Sure. So my background is mostly as an athlete. So I played college lacrosse. I played for team Turkey. Long story before I even started doing Man Flow Yoga. I was also involved with I did a lot of stuff with state department and I studied international, you know, international studies and international affairs and fluent Turkish and Persian. Which is completely unrelated to what I’m about to tell you. But anyways, that was, that was kind of where that was where I was headed professionally. But fitness has always been something that I’ve always been extremely passionate about.

It’s something that I’ve always made time for. It’s something that’s always been really important to me. And lacrosse was that was my main sport. And so when I first started yoga, it was within the context of lacrosse. I was curious about and wanting to keep doing yoga because I believed it would make me a better lacrosse player. I thought it would improve my performance. But my story with how I actually started yoga was completely on accident. So one day I was home for winter break. I think I was, I was a senior. I know I was home for winter break and I was going to go to the gym, but before I went to the gym, I was going to go to the tailor. I needed my pants shortened. So I was trying to find the tailor and I couldn’t find out.

I couldn’t figure out how to get into this building. And I ended up walking into a yoga studio. So I wandered into a yoga studio and I’m like, okay, well I’m dressed up the workout. I’ve always wanted to do yoga. So I talked with the yoga instructor at the front desk and I said, here’s the deal. I play lacrosse. You know, was this going to help me? And I was totally brought out. I was wearing my like Wisconsin hoodie, my Wisconsin lacrosse hoodie and my Wisconsin lacrosse pants and everything. And she said, yeah. And I said, okay, whatever. And so I looked around at the people who are also in there and you know, it was your typical yoga class. You had mostly women, but a lot of women who were older. And so I’m thinking, okay, I’m going to crush this, like yoga, whatever.

And you know, you, you get in and it’s, this is Bikram yoga, so be come yoga, if you’re familiar, it’s the 105 degrees, it’s 90 minutes. It’s the same sequence every time. Of course. I had no idea about this beforehand. I had, I know, you know, no idea of what postures we’d be doing or anything for an athlete that can be really difficult. Yoga in general. Oh yeah. Like, and doing that as that being your first class, that’s like a, yeah, it’s a difficult start. Right. And I thought that I was, you know, I was like the, I was kind of like the team workhorse. Like I was the guy, I ran the conditioning sessions and I was the guy who would clear the ball. And mostly you would rely on me if you needed some sort of sprinting to be done. That was kind of my job.

And so I was in really good shape. At least in certain regards. And so I was thinking, okay, I’m going to crush this workout. Like it’s going to be, you know, whatever. I’m going to show all these people like what I can do. And 15 minutes in it was, I was exhausted because we were doing all these exercises that I had never done before. They were totally new to my body. And so I was working muscles that I, you know, didn’t really know about or kind of forgotten about. And we were working on aspects of fitness that I didn’t ever train. Alright. So you don’t really, if you’re following a typical athletic program, you’re doing strength training, you’re doing endurance training, you’re doing, you know, sports specific training. Obviously practicing the sport. But you don’t do a lot of what we were doing in yoga is I should metric exercises holding things.

In other words, so something like a plank or holding a lunge or holding a squat. And flexibility work. You don’t really do flexibility unless you’re doing some, you know, some stretching. But even when you’re stretching, you’re just kind of looking out at the field and you’re not really involved in it. You’re just like stretching because we have to. Yeah. And it’s the same stretch every time. So it’s not like, you know, we’re jumping with yoga. It’s all over the place. It’s not just, Oh, I’m stretching my shoulder and then you’re done. Yeah. So, so anyways, so that my full, you know, so the whole first workout of the whole, that workout was just incredibly challenging. And halfway through they’re like, okay, we’re halfway done. I was like, you’re kidding. We’re only halfway done. Like I’m, I’m already, I’m already spent, like I don’t know how much more I can do.

And so I, I eventually finished the workout and that sold me. I was sold on the challenge of that workout. Intuitively, even back then I kind of knew that I didn’t, I don’t think I consciously knew this, but intuitively I knew that if I could do things that challenged me, that was going to make me stronger, especially in fitness. And so I kept going back and I think I went back four or five times that week and then eventually within a month I was going to yoga classes almost every day. And at the time I was still still playing lacrosse. And so I started teaching my lacrosse team yoga because I was running the conditioning sessions. So, you know, my thought was these workouts are great. Like these, these exercises are helping me feel stronger. I feel more in control of my body, I have more flexibility and that makes it easier to do, you know, certain movements like weightlifting God easier.

And so I’m like, okay, well, so first I invited my lacrosse him like, Hey, you guys need to like come to the yoga studio with me. They like say, how did they respond to that? Yeah. They were like, absolutely not. And this is, keep in mind, this is 2012. No, no, this was 2011. And the atmosphere around yoga back then was a lot different. It wasn’t really in the public eyes much, nowhere near as much as it is a days. And even today, like if you go into a yoga class in any major city or metropolitan area, you’re going to get an even spread of men and women. But back then when you went to a yoga class, you were the one or the two guys. There weren’t that many men in there and there was no really public discussion on yoga [inaudible] for for guys working out just really wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t a thing yet.

And so I was trying to get these guys who are, you know like me 21 2019 years old. Insecure men trying to do too. You know I was too. But you know, trying to go to, the only reason that I went was because I stumbled in there on accident I wouldn’t have on my own. Yeah. That’s interesting cause you almost made it sound like you thought yoga would help you it was there any thought process behind does that or is that something just where you were just looking for anything? I have no clue why I thought that yoga was going to be helpful. I really don’t. Oh, you know, I remember, you know, being in college and you know, and, and going to yoga class, just somebody invited me and I finally went and you know, I went because I was like, okay, well maybe flexibility.

I’d never really thought of it. And this is a long time. It’s not 2011. It was probably more 2002, but no idea of performance with yoga. And we’ve come a long way. I think there’s a long, long way to go, obviously. But you know, I was, I only thought of it in flexibility terms for a long time, but then you go and you go, Oh, this is difficult. Yeah. As like someone who only lit weight lifts a lot. Right, right. And because the flexibility is the opposite of weightlifting almost because you’re tightening, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it’s just something that you don’t, you know, with, with weightlifting in, with other types of fitness, what you’re pushing is your strength or your endurance. You’re not pushing range of motion. So when yoga, a lot of the emphasis is how can I get deeper into this position while maintaining proper technique.

So it’s just a different type of, of, of fitness and there is a lot of strength involved. Mmm [inaudible] and yoga just because you’re holding it for a longer time and you’re holding it in positions where your body’s not used to it, but you just don’t have the strength in that position yet. Mmm. So you’re, you’re basically just working a lot of different aspects of fitness that you wouldn’t get in, in your other workouts. So then did you get some of your lacrosse teammates to start joining you or how did that I got that story. I got one or two guys to come with me. And so when I realized they, the team wasn’t like, other people aren’t going to come. I said, I’m the conditioning coach. I’ll just make you guys do it. So we would I think we had conditioning sessions like Tuesdays and Thursdays.

And on one of those days we would, we would go to our, the natatorium, that’s what it was called, our rec center. And we would wait for someone to leave a basketball court and we’d run on and secure the court for ourselves. And we do yoga. And I remember the first couple of weeks after doing that, we got a shout out in our, you know, in our student newspaper, there’s like a shout out and an anti shout out section. And I remember we got a shout out from someone, like I said, like, shout out to the men’s lacrosse team for doing yoga in the auditorium out. I was like, yeah. And that was, that was, that was cool. Well yeah, so that was how I got them to start doing it. And you know, a lot of, a lot of guys were skeptical at first, but at the end of it, once we actually did all the exercises and I even had them get in, you know, corpse pose at the end and like, just lay down on the floor and take a nap.

Mmm. And then we finished and people, everyone except one guy, one guy was not, was not into it, but almost everyone was they loved it. They’re like, can we do that every time or can you, I think I even had a couple of guys jokingly said, Hey, I need you to do to that, to do that and help me go to sleep at night. Right? Sure. Mmm. Well yeah, that’s how it started. And then I decided I would record videos and put them up on YouTube so that they could continue to do yoga while they were on winter break. So that was how I first started recording videos. I was like, you know, the goal was I’m going to record some videos in my office at home or my mom’s office at that time. Mmm. And I’ll just upload them to YouTube, share them with the team via the, you know, the email list and, and that was how I started making videos.

So that’s interesting cause one of the first questions I usually ask is like, how did you start, you know, taking your idea and becoming a business. So yours sounds like [inaudible] already that’s already starting to happen organically. You’re just trying to help provide value to your teammates, your friends. So walk me through from college then you, you said you played in Turkey, so how’d that, you know, was the, did you continue your yoga journey there or like what, how, give me that story.

So my Turkey story started with my high school girlfriend who was Turkish and she would speak Turkish with her family when she didn’t want me to understand. So I started learning Turkish and then I ended up learning it in college and that opened up a lot of doorways for me in college. I got I got accepted to what was called a critical language scholarship and I was able to go study in Ankara, in Turkey for three months with you know, totally paid with an immersion program through the state department. And then a few months after that I went back and I studied an Istanbul as an exchange student. And then a few months after that I went back and I worked at the U S embassy in Turkey as a cultural affairs assistant. So that was, that was kind of my Turkey journey and that was

Turkey journeys. Now, I mean, I’m listening to this and I’m like, man, I think I should learn a unique language or should have been in college because you know, if you [inaudible] learn Spanish, there’s a lot of benefits, but learn Turkey, Turkish. I mean, look at the, look what you able to do. Cause there’s not that many people probably that knew it.

Yeah. there’s also no uses for it in the United States. But yeah, it was cool to, it was cool to do something that was unique. And so, and I was doing all that cause my goal was I want to work with like a three letter agency or I want to get into government somehow. And I actually started college in an army ROTC program. So I had a four year scholarship to, you know completely paid to go to Wisconsin and do army ROTC. And I went to airborne my first summer. So after my first year, I had really high physical training scores. And I had good grades. So they looked at me and they said, Oh, this guys, this guy’s a smart guy. He’s very fit. He’s dedicated to the program, we’re going to send you to airborne training. So, Mmm. That summer I went to airborne training in Fort Benning.

Yeah. Which was my first real army experience and I got to jump out of planes. You know, I live the army, the army lifestyle to some extent. Mmm. And at the end of it, I realized that I did not want to do this at all. So that ended that little, a little journey. But know I was still committed to, are still had an idea of professionally I wanted somehow work as an intermediary between the United States and Turkey. Mmm. And then 2012 happened and it’s a quest ration was in full effect. There was a freeze on hiring anybody in the federal government for the most part, unless it was, you know, deemed critical to security. And so there were no opportunities. And so I started looking elsewhere and I feel like we’re going all over the place. I like it a lot.

I need like visual AIDS, like shows us candy land course. What I like, you know, there’s no straight path, right. Obviously for almost anybody. And I think it all makes sense. So you’re kind of figuring out your life a little bit. It sounds like you’re bounced around a little bit. So at what point did you decide, okay, no open, I’m going to run my own company, started coming join a company like [inaudible] w when did you say, okay, like I’m going to go on my own here. Yeah. So all that other stuff, wherever it got me to. Aye. I ended up getting a job in Austin, Texas. And at the time I had never been to Texas. I didn’t know anybody in Texas. I had been applying to jobs in Madison, Chicago, and New York. Mmm. And nothing was happening. Nobody was, I don’t think I even got like follow up and I had a pretty good resume, a blend, three languages, graduated with honors, three different majors.

Lots of experience, but nothing, but I did get an interview in Austin. Someone recommended I apply to jobs in Austin. So I interviewed, they hired me. I said, fine, I’m guess I’m moving to Austin, Texas. I moved down here and I, and I was working in third party logistics, which is basically just cold calling. Cold calling companies that utilize trucks that utilize carrier services. Insane. Can you pay me more money than you pay the truck driver so I can help you get this from point a to point B and also make money in the process. That was my interpretation of that. I have a lot of experience with three PLS, but yeah, it is true. But also you can add services to that. You absolutely can, but it, you know, it, it is more expensive typically. And most people, you know, anyway, that’s a whole different world.

Yeah, it was a, it just wasn’t, I didn’t see the value in it. And so after about six months of that, they had a very strict you got to make this amount of money by six months in or you’re out. And I was about a week away from that. And rather than stay on and keep doing it, I I ended up quitting and I had another job, but that offer fell through. So I had been interviewing at another job offer that fell through. And so I was, you know, here I am, I’m 23, I have this Facebook page. So at the time I had been also doing, you know, putting out videos, doing and having a Facebook page and, and some stuff a very minimal website. And so I looked at my options like, well, I could use this very minimal experience to go apply for another sales job or I could try and do this man flow yoga thing.

If I can get two customers a day, I’m going to be basically making the same amount that I was doing my sales job. And so I called my parents and I said, here’s the deal. Like I, I, aye, right now, here’s what I have. I have really no, no job opportunities. I could apply to something. I could go spur job search or I could try doing this yoga thing. And I had also I had also looked at working with a moving company and I actually got a job, part time job with the moving company. So I was doing part time moving and I was doing yoga and I talk with my dad and I was, I think I was at the time I was really concerned for some reason I had never, and this is probably an experience with a lot of people I think especially in in the United States, but I think it’s really common elsewhere too, is you go to school, right?

You specialize and then you get a job based on what you’ve learned and you work with a company, you get insurance. Do you get your, your benefits and that’s what you do there. There is no, you know, thinking about starting my own company and doing this on my own, it was not an option or, or just just making enough money, right. As an option. It was like you had to have a respectable career. Right. And a lot of people don’t, you don’t realize that you’re 23, like this is the time to do stuff. It’s so much easier to do it. And you already had a little foundation. One question I do have at this time had you do have, were you doing any like traditional yoga studio classes or anything like that or just your videos online? I was going to yoga classes on own teaching, but I wasn’t teaching.

I think I had, when did I start? I had a teaching gig. I remember my first last night [inaudible], which we’ll get into it in a second. But which I want to, I want to kind of finish up the so anyways, I had these, you know, and I, I got and basically ask my, I was asking my parents’ permission, Hey, can I just, is it okay if I make enough money to pay for myself, even if it’s not a real career? And they were like, yeah, that’s fine. Just as long as you can patient. I’m the great. Cool. So I started, you know, I started moving and I started trying to build this, this brand. And that was when I started calling gyms and saying, Hey, I’ve got this Facebook page and a YouTube channel. I’d love to teach classes at your gym.

So that was how I started. I’m getting gigs. I just called every gym that I could followed up with the people who were dumb enough to respond or not dumb enough to respond, but who were nice enough to respond open enough to respond. Yeah. And you already in your head the name man, flow, yoga, get this time or okay. Which I think is very interesting insight as opposed to just your, your, your own name as the brand. You had a kind of other full-out brand name. That way you could you could enhance that brand and market it, which would be great in case you needed to duplicate or scale and it not be just you. Right. Yeah. And I, and at the time when I, so I, I initially call it a Broselow yoga because I was, I was, I, I was looking on, on, you know, I’d go daddy.com like, how is there’s gotta be a bro flow yoga, like, did yoga has to be popular enough that someone made bro flow yoga?

It wasn’t, no one made Bravo yoga, so do, I said, okay, I want to make this, I’m like, bro, flow yoga. And so I did that and then I sent an email to Broga, which is like a kind of of a more well-established yoga for men brand. And I said, Hey guys, I make, I made this thing called bro flow yoga. And they sent me a very, very nice cease and desist. Like, I’m not like an official, they just say, Hey, Dean, like, this is really cool and we’d actually love to for you to work with us and do our teacher training. But would you mind changing the name? And my response was, okay, fine. Yeah. I’ll just call it manually against it. And and, and it’s [inaudible] it’s kind of funny that you mentioned the whole brand thing is dissociated from the name because people would send me messages and and they would, they would try to like they were trying to interact with me personally, like they were like, Hey, where do you live?

I’m like, well, I’m a brand. I live on the internet. Like I was trying to answer this. I was trying to answer in third person. And and eventually I eventually realized that, yeah, the brand is intriguing, but what really keeps people was that it was, it was me doing it. It wasn’t because, you know, it was called van for yoga that might’ve gotten people in the door or take, gotten them to take a second look. But it was, it was me that was keeping people, you know, involved. And was there any inflection point to where you’re like, okay, this is really gonna work. I don’t need to go find another job or like walk me through that kind of path. Yeah. So about four or five months after I decided to do things on my own. This was four months after I created the LLC and I was also working part time with that moving company.

Aye. I S I got a client who was going to work with me three times per week and that was enough for me too. Oh wow. Okay. Three times per week. That time. Is that okay? This is like enough. I can, and I had a dirt cheap living style. I think I was spending $1,500 a month. I, my apartment was $675 a month putting it with another guy and, and yeah, I just, I was cheap. Like I just, I had no, I didn’t have a lot of expenses, so as long as I could keep it that low then Mmm, no, that was it. As long as I had enough money to go out and go to the, go to the bars. Yeah. Yeah, that was pretty much, that was pretty much all my money went into rent, food and embarrass, which I’m pretty sure is what most people

Yeah. Especially at that age. Yeah. Completely. And especially in Austin, Texas because it’s always a good time here. Ah, I love it. I love, I love that you also, you know, you’re like, okay, if I just do two people week or whatever it would be, because if you ever said you got it, we were trying to get a loan at a bank, lot of times the first question the last year is, well, what’s your break even point? How many customers do you need a day, an hour or whatever it might be to break even. And sometimes it’s not as much as you think, right. Just a few now that you might not get rich off of that, but so walk me through your, your company of how you make money. Right. So, you know, there’s a lot of different ways, obviously. So walk me through that kind of thought process and maybe how that’s grown over the, over the years.

It’s so it did evolve significantly. So my initial strategy was I did, I did personal training and group classes. Mmm. And, and for awhile it was mostly group classes and then after maybe a year or two, it shifted too, almost all personal personal training sessions or small or like two or three people sessions. And so that was, that was how I made money. And I was, I was actually doing very well for a personal trainer. I had 30 sessions a week. My hourly rate was anywhere between 65 and $90. So I was doing pretty well as far as the personal trainer goes. But my plan was never to be a personal trainer. My plan was always to do what I’m doing right now with flow yoga. Mmm. But to get there, I, I didn’t quite know what I was, what I was going to do.

So I experimented with the different things. I started by creating single programs and then selling them. And of course to have an audience sell them too. I, and you know, I, I put a ton of time and energy into my Facebook page and my YouTube channel. And the goal was just to put out as much content as possible and create a brand. Mmm [inaudible] the goal wasn’t, even when you look at it, if you were looking at it from a business lens and you were experienced in business, you would look at it and you would say, this guy is like, he’s making a brand. I didn’t know what that meant. I had no clue. But then I would have people come in and they say, like, you have a really strong brand. I’m like, really? I didn’t even know. I’m sorry. That’s great. Mmm.

But yeah, my goal was to just create as much content as possible and reward people for being on my email list and, you know, being subscribers. And, and just tried to build as much of an audience as possible because again, keep in mind, you know, when I started the YouTube channel and the Facebook page and stuff, the goal wasn’t, it was, it was a hobby. I never thought that it would be, Mmm, you know, my full time job and I even, people would even ask me, I’m like, so is this your full time job? I’m like, no, no way. And then even when it was my full time job, people would ask me, what do you do? And I would kind of laugh and jokingly say, Oh hi, I run this company called man flow yoga. Like it was almost a joke to me.

Yeah. It took a while. And even in my filming style I was kind of apprehensive or maybe a little embarrassed to put up videos where I was doing yoga. I guess I don’t, I don’t know. Do you think that’s because it’s not a traditional business, a way of making money? Cause it sounded like earlier, like you were worried about going off of your own and be an entrepreneur and because it wasn’t a normal nine to five job? Yeah I think it was part of it. It was partly that when I told people like, I run a yoga company, I thought that it wasn’t, didn’t sound like legitimate to me. But the other part of it was, this is still yoga to me. I was still and am still, Mmm. The, the athlete weightlifter you know, that type of trainer. So yoga was still like, yeah, I do yoga and it’s good, but you know, it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s yoga.

Right. And now I’m, no, I, I know like my license plate says man yoga, like I though you see a man yoga license plate, that’s probably, that’s awesome. So I have like no apprehension about, you know, no embarrassment whatsoever about, about being a guy that does yoga now or teaching yoga for men. But I think back then I did still have a lot of apprehension about it. And do you think that changed the apprehension to, to the, almost the excitement to, to put it on your license plates. Do you think that was because X number of users, do you think it was because of time? What legitimize it in your brain do you think? I think over time I just got more comfortable with doing it. I think my experience with practicing yoga and my experience with with working out with yoga and developing this brand just removed any subconscious barriers I had or the stigmas that were associated with it, you know, and I encountered those stigmas.

You know, that’s, that’s the whole, yeah, I encounter that all the time, even on a daily. Yeah. but yeah, I had, I even had them, I had my own subconscious stigmas that I had to overcome, but yeah. Eventually I did. And yeah. And here we are. I love it. So why man? Flow yoga? Well, yoga just flow yoga. So yeah, the whole, the man thing, and I get this question a lot and I think people misunderstand people think that it’s, you know, it’s 20, 20, which means Mmm. I mean, I get accused of toxic masculinity, which is, which is really funny to me because if you look at, you know, if you look at any of my blogs, do you read anything? Mmm. You know, that’s just not who I am. That’s just not who I am. The reason why man flow yoga and not gender neutral or binary?

I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know yoga is because if you go to a yoga class and you’re a guy and you try to do what a girl is doing, what the typical female in yoga class is doing, you can’t do it. And the reason is because men have different women, different bodies than women. Men are less flexible. It’s not, it’s not a generalization. It’s an anatomical reality. Men are less flexible. They were, they did not evolve to give birth. Oh their hips are not as flexible. Their joints are not as loose. They are not as flexible as women. The other part of it is men and women have different centers of gravity. If you look at the way that men and women do yoga especially when they’re beginners, they have different tendencies. So men will rely more on their upper body strength. Women rely more on their core strength in their hip strength.

And this means that men and women have make, make common errors differently. And so the intention behind mantle yoga is, is partly because there is a difference between men and women. The other part of it is we need, the other part of it is men don’t feel comfortable doing yoga because it is seen as a primarily female dominant activity. And so my whole goal was to create a brand that said, Hey guys, cheers. A normal guy doing yoga. His goals are what most his goals are similar to what most men have, which is building strength, building muscle, feeling strong, feeling capable. Mmm. You know, building athletics doesn’t know if that’s, if that’s what you want to do, but, and building a strong physique. And that was what I wanted to create. I wanted to create that image of a guy doing yoga, focusing on the typical man’s physical fitness goals.

So I’m like nodding about, about all these areas that you’re talking about because flexibility is way different for me. I have probably different goals. The most people would go, well, if I go do yoga. And I also, I think I have a tougher time just being a man and who likes to go to the gym to lift weights, did a lot of other people. I also, because I’ve, you know, I’m a big [inaudible] marketing person, I also sit there and say, well the general all yoga is a little bit more feminine. So it makes sense to niche it up. Like it just makes it easier to pitch people when you kind of get in a little bit more of a niche as opposed to just being general. So I mean to me it makes sense in a lot of different ways, but all right, so what’s, what’s some positives that you have when you, when you go out, like do you think that you, you’re, you’re calling it man, flow yoga gives you a advantage over other yoga teaching studios or online services.

I think that definitely helps to differentiate because manful yoga is not just yoga. [inaudible] We’ve gotten to the point now where there are two types of yoga. There is yoga in the traditional stench in the traditional sense. Use me where it is a philosophy, whereas the lifestyle where it is based on the continent, Indian Indian subcontinent philosophy. Mmm. And there’s the other half, which is, this is the yoga that is practice at gyms. This is yoga, this is yoga as a system of physical postures, breathing exercises, and sometimes meditation. And I, I actually looked this up two weeks ago because I launched a new ad on Facebook and I specifically called out two people looking for non-spiritual yoga. And there was so, there were so many comments from angry yogis. Dane yoga cannot be, and yoga has to be spiritual if it’s not spiritual, it’s not yoga.

And, and so I looked, I saw it. So I thought to myself, okay, I’m, I’m not special. There are other people like me. So there must be a reason why I’m saying yoga and not implying spiritual. And so I looked up, I went to, you know, I looked up the dictionary, I went, went to the dictionary website, Merriam Webster, and I looked at yoga and there were these two definitions. One is the philosophy. One is basically a form of a form of fitness practice for wellness and Mmm. What was the question again? No, I don’t, I don’t know, but I love it. I was going to ask that. My next question was going to talk about religion and spirituality. So you’re actually completely covering it. So, so do you get a lot of pushback there on this book?

Since then we were talking about the, the manifold yoga brand.

Oh yeah, sure. Mmm. So does it, does it help call men specifically? Yeah. Right. So, so when I S so manful yoga is a pronoun, that’s how I like to look at it. It is, it is. It is a system of fitness that is based on yoga, but it also includes body weight exercises, includes a lot of physical therapy, like exercises. So it is familiar to yoga, but it is not traditional yoga. It’s so people say, you know, it’s, it’s, you know, is this true yoga? I’m like, well, it’s called manful yoga. It’s, it’s, it’s somewhat like, it’s, it’s, it includes inspiration from yoga and includes a lot of things that you’ll see on yoga. But you know, it, it is, I don’t know, I hate the phrase, it is what it is, but you know, it is what it is. A lot of different ways of working out.

Right. You know, and the same with any exercise. So. Okay. The spiritual thing. Well, yeah, I think actually it’s dive a little deeper into that because [inaudible] that is something that’s interesting. Like the spirituality with yoga and you guys, you, you have the absence of spirituality. Correct. And you’re a [inaudible] system. So walk me through, it’s already, you already kind of started on that. Maybe just give me a little bit more detail of why you decided that. Yeah. And how and how you guys do it. I’m a, I’m a lifelong athlete. I’ve been working out since I was four. I’ve done soccer, I did swimming. I, you know, I worked out at [inaudible] the gym. I’ve lifted weights. I did like bodybuilding, like programs. I’ve played baseball, basketball, lacrosse, floor, hockey, wrestling. I’ve done as many sports as I across CrossFit. I’ve done, I’ve done as many types of fitness as I can.

And one thing that all of these things have in common is they’re not spiritual. You’re there and you’re involved in the activity, but there’s no mention of spirituality when you’re, when you’re like, imagine going to the gym, right? You go to the gym for your normal workout and you finish your first set and then you own [inaudible] right. Now, does that make like, yeah. And it’s funny. It’s actually funny when you look at that. That’s how I think of it. Yeah, sure. That’s, that’s literally how I think of it. This is, for me, yoga was a workout. Yoga continues to be a workout. It’s a system of fitness. There is not the spiritual aspects don’t even register. [inaudible] You know, people ask, why don’t you include spiritual spirituality? Like that’s because it doesn’t, it’s as a workout. This is, this is not a spiritual thing. And a lot of, and a lot of people who practice yoga, that is their first experience with physical fitness.

And so they draw an association between practicing spirituality and movement. And a lot of people say, you cannot move without being spiritual, you know? And if that’s your experience, then that’s fine. But as an athlete, that’s not my experience. When I move, I want to be sure that I’m using proper technique so that I’m not only getting the most effective workout, but also I’m avoiding injury. And whenever you move, if you don’t pay attention to your technique, you can risk injury, you can risk creating developing poor movement patterns that will eventually lead to injury. And so you know, whether w w w for whatever reason you’re doing yoga, if you’re moving and you’re not paying attention to your technique or you don’t have proper technique, you are potentially setting yourself up for injury. And so that’s why that’s why man, for yoga, we focused on the technique.

So all of that space that we could be using to talk about. And if you had an altercation with someone today, I want you to just breathe and let it go or whatever, you know, whatever typical yoga is and you would hear instead I’m saying, make sure that your knee is in this position and then squeeze your glutes to make sure that you’re using your glutes and supporting your low back. So it’s all focused on the physical explanation and what you should be feeling. What you shouldn’t be feeling. How this translates into your physical fitness. That’s a great use of time. You know, and there are different, there’s, there’s a place in time for everything. I think. So what about struggles with working with Olin, with men? I mean I think the, I think the biggest struggles are, I think the biggest struggle is, are actually just in the conversion aspect.

Mmm. I say conversion as a marketing term. I don’t say conversion as like we’re converting you to man flow yoga and you will and you will eat grass fed beef with every meal. Right? yeah, no, I, I could see that because you have to sell them almost twice. If to sell them on yoga and they have to sell them on your program. Yeah. And usually, usually that happens by first pointing out, yeah, this isn’t spiritual. This is just a workout. Also, a lot of yoga is not appropriate for men. And that’s something that’s actually, I truly do believe a lot of yoga is not appropriate for men because if you are not teaching the proper technique and if you are not accounting for that difference in flexibility, then a lot of guys would go to yoga classes and they’ll end up hurting themselves.

And then they’ll say, I went to yoga, but I couldn’t do any of the poses. And I felt, you know, super unmotivated and, and so, you know, I, I think I wrote a blog beast of a blog. Like I think it’s like 35,000 words or something like that. But the book and I talked about is yoga good for men? And at the top of that paragraph, I say it can be, but only if it is appropriate for men. There are a lot of postures, there are a lot of sequences, Mmm. That are not appropriate for men. If they’re not focusing on the proper muscles, do engage if you’re putting your spine [inaudible] excessive flection, which means if you’re rounding your back significantly, then that’s something that leads to herniated disc, that leads to, that’s reinforcing the issues that we have with, with sitting at a desk all day.

So it’s, it’s, yeah, so the first part is I’m a guy, I don’t need to do yoga. I want to weight lift. Okay, cool. Well I do yoga because I also enjoy weightlifting and I want to continue to be healthy and I want to get better at weightlifting and I want to get better at the sports that I play. And the man flow yoga helps guys because it gives them modifications because they’re less flexible. We avoid postures that are, you know, totally inaccessible to the typical guy. And we focus on those aspects of fitness that most guys are interested in when we’re talking about, you know, the postures and how that fits within the context of fitness. [inaudible] Guys. All right. So you mentioned before you did a lot of personal training. So whether you talk about revenue or time, what percentage is now doing?

I don’t know whether it’s online subscriptions or online services versus actually in person physical stuff. 3%, 3% of maybe two or 3% is as from direct interaction and everything else just from the online subscriptions. Oh yeah. And walk me through that journey of how you went from, because to me the online is so much more scalable. Right? Yeah. And it makes so much sense. If I was ever in the fitness world, that’s exactly where I would go is some form of video service. Walk me through w okay. You’re making good money. You’re, you’re, you’re booked physically and then you, now you went into the more, the online space. So again, the, the, the the intention was always to get into the online space and make it scalable, so to speak. I don’t think I knew the word back then. And then once I figured it out, I probably went full Tim Paris for like two years and only talked about things in terms of scalability and, and, and you know, life purpose and providing value.

And then I saw one episode of Silicon Valley and I was like, that’s hilarious. That was me. Yeah. Your whole story has been providing value the whole time. Like that was your initial intention with your clockwork LA lacrosse teammates. Yeah. But continue. So yeah, so the goal was to always create a brand. Part of that was also I is, didn’t want to interact with people all day. That was too draining for me. I like, I like being on my own and creating things. But being with people all day, it would be challenging. So my, my initial strategy was I’m going to take all the money that I make from personal training and put it into this online thing. So for awhile I was basically just funding this thing that ate money and did nothing. Mmm. And the whole goal with what I was doing was to create this huge base of potential customers.

And I did that by reading eBooks, bye. You know, creating YouTube content, creating Facebook content. Mmm. Eventually I got, eventually I also started working with a DVD company and I created a series of DVDs, blood body by yoga. And surprisingly, people still buy DVDs that we’ve sold. I think we’ve sold at this point, probably over 35 or 40,000 DVDs. Wow. And there’s people who buy. Yeah. So there are people who are buying DVDs. Mmm. And my strategy has always been let’s create as many as many low cost entry items as possible. So DVDs, eBooks, I eventually got a book deal with with DK publishers and wrote a book called yoga fitness for men which is extremely popular now in four different languages. It’ll be translated into Mandarin pretty soon. Wow. And it’s still a, it’s still number one in multiple categories on Amazon UK.

And it was number one new release on Amazon U S and in multiple categories. And Mmm. So it did, it did vary. It did very well and it continues to do very well. But these things on their own are nowhere near enough to actually support, you know, a business. But the goal was always to create DS, these these high quality lead generation tools. And that’s kind of been my, that’s exactly how I approach a lot of things in life. My, my, my, my system is too overly prepare before going into something. And then even as you’re going into it to constantly constantly replenish, like think of a, did you ever use to play computer games? Like age of empires? I still play it every once in a while. Perfect. So like I was the, my strategy was to build up an army and then by the time I had ransacked or whatever, destroyed every, the other opponents mall in their buildings, I had already had a full army ready.

Like on top of that, my, my, my strategy not to diverge too much. I hated any of my guys dying. So I always had like either amazing defenses and multiple walls. Yeah. And then I also like always be over prepared as well. So cause I didn’t want them to die. Like I was trying to like minimize my losses at all times, which is a funny way. So why so, okay, so you were preparing strategy. That was how I, that was how I created all those things. I love. So, so since you have all these different areas and you’re, they’re probably constantly scheming, trying to figure out the next version of next thing you’re doing, walk me through maybe a normal day in your life. Like how do you decide what to do? What’s your morning routines, that type of thing. Do I have my, I don’t have my index cards with me.

I, I read an index card with the to do list every day. In one column I put, if I see if I have a schedule, if I have any appointments, I’m in one column. I put personal things that I want to do. So if I need to like go buy something from Costco or if I need to, you know, what’s my workout going to be that day? Or if I need to do something else and then I’ll write in the other column in the primary and the primary column. All right. A lot of the things that I need to do today for my business I try to create a weekly to do list at the beginning of the week. So I kind of know and then sometimes we’ll also create a an index card with days on them and columns for each day if there are specific things on each day.

So that’s, that’s how I, and how many items are on the, on these index cards? On a good day, there’s three on like a typical day, there’s eight things that I will no, that are always reach goals. And why do you ride them out as opposed to how modern your phone or on your laptop or, I like writing things out. I don’t know what it is and this is what I, what I teach with people too, is I like writing things out. I think it makes it more real. I also don’t like getting on my phone. So the more that I can like grab a physical reference, like if I can have it just a note card in my pocket, I’d much rather grab that. I love, I’m also a very dopamine motivated individual. So crossing something off a list it is huge for me.

I also think it’s nice to download it out of your brain and writing it down for some reasons. A really way, good way of sitting there saying, okay, it’s written down. I don’t have to think about it anymore. It’s there. I can, I can look at it when I need to. I don’t have to constantly do the on repeat in your brain. Right. It’s my own pensive, pensive, like Dumbledore had a page, right. He took it from his, yeah, that’s right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Getting obscures, we can get references I haven’t told you about, like what’s the actual business I’ve told you like about the like, yeah, actually, yeah, let’s jump into that. I love that. That’s a great place to go. Okay. I felt like we were home. I felt like we were heading there. So, Mmm. Again for like 2014, 2015, 2013 my, my main business strategy was create programs and sell them to my existing email list. [inaudible]

That was, that was okay. I would make a couple grand or a few grand at most, maybe like two [inaudible] I think maybe $3,000 at most when I launched a program and we sold them for 25, 30 bucks. And so we get a bunch of customers, but then that program would be done. And then I have to spend a few more months creating another program and thinking about, okay, I need to pay whoever it is to make the art for this and then I need to pay a videographer for this. And it wasn’t like there was no, I was breaking even on things and which was back then breaking even on something was a success. Like, Hey, we didn’t lose money on this. Yay. but that wasn’t sustainable. And then all of a sudden inspiration struck me in like 2015 November and I, I don’t know what it was.

Maybe I saw other people doing it. Or maybe I, you know, but I was real, I realized that all of the content that I created was focused on improving your yoga workouts. But the one thing I wasn’t providing was consistent yoga workouts. So I thought, okay, well I need to make a, I basically need to make a members’ area, right? I need to make it something where I upload new workouts, every one where people, you know, are either monthly or annual or whatever it is, subscribers that I have dependable income and and that’s going to be my project. And so I spent that entire month probably a month and a half, just [inaudible] all of my time and energy, the only workout setting up this members area. And I remember in January I was, I looked down at my phone and I was checking sales and I started seeing annual sales come in.

Like, just feel that people actually pay me for, like, people are paying me for a year in advance for something. And then I waited a few days. I’m like, I’m definitely like a credit card company is going to call me. Or like they’re going to email and they say like, I didn’t actually want to buy this and it didn’t come in. And that was when I realized, wow, this is a product that’s actually going to work. And so at that point I switched most of my energy into the members’ area and that has been my product ever since. That’s the best way for me to interact with the community, to create workout programs too. You know, cause people ask me questions, people who are customers ask me questions all the time. Like a Dean, what do I do for knee pain? I’m like, program for that. I have a pro, I have built a program for that.

Here it is. Or like DNI, I need to get rid of my back pain right away, man, here’s a workout for that. It’s right here. And so it was this very easy way for people to get the solutions for what they were looking for all in all in one place. So I have so many questions related to the membership approach. I think a lot of people get a lot of value out of this. So how do you, how do you create, how do you decide to create a new I don’t want to call it system, but it’s a new program. Like how do you do, how do you come up with these things? Sure. So I’m, I have my ear to the ground, so to speak, with my, with my members, we do a lot of surveys every few months we do what’s called number talks and we’ll set up, Mmm, Oh well, block off afternoons and put 15 minute blocks, ask our members specific questions.

So we know a lot about our members. We know why they’ve signed up for manual yoga. We know that they’re there because they’re looking for non-spiritual yoga that’s focused on men, that’s focused on guys who are not as flexible, who are new to yoga, who are looking for yoga as a functional fitness system to enable them to do what they physically want to do without pain and without having to worry about injury. We know that that’s like, that’s our customer. And so Mmm [inaudible] part of it is listening to them part. It is also kind of listening to listening to Google and listening to YouTube. And I don’t do any of that. I am a, I am not the analytics guy. Fortunately we do have a guy who is like, who does all of that? And he says, we need to create content for this. And I’m like, okay, fine.

Good, good idea. Let’s do it. Mmm. But it’s a lot of just listening to the customers. Mmm. And looking at stats and looking at playback rates and seeing, Oh wow. Like people actually do this entire workout. They like do 76% of this workout. Whereas with this routine, people are only doing, you know, 26% of the workout or 50% of the workout. So, you know, we kind of realized that people are, most of our guys are busy guys. They’re either dads or they’re busy professionals. They’re in their forties, 50s, 60s. We do have a lot of people in there. Thirties, a few in their twenties and then guys in their seventies as well. But they [inaudible] a quick efficient workout. They want intense, they want a good workout. They want to feel accomplished at the end of it. And they also want to be able to notice the results.

Like immediately, they want to feel, they want to get rid of their back pain, they want to feel energetic, they don’t want to have their joints feeling in pain and broken the next day. You know, there are, there are, there are other types of guys who are looking Morrison, the district type guys who do want, like who do want to feel awful after their workout. But yeah. But these guys have often been there already and realized or come to the conclusion for themselves that this is not a sustainable thing for me and I don’t want to do that. Mmm. So for our guys, much more important than like getting a six pack and getting ripped is just feeling physically strong and physically comfortable. So based on, you know, based on understanding our customers, we created things to and also thinking about one, you know, thinking about an avatar in particular, so picking out one guy and then thinking this is what you need to do and building it into a system. That’s how we, it’s a combination of that. It’s a very common approach. They have the marketing is pitch to one person specifically talk to them and then broaden out. How do you come up with pricing?

It’s always stopping. Mmm. I think we’ve just kind of landed on certain prices. Mmm. I, I am not the budget company. Mmm. Because I do provide the port to my customers. Like if they email me and ask the questions, I’m not just going to direct them to the help desk, I’m actually going to respond to them. Mmm. So we’ve, you know, I’ve kind of experimented with, with prices and then looking at the types of customers that I get with certain prices. Mmm. So I’ve found that, you know, pricing the things out the way they are now I’m able to have customers who are satisfied with the product. And also, Mmm. Also do not give me a headache. So, you know, we found that the customers at, you know, whatever prices they are, this works for allowing me to continue to create content. Mmm. We might not get as many customers as we possibly could, but I also don’t have 350 emails to respond to every day.

So this is, you know, when people are, people are buying it, you know, we have, we do here for them, from some people who say that this is too expensive for me. I can’t do this. And you know, I don’t know if we’re, you know, short of dropping the prices tremendously. I don’t know if we’re and be able to appeal to everybody. Mmm. But I, I think that pricing too low gives off the wrong impression. I think that for what we provide and the amount of thought that goes into these programs, Mmm. You know, all of the, all of the customer research that we do and, and the fact that I create very comprehensive programs. So whenever I create a program, have you, have you read the perennial bestseller? I have not. No. Okay. So this is Ryan holiday’s book about basically how to create content that lasts.

Mmm. I love that book. I had subconsciously been utilizing a lot of its principles beforehand. Mmm. But basically I have a system for creating programs. And the first part of it is why the hell would anybody pay attention to this? Why should anyone care about it? Right? Because it’s not just this is a program for hip flexibility. Why, why does anyone care about hip flexibility? So it has to address a lot of these questions. It has to address counter questions. It has to have content built into it to address these counter questions. So the contents that we create are the content that I create.

[inaudible]

Is super comprehensive and that is valuable. So I don’t sell things, you know, as deep as you might see on other websites because I do play a lot of, you know, there’s a ton of thought and there’s a ton of time that goes into it.

It’s not just something we we throw together. So if that makes complete sense. A lot of takeaways there. One. That book sounds also like I’d worked for copywriting as well. Yeah. To me, you want customers that are also serious, that’s going to do your service and they need that skin in the game. Yes. also, well, I just have another follow up question on that is do you have any fear with putting your prices out there? We’re changing prices. New programs too. I did. I, I mean, our programs now, they usually come out around 50 bucks. But when I was first starting out and I was not first started when I was first starting to sell things, there was fear and there were people who are like, ah, I just, you know, you know, they wanted a free, yeah. They wanted, you know, they were, they were, the choosing beggars is fantastic.

Reddit, Brad, that I, I don’t even get on Reddit, but choosing beggars. Fantastic. Just if you want to get lost on YouTube for a day, choosing beggars. But yeah, there were a lot of people who were disappointed that, you know, it’s, this free yoga is supposed to be free and like, cool. Well, my time is my time is valuable also. You know, videographers are not free. Renting the space that we filmed this in is not free. So while you may have lofty, Mmm selfless, I don’t know what to call it, ideals about, you know, yeah,

Yeah. I just thought, yeah, you just don’t want it. It’s wasted energy even thinking about it. What about software for a membership program? Say somebody want to get something going. Is there anything that you like that you’ve used that you enjoy?

If I could do it again, I would honestly have just done a prebuilt template. But we use a, we have a WordPress based website and it’s completely custom. We have custom filters, we have custom categories, we have custom, custom everything. Mmm. You know, so our workouts, a lot of members, areas for particularly for video content are kind of structured like Netflix, you have playlist and playlist and playlist and, and that’s pretty much it. Ours is ours is completely custom built. You can custom, you can look for your workouts based on not only duration or text search, but also on you’ll level a fitness focus. So if you want to do like hips or, or sorry, that’s target area, hips or shoulders or fitness focus if you want to work on flexibility or balance or strength or endurance. And then intensity level cause skill and intensity is not the same thing. Do we have tons of filters that we’ve built in and there’s just tons of customization that we built. But our stack is a WordPress a WordPress site. We use infusion soft or our, our CRM. And then we plugged that together with men barium and we use a service called Wistia for our video streaming. We were using Demio for a while. Well we got a lot of complaints about buffering and just video stopping and not playing. So, which is kinda funny cause people said that they were, they would be in a pose

And then it would pause and then like a minute later they’d still be in the boat in the middle. Look back at the screen. Wait a second. Yeah, that’s hilarious. What about any a mentor

Along the way or before you started that came along in any or, or you’ve mentioned a couple of books. Anything in that area? There’s not, honestly, there’s not one person who really stuck out me. Mmm. And I have, I’ve done enough reading and enough involvement in kind of this, in the personal develop world that a lot of content is just recycled and kind of ideas that have already been, you know, ideas that have already been created. Mmm. So no one, honestly, no one really comes to mind with Mmm. In terms of mentors. Most of, most of what I’ve learned has been through, Mmm. Has been through reading, you know, I, I like [inaudible]. Mmm. Yeah. I nailed that pronunciation. By the way. A flow, the psychology of optimal experience is a fantastic book. Mmm. I like Ryan holiday’s books. I think they’re just fun to read.

Mmm. Another favorite book is Steven McCovey, seven highly habits of effective people. Mmm. I haven’t read that one in a while and either I got that downstairs on, I know we read that one. It’s always good to reread that. I love those. I love those that you could just jump right back in. And some of them, I like that a lot of times you just, ah, I’m just going to read chapter five or whatever. Sometimes, you know, you can just jump in the middle. Yeah. What does success look like for you? Success for me, Mmm. Looks like predictable income and enough two enough to support my lifestyle without having to worry about things. That’s, that’s, that’s a big part of it. Mmm. The other part you know, from a, from outside my own personal perspective I guess would be all right. I guess outside my immediate needs would be being seen as the authority on yoga, fitness for men.

And I did write the book on yoga, fitness ferments, and we’re off to a good start there. And that book is, I think it’s number one. If you sorted yoga for men, like that’s the book that comes up. Right. Which is great. But so being seen as an authority beans Dean, as someone like

you know, if, if people say, have you tried yoga? And they say, nah, I don’t want to do yoga. And then the counter responses. Yeah. What have you tried to man flow. You love it. So what does your future hold? Like what’s your my future? I’m not good at my longterm plans. Definitely the, the website and the members’ area is something that, you know, we’re going to keep doing. Mmm. The things that we haven’t branched out into doing more is we actually don’t do any sort of collaborations with people.

Very minimal. Mmm. Which is weird cause if you look at almost all startups that are kind of doing what I’m doing, it’s all about collaborations and we’ve always, or my strategy has always been to stay in my office and create really good content. And that’s been like what I do. But something that we haven’t done, we need to branch out into referral programs. We need to do way more with collaborations. Mmm. I think collaborations would be huge because you get their whole, their, their whole network, you know. Right. Come that can be expensive or they could be frayed. Depend on the person too. But yeah, I think that’s, you’ll figure out what makes sense. And it’s so easy for us because man, flow yoga is something that can be combined with other types of fitness. I don’t recommend that people only do manful yoga.

And when people tell me I’m only doing your workouts, I’m like, yeah, but I told you you need to do pulling exercises too or your shoulders are going to get messed up or you need to do wrist strengthening because your wrist, you’re going to start hurting if all you do is yoga. So, you know, I see it from Mendis opportunity for people to integrate multiple yoga with other workup programs. So that’s something. Mmm. We, we have, we have books already. We have DVDs. We have a really good yoga mat on Amazon. Mmm. Which is the numb, which is usually the result of the number one result for cork yoga mat. But it is currently sold out. We’ll be launching yoga blocks yoga, knee pads foam roller straps, all that kind of stuff. We’ll be, we’ll be, it’s on, it’s coming up.

So cause you’ve kind of got this great vision into the men yoga users. So it’s, it makes so much sense of you’re creating these products and services and books and all this [inaudible] around it. Cause they’re basically telling you what, well, they’re telling you actually by calling your email you or they’re telling you by their, their actions, you know, how long they’re staying on different programs. It’s kind of a fantastic way. You get a lot of data. They’re data points. What would you title this chapter in your life? Growth. All of it. The escape, not scaling, but like, I dunno, the next level I guess. Like I’ve, five years ago when I first thought of doing what I was going to do with man flow yoga, this is what I, this is what I had envisioned. I’m going to be running a website, like, or I’m going to be like running an online brand.

I’m going to have a pretty good level of success. I’m going to have, yeah, three to five people working for me, but I’d never, I didn’t think beyond that. So I S I still am, you know? Mmm. I’m still trying to figure out what is the next three to five years look like. So, you know, I don’t know if, I dunno how much to what extent I believe in, you know, visualizing where you’re supposed to be, where you are, where are you going to be three to five years from now and then taking steps to get there. My approach has, or my thought has always been much more, we need to figure out, we don’t need to set a goal for ourself. Like the goal is not to make $100,000 a month. The goal is to figure out how to reach as many people as possible.

And if that number is 80,000, great. But if that number is above 100,000, then why are we limiting ourselves? The goal is to do as much as we possibly can to reach as many people to get as many people as we possibly can do in these programs. I love it. I think the, the key to happiness is growth and personal or business or anything. I think that you kind of have to have that and why not reach out to as many people as you can. Yeah. So

what about, is there any like common bad recommendations out there about yoga that you just hear all the time and you cringe a little bit? Just do what feels good. There are certain phrases or like just listen to your body. A lot of people who are doing yoga have no experience with fitness. They don’t know what listen to my body means.

They don’t know what just deals good means do I see a lot of yoga instructors giving advice like these things that sound great but don’t actually don’t actually that [inaudible] terrible in terms of physical fitness advice. There’s a lot of people just don’t know what feels good with their body. A lot of people don’t intuitively have that knowledge because they haven’t been, you know, working out if they’re not athletes. So, okay. Really bad advice that I hear with yoga instructors is, is, is, is general phrases that are kind of Ari that don’t actually apply to physical fitness. That makes complete sense. What doesn’t really apply to business [inaudible] I know. No, I like that actually is what I meant. What about, and walking me back when you got your first like online customer paying you, like how did that feel? Like w how’d that happen? Did that make it seem real?

I’m sure it was a small amount, but like walk me back to that day, if you remember even, I don’t know if I even remember. I think, I think launching the members’ area was, I think that moment when we were launching the members area and we actually started having people sign up for like a year in advance. Mmm. And then not only after that launch, cause I had been used to people buying like things and like, you know, buying things in spurts. Like sales would look like, Ooh. And then I’d go back down to zero a week later. Mmm. But seeing people buying the same product that I have launched like a month or two ago, and then people continuing to buy that product, that was for me, that was like the big moment of, Oh wow, this is like, this is what it really means to have like an online business. Real. Yeah. That was, that was a moment for me. All right, well last question. How would you like to be remembered?

I would like to be remembered as a, Oh man, I would like to be remembered as someone who, someone who cared deeply and also people were, people could tell that I made the extra effort for people that I try to go try that. I tried to go above and beyond too to me to make that, you know, that extra action. Mmm. At least that’s how I would like to be remembered or wrong. People who are most me. And then professionally I’d like to be remembered as the guy helped make… Who helped make this, this this, this form of fitness, more accessible to people who, who otherwise would not have done it. But yeah, I think that that first part of I would like people to recognize that I put in the extra effort. I think that’s, and just being acknowledged for that. I think that would be, that would be, that would be a swell.

I love it. Alright Dean, it was a big pleasure to have you on the podcast and really appreciate, man.

Yeah, thank you. Cheers.

Thanks for having me.