Latest / The Growth Class with Phil Masiello / Online Coaching Scalability: Transitioning from In-Person to Digital Growth with Nick Shaw

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Online Coaching Scalability: Transitioning from In-Person to Digital Growth with Nick Shaw · The Growth Class with Phil Masiello

• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody, and welcome back to the growth class.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Phil Massiello.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And today we've got something a little bit different than what we normally do, but we've we've businesses and profitable businesses come in all shapes and sizes.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And today we're going to talk with Nick Shaw, who's built a profitable business.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And he's an ex-IFBB pro uh and he's he's you know really lived a lifestyle, but then he built his business sort of around his passion of that lifestyle.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: So today we're gonna look under the hood of a multi-million dollar company with someone who understands that better than anyone.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: He's uh the co-founder and CEO of Renaissance Periodization or RP strength.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: He took his background in sports management from the University of Michigan, turned a small science-based coaching service into a massive fitness technology brand driven by AI-powered RP hypertrophy app.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna cut to the fluff and talk about the actual mechanics of scaling with one-on-one services to a massive tech footprint.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, Nick, welcome to the growth class.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thanks so much for having me on.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Great to be here.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, an interesting background um and an interesting path, I think, to from what you were doing to you know, a powerful app.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: So can you kind of take us through that journey a bit?
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think from a pretty early age when I first got into lifting weights, I had a brother who was a few years older than me.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: And um, we had uh in my parents' basement, this is growing up in like rural Michigan, we had some like old sand plates, some of them you might know what I'm talking about, one of those like really skinny benches where you can barely just hit fit your head in between.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, my brother who was uh four years older, so he was you know training, working out for high school sports and all that, and I just saw that and I was like, oh, this seems pretty cool, and really just got started that way.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I no doubt about it, fitness was really just always kind of my calling.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: And because I just loved training, I loved lifting, I was a runner in high school, so I was just always working out.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: Just loved it.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Loved the idea that uh kind of the amount of hard work you put in, you get out a really good return from it.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: And because I I wouldn't say that I was very like talented when it came to sports, but uh I worked really, really hard, especially in the weight room, especially when it came to training, and was able to, you know, be uh definitely an above-average athlete in high school.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh my main two things were running, ironically.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: But uh, and really I attribute that to just, you know, is it okay if I swear?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: Is that up?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Is that allowed on the podcast?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: My ass off.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: I just I really loved it.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, went to school to study sports management because like s uh sports, you know, athletics was just always my passion.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, sports and fitness are pretty closely related.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so it just was always something I was drawn to, and ended up meeting uh at the University of Michigan uh my colleague Dr.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Mike, who is kind of the face of our YouTube channel now, and he convinced me to like get into competitive uh lifting, that was powerlifting, uh later bodybuilding.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: And to say that I was hooked was an understatement, was sort of just uh solidified that uh fitness and sports was kind of my true passion and calling and where I needed to be.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, lo and behold, we never thought it would become anything, but uh it's turned out to become something pretty cool.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm super proud of.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I like to say I've got three kids.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: I of course have two kids, and my son's 14.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: My daughter is, well, I guess when this comes out, she'll be 12.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Her birthday's coming up in a couple days.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then I, of course, have RP, which, you know, that's just it all means the world to me.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's all things I love and hold very near and dear to my heart.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: So uh it's been a great journey, and I'm super just happy with everything.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's fantastic, you know.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh especially when you're doing something that you really, really love and you can keep doing it for forever, especially around athletics and and bodybuilding, weightlifting, strength training.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're all sort of interrelated.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, there's so many studies out about the longevity of your brain, longevity of your muscles, the longevity of your body as you get older to uh that benefit from strength training.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, I w I was always an athlete in high school, bas usual stuff for guys, basketball, baseball, basket uh football.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then but I never really got into um bodybuilding or strength training, more more just weight training because I like that would benefit me in sports.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um so you know, and then I went on and and started running and cycling and doing triathlons and things like that.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And um which I still do some of.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I've recently got into uh indoor run uh indoor rowing, uh start which started with uh during the um during the pandemic, but I really love it.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh but I never thought, you know, it's funny because I never thought about taking that in as a career path, you know.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it was always sort of a uh a side gig.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I do have a friend who took their passion for doing triathlon and turned it into a a retail store and training and some other things and some things on online.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I applaud you because it's great because they love it and they're they seem to have a low stress life.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh maybe, maybe some days, maybe some days not so much.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'll I'll say.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, no, it listen, it's great.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: It definitely uh, you know, when you have that purpose and calling behind you, it's a little bit easier to wake up some days, even if you are going through the the stressful or the tougher times.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh if I was doing something completely unrelated to what I really, really loved, you know, I can only imagine it would be a little bit harder.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: But uh again, I'm super, you know, blessed, Fortunate, super grateful that uh you know got a lot of good people around me that that work for RP.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: So just you know, shout out to them.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, but you didn't start out with the app.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: You you really started out really just as a coaching uh uh business, did you not?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I can take it one step further.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: So once I graduated from University of Michigan in 2009, I moved out to New York City, where uh Dr.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Mike and I were both personal trainers.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: So we were training people in person in Manhattan, uh phenomenal.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: I had never even been to New York City.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Drove out, my buddy drove me out, interviewed, you know, got it.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: What's really funny about the interview is I showed up to a gym and I was like wearing a suit, which, you know, like I never wear a suit because I'm just a kind of meathead, completely overdressed, but you know, got the job.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: We got to train some of just like the best, smartest, brightest people in the world.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking to, you know, hedge fund folks, uh, you know, doctors, accountants, lawyers, all that stuff.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Really, really great people, the highest respect for all those folks.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: And this was not long after the whole kind of crash around 2007, 2008.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: So it was really interesting to get all their perspectives.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: But uh kind of knew that, man, personal training, one-on-one, being there on your feet all day long.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: You kind of have to be there early, you got to be there late because that's when people are training.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: They're training before work, they're training on lunch hour, they're training you know after work.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: Really, really hard gig.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, shout out to personal trainers.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: They really bust their tail.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was just like, this isn't really sustainable enough.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't we do this for you know the next 20 years?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: Even as much as I love it, right?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, Mike had moved down to East Tennessee State where he was getting his PhD and he was working with some people online, and we kept referring folks back and forth to one another.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And he was just like, hey, like, why don't we just start a little business?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that way, you know, rather than just say, Hey, I'm referring you to my friend, you know, it's hey, referring you to my colleague.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's kind of how we I got started in online.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: And once I started working with a few people online, it became one of these, oh, you know, one of the aha moments.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: This is a lot more scalable.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: I could sit in my uh, you know, New York City apartment and I don't have to go take the subway, you know, walk down all the stairs when it's 100 degrees in the summer and it feels like a microwave down there, you know, all that crazy stuff.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, wow, I can just sit at home and do this.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so what happened was I slowly went from like 100% in person to zero percent online to maybe like 80-20, 50-50, 20-80, you know, and then all of a sudden it was like I could pretty much pick and choose if I wanted to work with people.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that was like the first aha moment of like, hey, there's something here on how to scale.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: But even when you're coaching people just one-on-one, it's still your your time, right?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's sort of the limiting resource.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we hired a couple other coaches.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: These were usually folks that Dr.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Mike was in school with.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: So these were other, you know, exercise scientist PhD students.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: So super passionate about what they were doing, wanted to help people very smart, very knowledgeable.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a little bit easier way to scale.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then we started thinking, cool, we kind of have this like set process on how we do stuff.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: You could call it algorithms, more or less.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so we transformed that into like selling digital products.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the second aha moment.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because you went from, oh, because if you're coaching someone, you can realistically maybe have like 30 to 50 clients.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Beyond that, it gets pretty hard.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then then it's just scaling time, and you have to have a lot of coaches, a lot of management, etc.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: But man, selling digital products uh was the next unlock for us.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that was kind of the the first real true hockey stick for RP, and was just really cool to see because then it's just like you have the products already there.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's really just kind of becomes a marketing game and is how do you get more eyeballs and draw more traffic?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, we did that largely through social media, talking about our results, and yeah, it was just it was a great time, did really well for us.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: So that was kind of like stage two, I suppose.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: Stage one was coaching, maybe even before they could or your stage zero was personal training.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: So from personal training to online coaching to selling digital products, and then we kind of knew we wanted to make an app eventually.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this app process is really uh uh long and expensive, as putting it lightly.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, eventually that kind of became the phase that we're in now.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Where's like now the name of the game is uh selling app subscriptions, and that's uh where the kind of the bulk of RP uh revenue comes from.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: And how what's your what's sort of your marketing strategy for you still use social media pri predominantly video?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Social media content.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I will say early on it was a lot of like Facebook, call it like 2011 through 2015 or 16.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it's really just posting about your um success stories and your clients and testimonials and things like that, and it's just a lot of word of mouth through social media.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: It then it probably morphed into a lot of Instagram because you know, before and afters lend themselves really, really well to the Instagram medium.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that did great for us from, you know, call it 2015 to 2020, 21.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we still have a very big uh you know Instagram presence, but it you know, things are always evolving.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then I would say around like 2020, 2021, we started putting a lot of resources into uh YouTube.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: And Dr.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Mike is a very skilled orator.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: I would say he's got the gift of the gab, and it was wildly successful for us.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: We had went on a really sort of crazy ride from 2023 up to probably you know last year, um, kind of meteoric rise.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so that just brought a lot of eyeballs.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Again, that's just kind of one part of it.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, you know, it's drawing people to the website.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, how do you kind of identify who these people are?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Can you sort of retarget them through paid ads, you know, middle, bottom of the funnel, et cetera, et cetera.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't mean to paint it as like it's just a social media thing, but that's obviously a very big piece of the puzzle in an area where we've put a lot of time, effort, and resources into on the social media side.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, having an agency, we you know, we spend a lot of time figuring out how to best get uh whoever the target is for whatever the client is.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, too many, I think too many times people focus on ad first and then other things, but ads are there to support.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: And we always try and talk, you know, even though we make money on selling ads, you know, we we try and get people to not spend money on ads first.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you have a really robust, especially today, if you have a really robust social media channels and you're really targeting correctly and you're getting people that are interacting with your content and they believe in you and you built up the trust through authentic content, then you know, that's that's gonna help your ads convert those people to your site, and ultimately your site's gonna convert those people to a sale.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um and same thing with apps.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, you know, I'm glad that you're you're saying, you know, it's I understand what you're saying about, you know, it it's not just social media, but social media certainly drives the boat today's uh in today's environment.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we launched brands on shopping channels which were very video focused early on and physical product brands.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And though I love that whole concept.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: It really taught us, I think, as an agency, how to uh prosper in today's world because we learned how to, you know, talk the message quickly, get across the points quickly, and then using video to to obviously sell.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, social media is great.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh you know, the paid ads are sort of there to uh support it for sure.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, one one thing I will say is when you're pretty heavily reliant on social media, sometimes they can change the algorithms and stuff around.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: And and and so like the I uh you've probably heard this analogy before, but like social media is is sort of like uh the weather where it can sort of come and go and you can't really control it.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas if you can really dial down the attribution on paid ads and all that, it becomes a little bit more of like a faucet.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: You just have a little bit more control over it.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's hard, it's hard to do.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well, both are hard to do, actually.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: But like one of the uh bedrock foundations that we had on social media was just really like providing people evergreen content that just was there for potentially years.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: So you could go back and watch some of our videos for three, four, five years ago, and they're still gonna be very valuable.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: But so that was really the foundation.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: But again, kind of, you know, things change, things evolve over time, and now it seems like you know, YouTube, especially one well, not just YouTube, but social media in general now wants to reward that kind of clickbait, rage bait type stuff.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, I don't love it, but again, you sort of have to be able to adapt and um you know kind of keep your core main the what do we stand for at ArcP is gonna be education around fitness content, but you kind of have to play the game a little bit.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so like evergreen content probably doesn't work quite as well as it used to.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so then you gotta lean into and figure out kind of how you can entertain people a little bit more because you know people have short attention spans, and that's doesn't seem like that's going away anytime soon, although I wish uh maybe it would, but here we are.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: No, I th I agree with you.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's the same thing like uh with Amazon selling, you know, when you're on somebody else's platform and they change the rules, you're either gonna adapt or you're gonna get left behind.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: But the beauty of it is if you can build up that clientele, that if you can build up that viewership and and they're staying with you, your subscriber base is staying with you, you know, your your your um followers are staying with you, then you can use that to your advantage because they're not gonna take that away necessarily.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, YouTube doesn't want to take away people that have already built up strong followings, right?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, i they're trying to everybody right now is trying to compete with the growth of TikTok.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And TikTok videos are a totally different animal than what we see in, you know, Facebook and YouTube shorts and things like that.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, there's a way to balance it and certain and certainly having the following, because at the end of the day, the algorithm is gonna look at, okay, you've got a page, Instagram page, Facebook page, you've got followers.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: The people that interact on those pages, they look like this.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: So Facebook and and and Instagram are gonna be able to take that, and YouTube can be able to take that information and do a better job of targeting the ads, which drive the cost down for the ads.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm just a startup in the same category as you, I'm probably gonna choose it's probably gonna cost me three to four times what you're paying in ads to get the same result.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Or kind of testing and experimenting, yeah.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Even the cost per click, because I don't have the the you know, I don't have the growth, I don't have the the muscle behind it.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you've got history, you've got people that have interacted with the ads, and those people look like this, you know, and you can take those audiences and you can do things with them.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so yeah.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it's I I uh you know, it's you can't get away with you can't get away from ads.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Then the other thing, I'll tell you, you know, that's very, very strong for a lot of our clients are connected TV ads.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because you can you could very much target um because they're going through programmatic, you can very much target the key to it is to have a great piece of creative and a great uh uh understanding of who your target customer is.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Those two things are really the pieces that will give you uh the best result.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it's and the beauty of it is that because it's so highly targeted, you know who's interacting with your ad.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure you've seen it.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: You watch Netflix or you watch, you know, something on Hulu or you watch, you know, anything connected.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: They know who you are, you logged in.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so we know who Nick watched, we know what he did, when what he interacted with, and then you know, tomorrow morning you're gonna get on your computer, you're gonna start seeing ads fly in about the same thing you watched.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I tell you what, they um just in speaking of that, man, the they love to I actually I I'll give two examples.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: One is very recent, one was a few years ago.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: I forget if I shared this with you last time we spoke when we did kind of the the pre-call, but yeah, I'm a big Michigan fan.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: And uh when they won the national championship in football a few years ago, I feel like the people that are creating ads to sell like championship sports team stuff have the easiest job in the world.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because like they just kept showing me stuff.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, Do you want this like specific football or do you?
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm just like, well, yes, I do.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I do want this.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm just clicking away.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Man, the people just missed me raking in the dollars from that.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're into that type of advertising, you run those companies, kudos to you.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: You've probably got a real easy job.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that was the one example.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: I just, it was so funny.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: I kept thinking, I'm just like, at some point I gotta stop buying this stuff, but they kept hitting it.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a new thing every day.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh, who am I to say no?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Michael hasn't won a national championship in 26 years.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, you know, who knows when it's gonna come again?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other one was um they've gotten me a couple times, and by they I just mean, you know, advertisers in general.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: But like stuff that's designed to, I guess, be like jewelry for your daughter.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so my daughter's got a birthday coming up.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know how they did it, but they're showing me stuff, and I'm like, I guess I gotta get this for my daughter.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, here I am.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: I just got it in the mail yesterday.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm probably gonna give it to her today when I see her.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just, man, it's really funny.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh just there's some really sophisticated stuff behind the scenes as to how they do all this.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: And credit, you know, credit to them.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, you know, what what do we do?
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we I would say, you know, our demographic tends to be people that are a little bit more serious about fitness.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: So you're probably not gonna get someone like just using into fitness, probably gonna hit some of the other Weight Watchers, whole 30, something like that.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: They're probably targeting those types.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: We're targeting the people that have probably already been into fitness for a little bit and are like a little bit more serious about it.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of our main, you know, bread and butter, our demographic there.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, you target again, it's on the programmatic side, and what you're talking about is all based on the programmatic side of advertising versus, you know, Meta's got a little bit of programmatic in it, and and and and I know that everybody says, oh, but it is programmatic.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's not really.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: And when you if you were on a demand side platform looking at programmatic, you'd see the difference between Meta and Google.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, nonetheless, um as long as you know who you're targeting, right, they have a pattern and they're gonna be looking at specific types of things.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, for example, I'll give you a perfect example.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: I um I started to change my my workout routine about a year ago.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: I um I started to do more strength training because I uh I'm still running but and I'm still rowing, but I wanted some more uh something different, right?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I started doing, you know, push-ups every day and we have weights and stuff downstairs, and so I was doing, you know, chest and back and and and arms, right?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: And no legs because I get enough leg from everything else.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and then I made the mistake for entertainment purposes of watching um uh w Pumping Iron, Arnold Schwarzenegger's movie.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: I I made the mistake of watching that, right, while I was working out.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: And and I know exactly how it was done and I know exactly who did it, but suddenly like I got bombarded with coaches wanting to sell me training programs for strength training, right?
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: And they knew exactly who I was, they knew exactly what I was doing because they were they were so targeted.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, you know, for your next triathlon, have you decided to, you know, yeah.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's good.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's going out and looking at what I have on my social channels, right?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's looking at what I've done in the past, it's looking at my bios.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm looking at all that information, especially today with AI.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm look I'm the the the the programmatic side has built a profile of Nick.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: I said, well, Nick likes Michigan, so shove the Michigan stuff to him, right?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: And they do, man.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Boy, they do.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I started getting all this stuff.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, you know, the next thing I know, I'm buying, you know, all these different, you know, not just not programs necessarily, but other weight stuff, other things, you know, different kinds of bars.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and so I was having a good time with that.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, we have a client who um sells uh uh floral stuff all around the world right they can they can ship all around the world and I used them uh a couple of years ago for val I always send I've I have four daughters I always send everybody flowers at Valentine's Day plus my wife right and I did it once and then every holiday right I get a thing hey don't you want to send Sabrina or Vivian just click this and and the order's set and I'm going you know so it's like I and every Valentine's Day they make it very easy for me.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And now the uh the chocolate company that we used is doing the same thing to me.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's a very simple process.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now I just have to click one button and everything goes and they do it about a week before Valentine's Day so I never forget.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: So interesting okay I've got a question for you then obviously this is your your wheelhouse but like you mentioned AI so AI is kind of about their scraping so I I mean how do they know where like what your social media profiles are then so I guess they just know who you are but like how how would they then identify that to potentially go and scrape it if they're pulling stuff from bio or what happens if you have a private account?
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's so many questions there.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just now my mind's sort of blown because you are correct.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean listen I remember ads that were so targeted that I was like how in the world do they know this about me?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's like are you the the youngest child of a family born in rural Michigan?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like what?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yes I am but like how do you know that stuff?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy it's wild if you ever if you've ever gone out and and Googled yourself and look at the amount of information on you that's out there, right?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: So you know I'm Nick Shaw I live down you know in this state and my at my previous addresses one in New York one in Michigan one in this yes that's the Nick Shaw.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's the guy we're looking for he's the same guy that's that owns this business and he's the same guy that competed in this and he's the same guy that went to Michigan.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: He's the same guy.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: So within minutes AI has scraped you and knows everything about you.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now what you think is private isn't necessarily private.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Every single platform out there I don't know if you've ever read the terms and conditions for meta TikTok YouTube any of that your information is is being bought and sold.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah that's what they're selling right that okay yeah that's how they kind of know who you are yeah yeah so so within you know AI within minutes can do a profile of you.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: It it took look usually we we started we used to ask prior to these shows to send a bio and a headshot and now we have a product that we just go you know give me a b a background on Nick and all of a sudden you know I've got three pages on you.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: I know where you were born who your parents are you know everything.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and just so then we can build a a bio for you for the intro to the show.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why I'm saying like programmatic advertising for connected TV is so much more powerful.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're looking at a guy who had a brand and wasted millions of dollars on tele con traditional television advertising and I hated it because it was just you know it was just I felt like I was just throwing money away because it's not targeted.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: On on traditional television you're targeting a channel you're saying oh I think this will work on sport ESPN or I think this will work on Fox Sports News.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: In in programmatic advertising you're focusing on a persona I'm saying I know who my persona is it's a guy who's been you know who's maybe got a membership to Gold's gym he's been doing fitness for you know three years he's doing this he's doing this he's doing this that's my profile I know who my profile is and now I'm gonna put that information in AI is going to say oh I've got you know 52654 men between this age that fits that profile and I've got you know 37,212 women that fit that profile.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: And these are the things they watch and then you put in your ad and then you uh you figure out how much you want to spend I mean you can do it all the way down to a zip code.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know it's so so anyway, but uh that's really what our biggest focus has been as an agency over the last couple of years because you can bl you can you can get such better returns than just doing traditional advertising.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you are using Meta and Google because you're retargeting from who interacted with your ad, where they interacted with it.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we come off on another call and go through some stuff but uh you know but yeah and now we're we're pretty much out of time and we wasted it talking about uh I don't think it was a waste hopefully people because it is fascinating the peak behind the curtain so to speak where it's like the Wizard of Oz going on where you Yeah yeah that's what it is.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah I appreciate uh I appreciate you taking the time to come on and uh and and have me tell me tell you about my business a little bit.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: But well hey I think I think we both got something out of it.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the listeners will also get something out of it.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah yeah no no no question about it.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I I do I think it's I think it's really great what you've done.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: I've I've I've taken a look at you I think your site is really well done.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: I love the um I love the testimonial side of it and I love like all the because w the the credibility side of if if you're gonna be a strength a guy who's into strength training, bodybuilding, whatever, you want to go where those people have tried and tested it and proven that it to be true.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: So absolutely yeah that's one of the things we've always had lots of uh you know testimonials before and afters um again the evolving algorithm on social media you the the Instagram doesn't tend to reward before and afters anymore but we've got no shortage of them and so we can I remember a the early on in RP existence it was like hey does this work?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: Then we just got so many before and afters, so many success stories.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: The question shifted from you know does this work to oh kind of how do you get more people to to know about it?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's no question.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: It was undeniable at that point.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you follow it you're going to get really good results.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: So that was kind of the the big focus early on is just like yeah you got to prove yourself but then once you do it's it it with social proof all that it's a lot easier.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because people look to it and they go oh well this person did it and they're they kind of look a little bit like me that I could probably do it as well.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, I I agree with you.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's I'm gonna give personally I'm gonna give it a shot because uh I um I'm on this kick to do something a little bit differently.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I'm ever going to stop running or cycling or doing um uh rowing but I need something else in my life to break up that sort of routine um so I'm gonna give it I I am gonna give it a shot.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah we should met we should mess it offline it might be worth just a separate call we can we can go behind the the curtains a little bit more and I can maybe give you a little bit more insight into kind of how to best use our app because um you know again listen if you if you're if you're if you're listening to this and you're someone that already does a little bit of cardio and all that and you're like well how do I incorporate some strength training literally two times a week will add tons of benefit.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: There's just so many you earlier talking about you know longevity and all this stuff.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's like again it's undeniable now that lifting is so good for you in so many areas.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like I believe everyone should be lifting weights to some degree.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: And again it doesn't have to be this thing that takes up all your time.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: It can literally be twice a week for 30 minutes.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: You can get in there you can do some supersets like back to you know back and forth you can do like chest and back you can do you know arms and shoulders whatever it is and you just you crank through it pretty quick it gets your heart you know you get all these benefits from it.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think people have this false assumption that it needs to take over your whole life and that's not true.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: You could literally do one hour a week you know two sessions on Monday Thursday Tuesday Friday Wednesday Saturday whatever it is and 30 minutes just get in there work your butt off you're out and you know you're it's only 30 minutes, right?
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't really take that long, but you got to be able to get after it a little bit.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah no doubt.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: But uh hey I appreciate you taking the time to come on.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: Ran over a little bit but that's okay.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but again you know whether you're uh you know optimizing your training program or you know whatever you want to do check out uh rp hypertrophy app uh follow Nick on Instagram follow the brand go go visit the website which is rpstrength.com um rpstrength.com right yeah rpstrength dot com um and and take a look it's it's fascinating stuff and uh until next time thank you for having me on my pleasure