shouldn't be doing your own laundry. That's a waste of your time. But as a business owner. But anytime you're doing.

I don't do my laundry.

Yeah. So doing anything where I'm usually doing something like minorly physical, like eating a meal or driving my car, I tend to be a very physical person. And when I'm moving around, I tend to be at my best. I tend to be having. I have my best ideas and I tend to like think the most clearly when I'm moving around. If I'm going for a jog again, I can have my headphones in. And I can just sit there and think. If I just stop and I just sit and I just listen or I try to lay down and listen, it's like I don't even hear what they're talking about. But when I'm moving around, I'm just at my best. So that's what works for me. And if I just try to, like, schedule time to read a book for 30 minutes, I can do it, but it just. It's like I have to, like, fight to, like, find the time to sit down and do it. And then after 20 minutes, I'm like, man, I need to, like, go do something else, because I can't just sit there. But listening to audio content really, really helps.

Well, you're in the right business because in fitness you're always moving, right?

Yeah, that's very, very true. So that definitely helps. And then we met at a mutual friends event again. Pagan mentioned him earlier. We met at one of his events. And going to Mastermind events like that with other people who are. They're successful, they're doing big things. They're also trying to grow and meeting those people and being able to, you know, have conversations over the weekend with them and then reconnect with them, just like we're doing right now. That really has been huge for us. So now we started on our own.

Mastermind live connection, you know, with people. Because we are so digital these days, right? That's how we're connecting now. But I think that. And we're craving that connection. And that's why I run my Mastermind, the Pinnacle. And it just is so powerful, the aha's that you get when you connect with one another.

Yeah, Mastermind is really where everything is heading right now. People love to just sit around table with other people who are doing big things. And they respect them already. They know they're smart and just like, man, this is happening for me and my business. What would you do? And they just want someone to tell them, like, hey, this is what I did. It happened to me. It was really similar. It's not quite the same, but I would try this. Have you tried that? Have you tried this? And they'll just talk, toss around ideas in a very normal conversation, rather than going to a conference and just sitting in the audience and taking your notes and there's no connection there. So I think Masterminds, once you get to a certain level of competency, once you kind of have the basics handled, you just need to get in the room and just have a conversation with people. Masterminds facilitate that process and make it very, very easy.

And that's the value really being in the room with those people or working with them throughout the year.

Yeah. And it really has nothing, not nothing, but little to do with just the two days that you're there. You're gonna go there, you're gonna meet a bunch of people, you're gonna form real connections, real relationships. And then next time you have the mastermind, certainly you can see them and do the same thing over again. But now you can actually, like, call that person up. You can meet for coffee. If you happen to travel to the city, you can go meet up. Now you have a real friend. You're buying friendships in a way. And that's a super valuable thing, in my opinion.

I totally agree. Business is all about relationships, relationships with your clients, relationships out there with people that are helping you to grow the business. So as we come to the end here, a couple important things I want to touch on. One is that, you know, some people sitting there might be, well, that's great. He jumped in and he did it. But how could I do it? What's some of the mindset that you feel that you need to have stepping into the business? What is some advice for those that are watching the show today saying, you know, I'm really ready to do this, but, you know, they have all that mind chatter going on.

Right. So here I'll talk about the online space specifically. For the moment, the biggest thing with the online space is not selling something online. Anyone can open up a simple shopify store and put some products in there. And now you just have this store in the middle of the desert that nobody knows is there. Nobody's going to come buy from you. So really, online comes down to creating a following, creating fans of your personal brand, yourself, your content or whatever. If you want to get started online, the first step really is not having something to sell. It's just creating a fan base.

Building a community.

Yeah, building a community is another way to say that. Absolutely. So, yeah, you got to build a community online. And the best way to build a community is just to put out some very consistent content. So in our company, what I did was once we had started making some shows, I very intentionally tried to take over Wednesday. We started making T shirts that say, is it Wednesday yet? And coffee mugs that say, is it Wednesday yet? And we use the hashtag, is it Wednesday yet? We want everyone to know that we post on Wednesday. Right. And that's not just so they know to watch the show. On Wednesday. That's so we know to post the show on Wednesday. And if we don't, then we have this angry mob on our hands. That's like, where's the show?

You know, it's Wednesday, right?

And so. And that's happened to us before. Usually. Usually it's a YouTube upload issue. We'll try to upload to YouTube like three or four or five times, like, all night long. And it doesn't happen in like. Like, social media is just, like, tearing us apart. They were like, we can't wait. You know, people are. They freak out and it's great. But yeah, letting your audience know and putting that social pressure on yourself that, hey, every Wednesday, I post blank blog posts, audio podcasts, video, or whatever. It doesn't have to be anything that's really fancy. In fact, you're more than welcome if you want to go look at my first videos. They're still on YouTube. Fourth of July, 2011, I posted my very first video from all of our. All our videos. This was about six months before our show started. And that was one of the technique WAD episodes where I'm just teaching weightlifting. And I set my. I didn't have an iPhone back then. I had like, one of the first Android phones that shot HD video. I don't know if it's actually HD or not, but it was good video. I just set it down on a box and then I ran in front of it and I yelled at it. And then I ran back and turned it off. And then I uploaded straight from my phone. So the audio is shit and it's not edited at all. And then the next day I did it again. The next day I did it again. And I just did that every single day. And nobody watched them. But eventually people did start to watch them. And if you look at our YouTube stats, it looks fake. It looks like this, like nothing. And then it's like that. And now it's like straight up. So it will take a little bit of time, but because creating that audience will. You have to gain some momentum, but you will definitely snowball if you just push it down the hill to start with. So the biggest thing really is just be consistent and don't stop.

Right?

It doesn't have to be good. That's where people stop. They don't think it's good. It doesn't have to be good. Number one, it won't be good.

It's sticking with it, though, because that in the early years of my businesses, sometimes you're working a lot harder you're really burning the candle at both ends and you're not seeing the results that you want or you need. And I think that's where a lot of people get frustrated and they quit. And so what you're saying is so true. You just have to stay with it. You just have to stay with it. And over time, obviously there were at least a few people watching your show, right?

Yeah.

And then it started climbing from there.

Right. So. So, yeah, in the beginning it won't be good, but it will get better. Like if you just get started, you eventually will make little tweaks and then a year later it'll look so much better. Two years later, it'll look so much better because you don't want it to look bad. You know, you don't want it to look bad. You're not going to let it look bad forever, but you don't know how to make it look good yet. It's not just going to go from looking bad to looking amazing. It's going to be a journey, so to speak. So you got to just get started or the journey never starts.

So that's really exciting. So people can find you, Doug, and in your business.

And yeah, you can go to our website. It's barbellshrugged.com, very similar to Atlas Shrugged, but Barbell Shrugged. So it's S H R U G G E D as opposed to just a Barbell shrug where you're shrugging your shoulders. So barbellshrug.com, we post an episode every Wednesday, as I said, for the fitness, strength and conditioning show or for the. For more relevant to your audience, I'd imagine. We post episodes of Barbell Business. You can go to barbellbusiness.com as well for that, to sign up for that newsletter. But we post episodes of Barbell Business every Friday. They're usually audio only, so you can subscribe on itunes for both shows, Barbell Shrugged and Barbell Business. But occasionally for Barbell Business, we will do a video show as well. We just went up to Tim Ferriss beach house in Malibu and we did a video podcast out on his back deck over the water, which was super cool. So if you want to Google that, Google Tim Ferriss barbell Business. And there's a video on YouTube of us interviewing Tim Ferriss, who obviously is incredibly intelligent. And that show was, was absolutely amazing. So if you want to start with one single video, definitely go listen to Tim's episode because it's awesome content you definitely should watch. It's really Good.

Fantastic. Well, thank you.

Yeah. Thank you for having me.

You gave so much great advice. Lots of wisdom in there.

Yeah.

And I wish you the best of success. And I know it's all there. I'm excited for you.

Yeah. Thank you.

Glad you're here in San Diego.

Yeah, me too.

So hang on. We will be back in just a moment. On Ally and you.

Sa.