Why Customers Don’t Trust Health and Wellness Brands...

Why Customers Don’t Trust Health and Wellness Brands... Speaker 3: What are some pieces of advice you can give to brands who are maybe trying to start, you know, maybe a YouTube channel or Instagram account or trying to just get influencers, you know, on the roster, but how can brands really grow their organic presence? Speaker 1: The way Instagram was, like, I don't know, people could kind of fake stuff and they could just post it and whatever. Nowadays people see through that very easily. And so it's really leaning into authenticity. It's like, here's the thing, like we use our apps every single day. And so it's like, it's almost not marketing. It's just, Hey guys, here's our life. Here's what we do. Come on this journey with us. Here's how we use it. Here's how we set things up. You know, you guys can sort of join with us and all that. And like, it's just, it's authenticity. Speaker 2: Welcome back to another episode of Chew on This. Today we have the founder and CEO of RP Strength. And he came down here all the way from Charlotte. And I'm excited because we don't get to sometimes talk about brands and companies in our category because we're in the health and wellness space as well with Obby. And I'm super excited to talk about what you've been building, especially Being something that is a little bit like recession-proof in a way, being in the digital forefront, it's really exciting to break this down. So first of all, Nick, for the few people who may not know you in our viewer base, can you give them a little bit of your background, a little bit about what RP Strength is about, and a little bit about what you're building? Speaker 1: Yeah, so I went to University of Michigan and that's actually where I met Dr. Mike who was a co-founder of RP with me and then we were personal trainers in New York City for a while. He was there for about a year. I stayed for a few years and that's kind of when we started RP because he was getting his PhD at a school called ETSU, East Tennessee State. And he was training people online, I was training people in person. We kept referring folks back and forth until we were like, hey, why don't we just start something? So it really just started him and I coaching people. And then over time, it morphed into selling digital products, because we thought we had a pretty good framework. And we're like, hey, why don't we digitize this? And then we started selling digital products, we started to see it take off, like the scalability was there. And we're like, oh, it's Probably onto something here. And then that eventually led us into selling something called Diet Templates, which is kind of what first got us decently well-known. And like, let's call it 2015 to 2018, something like that. And then the whole time we knew we wanted to turn it into apps eventually, but you know, it's a long process. It costs a lot of money. So that kind of, that was basically the seed money to start building our apps. And then we started Launching our apps in 2019. So that's really what we do. And I would say we're catered more towards people that take fitness pretty seriously. Like if you're brand new, never picked up a weight before, you're probably not gonna do well with RP. But if you really kind of want to take yourself to the next level, and so now we've sort of centered everything that we do around like hypertrophy training. So, you know, Dr. Mike, he's my co-founder. He's the face of our RP YouTube channel, which is like blown up here the last couple years. And he's kind of Maybe the leading expert in the world when it comes to hypertrophy training. So that's kind of where we're at now. Speaker 2: Wow. It's really cool. So thanks for taking us through that journey. I think one piece that's really, really kind of a curiosity thing right off the bat, when it comes to digital product, right, I feel like, and then maybe I'm talking about myself as a consumer, but maybe I probably don't even fit the criteria, but I feel like when it comes to digital products people sometimes get bored. People sometimes kind of get like I don't want to go back on my iPad or open this app and like they're looking for excitement. I think it's been the rise of like the soul cycles, the berries and all those things too because people love excitement. I'd love to understand like you guys probably have content nailed down so well to keep things exciting. Give me a little bit of breakdown into content processing for you. Speaker 1: Content. So Dr. Mike is really kind of the If we want to give him a title at RP, he would be CCO, Chief Content Officer. You know, kind of a made up title, but that's really what he does. And I say this all the time. He just has the gift of the gab and he's just very skilled because he's super smart. So he can take complex ideas and break them down into like very simple to understand formats. And on top of that, he's just funny. And you know, when we first started RP, I kind of told him like, Hey man, like, cause I know his personality. Like I've been around since 2007 when I first met him. So I've known him almost 20 years. And I was like, man, why don't you just like scale back a little bit? Like, don't let the full Dr. Mike out. And then over time, what we realized was that people actually like that. And like, that's part of the appeal, right? And so like, I think there's been a shift on social media, you know, the last couple years where it's sort of like the individual Over like the brand itself and so we've kind of leaned into that a little bit more with them and so like that's a big part of our content because it is educational. We always want to give away tons of free value to people. That's what our YouTube channel is like any fitness topic you can go on there. There's probably a video for it that you know can explain things but at the same time so we provide the education along with entertainment and so you watch the videos and I mean I still watch them to this day almost every single one. I can't help but laugh. Like I just I'm because that's just that's the skill that he has he just and so it sort of combines It's not you know you picture because he was a professor and you picture you're sitting in a class It's kind of boring. It's kind of you know dry basically falling asleep So he's always had that skill, but then you combine it with putting him on video reaching You know hundreds of thousands of millions of people you know people just love it because it's like self-deprecating humor. It's jokes It's fun, and that's really what we've leaned into in terms of the content piece. Speaker 2: That's really cool. Speaker 3: Love that. I mean, it sounds like obviously building credibility for your guys is, you know, yourself, the brand, each of you probably has kind of the trainers that people would be coming to and trusting, right? If you can kind of build that audience and build that trust factor, it makes selling a little bit easier, right? But even during that sales process, you can be witty, you can be funny, you can Have the results yourself, right, and tell you, you know what, I'll do for you what I've done for myself, but at the end of the day, it's all about social proof, right? Actually seeing, well, is this actually gonna work for me, right? Is this something that I'm gonna invest my time and money into? What are others talking about, right? What are the reviews here? So I'm very curious, you know, how important is social proof to you guys and what are some of the forms that you guys are utilizing to leverage this? Speaker 1: Social proof is huge. It's sort of been an evolution for us because in the early days of Instagram, like 2015, I don't know, let's call it up until 2020 or so, something like that. The use of before and after pictures and what we did, like selling that proof, what happened was when we first started, it was kind of like, oh, are these guys, like, can we trust them? Do we know what they're talking about? And you start working with some athletes and influencers, and then you start getting the results. You get the before and after pictures. You post that. It immediately builds a credibility. And then what happened was people sort of stopped asking, does this work? Because I was like, well, we've got a page here with like thousands of before and after transformations. It's sort of undeniable. So social proof has always been a huge part of that. And of course, I mean, how I found out about social proof was Robert Cialdini influence. I was kind of like, you know, the book and you read that and you're like, oh, okay. So it's definitely been huge. It's transformed a little bit over time, though, because what's really interesting is like nowadays that you can't post before and afters on Instagram, right? Like they're dead. And so we've kind of had to, you know, shift a little bit into more of that like, Individual leaning into, you know, a little bit more of the Dr. Mike, a little bit more just like the, you know, education slash entertainment piece. And, you know, by then, you know, we've had enough people use our apps and we've got enough reviews and, you know, I don't know, thousands of them and all that. So, like, it's shifted a little bit, but that's definitely where it started. And, like, when you go to our landing page, we still use that as part of the credibility process because people want to know that, you know, hey, is this going to work? Am I going to get the results that I want? Speaker 3: So, obviously on the social front, and even for us too, right, especially when we're running ads, we can't necessarily show the before and after, even if they are legitimate, right? I mean, I think the reason why it's become this way is because there's a lot of bad actors out there and, you know, obviously we want to kind of shine through the authenticity here, but I mean, from what we've seen, right, is Fully on our landing pages, the amount of social proof that we need, more is always better, right? So when it comes down to even like sourcing this from customers, are there other elements that you guys are doing, like whether it's maybe even like customer interviews or, you know, getting, I guess, kind of like testimonials written or video wise, but are there other stuff that you guys are doing to get that additional social proof? Speaker 1: Yeah, usually we'll have some testimonials from like some top athletes or influencers and usually that lends more credibility. So that, along with some before and afters, along with some written reviews too from like real people. I would say it's a blend of those three things, especially on the landing pages, because you're right, you cannot use before and afters in ads anymore. Like we tried and sometimes I forget at one point someone told us like hey like make a video and like that's not the beginning of it and then you weave it in in the middle and like nope nope that doesn't work either so yeah you know meta and all that they don't allow that at all for sure. Speaker 3: Are there any cool ways that you guys are doing to kind of extract this from customers? Speaker 1: So we have, you know, automated email flow after people join where, you know, we have some set markers. And like, once they reach those, you know, it's like for us, when you start a hypertrophy training program, it's usually like, if you get a couple weeks into it, or like you end your first program, you start building the second one. That would probably be a time where we're going to ask people like, Hey, did you like the app? Like, cool. If so, leave us a review. Like, what did you think? And so we'll pull some of that. So a lot of it comes from some like automated tags and triggers along the way. Speaker 3: Awesome. Speaker 2: So I'm curious, I want to get into the tactical pieces of growth. Obviously, you know, you guys have been at it for 10 plus years now. I'm sure you've seen a lot of waves of the early days of, you know, we were at a company called Shreds back in 2012, 2013, which was a fitness supplement brand. Speaker 1: Sounds familiar. Speaker 2: And back then, you know, it was like you have to post on Instagram. I hope for the algorithm to keep showing the most recent thing and then it shifted into early days of meta and now there's businesses built off of the backbone of meta, right? Walk me through what the last few years, what have you guys doubled down for your growth? How much of it is referral, word of mouth versus just plain old ads on meta and what platforms are working for you guys? Speaker 1: When we first started, it was all Facebook, like before it was meta. When Facebook actually sort of provided value and people really used it, nowadays, it's a little hit or miss. So it went from Facebook, then it went to Instagram, which is like the perfect medium for what we do. Videos, you know, the before and afters, all that. People, you know, showing. Speaker 2: Athletes, yeah. Speaker 1: Exactly, right? So like that led to, you know, Instagram led into working with a lot of athletes and influencers, like affiliate marketing. That was huge for us for a while. It seems like, I don't know, call it 2021 or so, Instagram changed a bunch of stuff and it really like I don't know, they sort of, it basically became all pay to play. And so, you know, we kept doing the same things. We struggled for a while. And at the same time, I think in 2020, so when COVID hit, we had all this free, I'm sorry, not free content, but we had all this content, but it was behind a paywall on our site. And we thought, you know what, the way fitness is trending, why don't we take all this information? Why don't we just start putting it out on YouTube? And I sort of thought all along, like go way back to 2014, I remember sitting in a university classroom at the University of Central Missouri, which is where Dr. Mike taught, and he was teaching a class of like 30 students. And I had never really seen this before, but everyone was like leaning forward. They were super engaged. They were laughing. He's making all these jokes. And I'm like, he needs to be doing this for 30,000, 300,000 people. And so when COVID hit, we started to transition more into the YouTube side of things. And we really started putting a lot of resources into that. And obviously it takes time to build up. So we were heavily on Instagram, a little bit on YouTube. And so now it's kind of flip-flopped. Like now YouTube is probably I mean not probably it is the number one place where people hear about RP because it just it brings in folks and It's sort of easier said than done right because like he has such the personality for it that it lends itself to that type of content and like we've built out a whole production team where we've got you know, I don't know something like Six to eight people, maybe not all full time, but you know, some contractors in there that are just working on YouTube content. So like that's definitely our bread and butter. And then, you know, referrals, paid ads go along with that, but it's sort of like that big chunk up there. It's definitely YouTube. Number two would probably be Instagram. Speaker 2: And within that big chunk of YouTube, is it all organic there? Or are you guys also then fueling it with a decent amount of paid? Speaker 1: Mostly organic. There's definitely paid sort of layered in. So I guess how you view it would be like YouTube drives top of funnel. YouTube shorts are almost like a top of funnel for our top of funnel. It just drives even more people in. And then as people, you know, see Dr. Mike, they watch the content, they end up subscribing. What'll happen is a lot of people end up binge watching. It's like, I just can't get enough of this guy. He's so funny. And then we'll sort of use paid ads to kind of like retarget, come back and more like middle and bottom of funnel, something like that. It's probably maybe the best way to describe it. Speaker 2: Really cool. Speaker 3: I love the strategy because I think organic is something that a lot of brands are missing. It's like you start a brand, you immediately want to deploy dollars into meta ads or TikTok or Snapchat, right? For brands that are kind of struggling with creating an organic presence, and this is even something that goes for us too, where we're kind of like relying on influencers and tapping into their networks and their audiences. What are some pieces of advice you can give to brands who are maybe trying to start, you know, maybe a YouTube channel or Instagram account or trying to just get influencers, you know, on the roster, but how can brands really grow their organic presence? Speaker 1: So I'll say this, and it's a painful lesson that we learned, but I talked about it a little bit earlier where I would We kind of didn't let him unveil his full personality. So he wasn't being his like true authentic self. And when we started to lean more into that, it led to more success and more growth. So I think that's probably a big piece of it because I think gone are the days like sort of, let's say pre-COVID and the way Instagram was like, I don't know, people could kind of fake stuff and then you just post it and whatever. Nowadays, people see through that very easily. And so it's really leaning into authenticity. It's like, here's the thing, like, Whether it's Mike, whether it's myself, we use our apps every single day. It's almost not marketing. It's just, hey guys, here's our life. Here's what we do. Come on this journey with us. Here's how we use it. Here's how we set things up. You guys can join with us and all that. It's authenticity really. And then I guess obviously you have to pair that with like a long-term time horizon because it's not like it's not just going to take off day one. It just takes a long time. And so you just have to sort of accept that like when you first get started, it's not going to be that great, but you just, it's like anything, right? You just, you learn, you iterate, you keep going. And then like over time it gets a little bit better and it kind of, you know, builds upon itself. You get some of that momentum, right? It's, it goes back to social proof. Like something that was really, really interesting was it seemed like on YouTube, When we hit, I think, 500k subscribers for the first time, it almost, like, started to skyrocket. And from 500 to a million was, like, that. And then, like, from a million to two million... It happened pretty quick. So now we're at about 3.5, but it is that ultimate social proof. You know, you go to a channel, you see someone's got like, I don't know, 10,000 subscribers. You're like, oh, that's cool. But it just, if you keep going, you keep being consistent, you keep building that, then all of a sudden, you know, you've got 50K, 100K, something like that. And then it just tends to draw more people in because obviously YouTube's filtering, you know, their, the algorithm is showing people kind of what they want to see. And so you just have to keep leaning into that, being really true to who you are, You know, obviously not everyone's going to have millions, but it can be a huge difference. Like, let's say if you're just running a coaching business, if you go from, I don't know, 5K to 50K, like you're probably set for life. You never really have to worry about mining for more clients or something like that. Speaker 2: Makes a lot of sense. Thank you for that talk, guys. I think so many of the brands that come on, we're always talking about meta a lot. So it's cool to be able to explore a different strategy. To go deeper into it though, where do you kind of like influencers, athletes, and kind of sit into your strategy? Do you guys do a lot of whitelisting? Do you do a lot of cross promotional through other people's platforms? Or is it all pretty much kind of doctored, no pun intended, to be on your own channel? Speaker 1: So I would say we used to be more reliant on athletes and influencers. We still do it now. We've probably got like a roster of, you know, if we count ambassadors in there, I don't know, like 50 to 100 people, something like that. Now, where we have started to lean into more is like on the YouTube, going back to YouTube again. But rather than sort of seeing other people as competitors in the space, it's like, hey, why don't we go and collab with them? Why don't we bring them onto our channel? Or like, why don't, you know, why don't you get Mike to go on their channel? And so if you go, it's the same sort of principle, right? When you're at 100k, you kind of have to, it feels like people are doing you a favor to come on the channel and collab, and then all of a sudden you get to 500, you get to a million, all of a sudden those people start reaching out and they're like, hey, do you want to do a collab? And so it's really interesting because we've literally seen that happen. And so then it's like, well, why don't we just try to get all these other top people? Why don't we try to get them together? And I say kind of everyone benefits because you can do a video on their channel, you know, and vice versa. And so then like their audience sees you, your audience sees them. It's sort of just the win-win. So it's that mindset of like, maybe we don't view people as like direct competitors, but there's probably a way that we can work together to ultimately be better in the long run. So that's maybe a little bit more of how we're going with like athletes, influencers, but we do definitely still use it. On Instagram, we probably use it quite a bit. We've got someone on staff that, you know, manages that whole thing. We don't do a lot of waitlisting. And funny enough, that has recently come up and something that we're going to start leaning more and more into because, you know, we don't even do that with Mike's page currently. And so it's like, that's definitely something that, and again, actually this goes back to like, you know, I've been subscribed to your guys' newsletter for a while. And so I think the one that just came out, you were talking about this. And so like, usually what I'll do is I'll read through it. I mean, oh, this is really interesting. Oh, there's some cool ideas in there. And so I'll forward it to a couple of people on my team and be like, hey guys, check this out. You're not like, hey, we need to do this, but like, here's Chew on This. Think about it. Think of some different ways we can do this. Let's circle up here in a week and then like, let's see if we can set something up where we can do this. So we actually don't do any whitelisting currently, but are trying to get into it because, you know, I think there's obviously got to be a reason that so many people do use it. Speaker 2: Chew on This is sponsored by, if you want to build a profitable e-com brand these days, then you need retention. Lifetime value is the lifeblood of your brand, especially when cacks keep going up. Being first purchase profitable is great, but you only really start to print money when that customer comes back over and over and over again. It's why subscriptions are such a big piece of our strategy here at Opview. There's a big reason Brands, no matter the size, are using a tool like Recharge. What we like is that they're not just adding a subscribe button on your site, they're a complete subscription engine, helping you convert buyers to subscribers, preventing cancellations, winning back churned customers, and they're even driving more revenue through smart upsets. That's why big brands such as Dr. Splash and even Vital Proteins are using ReCharge. So if you're looking for a powerful all-in-one subscription platform, head over to get ReCharge today to see how you can pump up your LTV for your brand. Now, let's get back to the episode. Speaker 3: I love the acquisition strategy here, right? It's like the most ideal setup for a brand where you have a top of funnel source, you do have paid that's kind of going after this middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel, and you just have your guys' selves just being the creators. that people are looking up to and engaging with. On the flip side, on the retention side, getting people into a program, downloading the app, I would imagine that's also half the battle as well, right? And kind of keeping them on. Any tactics or any strategies there in terms of, you know, is a content strategy different for what's on the app versus, you know, how you're getting people into your funnel? I guess just talk through, you know, a little bit how you're kind of keeping people on the app. Speaker 1: Yeah. One, I think we can do a lot better job of that. I would say there's not a huge difference currently. So it's probably a big area of opportunity. I think part of it goes back to We really set out a couple years ago. We're like, you know what? We want to lean more into who we really are. It's more of like the kind of the bodybuilding hypertrophy style training. You know, that's really who we are at the end of the day. Let's lean more into that, which means we have to go after a different type of person. Speaker 2: Right. Speaker 1: And that's someone that, you know, maybe doesn't do CrossFit because we were big into CrossFit for a while and we work with tons of athletes and influencers on that side and we've kind of gotten a little bit out of that. Not completely, but we definitely made an effort to go after people that took training more seriously. And, you know, you mentioned recession proof. I'm going to knock on wood here. We shall see, right? Hopefully that doesn't happen. But, you know, my hunch would be that folks like that We are not as immune to giving up training because, and I can speak for myself, but, and actually like when we're done podcasting here, I'm going and meeting up with one of my friends and like we're going to the gym, right? Because that's what we do. And so when the gym is a huge part of your life and what you do, what ends up happening is like, you don't stop. So this is a really interesting lesson too, because we have a diet app and we have a training app. And with the Tide app, we saw a lot more like seasonality, like cyclical nature, where people would come and join for a couple months, and then they would, you know, not everyone wants to die all the time, and you shouldn't die all the time, but like. They would join for a few months and then they would kind of stop for a while and then maybe they would come back, you know, later in the year, the next year, whatever. But our hypothesis before we ever created the training app was like, we think these people are going to stick around longer because that's sort of who they are, right? It's part of their identity. And generally speaking, I would think that has sort of played out. But to your point, as we, you know, so that's sort of our core. Now, as we start getting on the peripheral of that, That's where I think what you're talking about is going to come more into play where we need to do a better job of that because these people might be more susceptible to dropping off here and there. Does that make sense? Speaker 3: You kind of like extracted everything that you can. Again, these are people that are into working out. They already have a good routine and if you can't really give them more to graduate maybe to the next level, it's tough to retain them. I think we see the same thing too, right? It's like for our customers that are coming in trying to hit a certain goal. You hit a certain goal and then it's like, well, we no longer need you, right? Which kind of like goes into the next question is, are you guys launching maybe new products or maybe new apps? Something new to kind of keep people around because I think that's just like a core strategy for us where, you know, we're trying to hit, you know, and try to provide, you know, the certain supplements that, you know, our customers are asking for, right? If they come in, you know, for maybe for like hair, skin and nail benefits, right? You have a collagen, but, you know, later down the line, you know what? Well, I want to lose a little bit of weight, right? So there's a product for that. And then just seeing what's trending, you know, in the market, well, how can we do our own spin on that? I mean, product development for us means coming out with, you know, new supplements, but is there, what does that look like for you guys? Speaker 1: Product development is definitely still a huge priority. For us, it's really, you know, people are using the app. What feedback, what are people saying in reviews? What are people saying? Like, we've got a giant Facebook group where people can, you know, interact with other folks that, you know, are on the same programs. What are people saying? What are the features that people are asking for? And does that fit our hypothesis of what our product roadmap is? If it lines up perfectly, great, then like we know we're on the right track. If not, okay, let's go back to the drawing board. Do we need to move something above something else? But for example, and this goes back to the retention piece, when you would finish one of our programs, and it would, you know, usually they're like four to six weeks long. People would kind of have to recreate from scratch what they were doing. We're like, that's probably a big friction point. And that's what people would say where they're like, well, I don't want to have to kind of program, you know, for myself again, week one of the next program. So what we did was our software engineers made an update. And so like, in essentially two clicks, and I'm not even kidding, it's like five seconds, you can take your previous program, you can basically click two buttons, and then you have the entire next program built out with the sets with the weights and everything. And so I'm like, that's huge. That goes back to the retention piece because you don't have to think about it, right? We want things to be simple for people and if we can make it simpler for people, like, so now you can get theoretically, you know, another four to eight weeks worth of training because another feature that we added was, you know, sometimes stuff happens and people are traveling or whatever. Let's say you have a six-week program. Like, well, you know, I'm going on, I don't know, spring break, right? That's coming up or already has happened. Well, I want to drop a week or I want to add a week. And so you literally have a button and all you have to do is click it once and like it adds or removes a week for you from the program. It keeps everything else the same. And so like, I would say it's that constant iteration of making sure that we build stuff that people want. Some of it is like, cause we all use the apps ourselves. So we have a pretty good inclination. I'm like, yeah, we think we need to do this, this and this next. But then it's what are people saying? Does that match what we think? Or, you know, do we need to go back and maybe think about it and prioritize things? But like that's really the core of it. I don't know if it's necessarily new products per se, but more the product development process and software. Speaker 2: I think on that same note, I think, you know, when I got to spend some time on your website and whatnot, the flip side of this that's really interesting is like you've also been at it for a decade and And you haven't launched a breadth of an insane amount of products. It's not like you went and started multiple supplement lines or just finding products to sell to people to just to sell. You also, you know, haven't maybe ventured out that much into gear and like, you know, I think there's a lot of distractions too that can easily come into play to, you know, Look at it. So how do you balance also saying a like, because you guys have the capital and potentially even bandwidth to go and do some of these things because they've become, I think that the barrier to entry has become a lot easier. To access, so how do you also now choose between like, hey, let's just get obsessed about content, our app, our YouTube channel, and delivering value through that way versus ancillary products? Because I think everyone is always fighting that balance. Speaker 1: Learning from past mistakes. So if you're looking at the website now, we have definitely pared stuff down a lot. I design because we used to and we definitely did not have the bandwidth like even though you said that but there's this allure right of you're like, well, we do this. Why don't we also do this? Why don't we also do this and like, well, that's fine in theory. But when you do have a smaller team, it just means you're doing more stuff marginally well or average versus, hey, why don't you just pick the couple main things that you're good at and really just double down on those? And I think that's a really big piece. And so like we fight this all the time. So there's maybe I'm going to make this term up here, but like the creator curse. And what that means is like, you know, Dr. Mike goes and he collabs with all these people. He goes on these big podcasts and all that stuff. And so what happens is you start to see everything else that other people are doing. And you're like, well, why aren't we doing that? Why aren't we doing that? Why aren't we selling supplements? Why aren't we doing all this? And you're like, well, because that's probably their main thing. Speaker 2: So true. Speaker 1: Our main thing is apps. Guess what? They tend to be high margin. They tend to be recurring, which is kind of what you think at the end of the day, it's kind of what you want, right? And so it honestly is like this recurring discussion that happens within RP where we have to be like, guys, like let's kind of, let's block out some of the other distractions and let's just try to stay focused on the couple of main things. But it is always something that keeps coming up because it's just hard, right? We just live in that age where we see everything else that everyone's doing and it just leads to like, well, You know, they're doing it, why don't we? It's like, well, trade-offs. Speaker 2: Sure. Speaker 3: How are you guys seeing different trends, you know, come and go and how does that affect kind of like the programs that you guys are putting out and kind of the development there? Speaker 1: That's a really interesting question. I think the trend is like more and more people are getting interested in fitness. Whether that means from like general population, people are at least maybe starting to be a little bit more aware. I mean, like, you know, Ozempic and all that stuff. It's like, I mean, you guys watch NCAA tournament or anything like that? I mean, you can't go more than five minutes of watching that without seeing the commercials for that. So I think like people are just becoming a little bit more aware, which is interesting. So like maybe leaning into more content because sort of what's happened is like the YouTube channel is grown and now we're reaching, you know, Millions of people, you know, there was that core. Just by default, we're starting to get more people from the from the outsides of it, right? That maybe aren't that core demographic. So how do we kind of balance that where we always want to lean towards who we are at our core? But can we start producing a little bit more content that is, I don't know, more beginner friendly or like intermediate friendly, something like that. And then I think like, you know, the whole longevity thing. I just, in general, I think people are more and more interested in, in health and fitness. Like for example, you know, with Ozempic, people I think are a little bit more focused on protein and like getting in enough protein. So in terms of, I'm just going to sound like I'm talking on both sides of my mouth now, but We did actually start something recently. We were partners in it, but it's like a protein shop. And so like that's been pretty cool. It's called Genius Shot. It's like 23 grams of protein. Oh, yeah. I actually brought you guys a couple samples. But like that has been really cool to see because we do think there's a trend. Things are moving towards that. And like, by the way, it tastes really good. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: And so when people have a hard time getting enough protein, man, it's the most convenient thing in the world. Like I literally like when I travel and I travel a decent amount, once or twice a month, maybe on average. Dude, I take them everywhere. They go through TSA. That's why it was designed, 100 milliliters, 3.3 ounces fits through TSA. You know, I don't have to go spend $7 on a, you know, core power, which by the way, I love Fairlife. I'm not going to talk trash on them. But like, it's just so great. So like, I just think more and more people are, I don't know, maybe I'm biased, but like, I hope people are being a little bit more interested in fitness or, you know, health. Speaker 2: I'm also curious on where you look at the kind of the objective of what you're building, right? Because part of it is you're obviously created an ecosystem for people to be able to come in and look at diet and look at training, but also you've also created an ecosystem where people are looking for help. Right, and I think there's also probably a lot of verticals that can come from that, too. What's the goal here, though? You guys have been building this for some time. Is this like, hey, we're going to get to a certain point and we want to sell this company? Is this like, hey, we just love doing this so that we're just sharing it and it's a lifestyle business and continue on? Or how do you guys think of that part of the business element that comes into play, especially when you're building? Speaker 1: It's a really good question. We started as personal trainers. Mike and I both thought that if we coach people online and, you know, maybe made a hundred K a year, we'd be like, that we're set. Like we're good to go. And obviously things have morphed and changed over time. So I don't want to, it's definitely not a lifestyle business, but we do love what we do. And about an exit, man, I'm not sure, right? Like, let's say we sold tomorrow. What would I do with my life? Well, I'm probably going to write into the terms of like, I can't have a non-compete that blocks me from fitness because I'm going to do something fitness related. There's just no doubt about it. So it's funny because people have asked me that. I'm like, well, I would probably start some type of fitness business myself. I would probably just be a coach myself, right? Sort of the same thing. So yeah, I don't really know, but I think And you know, Dr. Mike is really on this bandwagon, but I think and hopefully the world doesn't like go crazy here in the next couple months, you know, knocking wood again. Speaker 2: For the next couple hours. Speaker 1: Couple hours. Here we are. There's ports not too far away. Like, holy crap, what's going on? But I think where we're likely headed and where I will slightly disagree with my colleague, Dr. Mike, because he's like all about this. He thinks it's coming faster than ever. But something he's called the aesthetic revolution of just like more and more people with like the rise of AI and technology and things sort of, you know, accelerating on that slope. The more and more people will be able to now, whether it's from like biotech and like, you know, literally drugs that can help get you the physique that you want. It just seems that more and more people will be able to get the physique that they really want. And whether that's five years, whether it's 10, whether it's 15, I'm not really sure. I probably lean towards the latter 10, 15 years. But, um, You know, that's really our goal currently because with what we have now and that's been hugely helped by some of these, you know, current GLP-1 drugs and you know, they keep coming up more and more is like our goal is really just to help people get into the best shape possible that they wanted to and using stuff that worked. So they're not being tricked. They're not being duped. They're not wasting money on stuff. And so that's where we see, that's where we saw ourselves and do see ourselves currently. It's the being that evidence-based company that helps people do that. And as things change, can we sort of keep up with that to keep providing that same end goal of making sure anyone can get the physique that they really want. And I don't know, man, I don't know if there's sort of an end goal to that, but just trying to stay on that trajectory. Speaker 3: How about opening it up to kind of like the different target personas, right? Because it sounds like you guys are going after the already in market, already in the gym for the most part. Is there a phase of the business where you kind of open it up to, you know, like, I mean, like I'm ready to get back in the gym, right? But like, I don't know where to start, like that kind of mentality, right? So like, does that open it up for you guys? Does that provide the next level of growth for you guys? Speaker 1: So that's really interesting because I feel like we tried that before like so we had our diet up and we thought that hey look Why don't we get more into like the general population? I call it the allure of the 1%. You're like, well, there's just so many people out there. If you can just get 1%, right? Like just 1%, it's not that hard, right? It's just 1% of people. You know, there's what, 300 million people in the US? Like 1% is what? 3 million people. You're set for life. What I sort of realized, and I didn't have a great understanding of marketing at the time. And so like that was a painful lesson for me to learn. I was like, you know, I got to really kind of learn more about this, more like holistic marketing. And so I set out to try to learn a little bit more. And you start reading, here's how I like to work. Like if I'm going to, Learn something new. I'll take, I don't know, five or so people in that space and I'll go read like what they all say or like listen to some of their podcasts. I'm like, okay. They're all saying these three things. Now, they're gonna say some different stuff, right? But like these are the key three things that everyone's saying. Cool. I'm gonna start here. And so it seemed like it was getting back to our roots, getting back to our like Who we really were. Authenticity led us down the path of more YouTube being the number one space in the world for hypertrophy. That's why we called the app the RP Hypertrophy App. It's like if you're looking for hypertrophy, we want you to come to us. You're gonna find us. And it's like, well, that works really well for the people that are more serious. Can that also work for the brand new people? I'm not sure. Honestly, I'm not sure. Could it be another? I don't know. Could it be an acquisition? I don't know. We can do it because we see some of those people coming in, but I think it takes a good amount of warming them up through education and through the YouTube channel and all that because if we go to paid ads, we don't do well top of funnel because if you've never heard of us before, You're going to see this crazy looking guy and you're going to be like, I don't know who's this guy, right? But let's say you stumble upon the YouTube channel. Someone tells you to go watch it and you watch some of it. You watch a few of them and then you start seeing some paid ads. You're like, oh yeah, I've seen that guy. Unknown Speaker: I like that guy. Speaker 1: That works for us. So I'm not sure, man. I don't have a great answer for that one, unfortunately. And if I did, well, you know. Speaker 3: No, fair. I mean, does it does it raise the question of like, some of these other channels that are kind of popping up, right? Trending, right? Like, you guys are big on YouTube, but what about TikTok, right? Can you get in front of a different audience? And I think that is like, A big struggle for a lot of brands out there that they're so reliant in one place and the buzzword over time has been, you know, diversified, multi-channel, omni-channel, right? So I'm curious, like maybe, you know, getting into some of these other, you know, platforms, you could maybe potentially hit a different demographic if you're on TikTok or even on Snapchat itself, you know? Speaker 1: Yeah, to me that sort of goes back to, you know, what you had mentioned about like, do you keep building out new products? Because we do pretty well on YouTube. We do pretty well on Instagram. We do pretty well on like paid ads and stuff and it's like there's probably a trade-off there of like we might just need to bring on more and more people in order to keep up with that or like do you keep branching out into other stuff that like might do well or might not do well or do you really just try to like just double or triple down on a couple areas at work? I would lean towards currently. We're probably going to hopefully Double or triple down on the few key areas that work really, really well. But like, it definitely is a really interesting thing to, cause like we are on TikTok. I don't think we do super well there, but like sometimes the virality of, of my colleague, like, you know, it'll do pretty well there, but, uh, there's, I mean, I'm sure there's probably some good stuff that could be had there. Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm really curious on getting through some challenges now. You guys have obviously been building through different parts of life cycles, both for the brand and the economy and the market, etc. Maybe you can share a few recent challenges that you guys have had to go through. You're still going through them or maybe you've you've been able to to tackle them just because I think some of our viewers We're all facing different challenges and I think it'd be cool to to talk through some of them. Speaker 1: It can be in any category Yeah, I think we've already talked about a couple so I'll just kind of briefly hit those again, but it was Trying to get away from our core demographic too early, too soon. And then when we sort of went back to that is when we saw, you know, the hypertrophy up really take off because we lean more and more into that. That was one. I think number two really is, again, what we've just touched on a couple of times was getting distracted and not staying focused on the couple of key things. And that really, it just hurt us because, you know, we don't have a huge team. And so what happened was we were trying to do, let's say five or six things, and they just, they weren't exceptional. I'll freely admit that they weren't exceptional. So like, for example, we tried doing a certification program. We're the experts. We've got PhDs, you know, up the wazoo on our staff. Why aren't we doing this? Well, we can and we did it. It was fine. It was a very good cert, but it wasn't the best. Like, have you guys heard of Precision Nutrition? They're kind of the gold standard. Why is that? Because that's all they do. That is their thing. And so it's like, well, if this is kind of our third thing, right, after both apps and then cert, it's really hard to compete with a company that is probably even bigger than us, that has every resource that they have dedicated to that. So we're like, we just can't really do it. Why don't we just double down on a couple of things that we think can really do well? And, you know, so far it's, you know, it's, it's, It's been great for the last probably, I'm calling it about two years now. Speaker 2: It's really cool. I had one more question. This is more around when you look at the ecosystem of building an app. There is an element of where you have to get people to take an action to be part of it, which is download the app, right? But then there's also like a lot of organic stuff happening on social platforms. You have your website, then you have the YouTube channel, but then there's this extra action, whereas, you know, a business like ours, which is like, hey, you see this ad, click to our website, buy now. I'm not waiting for someone to take another step. I'd love to just hear your thoughts on like I don't know if there was a challenge or not, but how did you get through making sure that there was a high effectiveness, a high effective rate of people getting to seeing something and saying, I'll take this extra step, which for some people is just inconvenient. Sometimes I'll see an app too and I'm like, this looks cool. I kind of want this. I just don't want to download anything right now. Speaker 1: And then once you download it, it takes a little bit while to get started. There's a little bit of onboarding flow and all that. I totally hear you on all that. I'd say there's a couple things that we did. We actually, we used to have a free trial. Unknown Speaker: We got rid of it. Speaker 1: Because what would happen was we would get really unqualified leads coming in, and they download the app, and they're like, is it okay if I swear on this podcast? Unknown Speaker: Yeah, yeah, go for it. Speaker 1: Like, what the fuck is this? And we're like, okay, those probably aren't the people that we want. So we're like, okay, no more free trial, like you have to pay to get in. And we actually raised our rates a little bit because we thought... Speaker 2: What does it cost? Speaker 1: So our Hypertrophy app is $35 a month. Our Diet app is $19.99 a month. Now, obviously, you get lower rates if you sign up for, you know, the annual or even like six months, and then you get extra stuff with those, right? Because we're trying to, you know, incentivize that to build LTV. So we did those two things and we're like, man, I'm not really sure if this is gonna work or not, but it seemed like it seemed to have worked. And so what it does is it kind of like pre qualifies people, almost like challenges people a little bit. And then on the flip side of that, we also, you know, cause I was actually on your guys' site too. And I thought it was really cool. You guys have a 90 day money back guarantee. Like, I think that's sweet. So we have a 30 day money back guarantee. So we're like, Hey, like we don't have a free trial, but there's a 30 day money back guarantee. Now, if you're someone that's dabbling in fitness and you sign up and you pay for a fitness app, but then you're like, ah, I'm just not going to use it. Are you the type of person that's going to contact that company to get your money back? Like there's probably got to be a little bit of like, oh man, am I giving up on myself? So again, it was a dedicated effort to, to, to be that strategy of going after people that are a little bit more serious about it. It's a big part of their lifestyle. Charge a little bit more. Don't give them a free entry in because then it's like, here's what happens in fitness. You give people a free entry in and because fitness just by default is hard, it's not easy. You can't just magically get results. A good amount of people are just going to fall off. And so like, that's why we try to change things around a little bit. But speaking to what you said, like if we start to get more of that, you know, peripheral demographic and outside even more, does that still work? I'm not sure. Speaker 2: One other just quick question on the note of the app piece is like, when it comes to marketing and looking at these different types of stats like daily active users or monthly active users or how engaged people are and whatnot, how do you guys focus on that in terms of like, how did you guys have to learn and adapt to those key metrics, whereas the rest of the D2C world is talking about Conversion rate this and you know time spent on site and this and that like how do you guys kind of adapt to having to almost build your own metrics? Speaker 1: It's a little complex when things go through the app stores. The data kind of sucks. You lose a lot of insight into that so a lesson learned right a challenge was Man, it is really hard to kind of go back and kind of recreate the LTV from like this not so great data you're getting from like Apple or Google. So we actually made the Hypertrophy app a progressive web app. And so we did that right intentionally because we thought, you know, if you're a brand new app, let's say it's a game or something like that, you probably need the app store to get some visibility. But when we've already got a big audience, do we really need that? Do we really need to pay 30% to Apple? Maybe. Do we lose some people because of that? Absolutely. Is it enough? Are we losing more than 30%? Doubtful, right? And so we did some of that and then when people sign up through our website, we get a lot more visibility into some of the data and so then we can start to, you know, model out those LTVs a lot better. We can look at, you know, probably the couple key KPIs that we use are So we look like a churn. We have a custom in-house churn number. If I showed it to you guys, because it doesn't mean anything to me, that's fine. Total users, just total people in the ecosystem, and then a separate one of active users. Yeah, because anytime you have, it's just like any gym, right? Like you're gonna have some people that don't use it, which is unfortunate. But the real sort of North Star metric is the active one. Well, if we're getting people and they're not using it, that's not great, right? That's not how you get people coming back. That's not how you get people referring folks. That is the big one that we want to use. I mean, those are probably the top three, I would say. Speaker 2: That's really cool. I also just really loved your pricing model example, too, because it reminded me of Equinox. My wife recently signed up for Equinox. Their whole thing is like, we'll give you, I think it was like $100 off your first month. But the only way you get it is when you sign up, it's $350. You have to go eight days consistently in a row and check in on the app. And then you get the $100 credit. And I thought that's like, it makes so much sense because they've probably found out that number eight is the point of building a habit. And you know, since then it's down three times a week. But it's like, that type of stuff is so much better because you can still give the offer. You can give that perceived value, but you can still make someone build into the habit formation that you need. Speaker 1: I think in the gym world, in the fitness world, I think that probably makes a lot of sense because it's sort of a challenge. Well, if you're a company, you're paying that amount of money, like a hundred bucks, probably not. It's not going to move the needle that much, but it's sort of like Do you have the guts to do this? Are you going to show up eight days in a row? That's really interesting. Eight days in a row. All right. Yeah, that's cool. Speaker 2: That's interesting. Speaker 3: Love that. A lot of great advice, right, in terms of kind of just doubling down on what you're good at to understanding distribution and kind of like the channels where you need to be and how to leverage that to acquire customers. For those who are, you know, listening and watching, what's one thing you want them to kind of take back and implement in their business today? Speaker 1: I would say if you're putting off making your own content because you're like, ah, people aren't going to like this or it's not going to be great, I would say, again, I'm actually saying this to myself because I don't do a great job with my own personal stuff because of these very same reasons that I'm saying, but just do it. Just get started. People are a lot more forgiving. They're not going to be as critical as you are. Just get started. Just get moving in that direction because I think like we said, there's a lot of pay to play, but if you use your personal brand as a way to build the business on the backside, It seems to be the way that things are trending on social media that I would say and you know, obviously you got like what the the Paul brothers I you know all these YouTube, you know, mr. Beast, of course like that's what they've done, right? Speaker 3: They've they've sort of built that fame and then on the back side of that, you know have a business that goes with it You want more from us follow us on Twitter follow us on Instagram follow us on tik-tok and check out the website to on this dial I.