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In todays podcast I had a very special guest that personally is one of my favorites idols in the fitness field, he is- MIKE MATTHEWS!
Mike is an Health and fitness author and founder of Legion Athletics and muscleforlife.com
He is also the author of the best seller book ” leaner bigger stronger” with over 200,000 copies sold!
So I wrote down some of the stuff Mike and I discussed in the podcast, enjoy!
Lidor: tell us a little about your fitness journey and how it all started to you?
Mike: I grew up playing sports like hockey and when I was about 17-18 I stopped playing it but I still wanted to be involve in a sport so I started to do weight lifting. So for about 6-7 years I was jumping around, not really educating myself, but I realized that I need to become smarter.
The first thing that got me was flexible diets, just follow numbers ( macros) and I can lose fat or gain muscle. Of course that later on I understood that what you eat is also important for your physical health and performance.
So I started to focus on lifting heavier and not doing all those “isolation exercises”.
So after a few more years I did a lot of studies and dived in so I can really educate myself and others. After I started to look differently people started to ask me ” how did you do it?!” so I started helping some people and some of them even started training with me. And basically this is how its all began.
Lidor: when you just started, have you ever hit a “rock bottom” that made a big shift in your body/life?
Mike: In my case there was no “rock bottom” moment. We always like to think that we are rational being and we all tells ourselves stories about us, about the world around us, about interaction with the world around us.
If we just look at our mediate self, how are we really take care of our body? Do we love what we do? How much money are we making? Does everything around us falling apart?
Conditions are either getting better or worth- objectively.
Be willing to admit you have bad ideas, that you are making mistakes and there is a lot of things that you don’t know and try to always look at others life so you can ask yourself what areas of your life need to be handle better. What’s doing well is always easier to keep going than what goes bad.
I try to avoid rock bottom and many others can avoid that as well if they stop lying to themselves. I also try to actively avoid getting myself into a position ” how the fuck did I end up here?!” so try each and every single day to get better because over time you have that compounding effect.
Lidor: what is the vision of muscleforlife?
Mike: muscleforlife.com was started around 2013 and since then it started to grow really fast. Today we get around 1.2-1.3 millions visitors a month.
We are going to start putting more stuff on business, life and stuff like that. We are also going to expend to digital courses like getting ready for a natural bodybuilding competition. We are also gonna have certify coaches for people around USA.
Lidor: what would you recommend for guys out there that pushing and trying to market and brand themselves in the fitness industry, who are just starting out in online business, what recommendation would you give them?
Mike: step one would be to get into a great shape yourself!
If you just look ok you are going to have an hard time because people are much more inspired to work with somebody that motivates them.
Step two will be to get results. And it depends what you want to do. If you want to be an online trainer it’s becoming more important to educate more and more people so you wanna be able to become a good communicator whether it’s a podcast, writing, videos.
My personal favorite would be writing, I just enjoy doing it.
Step three would be: putting out content that educate people and you have to look at what space are you competing and objectively assure if you really can compete with those people and produce long form content that is just as good if not better than them.
You also have to enjoy it, if you are forcing yourself to writing it’s gonna come through in your writing.
Lidor: how can you demand from yourself to stop procrastinate because even if you are totally into work there are some times that your mind will just “fly away”.
Mike: personally I don’t struggle with that because I love writing. I stay away from stuff that can become “addictive” or just stuff I don’t like to do. John racafeller said this: ” the reason why I never been an alcoholic it’s because I never took the first drink”.
So it’s just about learn to behave and I really don’t think my brain is different than anyone else.
Lidor: Do you consider yourself as a good leader to the world?
Mike: In some way I would say yes. I believe I set a good example for anybody who works with me and I’m much like the guy who is always on the front, who put in work, long hours even that I can work less. Its just not me and my personality so I always try to expand more and create more. I believe that I wanna be the type of a person that uses satisfaction and fulfillment.
I’m more interested in becoming the person I wanna be than always be the guy who is just searching for “ways” or “tactics”. I’m more interested on thing I don’t know than on the things I do know.
Most people don’t want to admit they are wrong, or things they don’t know and I forced myself to come out of that comfort zone and being able to question everything.
Lidor: How can you still manage everything and still be a great father to your kids and a great husband to your wife?
Mike: I can work no problem, but I kind of don’t like doing things that are purposeless. So if I’m spending time without clarifying why im doing it or why is it valuable than most times I would rather work.
So I would say yes that’s an area I do need to improved because if I didn’t change it then I could find myself in a relationship rock bottom.
So what I did is reorganized my schedule so I wake up around 5 am and go to sleep at 10 pm. This way I can have more time to spend with my wife.
If you are going to build a very successful business it’s going to take a lot of your time and your life is going to get unbalance in the process and you can decide where do you want this to be.
Lidor: is there was a time when everything went well and then you had too many stuff to handle and it started to stress you out? How do you handle with stress?
Mike: if all you want is less stress and stuff to handle then do less! Do not get into business if you are searching to do less. What has helped me a lot is being a better executive, which is learning to prioritize work. What really need to be done, and when you are building a business you kind of a “fireman”, and you have to know which fire you have to let burn and which one you really need to put out. I would also recommend the book- the one thing.
If you want to expend you have to have a team and you can’t build one if you don’t understand how a good team need to look like. For myself im the guy who prefer to do most of the work and I prefer to be a guy that do the work while others doing their work in the team than to be someone who always just telling people what to do.
Lidor: Who has been your role model?
Mike: I admire my dad and really appreciate him even more now than when I was younger because im also a father now and I can see things differently now when im in that place as well.
I can also say Benjamin Franklin, who was very likeable and ongoing which I admire this because I want to have that kind of charisma. Another one would be Elan musk, and I really admire his work.
Lidor: what legacy would you like to leave long after you will no longer be among us?
Mike: In health and fitness space I would like to really have with MFL the primer education for millions of people to get in a rearlly good shape.
In terms of legion and supplement side I would say the same, so I will try to add more and produce more so more people can get into good shape.
You can also check Mike Matthews at:
and on social media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/muscleforlifefitness
Twitter: https://twitter.com/muscleforlife
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/muscleforlifefitness/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikepmatthews/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/muscleforlifefitness
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