Marketing Tactics in the Supplement Industry

You can take a piece of research and you can say, well, this piece of research says you need to do this because of estrogen dominance or whatever it is. Right. And it's simply a marketing ploy to sell more supplements. And I got caught into that trap because I became one of their salesmen. And, you know, when you're when you're caught in that, you don't realize what's going on. You're like, hey, I'm with an education company. I'm teaching people how to do the right thing. And then you get called out by some other people. like I was called out by Minnow at one point and he and I had some conversations that, well, you've never been to the biosecurity class. You don't really understand what we're saying. And that, that, when that happened, it was after Charles had left and James LaValle had come in and kind of cleaned some stuff up and me and Larry Betado had cleaned some stuff up and it was actually becoming more of a evidence-based or research-based type of system. But there was still a lot of stuff in there that we couldn't prove. So it's like, I didn't feel comfortable then like teaching this stuff. Right. And we're giving people false hope in order to sell a bunch of supplements. And that that became the wrong thing to do for me. And I started realizing that towards the end. You know, but you see it. Everybody's going to have everybody's going to have a predisposition of moving towards that. Right. Especially you get on stage, you become a kind of a fitness celebrity or an industry celebrity. And you're either going to keep doing the right thing or it's going to make you a monster. and I see this all the time where guys that you give them a microphone and they just become a completely different person and it changes their whole world and they become a real dickhead right um but that's that's the current state of our industry right now and new people coming into industry they don't understand they don't have a solid enough science background to understand who's saying the right shit and who's saying dumb shit to them it's all cool and innovative right but you know because that's what sells that's what's that's what's marketable you know if i can come up with new crazy shit and then throw some scientific words out there you can confuse people and they'll buy into anything or any shit you're selling yeah well that's what i always tell people or what we always try and tell people is like okay what is the incentive that someone has for saying that thing and if there is no benefit for them they don't have a dog in the fight it's usually going to be pretty good information assuming that they've experienced them the experienced it themselves. They've put themselves through it. They've worked with other clients that are not like them on it. And they've done the research on it. Whatever the piece of information is in terms of the health and fitness. And there's this one company out there and I don't know why people can't see it. Like they've got a podcast as well. It's quite a big podcast in Australia and it's quite popular and they sponsor like a lot of CrossFit athletes and this and that. This is not True Protein in case anyone was thinking it's our sponsor. But their supplements are just like the craziest woo-woo shit ever like they're just the most retard like a lot of their things are like droppers and stuff like that and i'm like okay there might be some research out there that shows some very very questionable results but they'll get on their podcast and it will just say this one you know why you have adrenal fatigue and then at the end of it it's just this push for their new adrenal product you know it's it's like what like their incentive is to create exactly what you said a new condition, some fancy buzzword, some why you need to be in keto and then sell you their keto product and then sell you their crazy peptide protein shit where it's like, okay, doesn't actually make that much of a difference. Like you said, it's usually down to, okay, you're just like overeating or like you're not controlling your hunger or you're just having too many processed foods or just all crazy shit like that. And it's frustrating for us because a podcast like that gets so much attention and someone will come up to us and be like, dude, have you heard of like the crazy intermittent restricted 5-2 fasting protocol? it's like no it's like well let me tell you about it i was like well let me tell you it's bullshit you know but i mean look i mean that's the supplement industry right so i've been in supplement industry since i was like 16 so i can tell you like it's it's been the same thing since then but back then they were putting drugs and everything so actually worked you look at like the early early ages in 1992 of like eas and myoplex and dan duchesne put out ultimate orange and we had one called Hot Stuff. And if you look at the label, it tasted like battery acid and it had every single thing you could ever put in something but not enough to do anything. And they found out later they were putting D-ball in it and that's what it was. So, I mean, those were wild times, man. But, you know, it's never going to change until – I'm not one for a lot of government intervention because I feel like the industry should sort itself out. and now you have guys like you guys and Jackson Pales and some other guys that are kind of speaking against that type of thing and um and that's what's going to have to happen let the people sort the shit out but you're always going to have a sucker a sucker born every minute you know that they want to they want to believe that the one the one thing that they're missing is some weird ass supplement right or if you look at bodybuilders and palestines the one thing that always missing from them is they just not taking enough drugs right So if they can just take more anadrol that what they missing No what you missing is sleeping more training smarter, eating more or eating less or whatever, right? So, I mean, anytime there's money involved, we're going to have people that do that. And, you know, there are some merits to a lot of the supplements because the industry works in extremes, right? So at one side, you have guys that say, well, I've got three studies that show that our product works. Okay. Well, there's also 20 that shows that it doesn't. And then you have the other side that are saying, well, they only care about the research. Okay. For me, evidence-based means empirical observation. And now do we have peer reviewed research because there's stuff that's just simply not researched yet and probably will never be researched. So you kind of something that Bob Rakowski said to me one time is everyone's an N of one, right? So you just have to try shit to see if it works. And from my perspective is, and the reason I teach what I teach at Muscle Nerds is I want to teach trainers the actual, how the body works. Like there's how your cell works. Here's the biochemistry of things. If you understand how these pathways work just at a basic level, then it gives you a deeper understanding of, well, there's no research to confirm that like this nutraceutical works. But if I look through the research and I see what pathways it starts moving, I can make a best guess of what it's going to do. Now, is it going to be that beneficial? Maybe, maybe not. And for general populace, for most of the people that we all train, is taking something that is going to give you 0.003% advantage, is that going to be worth the cost? Probably not. But for say, in the same boat, it might be worth you know worth taking but i think people are missing the boat there's a i don't i don't talk about a lot of supplements in my courses anymore we stick to just basic shit multivitamin creatine fish oil if you're not eating enough seafood and if you got some digestive issues we might put you on a digestive enzyme for a short period of time just to help right if you're eating in a massively hypercaloric diet i'm probably going to put you on a good digestive enzyme but we pretty much stop at that unless it's super specific and we don't teach it the super specific stuff because none of our students know biochemistry well enough to understand the consequences that if I give you this thing, it's going to do all these downstream things, right? And when we teach the biochemistry, you guys have seen Shrek, right? You've seen Shrek. He's juiced up. He's juiced up for sure. Oh, for sure. But you go back to ogres are like what? Ogres are like onions. Biochemistry is like onions too. There's layers and you keep, When if you take something, you're stimulating layer one and you peel that back. What's going to seem like five or six other things, you peel that back. It's going to stimulate 10 more things. And if I know that something wraps up a pathway, then I can go down the chain and see what all it's going to do. But then we have to prove it or not really prove it. We have to either say we think it works like this or we have to falsify it. So there's a lot of stuff we don't know. And so one of the things that I don't like going into anymore is I don't like being black and white or anything. Everything's gray area. Like you what Jackson has told me, I'm doing a research mentorship with him right now. He's like, we can't actually prove anything. We can only try to falsify things. And we can only research what we can actually measure at this point. So whether there's truth in some of the stuff, truth that's not, you know, what people need to do is stick with the basic shit that's going to get them the most results. Use the 80-20 rule. Work on the shit we know works, you know, like calorie control, making sure you eat enough protein, you know, and then filling the rest in with carbs and fats or whatever you can actually be compliant with. because for most of our clients, the one thing that they're missing is not the next new supplement. It's fucking being compliant and being patient and understanding that to transform your body, to get stronger, to get really lean, to get really massive muscles. This is a long process. And I just actually, my buddy Scott Schutte from America, he posted a quote that I saw today that I reposted on Muscle Nerds Instagram that said, you know, people overestimate what they can do in six weeks and they underestimate what they can do in 10 years. But nowadays, because of social media, everybody wants to be Insta famous. They want Insta results and all this. They don't want to think about where could I actually be in 12 years or 12 months. Don't try to do it in 12 weeks. See where I'm going to be in 12 months. Right. And that's kind of what we preach is play the long game and understand that you need to chip away over time so that you don't push your body to an extreme where it's going to push back extreme to you. Yeah, it's really good points. That like the conversation I had this morning with training with my barber and he in like a it like caught in two situations kind of just gotten back into training He like training really well slowly getting him to like ramp up his calories and stuff And he stuck in this situation where he eight weeks out from his wedding And he's like, man, I think, I feel like I'm putting on too much weight. Like, I just want to start, start a cut for the wedding. And I said to him, I'm like, okay, well, you have two choices, right? You can, you know what the long game is. I'm trying to build you up. We're trying to get calories as high as possible, put on as much muscle mass as possible. Well, then when we strip back some of the calories, you can just do the same amount of activity and the weight will just come off you and you'll look a lot better. You'll just have better shape to you. Your shoulders will be bigger compared to your waist. It'll just be a lot easier. And he's like, well, I want to start the cut. I'm like, but if we start the cut of 1,500 calories, you're going to be at like 800 by the end and it's not going to feel good. I'm like, you're going to be in a shit mood. Your skin's going to be awful. You're not going to sleep very well. your performance in the gym is going to suck you're going to have no energy so it's like this this constant balance and we see that with so many of our gen pop clients when they come in it's like they want to get the result in eight weeks and it's almost like you kind of have to sell them that in a way so it's kind of saying yeah we're going to do that but we're going to play the long game at the same time and it's just that that tightrope that you just walk with the population is trying to get them a fast result so that they buy into what you're doing but also at the same time not jeopardize the long game don't get caught in the cycle of just like extreme calorie cutting reset extreme calorie cutting reset i mean the way i see it is you can either do it fast or you can do it right you can very rarely do both of those things at the same time right but like you know if you're looking at something like that where you know you could make it you can make a big push at low calories but you can you can you can only do that in a very short period of time especially 1500 calories, you know, you go down to 800 calories and all of a sudden your, your weight loss stalls. Okay. Well, you're no longer in a calorie deficit, but where do you go from there? Okay. And that's not enough. I mean, you're basically chip you're, you're, you're chipping into that RMR. And so the body has to figure out how do I survive on this many calories? Okay. Let me get rid of everything. That's not essential. Okay. Growing nice hair, skin and nails, not that essential. Your hair starts thinning and falling out, having a nice hard boner. That's not that essential. Having sex, not essential. Get rid of the libido, right? And you start getting these issues where you start toning down hormones because you're in such a catabolic state that your body just wants to try to survive and not thrive. And that's what people have to understand, right? You hear people like Lane Norton, he says, well, if you're not losing weight at 800 calories, you're not actually in a deficit. That's absolutely correct. But at that point, where do you go from there? Yeah, like only resort, take your calories back up the maintenance. Okay, try to get try to get all those components of your total daily energy expenditure re-regulated, we have to create a new maintenance. And then we start another deficit, right? So I like some of the stuff that like Jackson is doing on intermittent, intermittent dieting, where, you know, they just did the ice cap study where they've gone three weeks low, and then one week of maintenance. And I think, from my experience, that's probably going to be a good, a good way of doing things like push hard for three weeks, but then come out of it for a week and then push our threes and then say, okay, instead of a 12 week transformation, we're going to do a 12 week transformation, but we're going to put in a maintenance week every three or four weeks that we bring out. And so it's actually going to be 16 weeks. And so just take your time with it. And I personally like to do it in a very long manner. Like for me last November, I was 110 kilos and I said, okay, I want to get this off. I want to build my physique the way it used to be. I don't want to lose my performance. I also don't want to rebound. I also like chicken nuggets and aioli. I also like wine. So I'm not, I don't want to have to give those up because that's part of my lifestyle for my sanity. Right. And so over that time, I set a goal of like, I'm going to chip away 350 grams a week, a weight a week on average, and I've nailed it completely. And that's what people should do. They should plan a little bit better and they need to work on how many grams do I need to lose per week to get to my goal. And now is my goal realistic? You know, uh, to losing two kilos a week. Is that realistic? Not really. Can it be done? Absolutely. But you're going to sacrifice performance and health and you're going to sacrifice some lean body mass. Your sleep's going to suffer. Your guts are going to get worse. Your hormones are going to get screwed. so why why rush it if you know that two months after your transformation you're just going to blow back up and you're going to have to redo it again it doesn't make any sense but that's that's not what's being sold on instagram yeah look at my all week transformations but they're not showing the after the after pic yeah and then they're taking so many photos in that one week that they just use it for the rest of the year yeah you always see that you see it's you see with the fitness girls, right? So the fit girls, you'll see pictures, it like is it always a throwback Thursday Because I not seen any And then you show up at a bodybuilding show and you see them and you like you don look like your pictures right now It like oh yeah yeah yeah I'm in my off season. I'm like, you sure are. It's a big off. I'm going hard in this off season. Yeah, right? No, it's, yeah, some good points, really good points.