Adam Schafer: Mind Pump Co-Founder on The Mindset That Separates Entrepreneurs Who Win | Part 1 | Entrepreneurship | E337

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25:47Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. Yes. Now, I know that it took you a while to like fully feel confident, even when you were a personal trainer and doing well and fit and everything like that. You still had insecurities from your childhood. What do you think eventually got you over that hump where you were like fully confident? You know, that's a good question because I was even confident when I was young, like fully confident where I didn't have the same level of confidence. I think insecurities were presented in different ways. Like there's always been things like I was insecure because I wasn't as smart as everybody else.

26:23I was a little insecure because I wasn't as an athlete. But quickly I learned that if I put the extra work in, that I could be as good as anybody else if I were to do that. So I had physical insecurities probably the longest. So I was very skinny growing up. Like you could see my rib cage so skinny. And I'm tall and I get taller and lanky. And so then I got teased like a lot of kids did in school. again none of that really that didn't like hit me hard not like how some kids that can be traumatic for them again like the stuff that i went through that was way harder so getting teased and a little bit i went through people bullied me i went through all that stuff but i still didn't think that was that big of a deal but it did cause a little bit of insecurity and it did drive me to fitness it was just like okay again i can solve this i can figure this out like i'm skinny people are making fun of me for that okay well what can i do oh i can go to the gym and start lifting weights and build muscle.

27:13Oh, wow, this is really hard. Takes a long time. That's okay. That's my superpower leaning into that. It took a while before I think I started to build the confidence about what I looked like. I think that probably of all the things that I was insecure about as a kid, that one probably hung around the longest, which by the way, has probably what fed a lot of the success in the business that we're currently in right now. My co-hosts openly talk about this too, right we're very authentic and transparent and we lead with those things right so when we built the podcast a lot of the conversations we didn't share from a place of authority like we're telling you what to do it was more like a sharing from hey i too know what it's like to be insecure about our body and it drove a lot of the behaviors and the mistakes that i made in my 20s and here's what i've learned through that process and i'm still learning through that process so we really presented our information on the podcast from that.

28:10Even though we all had the national certs and education and experience to say to people, hey, you should do this, don't do that. We didn't lead with that. We led with vulnerability. And this is where we struggled. This is where we were weak. This is how I'm working on those things. I don't even know if I think we even did that strategically. I think it kind of organically happened. And that's just kind of who all of us are character-wise. I think we learned that as personal trainers. And so that conversation of being vulnerable with people, it really serves you as a personal trainer. Like if you work with people, and we've been doing this for over two decades where I work with people one-on-one, and most people that hire you as a personal trainer are very insecure about their bodies.

28:54They're 40, 50 pounds overweight, or they're skinny or whatever it is, but most of them are insecure about how they look. And that's what initially drove them to try and fix that in the gym and then, and then ultimately hire you. And then here you are this fit, young buff trainer, like that just makes them shell up even more. And so over trial and error, I realized like, man, I have to really, I have to be very vulnerable with these people and humanize myself. Cause they think, even though I don't think I'm some super, I'm a superhuman or what they think of you like that, or they see you like that.

29:26And they'll hold in a lot of this personal stuff and a lot of the stuff that's going on inside them, which you need to learn how to solve as a, as a good trainer. And if I wasn't going to get that out of them, I too needed to be vulnerable. They needed to see that I too have struggled and have insecurities and didn't have it easy. And so I think I learned that skill as a person, as developing my skills as a personal trainer. And I think you hear that in the podcast when we communicate to the masses, because that was how we talked to our clients was we had to learn to, and I do think that this is what hurts even some of the smartest trainers that are out there on social media and on podcasts is when you come off as this authority where you know all and you're so smart and you're touting study after study to prove to people how much you know, you don't make that connection with those people.

30:15And if you want behavioral change to happen in a client, you've got to make a connection with them. And that becomes more important than how many studies you can regurgitate. And we learn that as personal trainers. And so I think that part of me, like I'm always looking for my insecurities. I'm always looking for my vulnerabilities. not only to share, but also that's how I work through it. So working through it is being okay, confident and talking about these things that I too, I'm weak in and together trying to solve that and coming from that perspective. And so, I mean, I don't think I've solved every insecurity, but the body one was probably the last one.

30:50And again, that's probably the communicating of that on the show is probably what has resonated with a lot of people. I love that you've tied that into kind of the sales experience that you gained as a trainer. And we had another fitness expert turned entrepreneur, Alex Ramosi on the show. And it reminds me a lot of what he was telling me, how he learned about value creation and making sure that you're speaking in outcomes to sell your fitness clients. He learned about having to understand their challenges and their objections. And he learned about offering discounts and bundles and offer development.

31:26So he learned so much and then became this like incredible entrepreneur. I'd love to hear some of your experiences in terms of like sales, even leadership, and what you learned as a trainer that you've now brought into entrepreneurship. Someone told me that when someone makes a decision to buy, it really comes down to two things always, value and price. Everyone will have excuses. Oh, I can't afford it or I'm baking all these. That's all noise. It really comes down to how much they value that thing and what the price is in relation to that thing. And that resonated so much with me because I began looking at every deal that I didn't close or every client that didn't re-sign as I didn't provide enough value.

32:07They decided that I wasn't worth that investment to them and that falls on me. It's not because something came up financially. No, if I was so valuable, they would find a way to pay for it. And that had been confirmed. I had watched clients take a HELOC out on their home just so they could pay for their personal training with me. Like when you figure that piece out, again, reframing this, every time I went into any sort of sales deal of Adam, it always comes down to two things, value and price. They didn't buy. Okay. I'm not even going to listen to their excuse. It goes, it falls back on me that I didn't provide enough value.

32:44And it's literally how we built this was when we came out, like none of us had any sort of media experience. So none of us were like, oh, we're going to be so great at podcasting and talking on YouTube. Like I was terrified of all that stuff. It's definitely out of character for me. It's not something I wanted to do. I don't think it's natural at all. I still to this day can't stand making YouTube videos, even after doing it for over a decade. Don't like it. What I do know is that my, or what my goal is, is to provide value. All I think about whenever we're creating content or whenever we're helping people is value, value, value.

33:16And if they don't become customers, I didn't find a way to provide enough value to that. Now that becomes a little more unique when you're talking about you're communicating to a million people and like, how do you give them all value? Well, that's, you know, that's learning how to speak to each platform and content creation for your exact demographic or your target that you're going for. And there's, there's a little bit of a learning curve to that too, but really comes down to providing value. And then always looking back at yourself for, I mean, just like the other stuff that we talked about, people are so quick to point the finger at the other people, right?

33:47The victim like, oh, well they can't afford it. Oh, they're not the right customer. Oh, it's like, no, we, none of us ever look at that like that. If something is not working in the business or we're not being successful, it's like, what are we doing? What are we not doing to give that customer enough value that they don't even hesitate to spend that? That's when we started the podcast, we actually had the product ready to sell. So MAPS Fitness Products is the foundation of what scaled and built this business originally. That's what brought us into the millions of dollars was the digital programs that we sell online.

34:18And we had that before the podcast even started. But we agreed not to sell it until people were begging for something from us. We didn't want to go in and already try and monetize. It was like, let's go first, since we're not media guys, let's go first prove that we can provide so much value on this podcast that it organically grows. We didn't want to spend any money on advertising. We weren't trying to do all the Instagram, social media hacks. It was like, lean into the value thing. Let's go put out something that is so valuable that people are willing to share it. And listen, if I can't prove that before I'm even trying to sell anything, I would be a fool to try and sell something first.

34:56This is what I give advice to coaches and trainers that are trying to duplicate what we've done. It's like you're already trying to think about the product or the thing you want to sell. You haven't even proven that people want to hear what you want to give them for free. Go prove to your audience first that you have something valuable enough that they'll listen and or share with other people. Go solve that equation before you figure out your price point of your product or your thing you want to sell and allow them to dictate what product or what service you come up with. But that's the first problem in this equation that you need to solve is, can I provide enough value to a specific audience that they're going to listen?

35:34And what's beautiful in this day and age is that the entry to, or the level of entry or money to come into podcasting, YouTube, Instagram is so low that anybody can do it. And so it's so nice that you don't have to invest all this money to try what you believe to be valuable. Go do it and keep practicing it until they do that. Then once you start to prove that, okay, now you potentially have a business on your hand. And so what we waited for was over a year, we had done over 240 episodes already of podcast episodes, which is a lot. And I don't know how many hundreds of YouTube videos we'd already created by that time with the product just sitting there.

36:12And we kept telling each other, like, we're not going to sell. We're not going to sell until we feel like we have to, or we need to, or people are begging for it. And I remember the day, like yesterday, we came into the studio. This was our very first studio. We were in this little tiny 400 square foot room that we were renting, not making any money. We're all still working full-time in other jobs. We're hustling this on the side. We believe in it. The guys all come in and everybody had like a story to tell about somebody reaching out to them. So I think Sal was just like, dude, I got two DMs of people that are trying to just give me money.

36:44They're like, what can I buy from you? Because you guys have helped me so much. I'm like, oh, that's crazy. I got an email. Someone asking me about Patreon and do we have it because they want to give us money and support our cause. I don't even know what Patreon is. Justin, same thing. So all of us were starting to get bombarded with people just trying to give us money. We had already given them so much free, valuable content that we were already starting to create this loyal fan base of people that are going like, man, I took your advice and it changed my life and I lost all this weight and it helped my marriage.

37:10It was like, this stuff was starting to pour in. And then we all looked at each other and said, okay, I think it's time. I think it's time now to present to everybody that we have this digital fitness program to help them out. And it didn't sell thousands right away. We sold probably a couple hundred, which was really good for us. and then we were doing nothing before. And the thing that I think that stuck with me the most was that a good portion of those people bought it and said things like, I'm already following another program, but I just wanted to support what you guys are doing. Or I don't even need it.

37:39I've been wanting to give you guys, that was like half of the people were just, they weren't buying it because they thought, I think we're incredible program writers. I think that's part of our expertise. But what I realized was the power of community, building a relationship, staying authentic, all those things really all came to full circle for me. And to see that in the digital world was a really powerful moment. Like, oh, wow, like that is more important than even the product that you're going to deliver is can you build a relationship with your audience and your potential customers that is so powerful that the value is here.

38:14So anything that you drop in there price-wise, they were going to buy. That is really what set the tone because we made so many business mistakes and didn't know what we were doing in media for so long. We stumbled to all that success. But what we did know, because we'd been building businesses, all of us, our whole lives was, hey, we had value price thing. That was it. That was kind of like our North Star was keep putting out stuff until it's so valuable that people are willing to spend X amount of dollars with us. And that was the beginning. That was the beginning of the rocket ship. And then it hasn't stopped for 10 years.

38:47It's been a ride. It makes me feel excited just hearing about it. And I feel like you guys approached it in such a smart way. The fact that you just gave and gave value and it's the law of reciprocity. You give and you give and you give and people feel like they owe you. And to your point, people wanted to buy it even though they didn't need it. And the other thing is that the more value you give and the longer you wait. Like I did the same thing. I'm like one of the top influencers on LinkedIn. And I waited like three years before I ever put out a course. and I just wanted to help people because I had no intention of even putting out a course but eventually so many people ask you and then you can make a bigger ask where other people put out a$30 course.

39:26I got to put out a$2 ,000 course that people bought and because they were clamoring for it, I didn't have to do much promotion. I put out a post and everybody bought. I put out some DMs, everybody bought. But then as time goes on, you need to get more creative with your lead gens and pulling in new audience members and warming them up. So I definitely want to talk to you about how you get customers now. But before we do that, what's the origin story? Like, first of all, how did you guys start Mind Pump? How did you meet your co-hosts? It's kind of wild because the four of us collectively didn't know each other.

39:57So Justin, okay, was a kid that I hired straight out of college. This was when I told you I was managing trainers at the gym, 24-hour fitness. I hired him fresh out of college out of his kinesiology degree to work for me as a personal trainer. and what's unique about our relationship was we're so different. He represents a really important time in leadership for me when I was still at that time in my career looking for more me's. I thought the key would be, man, if I could just find 10 more of me, we're gonna be hella successful. And so I was on this mission to find that and he was like, not, he was nothing like me.

40:31We were so different. He's very introverted, his style of training, his way he communicates, but boy, we paired really well and he was really successful as being a person. And it really opened my eyes to maybe this is not what I want. Maybe I don't want to look for me. Maybe I need to look for people that fill the gaps and has strengths where my weaknesses are. Right. And so we're very different that way. So he quickly became my right-hand man, my assistant, and he was for several years. And then he went off to do other things, but we always remained in contact. We became good friends. And so, and he would always come knocking at my door every few years, trying to get me to do something with him.

41:04He's like, Oh, Adam, I'm building this thing. I'm building this app or I'm doing this business, come work with me. And I was always busy doing something myself. And then finally, this opportunity presented itself for us to develop this fitness app together. And I was kind of the finances behind it. He was the brains and the one who was coordinating like all the designer app developer and all that stuff. And so we began kind of like actually intentionally working together to build this app. So we're kind of doing that on the side, communicating while we're all doing our own businesses. Sal is a personal trainer, has his own studio.

41:35And Doug, our producer, is a client of his. So he's training him. So at the same time, Jess and I, and now mind you, we don't all know each other at this time. We just, this is what we're doing in our lives at that time. And Sal and I, we have a lot of mutual friends. And because we came from the same company, we all worked, but 24 Fitness was huge, right? Thousands and thousands of employees. So we had never met each other, but we had a lot of friends that would always talk to us, mutual friends that, which we didn't find this out till later, by the way, this was something that we found out after we got connected was we had these friends that would be like, man, you got to meet Sal.

42:10Have you ever met Sal? You and him would just, you guys got to meet each other. You guys have to meet each other. You're great. You're great. And he would hear the same thing about me. And we didn't, and this was for like years before not knowing it. Now we were both top performers at 24 hour fitness. So I seen his name, right? So you, and his rank, cause you get ranked and you just get trophies. And so if you were like a top producer. You won all the Hawaii trips and he'd done stuff like that. And so I'd seen him like in passing and like knew of his name on like the production report, but we never even had said hi to each other.

42:38So we didn't know each other. Him and Doug, his client, start working on a digital product. They start working on Maps Fitness Products, which is our product I was telling you that we already had. The reason why we already had it was they built it before we even met. And Doug has a background in, he used to sell insurance and he was getting into digital marketing. He was as a kind of a hobby, not like he was professional in it whatsoever. It was like a hobby. He was interested in the space. So he was, he had like the equipment and he had done some of the seminars and he had done stuff like that.

43:06And he kept telling Sal, like, man, you, you were made for this. You like, you should think about making a digital product. And Sal was like, okay, well, I mean, if you lead the way, cause Sal's like me, we can barely turn our computer on. So he's like, I'm good at communicating health and fitness, but I don't know anything about the digital marketing side at all. And Doug's like, well, that's, I can do that. I'll do that for you. So they had built that together or we're working on it. Justin and I are kind of working on this app. Sal and I have these mutual friends that are talking about. Sal finishes his digital product.

43:34And because so many people had told him about me and like my business acumen, he's like, you know what? And we had like passed each other on Facebook one time. We had just added each other on Facebook and we were following each other. He slides into my DMs and just like, hey, blah, blah, blah, blah, kind of reintroduces who he is. I'm like, yeah, I know who you are. And he's it's like, I wanted to show you something. I've heard so much about you and your business acumen. I want to know what you think about this product, this thing. And he sends me over kind of the sizzle reel to this digital product they make.

44:02And it was interesting because at that time we're building this app up. And I know that Justin and I are about to finish this fitness app and I don't have anybody to sell it to. I don't have Instagram. I don't, I mean, I have Facebook, but it's like family, friends. I'm not doing anything on it, right? I'm not actively building a social media platform. And, but I realized that I'm going to have to move in that, in that direction at some point, he sends that over to me and I'm like, oh, let's, let's meet. I'd like to talk to you. And I'm big, you know, one of the things I know we haven't talked about, but if I were to hang my hat on one of the most important things in being successful for me, it's been relationships.

44:37So I'm the guy, my wife still teased me to this day where no matter how busy I am, it's that I'll take a cup of coffee with somebody for a meeting for a potential new relationship. And I mean, And I waste a lot of hours doing that, a lot. But every once in a while, it ends up being a mess. And so it was kind of one of those situations. I was busy doing this stuff, but saw what he was doing, interested, I'd heard enough people talk about how he's raised. I'm like, I need to meet with this guy. And let's just see, no expectations of what we're going to do. And he says, hey, can I bring my buddy, Doug?

45:06And I'm like, sure, I wanted to bring my buddy, Justin. We'll all get together. So we all just, first time, meet each other. We get in my living room and we didn't shut up for like four hours. And it was like lots of passion and energy. and talking about what we think is wrong with the space and where we think this whole digital media thing is going. This is like 12 years ago. So we're talking about YouTube and Instagram and the podcast space and like all these things that we're paying attention to and we're curious about. And we're all these brick and mortar business guys. But we're curious about where social media is going and where the future of health and fitness is.

45:40And it was like, I don't know, like almost four hours of nonstop talking. My wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, Katrina was in the kitchen and I didn't even know this, but she actually hit record and recorded a lot of the conversation. And after we were all done basically meeting each other and realizing, oh, we all really liked each other. She goes, that was an incredible conversation to listen to. And I was like, really? She's like, oh my God, that was so interesting. And man, that was so good. And so we ended up meeting a second time. And the second time we met, Doug was the one who piped in and said like, hey, why don't we put this on a podcast?

46:12Let's, the stuff that we're talking about together, why don't we just put it out there and see if somebody wants to listen to it. The rest of us have no idea what that looks like. I'm like, do we have to get like a radio sponsor or like, how does that work? And Doug's like, no, it's really easy. Like we can record it in our home. We could put it out there. Cost us virtually nothing to do it. All of us were like, okay, let's go do it. Let's go put this out there. And again, this is, it started on the foundation of my girlfriend or my wife, or my girlfriend at the time, my wife now was like, oh, it was so incredibly awesome.

46:43We love the dynamic of the conversation. we know we had a lot of good information to provide people one of the things we all agreed upon at that time no disrespect to any of the og trainers or fitness people that were blowing up back on social media but we really felt like the most popular people on social media at that time really got there for not necessarily the right reasons and what i mean by that they were some of they were just first adopters they were really attractive they did a lot of the before and after and look how sexy I look type of stuff. And, or they were just cool or they really understood algorithms and how to hack.

47:18And so a lot of these young kids were making millions of dollars already on YouTube and Instagram. And we were going like, listen, I may not be as good looking or as talented as some of these kids that are at the top of the fitness space, but I definitely know the information I have to provide is way better. Cause I used to think like that too when I was 24, but I've learned over decades of training people, like that's not the best way to communicate that. I've learned that already through being in the trenches for so long. And we all agreed that, oh yeah, I can't believe this person and that person is doing so.

47:51It's like, man, that's not right. They should be saying this and say, hey, let's go put it on a podcast. We really believe that. We really believe we're that smart and we have that much better information. We have that much more value to give than these people that are making millions of dollars. Let's go prove it. And that was literally how we started it was, let's put this podcast together. Let's go give all this information that we believe is better information than the top people in fitness were at that time and just give it for free and prove that's as good and as valuable as we say it is.

48:19And that was the first litmus test to do we have a business? We didn't overcomplicate whose role is what, what's the partnership look like, what's the financial split, what we're going to sell yet. None of that. It was we really believe the information we had to give to people was better than what was out there. And so let's go prove that first. And then we started recording the podcast. And our strategy, the only strategy we had that time was kind of going back to my childhood. This is what I love about Justin and Sal. This is probably the thing that, and even Doug, we all have in common. We all kind of have that attitude of we will outwork the next guy.

48:54We will just bury somebody in work ethic. And none of us are cocky and think we're the most talented at anything, but we do believe that's a superpower that we all have. So that was a very important thing that connected all of us. And so that was the strategy was like, let's just drop podcasts every day. Let's just put out so much and just keep reinventing ourselves as it comes back. Oh, only 10 people listen. What do they like about that? Oh, wow, this one got 20 people listening. What are we doing? What do we do different than that? And then unpacking it and going, okay, they want more of this.

49:24Or what are we doing? And reading the comments and not getting offended by all the negative stuff that you're going to attract when you first start. And instead going like, and listening, like, wow, a lot of people think this is a terrible idea. So why are we continuing to do it? Let's shift this way. And so that was like really the impetus of the podcast was just the four of us getting together, having belief that we had more valuable information to give, and then starting with the business plan of let's go prove it. Let's go see if we can give so much free, valuable content that it grows. And I think when we knew that was, I don't remember how many episodes deep we were, but it was for sure in the first eight weeks, because in the first eight weeks of podcasting, you have an opportunity to fall in the, what's called the new and noteworthy category, the first eight weeks.

50:11And in the first eight weeks, you are only competing against other people that are in their first eight weeks. And it gives you an opportunity on iTunes to get populated right there on the front screen. If you can just, and that we also saw that as a huge advantage. Doug had read this. He knew that going into it. We're like, okay, let's go. We're like, we're only, we're not competing against the Joe Rogan who's been there forever. We're competing against other people are starting right now. And we believed in ourselves and our work ethic. And then what we had to give is like, let's go do that.

50:37And I remember when we reached, you know, number one and new and noteworthy, and we were there for several weeks of the first eight weeks. And that really catapulted the first initial wave of people that paired with what I was doing at Orange Theory, which is a whole nother side story we can get into sometime is like, I was out there on the ground, getting a building community in person. That was what I was like, I know I can control that. I didn't know if I could control the new and noteworthy thing and get popular on social media, but I knew I was good at what I did and I could build community in person.

51:09And if I could just get a few hundred people in my community in person, I would have a couple hundred listeners that would listen to my podcast and then maybe we would grow from there. So I was kind of simultaneously also doing that. And so I think the combination of we were actually doing okay on the podcast and got ranked a new and noteworthy combined with what I was doing in person with community really gave us the first foundation of the first few hundred or thousand listeners, it just snowballed. What's up, Yap Gang? If you're a serious entrepreneur like me, you know your website is one of the first touch points every single cold customer has with your brand.

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55:58Terms apply. Money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments Incorporated, licensed as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. So I started as an entrepreneur. Now I have a business that's about to hit eight figures next year. I run Yap Media. It's a social agency. I have a podcast network. It's the number one business podcast network. When I first started my business, I was 100 % owner. And it was great. I had a team, but it gets lonely. And now you just met one of my business partners, Jason. He's got 20 % of the business. And he's my best friend. And it is so much more fun and like just work is so much more fun.

56:35It's so much better to like have somebody to lean on. And so what is your advice to people who are kind of like holding their equity to their belt and just they don't have a partner? Like what's your what's your perspective on that? Yeah, this is an interesting conversation because I would tell you that my advice normally is to people is don't get a partnership. Don't do it. And I think a lot of that is because I recognize how blessed I am to have met three other guys that align so much with each other. It's probably the most interesting thing about this. I mean, we haven't got into all the things that we've built, but we've got multiple seven, eight figure businesses.

57:16We invest in real estate together. We own 15 homes together, even partnership. We have angel investing together. We have a stock portfolio together and we are evenly split on everything. We do think Sal wrote a book. He was published by Hachette and wrote a book. I made royalties from that book. I didn't spend a single minute doing anything to do that book, but I make, I make royalties. I do business coaching for people on the side on my own time at home with that. I give, I give that portion to my, my, it goes right into the pot. We have just agreed that everything we build and we do together is an equal four-way split, no matter what time and effort each guy puts into.

57:53And that is fricking very, very unique and very, very special. And I'm very, very blessed that we had that. A lot of that has to do with ego. And this is the other thing that probably connects us really well. We all have that kind of work ethic thing. And the other thing is that we all met each other at a place in our life where we had the opportunity to all be leaders and to work with teams long enough to know like the power of team over the individual. And we all are so competitive that we want to win more than any of us care about any sort of individual accolades or who gets the credit or who gets more money or a split that way.

58:32And ultimately we know if we, if we position, we knew if we positioned ourself that way in the business like that, that we would have abundance everywhere. And everybody in the business makes way more money than I think they ever dreamed or thought they would make. And so it's easy now, like at this point, it's like the revenue has got to places where everybody's so comfortable and stuff like that. It's not, it's actually not that big of a deal. But early on, that was really unique and special to have four guys like that. And I think it's different. So we talk about it a lot that it's marriage.

59:04I honestly think that, I think my marriage is easier than my business partnership. I think being in a business, because you love that person, right? You love that person. You're attracted to that person. You sleep together every day. You chose that person to do life with. So I actually think marriage is easier than business partnerships. I think business partnerships are like, a lot of people get into them because they see like, oh, you're talented in this. I'm talented in that. We would make a good team. Let's go build this business. But it's like being married. So you better have, you better be on the same page and a lot more than just, oh, you have that skill.

59:34I have the skill and that makes a good, a good business idea. I know you need to court people. If you're going to, if you're going to go into business with someone, you need to court them as if you were going to marry them. Cause it gets, I think arguably more ugly when you get hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars involved and you have this split, I mean, that really puts an added pressure to the relationship. Aside from you got to work with them, you have to steer a company or companies towards these core values. Do all of your core values align? Does your ideologies align? Like these things all really matter in partnership.

1:00:09And so that's the only way I ever recommend it to someone is if you feel like you've really vetted the person you're potentially going to go partnership, like you were going to marry them and you could be okay with living with them for the rest of your life. I just think that's so important. And I think we're such a bad example of, I think, four individual partners. I mean, name me another company where you know that, where there's an even 25 split in all aspects of all investments of all businesses that we're like an anomaly. So I never give people that advice of like, oh, try and find three other dudes that you're into.

1:00:43I mean, this is like, we believe that there's something greater going on besides us, that we weren't in control of this. It was very serendipitous the way it all played out. And so the advice I normally give is that do not underestimate the stress and the challenge of partnership. And so if you're going to do a partnership, you need to vet that person as if you were going to be marrying that person because you are. You're marrying them in business. And let me tell you, we have all out fights. In fact, we just had one two days ago. And I should read the text to you. And I said, I said back to the guys, because there was two different things that we got into in the same morning.

1:01:23Like it was like, it wasn't even 10 o 'clock and we had already like fought each other. We're yelling at each other back and forth. And I sent a text later on that night. Oh, here we go. I was just reflecting on today and how much I love you guys from the jump, getting frustrated at Doug to fighting with Sal over copy on a landing page makes me chuckle out loud. There's no one else in the world I'd rather fight with. It's very special. We can do that in a day and never break stride in our mission. Pretty fucking cool. And that is like, we have this ability to, I mean, get into it, like really get into it.

1:01:55But ego's never involved. It's never, I'm fighting with Sal because I want to be more right. I believe with all of my heart, this is the right direction for the business. And if he's fighting with me, it's not ego for him either. He believes this is the right direction for the business. And it's ultimately not about us. That's the secret sauce to that dynamic of being able to fight like that where it's healthy. It's not about ego. It's not about being more, I don't care about being more right. I care about what's best for the business. And if I'm passionate about it and I believe I'm right, I'm gonna fight too.

1:02:27And we encourage that. And we encourage that with our team too. Like, listen, just because I'm the boss, if you think I'm wrong about something that we should do and you passionately feel that, you better speak up. You better step to me. You better argue with me and bring your best argument. And I want you to do that because that's where the best stuff comes out. And then whatever we decide on and agree on, we all decide. So if Sal and I are getting into about the copy and we're both passionate, we're right. And we decide, okay, we're going to try your way and we'll see. I'm not sitting back now measuring, oh, was it bad?

1:02:59And mine was more, see, I told you I was, no, it's now my idea. If we decide to go with your idea, I no longer look at it as my idea. It's our idea. And I'm all about it. And I'm going to do everything I can to make sure you're right or we're right in that situation. Because ultimately, it's about winning as a team. And that's what we care about. That's special. It's so special to find one other person that's like that, much less three other people that are like that. And we have that in this team. where, and nobody, none of us too, like, I think it's unique when you get into this space where media and kind of the attention and fame comes, like none of us want that.

1:03:37Like one of the things that we were all, we were all very reluctant, resistant to the fame part of this. Like none of us are thirsty for that. None of us want that. And so it's kind of neat that nobody wants to be the guy. Nobody cares to say like, I did this or blah, blah, blah, or want to be in the front, front of everything like that. We're both are all like, ah, do you want to do it? I don't want to do it. You do it. We have that kind of attitude with the, with the limelight too. And I think that's so important. Like nobody is thirsty for the attention from anybody at all. It's ultimately about the business winning.

1:04:09And if you're the right guy or girl for the job in that situation, I don't care where you rank in superiority or whatever. It's like, you're the right guy or girl for the job. Go do it, go get it done, go make it happen. And so that's, that's special. that's unique. I don't think it happens to a lot of people. And so I think most people are probably better off building a business themselves and having like kind of full control of relationships and partnership with that. But if you do, it's a very special thing because then now you have four of us that became another superpower is that we can divide and conquer.

1:04:40But it took a while to learn that too, though, because early on, you know, we were so tight, we were so close and there wasn't a lot going on when we were only had a few thousand listeners, we had one product. So it was like every decision in the business was all four of us talking, everything we did. I think it was about year three when we were really starting to catch our stride and revenue was really cranking by that time. We started to realize, what are we doing? Why are we trust each other like family by this time? And we're making decisions together and it is literally hurting us. What we thought might've been our superpower in the past where you have four great minds collectively arguing over ideas.

1:05:19is, then we decided to go. Now it was slowing us down. Now it was getting to a point where it was bogging the business. We had too many things going on that we need to let go of stuff. And so that probably presented a probably a year transition of challenge for us was, okay, now that we've got this place where we were all married together, we all like each other. We all see, oh, the benefits of all four of us arguing and debate. Okay, that's great. But now how's it also hurting us? Oh shit, it's slowing us down when we need to make decisions. And speed is very important, I think, in business, right?

1:05:49To go test your ideas. And if we have to meet every time we want to try something or do something in business this big, this is killing us. And so it took about a year to like everyone kind of fall into their actual, in fact, by that time, we still hadn't decided our positions. Like we had never sat down and had a formal meeting of Adam, you're going to be the CEO. Sal, you're going to be the CMO. Justin, you're going to be the CTO. Like that didn't happen until like year four. and we had already been, I mean, we're cranking in the millions of dollars and we don't even have a structure. We don't even have a structure to who's in what position, but I really didn't think it was that necessary until it real, until we had so many different revenue streams and departments and building a staff underneath us.

1:06:32Then it presented itself. And we realized that it was a bit of growing pains for about a year. And then everybody kind of naturally fell into these positions. And because we have that solid foundation, the relationship marriage part, Like, no, and this is, I think this is so important in a marriage. Like if your marriage is not going to last very long, if you are constantly measuring what you bring to the table to what they bring to the table and the time you spent on a thing compared to that, like that marriage ain't going nowhere. If you're, you and your wife are arguing over who did more of what that's quick recipe for that relationship.

1:07:02And the same thing goes in business. So I can't sit there and go like, I worked seven days this week and I didn't get any breaks. this, that. And Justin, all you did was that one day you like, nobody, nobody even measures that. It's like, you're the best at that. You like doing that. Lean into that. Go handle that. Like you like doing that. You're the best at that. Go handle that. Oh, that stuff. You're terrible. Don't even worry about it. I got it. Like that's how everything kind of unfolded. And the positions that everybody is, we, we fell into the things that were our strengths and we doubled down on it.

1:07:31And the things that we recognize that we're weaknesses in each other, we, we let go of those things. So your example of partnerships, like you just said, very unusual. You don't really recommend it. You feel like it was just like a magical, serendipitous thing. I'll give a quick example to the listeners of how I found my business partners, right? So I have one girl, Kate, who has 10%. Jason has 20%. Kate started as an intern when I first started my company. She was basically a volunteer who worked for free for a couple of years. And then she was by far, like for her age, especially, she was just such a rock star.

1:08:05And it was so obvious that she was special. And she got to work for me and basically became a mini me. So she ended up getting 10 % of the business as one of my business partners. Jason was an acquihire. He had his own production company. I couldn't focus on production anymore. So I brought him in. He turned the whole team around. He ended up, he was already entrepreneurial. He was an entrepreneur. And after like two years of working together, I then decided to put him on a vesting agreement. So it's not just like, boom, oh, I met you at a coffee shop. Want to do a 50-50 split? Like, you know, it's not that.

1:08:41You've got to really get to know somebody and decide like, do I want to work with this person maybe forever until I retire? You quartered them. You quartered them for two years before you even consider doing that. I mean, that to me, that's so important. Like if that's why it's like, it's not fair for me to tell people don't do it. But I think a lot of people think it's going to be easier. I think the fear, because it's scary, right? Most people fail. And so nobody wants to fail and nobody wants to fail all by themselves. And so I think most people make the decision of a partnership out of this fear of failing by themselves.

1:09:14And then so they just search for somebody, oh, this person could bring, it's like, that's the wrong reason to do it. I think that's what you got to be very careful of. But I think that's a great strategy. I mean, we've done that now where because there's so many different businesses and revenue streams, we've had people that just like that have been started off as an intern, worked their way up to a position, worked their way up to a leadership position, now get 10 % of a revenue stream. So we've had people in the business where we've brought in kind of an equity split or a rev split on some things because they've earned that right to be more than just an employee.

1:09:47And we really want to do that for most people. But I think that looking for that right out the gates, I think that's the mistake that most people make when it comes to partnerships. So totally agree. Totally.

1:10:01Well, Yap Gang, that's the end of part one of my conversation with Adam Schaefer. There were so many pieces of his story and his entrepreneurial journey that really resonated with me. And the first was the value of starting to work at a young age. You've really got to get those reps in early when you're in your teens and 20s. And a lot of us may not be in our teens and 20s anymore. But if you are, don't underestimate the value of working in retail or service jobs. You might be surprised about how many skills you take later with you in life. And you may not be getting paid a lot now, but those skills will pay you a lot later from those experiences.

1:10:42And next, I really loved his thoughts about the importance of adversity and what you do with that adversity. Like Adam, you might have had a challenging childhood. but you can choose whether you let that experience be destructive or empowering. You can reframe your past and embrace the stronger, more resilient version of yourself that emerged from it. And finally, it was so inspiring to hear how it was Adam's insecurities and his vulnerabilities and his willingness to confront them that really vaulted him ahead as a trainer, an entrepreneur, and as a content creator. His own insecurity about his body and self-image drove his expertise forward, and it also made it easier for him to relate to his clients as a trainer and later as an entrepreneur.

1:11:28Whether or not you have muscles as big as Adam's, if you don't showcase your vulnerabilities as well, your clients or audience may only see your polished version, and that will make it harder to connect with them. But there's something else that Adam told me that was so eye-opening. It's what he and his Mind Pump co-founders leaned into that really catapulted their business forward. And we'll get into all that juicy stuff in part two of our conversation. Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast. If you listened, learned, and profited from this conversation with the super fit Adam Schaefer, then please share this episode with your friends and family.

1:12:06And if you enjoyed this show and you learned something, then drop us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, CastBox, Player FM, wherever you listen to this show. I love to hear from you and your reviews mean so much to me. And if you want to watch our podcast as videos, my YouTube channel is growing really fast. My videos have been going viral lately and it's really fun to witness it all. If you want to check us out on YouTube, you can go to Young and Profiting on YouTube. You can also find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn. Just search my name. It's Hala Taha. I got to say thanks to my Yap production team.

1:12:41You guys are amazing. Thank you for all that you do. This is your host, Hala Taha, aka the podcast princess, signing off. Thank you.