170. How I Built a $100M Brand from My Parent's House ft. Christian Guzman

34:03nabeel was 17. he was 17 but i had a few people um before that were javon kelvin um lawrence shout out when we started like really trying to elevate the videos with videography but now it's not, I don't know. I think it could work now for sure. But now it's just, we're like, for the last two years, I started a new YouTube channel. I hit a million. It was a 12 year old channel really plateauing and losing followers is an uphill battle. So I started a fresh channel, dedicated my whole everything to that. And it's been a constant growth, but I edited all the videos myself for two years right but that meant clips and voiceover so that's what i've been doing the last two years until nabil got here like five months ago wow on the topic of your new channel

34:51Christian Guzman:okay your boy am i crazy no no no we don't think you're crazy at all what's up with your boy max dude we gotta talk we gotta we can hit a mill we gotta talk to max we're gonna talk to him tomorrow i think you can for sure hit a mill i think that does that fuel you yeah does that fuel you it's not the i'll tell you like when i got the meal plaque i had no feeling i was like dope what's next so it's like when i got my 100k plaque just like yesterday i was like dope what's next so it's i know no matter what the goal is i'll always just feel like that but i'm not gonna lie it does motivate the fuck out of me just just because like and it's not the mill number but it's growth i want i want to put it max we were saying we were saying what you got to do i don't know if you knew you could do you do this with like the 100k plaque or the million plaque you can get a second one if it's like you and your boy if you have like a channel together you need to get him one and sign it ship that or be like you're gonna put this in your office behind you okay back up to something you just said about how you hit this goal you hit 100 and you kind of move past it do you feel like that's been an ongoing thing that you maybe haven't been able to sit and feel like these massive monumental moments in business or in these things that you're chasing do you feel like you always have moved the goalposts because it's something that i feel like i've dealt with a lot and i'm trying to work through like you know you'll you'll hit these numbers or you know you hit a podcast episode i'm like this is so fucking amazing but like you're saying it's like the next day i'm like we need a new guest like as soon as you hit this milestone that you've been chasing for so long the goal post just automatically moves forward this life man as much as i want to be like oh just let's i don't know okay i will say like there's a sense of with me getting married and stuff last year and just like kind of combining our pots and both money you know savings and being like oh shit like you know great like it's nice for sure but i find when i let myself kind of like oh this is i don't have to work like that's bad that's that's a dangerous territory to get that's a dangerous mindset to get in right because it i don't know i we appreciate how far we've come for sure but it's like it may sound so cheesy but if you're not trying if you're not working on growing i find like i just feel lost and i just don't really that's just not how i've want to wire myself um with fitness with with work with the content um so i just like the chase and i want to put myself in positions to always be chasing and like should you stop and appreciate for sure like sometimes i'm outside of the gym and i have like this wide angle just view of like everything i'm like and it's peak hours the sun's going down the sunset looks beautiful and i'm just like fuck yeah man like i'm living it right now i'm him so i think just be sure to remind yourself like you are living it right now like if five years ago you dreamt of this moment yeah embrace it and just all i can say is like be more present in the moment and it's like don't be so distracted i i feel one big thing that i've been working on is like just being more in the moment with things and i think that's something i've really gotten better at since really starting this new channel and this is a whole side tangent but like going getting off of adderall cold turkey and sort of like i found that what's slowing down i thought slowing down would be is actually just me being more clear and having more clarity making decisions quicker and just sharper and by doing that and not fogging myself with like stimulants and stuff like that i'm able to be more present and just enjoy the things more you know tried neuro gum uh once it was just really chewy yeah You know, that's the only downside.

38:43Christian Guzman:I'm into it. I got some extra in my bag. We're getting Rob's in batches right now. We're getting Brian's in. Okay, you brought up that there's a few athletes that crush for you guys that maybe don't have as many followers. You mentioned to us that influencer marketing has changed a little bit and isn't necessarily what it once was. And your guys' marketing strategy is changing a little bit. Can you talk about how your marketing strategy has changed and how it's different from or how it's different in 2025 than it was maybe in 2015? For sure. I mean, 2015 was I don't think there were many, many influencers back then.

39:20I would say like 2020, let's say. OK. So in 2020, I feel like that was a very easiest way to put it. About 50 percent of athlete sales used to come from influencers, athletes, creators and that. now it's down to about 32 percent right and what that it's interesting like what that means for us it's not a bad thing it means that we're investing also into ads into google into things like that and just like really the shift that i'm making now is having our our marketing team actually put their brain and attention on the marketing outside of just the influencers and just the ads or sorry uh just the athletes so like we need to we're investing so much money into this stuff and it seems like all of their day their actual work day has been so heavily involved in just like what's the next drop what who are we shooting this is this it's like pause for a minute dive split the attention from you know 90 this and 10 on this other stuff like let's actually see what happens if we switch that to be 30 35 focused on the athlete the marketing let them more so do their thing right let's lean on them to do their thing and let's put our internal team focus on how can we improve what we're putting out as a company building the brand like how are we going to do that instead of investing so much into these into influencers i mean don't get me wrong i stand behind our athletes so much but it's like at a certain point we need to let the athletes do their thing and like right and not try to hand hold it so much and give so much attention to it in the sense does that make sense i'm not trying to come off like no 100 why do you think though that it has gone down for tons of companies like a lot of people that we talk to that run any sort of brand that relied heavily in the very beginning on influencer marketing it's like it's changed a ton i mean it's it's changed a ton like the space is so different there's way more brands yeah like there's so many more places that i feel like you could be going to and there's more competition yeah like there's more competition from the big big players too not just like people that are making brands that are like under 200 million in that space like it's yeah i'm gonna stop trying to sugarcoat i'm like man if my athletes watch this i it's not that i'm but the straight up there's too many brands there's too many influencers working with too many brands your code is not as valuable as it once was it's not as unique and it's i think by the more things as an influencer and creator you say yes to if i'm going to say yes to doing this or yes to doing that all you're really ultimately doing you may get a you know a check or make some commission but like you're just making it harder and harder to grow organically out of this hole that you're building yourself and it's of it's such a hard balance to kind of understand because it's like you gotta you gotta pay the rent we got to make a living and stuff and i'm not saying don't work with brands i'm just saying that what i'm finding over the last five years is the conversion and the value it's it's just shrinking and it's like it's shrinking straight up can you touch on a little

42:35Christian Guzman:bit about how long it actually takes to build a brand because we've been doing this pod for we're coming up on four years and we feel like we're just now starting to get the traction we thought we could have got in year one but it's taken us we fucked up so much stuff but it's taken us like four solid years to almost feel like we're just starting out in a sense can you talk about how long it really does take to build a proper brand bro i feel like alfleet's just becoming a proper brand yeah like well just in the sense of where like i feel like we're building the the foundation to be able to withstand rapid growth again we're building it properly so where it won't like things won't crumble on it may look perfect from the outside but like to where things won't crumble on the inside so it's like i mean it's it can take even if i don't use that example it's like 3d has been around since 2017 right that's when we launched it and just now i feel like we've we've had launches we've had to change the name of the product we've um gotten retail stores lost retail retail stores i've had to you know rebuild those relationships find new partners and reformulate and it's like hey now it's actually starting to really gain traction for the first time in what eight years yeah that's fucking crazy right and it's still like it so that's another example i mean like the gym with all the money we've invested to this place like it's finally starting to show like signs of like healthy consistent profit yeah so it's like fuck that only took 10 years i feel like you know it's so refreshing to hear that because i feel like it's very easy for someone to see what you've built and think that it can just happen overnight it's even at the amount of revenue that you guys have done it's like to hear that you guys are a decade in if not longer and you're now feeling like you're kind of just getting started in in at a new chapter it's really refreshing to hear because i feel like people especially with how social media is nowadays they just want that instant gratification and not really willing to put in like the years and years of hard work that it actually takes to build something was the gym the biggest risk you think you took this property was the biggest risk that's what i mean this property i mean the one thing about the property is it's always been gym alfleet kind of all encompassing so that is how i viewed it i'm like this is the gym ain't gonna fund this place right alfleet is gonna fund most of it but like everything funnels to here but yeah i mean bro like just just to maintain this place is a fucking crazy amount and it's um not to mention the build out and the property costs so it sits on 13 acres right 18 and a half 18 and a half.

45:26Wow. Okay. When, when you get the idea and you see this land and you're like, I do want to, I want to buy this. Yeah. What was going on from a financial standpoint of like, okay, is it, do you have to put like 2 million down? Do you have to put five down? It was about 2 million. Okay. And then do you have to go to the bank and say, Hey, this is what I'm willing to find it. Like how does, how does, I want to know how the whole thing works. So how essentially I had a lot of cash saved because the businesses were just very healthy and it was time to you know make a purchase and stop renting and it kind of made sense to try to find this all-encompassing place um so i think it was like 20 down got the building for eight and a half million it got appraised at 11 so then i negotiated down to eight and a half so that was oh that's actually a pretty good deal for this property yes it's a huge headache and maintenance and a whole different beast but at least i'm getting a good value i only asked for one million dollars from the bank like an idiot to um renovate so 9.5 not 8.5 and then i put whatever the 20 % down so it was like about 2 million why 20 % just so people know like is it does it help with like taxes and whatnot or does it help with like their financing to get it yeah that's just what the bank set up okay okay okay i don't know 20 okay yeah it was like about two million okay okay yeah from there not to like go on a tangent but i ended up spending way more than that one million so that was anything that exceeded that one was for my savings um and that was many million many millions spent um the good thing is now the property is valued like 22 23 million wow so the the appraisals double what it was when I bought it because we put so much into it.

47:15And on paper, that sounds great. It's like, yeah, fuck yeah. But it's like, what are the reality benefits? It's like more leverage with banks and lines of credit, stuff like that. So there's definitely leverages, which I'm kind of finally starting to understand. And Chris is definitely helping a ton with that. Like having experience in private equity, I don't have any experience in any of that. Like I'm the dummy who bought the$8.5 million, asked for a million dollars and spent, you know so i definitely learned a lot with this property it uh was definitely the biggest risk for sure and yeah with that timing with covid it took two years to get this open um so yeah two years of hell was there a moment during that period where you were like i am way in over my head and i have to claw my way out of this 100 it was uh i bought it in february 2020 20 in March February of 2020 yeah COVID hit in March oh and so and I remember by like May or something around that time I was working in the shack and I walked out and a few guys had gotten COVID the staff so no one could come in it was like two weeks so I literally just staring at this massive property with everything demoed what with my gym being shut down that was open at the time hundreds of thousands of dollars coming out per month for my accounts being out of the million dollars so that all straight up from like cash flow right um so i just had to really bust my balls with alfleet so like that's where you know i didn't give a fuck if it was creating a hundred task lists for people i just had to get that shit done and communicate it in the only way I knew how it was full on survival and survival by pushing myself and just like I didn't if I didn't have the time to onboard new you know high level people and do everything like the right way I just was clawing my way man and like you I need you here you come do this I need these things done you have till the end of the week like get that shit done and I'll give you new shit to do like that's how that's how we survived so it's like yeah it fucking worked yeah were you sleeping a ton during the the build of this no i mean the sleep schedule was fair i'd never want to relive that again but yeah it was super fucked do you think it zooming back out now do you think it was possible when you walk up and you look at like the scale of this place and like what it is now like i mean we got here at seven o 'clock there was 100 cars in the parking lot do you think it's possible to do to do it like uh now like going back to that period time when you were in this hustle and you're fucking coming here every single night you're sleeping here like you know you know i really think this place is a big reason why i got so hooked to adderall i think now without the adderall i would do it so much more effectively efficiently and it's almost like i spent so much extra time and this is what i want to be clear when people and i was prescribed it man it started finding and taking more than i was prescribed but like adderall makes you loop in circles like this and it really makes you like get in your head and spend a lot more time running through scenarios and you do deep dives and you do and all this like shit that's ultimately unnecessary because and when you're taking it and kind of on the stimulus you're like okay i need i need to have my process i need to like do it a certain way but what you realize when you are clear it's like now i'm able to just make decisions bro so it's like instead of changing the floor plan as many times as i did and like that was so many of the nights were like floor plan material like just like scouring for every single thing so many times changing my mind it's like i could have just i really think i could do it for 35 cheaper now i think i could do it probably the same amount of time or maybe a little less so i just wouldn't be so indecisive and like unsure so every time you would change the contract is one would probably be butthurt and then also cost you a little bit more oh yeah every time you're changing uh-huh yeah wow i really think a lot of that was due to like me being on the adderall it's literally like 21 jump street when it has all the things he's like science we're changing it again but this is the one yes i got

51:43Christian Guzman:it this is the one okay you bring up cash flow and a big part of that is customer acquisition I'd love to know the strategy behind customer acquisition in 2025 as it pertains to both clothing and then also getting people into the gym into a physical space and like how they differ or and how they're similar honestly the gym has done so I just filmed like quality ads for the gym for the first time in my life a few months ago I saw I saw that until that point it's been organic via youtube or word of mouth and it's gotten us to a crazy point and so i don't want to come and sit here like i said and i've tried different sales teams i hired this really experienced guy from this commercial really popular commercial gym to come in try to redo the team bring that structure over here see if we can get more you know people in the door didn't work why do you think it didn't work because this demographic it just it's it really turned all of our people off and people actually stopped coming it changed the whole vibe down there it changed the whole uh like do you think it became like when you'd walk into like an la fitness and like hey man you want to sign up for a year like dude i'm just i'm just here for a day pass it really came it started you can't cancel your membership you're like yeah nope your joke that exact thing leaked into the company so bad and i mean as someone who was trying to like do the right thing for the business i wanted to see it through but after like x amount of months of it not working on paper and seeing the negative effect in person it was all right let's cut it we went back to just the old way we used to run stuff boom we're we're gaining more memberships than we ever have right now and and it's it's purely just from the fitness community knowing that this place exists yeah and knowing that like that energy is out what's the split between just day passes versus retained members now fine we're making for the first year we actually in i think two years we might have done more revenue in day passes than memberships which is fucking crazy we did like 70 000 day passes year one what's a day or what's a day pass versus membership cost 29 29 for a day pass day pass membership 109 oh wow so we were doing great but now we're kind of steadily between 25 and 30 000 day passes a year and how many members are here a little over 3 ,000.

54:09Wow.

54:10Christian Guzman:And do you think that's just cause you've built the brand to what it is and people just come out from out of town or I mean, dude, I flew in, I flew in when I was in high school, me and my boy flew out to your other gym, the one that had that gold writing on the, on the thing. Yeah. And we, I remember like, I was like, this is, this is Disneyland. It was huge. And it's funny. Cause you, I don't know. I'm excited. I haven't, we obviously didn't get to see it but i'm like this is so wild to see to remember like what that place was and like you know you see i've seen this place on videos but it doesn't even compare but you walk up and you're like it's literally like fucking disneyland parking lot it's got the little banners on it i'm like holy shit we're here it's so wild yeah do you guys offer fast passes like how do i get to the front of the line for the bench so what do you feel like hearing that what do you feel like people still don't understand about building a brand in 2025?

55:03I think that overall people try to focus in on product too much. And like, I'm guilty of this as well. Like I'll say for Alfleet, I'm always so involved in the product development and I'll get on my stories and like, literally tell you why our items are better. Like literally I'm going to describe why and how these items are superior and like all the love that goes in not just like oh I love designing so I made this shirt no it's like we chose this seam because of this and this and this and this fabric is different than our old one because you guys gave us feedback like I dive heavy into that and I think that does really really help for sure but sometimes I get because the building of the brand and the aura of become more which is our mission statement has always come natural to me because I've always just like documented what we're doing.

55:55And that is sort of, I've relied on that to be the mission. Now our challenge is how do we, I need to shift my marketing team's focus to like not relying on just me and what we're doing and actually like take, we need to find out how do we focus on become more? Don't focus on marketing the clothes, selling the clothes. Yes, to an extent, percent of it, but we need to shift more focus onto the messaging. So my point is messaging is more important than anything.

56:23Christian Guzman:I mean, it's the classic Nike example. Like you see a Nike commercial. They don't talk about the new tech in the shoes sometimes, but it's all about storytelling for sure. I also want to give you kudos because I had never like felt your clothing and you have the merch store downstairs. Phenomenal. Thank you. I'm going to be copping some stuff. You told us that you're back to focusing so much energy onto the content from a YouTube standpoint, from a short form standpoint. Why is that the biggest driver? For me? Yeah, for you, yes. Well, I finally have help in the office. So I'm able to do that because I think that's where in the long run, I think that's where I will provide the most value.

57:12As long as like in the CEO operation, like as long as things are getting executed and I'm communicating, like that's a huge chunk of my day. Is the content side of stuff? Is like being sure we're all good here. Oh, okay, okay, okay. But yeah, by having higher people, higher elevated people, I've just freed up more time to get back to the content. so it's like i i just firmly believe with that free time if i dedicate it to being consistent on youtube to trying new things to getting on a short form i have a full-time short form guy now right for any time i would like hire people like that when i was in the weeds i'd be like no fuck that you got to go to alfleet alfleet needs you more than me right and so i kind of like kept doing that and this is the first time i'm trying to make my stuff a priority in a long time with help and just i think the return on that eventually will be worth it and you've divvied up content people now right so you have nabeel doing youtube specifically and it's dohan doing short form dohan does short form and then is there someone also doing 3d short form uh like the ads behind 3d that team we're actually we were trying to split it just transfer we're trying to split it between our market our alfleet team we're like hey some of the staff we will pay you in addition to your alfleet role it didn't work it didn't work too much just too much stuff for them so we're actually dom will be taking that piece of the business and of course like when we need content me dohan heidi we go film for 3d but yeah the chunk of the ads and newsletters all that stuff like they're gonna we're gonna shift that to a team over there when you think about how you want to structure

58:45Christian Guzman:your youtube videos how often are you uploading currently twice a week twice a week when you're thinking about the structure of those youtube videos how much of it is i'm just going to document my life and then make a sick edit versus planning out okay i have this big thing that i want to highlight or this other thing that I want to highlight, how much planning goes into each YouTube video? There's been different times, like different eras. And I'll say right now, I'm definitely in an era where it's like a hundred percent organic, whatever's happening of the capturing of the life and vlog. I want to get it to a point.

59:17I think the only way for me to really grow past that is going to be to start dedicating and scripting and coming up with topics and like things to do, but I never want it to be more than like a 70, 30 split. um i think the whole purpose of my new channel is to feel the flexibility to like do whatever i kind of want um but it's a double-edged source i know like in order to grow i will have to plan a little bit more probably sure especially on short form short form is where i kind of get stuck a little more if i'm just like oh it's just film whatever's happening for the it's like here's another day in the life right it's not a bad thing it's definitely should be in rotation but i definitely have i get turned off when i have to like try to script something or like get a solid message i'm like i just rather vlog my life you know what i mean so i'm trying to get back to that 70 30 instead of just 100 like real time whatever's happening and you think that you do have to get back to the 70 30 to see a bigger spike

1:00:15On short form, yeah. Okay, for sure on short form. For sure on short form.

1:00:18Christian Guzman:I agree with that. Yeah, short form has to be more curated, I feel like. You kind of have to think of like the hook, the idea, something that's going to be shared. So frustrating, yeah. Yeah, it's fucking annoying. It's super annoying. Okay, we want to go back to the beginning, beginning. You open up that first box and something's not quite right. But you had a conversation with Paul and he gave you some advice. and that kind of helped take you through the rest of your career and how you operate as a businessman. Can you talk to us about the moment you open up that first package and what's going through your mind and that decision that you made?

1:00:54Yep. So my first Alfleet shipment ever arrived from China to my parents' house, right? I opened up the boxes. The sizing is two sizes too small. Like literally I had to wear a double X and I was like a large. and I took the, those Alfleet t-shirts that were custom made, custom fabric, custom fit to my t-shirt printing guy here down the street. His name's Paul that I was doing my merch with, a CG fitness. And I asked him, I go, Paul, you think I should just like put them on the website and say, order two sizes up? He goes, Christian, if you, do you want to be a millionaire? He asked me? And I go, yeah, don't sell them.

1:01:35Remake them. Can you afford to make, do them right? Redo them, find out something to do with these, but be sure the first time you launch the brand, you do it right. And I took that advice, went back to the drawing board, ate that initial investment, which sucked but invested about double for the actual first launch and looking back were those shirts perfect no they weren't they were way better than the initial ones i didn't do but there were i was very happy with them at the time and then of course like then it marks and evolucion let's try to get better and better and better but yeah i mean that advice was everything and i think a big reason why Alfleet sort of established itself as it has.

1:02:23And even now, I mean, literally 10 years later, we still have factory issue. And if a bulk shipment comes in, it first comes to retail and we test it. And we found stuff in the last one to two years, we've had to completely scrap. Don't put it online. It's like they didn't, whatever may have happened. And that sucks. It's like, we have to go into these battles with the factory and maybe we don't get, you know, they're not just going to give things for free. And maybe some, some of our, some of it falls on our design team. Maybe some fell on them. So it's, it's honestly a lot of that. And, um, that's what I was going to ask with the, when something comes in and it's messed up, like in your ordering so much at scale, what happens with, you know, with this factory team that you've built up a relationship with?

1:03:11Are you guys like, yo, what all individual cases, man, all very case by case. and like okay so something comes in and it's messed up do you first go hey to the design team like what the fuck's going on here no 100 i go i need back i need to see what the fuck happened and where and is it typically sizing issues or color or fabric like or is it different every single time normally sizing normally sizing and the way they maybe for example like the straps that they put on a bra is not like the same stretchness that we approved or it's like uh a very recent case we have a sandy bra and it's called sandy bra and literally the factory made them all the size too small so the smalls were actually extra smalls and they're all labeled mediums are actually smalls so in that case that's a one case where we just went on our website we said size up all over the place to communicate with the athletes you have to size these up but it sucks you get we do everything based off like percent splits extra small small medium 15 25 30 whatever so all that's fucked up and not only that but a second order of them is already committed to and developed for that's coming later so it's like we have the whole lifespan of this product now is fucked and had the wrong straps right so and that's one where like we claimed it to be like you know in some cases size up size down that's not a huge issue right but it is in the sense of being a perfectionist like wanting the best product like that's not what i fucking ordered um but there's been many cases where things just don't come out right and we can't release them so we have to go and fight tooth you know tooth and nail to kind of see what we can get back what we got to do with the product it's uh clothing is the toughest business i have ever been in by far do you probably will be in do you find yourself obsessed with the details of all of it like the gym the clothing all of it do you find yourself like a hundred percent and the the issue with the with clothing being so obsessive with it is the fact that like bro i want to upgrade everything and that comes at a cost and it's like we can't just with product costs going up in it's you have to have a you have to find a balance of like okay i need to like not make this something i have to sell for 120 bucks you know what i mean this has to stay within like our alpha kind of range but that means what does that actually mean in real life fuck we just have less margin because i increase the product quality i do want to increase the

1:05:33Christian Guzman:price but that's to that's to you just wanting to make a great product and you hold yourself to a certain standard you also have what percentage of your business is women's now about 67 okay so more than male yeah the first is actually it was like 80 a few years ago wow so men's is coming back up do you think that's because the women's buying habits are so different than men yeah okay like we're buying we were just talking we were talking about this as i heard you say that on a pod about how like think about when we buy men it's a lot of birthdays it's like if we're coming out here we went and got a fit like you know it it's so much less our girlfriends walk out of the door and they'll come back with it skims i'm like it's just fucking tuesday yeah what's going on why do we get a big bag at skims and it's just it's just a whose credit card mine's missing out of my wallet that's crazy tell us about the first women's drop first women's drop we sold i invested a decent amount of money made sports bra a tank a legging and a short we sold like three sports bras and i looked at my shipping guy at the time Derek and I go I'll just go deliver myself I'll walk them I'll walk the women's orders to the just so disappointed and it wasn't the quality that it was great quality especially for that time but we just weren't a women's brand and so it took getting that product like slowly out and then working on a new legging and it took getting that into youtubers hands and you know honest try on hauls and when that started kind of organically happening i started reaching out to the people making the video gabby was really the first one and i was like i would love to like work with you in some ways that was kind of like the first you know organic pop-off item that we had had that really like that changed the that's when we went from ordering you know three four hundred units of something to like 2 ,000, 3 ,000, 5 ,000.

1:07:45And that's what really took the revenues, you know, really kind of a lot of athletes growth over the first eight years was really due to women's cat. It was like strong men's start only men's start. Women's was a slow catch on, but then women's is what took men probably stayed steady, really a little increase here, but women just like skyrocketed.

1:08:06Christian Guzman:Was the decision to get into women's because you knew that obviously it's like a whole other market that you weren't tapping into did you feel like for alpha elite to really really grow into what you wanted it to you had to tackle both men's and women's it's a good question there's another one um you're hot today you haven't gotten one honestly like i it's not that i desperately wanted to make women's wear i just one knew i could and two knew that my competitors gym shark was doing it right i was kind of at the forefront i was an athlete with gym shark when they launched the women's and was really like kind of in those initial stages and knew i could do it i could do the same thing right and honestly create what i think what i thought would be better fitting higher quality materials and things and you know i remember like instead of like doing a printed logo on the lake i was like you know what we'll do knit it in so it's like forever in there it's not going to peel off it's like another selling point right um so i think i just yeah i just knew that was the next step in alphalete to be honest and wanted to tackle it and not quit when it only sold three bras at first yeah was the creator marketing like pivotal because during covid i remember seeing that was it the revival leggings go crazy on tiktok uh amplify amplify went crazy on tiktok when you saw those numbers were you like this is something that we've never seen from just like organic well 100 bro and the pop-off of amplify it i know i was talking on ego at the beginning of this the pop-off of amplify is what really just like led me to ordering so much fucking clothes and everything so that like ended up meaning over ordering and that sort of was the biggest reality check it's like when you see something catch on that big you are almost like it's easy to get you know caught in the hype and riding your wave and like all right anything we touch is gonna fucking pop off and that's not always the case you're like those stimmy checks are hitting people are gonna go off spending the whole stimmy check on the so funny dude we've moved probably over a million probably close to or over a million units of that of just the amplify i would say yes i was doing orders of like 70 80 000 between different colors and stuff right that was like peak buy yeah it was it was crazy something most people don't know is when you do get a lot of stock in your say it's not your own warehouse and you're having to use like a fulfillment center or someplace one ends up happening with stock that is sitting can you tell us oh you just get feed up the ass because it's not moving it's not moving you get feed and even like honestly we're it was constantly unraveling so many things that like miscounted things that are sold out on the website because it's not in our direct site now it's in a it's in fulfillment centers when we go in person and check it's like that's supposed to be sold out why is there a box right a lot of that happens um but ultimately you just get feet up the ass so we had so much square footage getting taken up of like inventory and especially if you over order hoodies if you order if you over order items that are more volume like leggings and shorts not too bad but if you're ordering you know duffel bags and gym bags and all this stuff it just takes more square footage so it's really by the square foot um by not cleaning out our skews on shopify Everything just adds up like way more than you think when you're signing that contract.

1:11:49Christian Guzman:You also brought up Gymshark and you told us that at one point you were really chasing them. Do you still feel like you're chasing them? No. Not at all? No, not at all. I want to stay in my lane, make healthy margins, get the company in a consistently healthy spot and grow it from there. It's like where I lost myself so much was chasing that number and it led to so many consequences that yes, now I have things and people and structures in place to be sure. if that next amplify fucking pops off again we'll be ready for it and i won't make the same mistakes again but it's like yeah it's so much can be destructed when you just chase revenue without really like especially i'll say like it's different with say supplements and with with like 3d and stuff where like you're ordering more real time but with clothing you're ordering nine to 18 months in advance so right now we're depositing like i have a meeting adopter drop so it's like are we going to keep are we going to cancel for women's summer 2026 wow yes bro so it's like it's so far out and it's so it's so you're the way we do it with drops especially like we're trying to shift away from just drop drop drop because every drop is such a risk right so we're trying to get you know realign our 12 men's skews that we're going to be like restocking and kind of replenishing but we've kind of shot ourselves in the foot where we trained our customer to be so drop oriented and how often does it drop is it every 10 weeks we have seven drops in the year six to seven drops in a year so yes what's the math on that it's like eight to eight to ten a year okay which is so interesting and then we have restocks in between or like subtle like capsules of like new colors of you know certain items but drops are like new styles new development that's the drop it's so interesting that you say that because i feel like the drop style has become so popular and such a great marketing tool of like i'm going to build a story around each particular drop and i'm going to do a limited amount i'm going to sell out i'm going to build this world around this specific drop but i guess yeah as you scale it's like having those key styles that are uh are like at the core and it's just totally different you look at gymshark they don't have like hype drops you look young la it's all drops you look at honor active they're more consistent they have a few drops they only do a few days of hype and they kind of release on the website and then things go it's like trying to kind of not be like anyone specific kind of make our own model is what we're trying to do by you know having the six to seven drops a year having small capsules which would be like new colors and stuff in between and then where the business will get more healthy is like we used to never want to make the same thing twice and that was such a fucking cocky thing for me to do bro and say and kind of like stand behind when people like it and they want it let's replenish and you know bring a few new colors and so those restocks that we're slotting in we're hoping to see that really like build that start moving the customer away from just drop first hour sales is everything to a sustainable higher daily sale average and actually this whole year like our we haven't got our numbers for july yet from the accounting but we had our highest daily average in june out of the whole which is like literally like exactly what we want to see what is average cart value do you know Card value is about 110, 115.

1:15:20Nice. Wow.

1:15:21Christian Guzman:I'll tell you why I think it's really smart to make something again and even bring back an old color. I'm just thinking about the way I shop. I recently got this shirt from Kith. I've had this style of shirt in a couple of different colors. As you have something for a few years, you wash it and maybe it doesn't feel like it once did. And you're like, I fucking love this color. Maybe it faded a little bit. I would love to have that again new or it's the same style, but I love when they drop a new color because I'm like, I know this fit. I love it. I love this shirt. I'm so down to have this specific shirt in multiple different colors.

1:16:00Christian Guzman:But I remember like I had one of these in like a teal green and then I fucking stained it. I'm like, I can't fucking wear this shirt. I'm like, I'm praying that they bring that same colorway because I loved it so much, but I don't have a shirt anymore. Yeah. And like the challenges as like a clothing owner for like that scenario is okay. If my daily sales, if I'm only moving three to seven pieces of this per day, it's like, is it, and then it kind of steadily drops and drops. Like how long do I keep investing into that? If I'm selling, do I order another thousand? That's going to take me what, if things keep going well, another, you know, seven, eight months to sell through, what's the cost of the warehousing that what's the cost of like, where does it all break?

1:16:44even so that's been with as many skews as we built up to that just caused so much complexity in the business towards now we're like bringing the skews down limiting to like six to seven men's items per drop 10 to 12 women's and even maybe bringing that down slightly so we can find the key skews that are going to be you know the ones that live for four to five cycles um that's kind of where we're at now is like resetting the men's and seeing and tracking like you know okay momentum t that sold out within 40 days so that's one we're gonna bring back if it sells out in 120 days maybe it's not really worth it if it sells out in a week yeah fuck yeah bring it back airship it get it on the side asap or do you put it on c take some longer time to get it like will the other drops take away from that item even if we restock it sold well the first time what if we launch something people want that instead now we're stuck with this restock so it's just a super complex business is what i'm getting at for sure uh do you cater that more more women's drops to more men's drops or is it the same like every time you do a drop we're like a year and a half we split it because at first it was always everything together okay and we split it and now we're actually going back to combining men and women together on the same day but why was that super super interesting you're about to you'll love this but we're when is this going up in a week can't say yet then yeah about two weeks if it's two weeks we're launching our alfleet women's instagram okay two weeks yeah on the 20th of august okay and keeping the alfleet page we're pretty much what ended up happening is women's just overpowers the men so much in sales and then therefore marketing, right?

1:18:33So it's like, we're going to be posting if that's where the sales are coming from, it's going to be like the page will look 70 % women. So that's causing men to not necessarily resonate with the brand as much. So what we're going to do is really, instead of making the current Alphala page men's only, just be more Alphala, become more focused, more male content, women still included in that obviously but a women's specific page to have the more like fun like you know matcha like the the more lifestyle women's specific content because i do me and my marketing team go back and back all the time but i having all that content and when you're trying to like have a solid become more mission and like it it's too conflicting like what is alfleet right and that's just been the burning question in this office for like the last two years like what is our what is our mission how are we making content that revolves around it are these tiktok videos that's not on brand but it's still needed right so it's like really separating those and then having tiktok content for tiktok you know and just having content that giving it more structure so it's not just like oh you see this badass you know runner george running a full marathon become more athletic cinematic dope cool blurry pictures but then you go to the next post and it's like outfit try it's like what is the brand messaging and i think yeah that's something we're about to try so i'm excited to see how that goes that's so interesting you used to also compete when did the idea for summer shredding become a thing and throwing your own show 20 after doing summer shredding that was my first like youtube series i just titled it for my competition prep uh it led to an online competition where we had the one year we had like 30 ,000 people sign up it was free and they could like win months so i had 30 ,000 people doing the 90 day thing with me um and after that it was like man how would these shows i'm doing kind of suck like the organization of them like the the gift the experience like no one talks to each other backstage it's a very kind of you know isolated yeah very isolating kind of vibes it's Like, how do we make a show and involve transformation?

1:20:47Cause like I was doing this online competition. How much can you transform in 90 days? Take a newspaper, picture newspaper. And so then the idea of like, we'll have a transformation class. We'll have people make a video. We'll put it at the top screen. And then they walk out. We have the before photo after we see the before and after. So it was like kind of taking that online thing and putting it in person was like the sprinkle that a competition needed that now makes that summer shredding. and it just took like going to the stafford center down the road and be like how much would it be to rent the weekend and once we got those numbers okay so we need like whatever 110 120 competitors to break even let's see how it goes and then since then we did like three or four years of one show a year at the stafford center and then it led to wanting to make the ssc which is like a league where we have top five from every show qualify for a big championship the prize money back there and we actually have our biggest show ever September 12th here yeah and will it be at the gym or it'll be the staffer center at the staffer but we kind of host everything here we do the athlete check-ins here we throw a big bash the day after we have judges feedback and all the vendors so like we're just able to provide a really dope experience when we do it in Houston

1:21:59Christian Guzman:what was the response like after that first one the first show yeah the first summer shredding fantastic and did you have people saying man this is different than anything else i've experienced like what percentage of those people that came out for the first summer shredding had competed before versus i'm just really into fitness and i fuck with christian i probably say like 50 to 60 percent had competed before 40 were wanting it to be their first show and i would say that's a maybe about the ratio now uh there's a big like misconception where summer trading is just a beginner show and like i just say to anyone who says that come do it then yeah you know yeah come win come with that legit but it's definitely like a great for transformation especially for people that aren't quite at you know i'm gonna place top in a mpc i want to be an ifbb it's like this is a great place to get your feet wet for sure but not to say there's not good competition as well dude give me a year i just took a before you think so how do you stick it before let's not let's not get ahead of ourselves physique that's a natural drug tested dude maybe you have a chance in there yeah come on were were people in the other body building leagues were they kind about this idea or did you feel like were they like that's what i was yeah there was there a lot of resentment towards it still kind of is well no i mean i can only imagine i bet their butt hurt because they're like you're coming on to the space and trying to make something that's so much better what did what did that look like were they trying to like block your shows at all is that something that happens i have no idea i'm just i got a phone call that was like you need to change some of your posing just like and so you know hearing that i changed some stuff up what what is that what does that mean like change the for example and this is not it's never been like firm concrete like there's no like hard it's just like context clues okay which i don't really appreciate yeah just call me and tell me exactly what's going on that's what i would love but i mean so for example we added a front pose to bikini so now it's like you have your uh it's always been front and back okay but now we have a front which is like your favorite hip uh we added a front pose where your hips have to be dead on so that's like something we added this year just to make our division a little bit more unique transformation we have fit physique um we do our we added a side tricep into classic physique which is like just like kind of adjusting the way we do the the posing and just finding more ways to make it more unique is all i can do and that's all i'm gonna do but it's also like there's also been conversations of you know having a sanctioned show with the npc be through summer shredding so it's like but again it's kind of like gets thrown out there then no one follows up and it's kind of like i'm just doing my thing but i think just put on a great show and like summer show it's not i it's not the mpc not the ifbb and that's a path that's a whole different if you're going you want to if you dream be on the olympia shut the fuck up about summer training that's not what you should be doing you need to go that path like if you want to be an ifbb pro that's the path you go but i'm just trying to build my own thing over here how has the show changed since that first one besides the posing A lot more prize money, a lot more.

1:25:23Essentially, we try to give the two champions the best opportunity to succeed. We give them camera packages, laptop. We give them all the tools. We give them an Alphalete sponsorship. All the tools so they can, if they put the effort in, create a business for themselves.

1:25:42Christian Guzman:That's awesome. And you guys also just had your first win in. Instead of just winning a pro card, right? Okay, I see, I see. that's like realistically to make a career out of this you're gonna need to start understanding social you're gonna have to start understanding how to market yourself and like that's really what we lean into a lot that's super cool yeah with with 3d when you have a falling out with the partners that you were originally with how long did it take to fully get the company back to be your own about two years wow two years but i will say like a lot of that was also I feel like a lot of it was me not being prepared to have the tough, blunt, decisive conversations.

1:26:27Right? It's like, oh, let me get, and lawyers, we needed lawyers, we need their lawyers going back and forth, especially after everything was kind of happening. But I think if I would have called and just said, I want 100 % of the company, what's it going to take? But see, that's a very different tone. That's a very different outcome. They would have been like, oh, it's going to take you buying this out, blah, blah, blah, versus like, no, I'm fucking serious. Let me get my lawyers involved. I'm not going to. And so that ended up I was given the 100%. And they're like, oh, good luck with the product or whatever.

1:27:01But I was able to pick it up. New partners, like getting all that sorted. And we sold that old inventory, got it all out, used those funds, invested in the new one. So it's like we're able to kind of save it. but it was a long i mean two years could have been much quicker but i kind of needed that time to like find the new partners and kind of you know what i mean and not like let the weight of alfley and all the other things crumble because like 3d was always there but it's like i wasn't on a daily basis putting a lot of time into it so it's like i had to be sure i was ready to put the time in again as someone who wants to start an energy drink one day what are three things that i need to know i want that one at a crack to be a part of a drink brand online you can start it online for sure but you're gonna need distribution so what was your whole playbook like show them what this first drop can do with my audience and then go hey this is what we did 100 okay how different And that worked in 2017.

1:28:05Uh-huh. And I will say like when we, our first like online, the first place you could buy this when we relaunched was Vitamin Shop online, not in person yet. Yeah. Fucking crushed it. Oh, wow. Like every single link I would do, 700 link clicks, 1 ,200 link clicks. Wow. And Heidi as well, right? Where boom, Vitamin Shop texted Don. They're like, I think you got a winner here, right? And so it's kind of the same, like that traction. so it's definitely like use the online to get it in but i would say just like try to find it's tough because you're gonna have to it's like the chicken or the egg do you make the product first or this and then take the risk and then get it in but um yeah i mean driving your people to clear the shelves is the surefire way to keep growing and beware the minimums the minimums are high okay what the minimums i want to say per flavor are like 250 000 cans divided up by 12 cases per flavor so we did like my god one and a half million cans with the og when you were trying to just get it created and get the flavor tested how hard was it to get anyone to take you seriously because they're like i don't know how much volume at this time period like what was that like to actually get i did the minimum oh you just were like i did the minimum and then we sold it online it has to be 250 like in the beginning had to be 200 that's what these were wow that's fucking you might be able to find different companies how many how many cases is does that shake out to be do you know divided by 12 so like oh they're all okay all a 12 pack wow what 10 yeah 20 wow a lot a lot of cases yeah it's fucking crazy brain's never been too good at math but no that's

1:29:46Christian Guzman:not my thing but what you said you see somebody like a ryan trahan who's killing it in target with his candy it's like that is the power of personal brand and having an audience best friend max just yeah yeah it's insane right it's great but having that audience to go ride for you and go buy in store to prove to these retailers 100 that's that's the way once you got the keys back and 3d is yours how did you go about reintroducing it in a new way just literally finally honestly leaning on my content leaning on youtube leading on leaning on let me catch you guys up and from that point because i wasn't talking about it for years because of the lawsuit so i finally like opening up about it and then from that point through launch and even now literally like documenting every single step um and i think that is what has led to the successful relaunch have you studied any adjacent brands in the like in the drink sector like a poppy that sold for multiple billions or something is there anything that you've noticed from or other energy drink brands you're like that's something very unique that i want to implement here is there anything like that i mean the only thing i would say is that making this product and having it retail under two dollars yeah it's a massive statement yeah it's crazy and that's a huge like reason why this is going to succeed it's like we're placing it like you know the nos drink and venom yeah that's where that's where those are the only two drinks in that then this so it's like if you have that that and venom does like 100 million every like either quarter half a year so it's like that's crazy if you put 3d in that lineup tastes better cans more attractive it's cleaner no artificial dyes it's like just is that a combo you had with dom and you guys were like yeah we we're gonna have the pricing thing was 100 him what is what does one can cost cost like what like what can i get it at a dollar 98 okay so just shy of two wow under two everything's fucking four bucks now every every drink is between three and four yeah everything's You go to Air One, four bucks, dude.

1:31:57Every drink on that damn shelf. And if vitamin shop cases is$19.99 a case. Oh, wow. So that's even cheaper. Even cheaper. Yeah. So it's like we're willing to take less margin because we're going to bank on volume on this. Okay. That's what I was going to ask. This isn't going to be like an Uber situation where you get me in at two bucks and then in two years, these are four. Okay. That is the plan. The business model is to stick at that price. Stick at that price. kill that price point okay just like grow it and beat them with volume yeah wow and is the like is there something you have your site set on where it's like do you want to be in like a walmart or a target or something that walmart's already on the way target not yet okay but uh but walmart's on the way walmart's on the way yeah how how is the dom text me he goes walmart done oh wow okay let's go how's this kind of how's the pitching process been with heidi when you guys get to go in and sell these retailers on your guys' product?

1:32:55Like, what have you learned about pitching with Heidi? It's interesting because, like, we actually have Kroger next Tuesday. We're driving to Dallas, and you're going to go meet with those guys to lock in that deal. But, I mean, literally, when I went to HEB, that was our first, like, pitch and had no idea what to expect. But it's one of those where, like, if I would have started to think about how's this going to go, what do I need to say? it's like i just kind of showed up and told the story you know it's like started this energy drink because i love white monster i just didn't like how it blowed to me it was kind of expensive so just kind of the story even about the partners failing the partners not working out restarting finding new partners and just honestly being transparent honestly transparent uh being transparent with anybody you're talking to is always just like the best plan and yeah everyone who's picked it up so far has had an incredible reception for it selling quick so it tastes

1:33:53Christian Guzman:really good i was never into the white monsters until i moved in with brayden yeah you dude i needed it they sent me a tower of them yeah never wanted to work with me unbelievable i was like what are we doing here they just remember how many did they send me like 40 cases marketing director i finally got in touch with the guy i was like dude and you're something like the summit channel yeah no it's not good it's not the vibe but i that was right that was what i used drink when we were in college and then we switched i'm a coffee guy but coastie likes coffee i'm not a big guy i do both do you drink two a day because i feel like i'm a two a day kind of guy two a day yeah uh what if i'm doing like coffee in the mornings which is almost every morning it'll be like usually one and a half black coffee i like to add some protein shake oh some like rtd protein shake okay stevia i was doing black for a minute but i just prefer it with some yeah some protein who are we trying to impress you know uh how okay you have four businesses that could easily take up 100 of your time as a ceo managing four different businesses how do you think about divvying up your time i mean honestly it's like where where what's going to have the most impact is kind of always the question you just have to ask yourself an answer and most of the time that's alphalete right it's mostly alphalete but at the same time by having the gym here and it's where i train every day it's like my gym work always happens during my workout so it's like okay i'm making all these things i want to see i'm kind of making the list usually communicating with everyone that i need to communicate while i'm lifting which i shouldn't be doing but like normally my two and a a half hours here is, you know, setting up the next steps for the business and for the, for the gym.

1:35:39Um, and it looks a lot different now than it used to look, but I will say it's always been like, if I were to spit numbers, maybe like 60 % athlete, 15 to 20 % gym, 20 % 3d now, and like five to 10 % summer shredding, like very little summer shredding is like really just a little bit of promo year and I show up to the shows and just talk to everybody that's like my and that's my number it's like I don't have to really do much business but it's a pretty good system and flow and kind of I guess that's the thing where like every business has a different cadence so like the gym was a shit ton of work to get it up and running and there the time was probably a little more than 20 but now it's like it's very easy to have it's built it's done it's like we'll upgrade here and there but like that's a running thing that now takes less time same with summer shredding we got the system down now next year we're going to add one show maybe a second if this one really like does really well which we might do but it's kind of copy paste so like those two are super easy 3d is where i'm like opening up a lot of my time for right now so it's like right now i've got more of my time focused on content and my responsibility with 3d is like the market i need to fucking own that shit right so i'm prepared to go in any direction i'm kind of feeling this out and like prepare to give more wherever it's needed what meet what do i need to do to blow this up and i'm relying on my partners to feed me that information um but really the most difficult and the one that's always been the most time consuming is alfleet due to the ever-changing style of the business with the drops with the new product with the tweaking of fabric it's just a that's the constant most challenging for sure i still just can't believe if we could get 18 months out on the pod holy shit dude dude we get two months out on the pod two weeks and i'll say 18 months if you're like you're putting things on a boat you're really ordering big rolls of fabric and like that's like a that's something i kind of tried to do and that also in combo with alpha with the pump or sorry with amplify popping off trying to get too far ahead also fucked so it's a combination of things ordering too much making too big of commitments ego is high but now we're working on more of like a for women's about a 10 month timeline and obviously like the shorter your timeline goes the more your cost is going to be so it's like that's that it's a double-edged sword again like do we want to be more real time with their data pay some higher prices be a little bit quicker to ship and all these things or do you so i'm trying to get to that business model again but right now it's like in men's is even like six to seven months we're like on a shorter turnaround time so we can just kind of have lower margin for a second but get the data so we can work further out again i mean you you have we got the the big gym literally right downstairs what's something that has stayed the same or changed in the training protocol because i know you're doing something totally different now yeah totally different have you enjoyed that or has it been a pain in the ass no i it's like a fucking pain in the ass dude it's i mean it's definitely like different and it's like it's like it's like a bunch of negatives and then going slow on the way up too right yeah it's just a lot of weird movements i mean it's still got it's like basic every three four weeks it's a different set of things so like sometimes on the first day of the week i'm like fuck i hope i like this or i hope i don't hate it but it's definitely just um it's a nice challenge to have to really think about what i'm doing in the gym instead of just like kind of going through my motions and like slowly trying to add weight and stuff but i definitely i mean i like having some free workouts here and there but i haven't really done that i've really been strict on the plan but my body is in a great spot right now so but it's also like a lot of that stupid diet i was just about to ask i mean it's like 80 diet bro okay 80 diet if someone just like hey i want to get fit it's get in here as often as you can but more so more so the diet that

1:39:47Christian Guzman:is so great to hear because you have a chance in and out at yeah what 1 a.m last time we got it and we're so hungry we're dude we're on the right path i'm feeling i'm feeling good i'm ready to lift later yeah you guys gotta try alpha eats no we we we had a sandwich we had a sandwich this morning oh yeah the breakfast the croissant one no i don't think it was open yet i think but we had a little here's what it was it was open we were just setting up and i was like i'm gonna to get a pre-packaged sandwich it's delicious by the way the croissant breakfast sandwich is the best breakfast item okay okay it's good to know if someone's listening to this and they're maybe eating in and out and they've maybe lost a little bit of motivation could you talk to them for 30 seconds and get them fucking hyped up and maybe a little hope core going on talk to the people who are maybe a little bit unmotivated and how can they get re-motivated get off their ass and make change in their life look i'm gonna give you the hard truth man it's gonna take you looking in the mirror every day and you're gonna hit a breaking point you're gonna be like i'm sick of this right and the hard truth for most people that's what's gonna take and it's like that moment when you're like fuck like who have i turned into right that's when you get your ass in shape no one's going to get you motivated no one's going to like get you consistently maybe for like a month or two kind of going in but like to really invest into it you just have to flip a switch man and i mean then it's it's always way harder to get there than to maintain it maintaining it's not easy but getting there's a hard part and you just have to i find for most people like in our transformation class and stuff it's really just like a light bulb goes off and you have to just want it i mean it's a lot of effort it's not easy it's not a it's like you can't just go on and off it's something you're going to turn on and keep on and like you just have to yeah i mean i could sit here and be like oh i don't know try to sell some shit but it's really you just have you have to want the change you know and and usually it comes from hating what you see yeah you know or hating how you feel but usually it's hating what you see or like if you're kind of sort of in shape right when are you going to be tired of just like kind of seeing the same shit year after year yeah it could be that as well it's like god i've looked the same for five years it's like then do something different i think that's kind of the point that i'm at right now is i've always i've like always worked out but it's always been kind of like at least the past couple years it's been Be honest with him.

1:42:28Christian Guzman:Three, four days a week, getting in a flow, going on a trip, maybe feeling a little injured, falling off. And I've been in this cycle for the past three, four years for as long as I've known Braden. And turning 30, I kind of flipped that switch of if I don't make a change now, I'm like run, not that I'm running out of time, but in a way it's like, I would love to be able to see where i could take myself physically from like a lifting and and how like how strong i could get or how athletic i could feel so i think that you gotta pick a program lock in the diet which in the diet if you want to be tracking your food switch to whole food just do whole foods yeah hit your protein and eat whole food follow a workout program is huge just pick like what style you want to do if it's like hybrid side or like a high rock style if it's be uh if you want to get strong as hell and it's like a 5-3-1 or if you want to do a bodybuilding split you buy jeff nipper's program or if you get cbum's app it'll give you a split but just like get some split that you can track your stuff i think that's huge it's just like the fitness app i use it's it's pretty much like cbum's app um my coach runs it with him so that's made a huge change for me and instead of like just going in and kind of doing mentally that which i've done for many years that like logging all the stuff and being sure okay this week i did 80 pounds for nine like start tracking it do the whole foods if you're trying to get strong and all that like do three to four sessions of cardio a week and your body's gonna start changing like crazy what what do you notice has been one of the biggest drivers to strength like in those periods where the workouts have been more strength focused is it like what what has really moved the needle for you?

1:44:15I mean, strength, a lot of that is recovery. Honestly, like I find I'm resting now more than I ever have. I'm doing like a four day split right now. Um, and it's lower rep range. It's a lot of tempo work. So like pausing at the bottom three or four second negatives to really control things. Um, like the more control, okay. The more controlled you can lift the heavy weight, the stronger you're going to get. It's not necessarily like, Oh, I can do the one thirties for one it's like no like i'd rather you do 110s slow controlled pause and control that shit like own that be fluid with the movement don't hit those sticking points and then if you do that enough times then overall your strength is gonna be so much greater than if you're just like kind of trying to do max weight with kind of subpar form have you had the form is everything have you had to get like put more weight on to lift heavier you can stay you can stay a similar way I used to think I'd have to put weight on, but the, I've been over the last 14 months, constantly just trying to get leaner, obviously having ups and downs, but like on a downward trajectory for sure.

1:45:17And I've the strongest I ever happened. So it's also doing movements consistently. So not changing up your workout routine every week, like pick something. And if it's war, if you're progressing at it, stick to it until literally the wheels fall off until like, that's not work until you feel like you're not going, it should be like, you know, three, four it can even be five months that you're doing the same workout split and just if you're adding weight you're getting better form you're going to be seeing progress so right now you stay one

1:45:44Christian Guzman:today it's day one for us today dude is it is it day one or one day or one day you tell me it's day one brother um no i'm like two weeks in we did we got a little bit of momentum you feel like you're the strongest you've ever been right now in the sense of like overall for example if i were when I was in my bench pressing phase and I was benching twice a week for like six months I was I'm a stronger bencher back then than I am now but like overall if I go pick up any movement yeah overall strength but like of course if you do the same movement for long periods of time you'll get more if I go in incline bench right now I'm doing 275 for a few a year and a half ago and I was doing incline bench with the barbell all the time 275 for 11 so it's like but if I just do the 275 for you know the next two months i'll be back up there no problem so it's like my body's in the best stage to be strong at anything i'm doing that's kind of how i feel like with like speaking spanish right it's like it's like iffy but like dude take me to mexico for a week i'm back dude that's so fucking funny is there when it comes to fitness uh obviously like you love bodybuilding um as you get older and continue to train like do you think you'll continue to just be like in love with the bodybuilding are there other forms of fitness that you maybe want to like bring into your lifestyle i did a half marathon in may oh hell yeah um because ashley flora is one of our athletes called me a pussy you didn't do the half so i said fuck i'm doing it and i didn't stop 13 bro i did a full in may of last year haven't ran one time since yeah and honestly it took that half marathons i was like yeah i'm like i don't i don't like this i went same situation my friend and i were going we were going on like a christmas vacation and he's like we're in line at lax and in an uber and he's like you won't run a half marathon you won't run a full marathon with me in may and he's like you could not do it i was like i'm i'll buy the thing right now and then you realize you're literally like every day is running bro every it's so much in my and then i'm realizing oh my god my saturday and gone you run for four fucking hours or like you run for two and a half hours you're exhausted the last thing i want to do is anything i'm also so sore you're like walking or then i didn't want to lift yeah then i got super small i'm like the weirdest thing i feel like is people that get into running as someone who enjoys lifting it's like okay great now i suck in the gym and i also still suck at running this is like unless you're nick there unless you're nick there and you can run fucking a three minute mile yeah it's just ridiculous it sounds like you just got to go one more it's so it was so frustrating and i remember when we we hit the half like a half marathon of the full marathon and i'm like dude i'm kind of cooking i'm at 155 like i'm flying i got hurt though so after mile 15 in training i didn't do anything after 15.

1:48:31so after 15 on the day i'm like man i'm feeling pretty good this is all new territory yeah that's 11 more miles of new territory it was awful it was so brutal yeah i mean i think my focus i definitely want to keep my focus on but i follow these guys 3dmj team that are in their high 40s still making progress like naturally oh with with like fitness so it's like i definitely want to keep my physique uh primary focus while you know dabbling in and trying other stuff as well but not to the point where like like when i did that half i really had to say okay i'm putting my gym gains on hold for a minute so i could like accomplish this goal but i found like i really just didn't enjoy that that

1:49:12Christian Guzman:much i didn't like running dude yeah i didn't run like that gone on a few runs and kind of enjoy it but wait wait wait wait till you go run for an hour and a half and you're like i tell my girlfriend i'm like i'm gonna go run i come back i like ran like i'm loud she goes you're back already what the fuck do you do also another thing i told braden this last night uh my dad just turned 70 and we're like yeah so like what kind of goals do you have he goes oh i just want to make it to 100 so i can uh compete in this centurion olympics like a what a sick goal hilarious it's so funny dude is there is there any specific goals outside of fitness that you're really trying to master in business do you feel like there's something where you've looked at this goal and you're like man i really want to go after this in the next two to three years or even the next year could be shorter term too in business man i i really think that all of my 20s i spent so much time like hyper mode kind of like starting a lot of things almost too many things i've had to you know cut ties with a few businesses i wanted to do just because i was spreading myself way too thin and just overly excited so it's like right now i'm just truly honing in on making the four businesses more effective structurally sound so when with growth we can like do it the right way this time and yeah just get on a really good growth pattern man and like have sustainable growth year over year it's like as simple that's kind of basic that you want to grow every year but i want to do that with the structurally sound um foundation so it's not just me like killing myself with no with you know no control over the details i want to do it all over again in this next decade it's like finishing one decade i was really able to reflect of like you know just how things went the good and i feel like i've learned so fucking much that now i'm just trying to do it in a different way and a lot of that is because i'm ready to start family like i was going to say like one big huge goal is we're really trying to start a family have like kids back to back right now so i want to you know set things up to where i have a healthy balance of i hate that i hate healthy balance um where i'm able to trust and keep like a good level of in the business but also like have the time to be the dad i want to be that was the question i was going to ask you about balance because as someone you hear that thrown around a lot i feel like it obviously very really varies depending on like if you ask oh what's your goals in the next year like they'll kind of tell you what level of balance they want or have is that kind of a bullshit thing that someone made up and it's it's just like fugazi i think it needs to be bullshit until you get to the point like i guess it's a weird spot because when me and heidi got married we were looking at what we've actually like accomplished like we're fucking proud like or we've come a long way man and it's we've but it's also realizing like we have busted our asses so much to be able to be home when we start a family and to be able to like spend that time and like really do that how we wanted to so it's like we sacrifice years to live that future life so it's like now it's time to like get working on that life but not just saying like oh i want that it's like i know i still want and i'm chasing and they're gonna put all the effort for all these companies but understanding family has to be a priority now because like we're not getting any younger we're about to start a third round of ivf um like we have to take this seriously now if you want to make it happen so it's like that's a big shift and like two years ago when i was in the trenches bro three years ago kids not yet i can't i physically i can't in this headspace like but now i'm prepared and i'm you know super ready and stuff but it's just uh yeah i think biting off alphaland in kind of that whole roller coaster of three really four years um has put has like i've earned my spot i feel like yeah i've earned this next chapter and she feels the same how have you felt in your early 30s because i just turned 30 and i don't know what it is i feel kind of younger at 30 than i did at 29 honestly it's just clarity it's like i think my 30s is have equaled clarity yeah my 20s were like hyperdrive but hyperdrive isn't always effective right so it's chaotic like chris bumstead calls me because he like from all the years he'd you know me i was like we run a podcast kind of like this with the raw team and he goes if i had to describe christian one in two words chaotic hurricane is what he said and i think that describes like my 20s so perfectly it's like chaotic as fuck got it done hurricane but like there's an eye in the middle of the tunnel so it's like you know i still get the shit done but that was his metaphor and that kind of i was like that does make sense but like now it's a very different demeanor and i think like being in the the 30s and just being in this stage of life like i feel i could outperform out decide i could outperform anything my 20 something year old self could do uh and with less energy you know what i mean it's more effective and i feel like at least for me i have a lot more clarity on i guess what i want to do career-wise but also like you understand who you are as a person so much more so i think that goes to what you're saying about being able to make decisions effectively because you're just like i know who i am i know how i operate and i know what is actually best for me and in your 20s like i remember feeling like i had to accomplish everything and have everything figured out in my 20s and then as i've become a little bit older and like going into my 30s i'm realizing your 20s is kind of for just trying a bunch of shit shit yeah working hard fucking up and then taking that it's like it's like you gotta like brute force your way through your 20s and i feel like that's the healthy it's like but people that are in their 20s that are like i need balance i need that's how i'm gonna shut the fuck up yeah force your way through power through and do like that's the time to really just push honestly and like that's when your body's ready for you can just really push that needle like you know one way and um you know see when see see when you overheat see when you rev the engine too hard and like it's okay to burn out it's okay if you i would almost i would 100 say you need to burn out to see what your limits are and then it's like every time i would burn out i'd kind of take a little you know little rest and then i'd restart and then get a new threshold so it's like oh i was able to you know go a little further this time and you kind of build tolerance that way you go through more shit you have more issues in your company you face more obstacles and then years later obstacles that happen feel like nothing you callous over those scars yeah how do you refill your cup when you do feel burnt out sleep not look at my phone much and uh watch netflix and fucking just chill play some halo you know like honestly have you been playing a lot of halo and cod are you good at cod not cod no i downloaded i downloaded it first time ever like three weeks ago can't get past the first fucking level bro i think i'm doing on too high of a difficulty but like oh you're doing story mode yeah okay yeah okay that's funny i'm a halo guy uh-huh dude halo back in the day i remember going to like a neighbor's house my mom had no idea i was like we're playing fucking halo this is crazy dude you're playing with like four different people i was just getting dogged on by the other three guys who had had the had it for so long i was never much of a gamer i played like 2k and some madden i was never a gamer other than runescape runescape what's runescape it's like a massive online um never-ending zelda kind of situation no more like wow but better okay interesting yeah it's like 35 skills that you can level up to 99 like okay you know i don't know what do you call it when it's like thousands of players online at one time you can you know like battle royale kind of situation or no i don't even know what that is it's where you play like like fortnight you play like 100 people yeah it's like that okay you chat with everybody it's like a whole like world wow interesting huh that's such a learn economy buy and sell make profit buy shit hell yeah if if you could go back and chat with your 18 year old self before you go on this crazy journey building the gyms building all these other companies what would you say nothing that would change the journey but what would you say buckle up let's fucking go man just get them hyped i think i mean like i i was very confident in my action things like that but i would have uh i think if i would have had somebody like in my ear really saying you can just fucking go like this is your time to try shit go do it like that's what i would tell them you know if i had a kid that was 18 i go this is your time to try and bust your ass and like go through the flames power through push your limits this is your time instead of like play it safe what's going to be your like that's not the advice i would i need it what do you think 18 year old christian would say if he could peak in like behind the curves yeah 12 years proud of shit yeah yeah proud of shit and nala's still here so that's dope because i got her when i was 19 yeah it's so crazy yeah amazing yeah she made it a little appearance of the pod ladies and gentlemen this has been episode 167 of the 505 podcast with christian guzman if you're still here please hit that subscribe button drop us a comment we'll see you guys all next week peace