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Send us a Text Message.Mike Phillips, Founder of THE GYM, joins me for this week's episode of It's Marketing's Fault. Mike talks about building community to support creators. Mike shares insights from founding THE GYM and how it is helping solopreneurs overcome self-doubt through accountability and encouragement from peers facing similar challenges.Key Points:Entrepreneurship is a long journey that will make you question yourself, but having the right support makes persevering possible.Commun...
Mike Phillips, Founder of THE GYM, joins me for this week's episode of It's Marketing's Fault.
Mike talks about building community to support creators. Mike shares insights from founding THE GYM and how it is helping solopreneurs overcome self-doubt through accountability and encouragement from peers facing similar challenges.
Key Points:
Entrepreneurship is a long journey that will make you question yourself, but having the right support makes persevering possible.
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Welcome to “It’s Marketing’s Fault”. If you are a marketer, this phrase is familiar to you. Sometimes deserved, often times not.
Don’t worry, you are among marketers and friends here. Let’s discuss how to do marketing the right way.
As a side note, in episodes 1 through 37, this was Build That Podcast. The goal of this podcast is to help you learn how to use a podcast to grow your business and expand your influence. If you go back and listen to earlier episode (those before November 2023) you will hear that name. Don't worry--it's good content too. :)
Welcome to It's Marketing's Fault, the podcast where we discuss how to do marketing the right way.
I'm your host, Eric Rutherford, and I'm thrilled today because I have with me Mike Phillips.
He is the founder of the marketing muscle brand, as well as the founder of The Gym, which is a community for creators and solopreneurs, which has the goal of helping ultimately solo creators make more money.
He also seeks to make modern marketing make sense for the creator economy, ultimately driving revenue growth for solopreneurs and creators.
Mike, welcome to the show.
Eric, it's so much fun to be here.
So glad to be back.
Oh, I am thrilled.
So for everybody listening, I had Mike was so gracious, and he was on the show earlier.
So if you're if you go back through the feed, go back to Episode 26.
Episode is titled you trade in trust before you deal in dollars.
Just a fascinating episode.
And so I was just thrilled you accepted the invite again.
It was my pleasure and we had lots of alliteration in that episode, trading in trust, dealing in dollars.
That was a lot of fun.
Ample alliteration.
I, yes, yes.
Oh, it was so much fun.
And so, so there are definitely things that we won't get into today because we covered in that first one.
So if you're listening along, you want more background, by all means, go check that one out.
Mike shared a ton of great stuff.
And, and now, I just want to jump in and kind of talk about, we'll talk about the gym, we'll talk about community.
But first, let me just ask, What do you say to people who think they can do entrepreneurship on their own?
You know, first of all, I say, I empower those people, you know, there are so many people who sit on dreams and never act, right?
They've set goals without plans, right?
That's unfortunately a lot of people don't ever take that step.
Even though they have the idea and how many times have we thought up something on the back of a napkin and then we see that product on the TV or out in the marketplace, like five, six years later, and you're like, I could have been that.
Or you think about.
making a funny video or making something super educational and then you see another creator doing something similar and you think, oh, maybe I've missed the boat.
So when people want to be an entrepreneur, the first thing I say is yes, because I see entrepreneurship in the creator economy as a path to economic empowerment.
I think it's an opportunity for people, whether you want to leave a day job or not, to develop security in financial diversity.
for themselves, if not through productization or monetization, just through a stronger brand alone opens new doors to new business partnerships or new jobs.
It's never a bad idea in my case, but I do add one caveat to it and it's that it's going to be harder than you think it will be.
It's going to take longer than you think it ought to.
and it will make you question things about yourself that you never thought you ought to.
And if you can engage with those, you can grapple with those truths as you go down that journey, then it's absolutely the right path for you.
I'm kind of chuckling as you gave those three because, not because they were funny, but because they were true.
Right?
It's absolutely gonna take like so much longer, so much harder, and you do question things.
That was the, especially you in the process, you question, am I doing, is this right?
Should I be doing this?
Am I wasting my time?
Is this ever gonna work?
I'm an idiot.
I mean, you're just filling the blank and it's just, man, that can wreak havoc on your brain or it does on mine.
it is a, no, it's not you.
It's, it's us, it's we, it's all of us feel that.
And that's why specifically online entrepreneurship, because it's very much tied up in accruing attention.
But it takes a strength of skill to execute, but it takes a great deal of strength in your mindset too.
And what it takes to continue trying things when you have.
six months of on-ramp with no tangible results or measurable impact.
And you're riding that long runway before the curve starts hooking off the X axis in that chart.
And you're like, this is pointless.
And then there's that tiny voice in your head that says, I might be three data points before it starts hooking up.
And I don't know this yet, because you can't, there's no time machine to see it.
And yeah, that is hard and it can be haunting when you're alone because a lot of people are not going into these things is a group enterprise, right?
We're used many of us who make the jump have some experience of social context and work we work with a team for a team or we manage a team and And because of that we are used to the nature of work being collaborative or Synergistic and when you go to build something of yourself as creator in the creator economy There is not a loneliness that kicks in but a it's a formidable reality of this is succeeding or failing exclusively because of me and That's a new Mental dynamic and it never goes away No matter how established you are and I could say this is somebody who is over three years into content creation There is still that microsecond hover over the post button where your mouse is just sitting there and you're like, and is this ready?
Is this good enough?
Is it whatever it, there's a moment.
And I'm like thinking to myself every time I happen, the dismissing moment is this is post number 1200 and whatever that you've done.
You know your stuff.
And anyway, if this one doesn't work out, the next one will.
It's another data point.
It's another rep in the set of building your content muscle.
And if you can't, as a creator, or somebody wants to get into entrepreneurship as a creator, grapple with that on your own.
I recommend surrounding yourself with people to help you do it.
That is so true.
It's like that.
However, I like how you talked about that.
It's, you know, whether or not it works on this particular post, on this particular piece of information and content, you just, you go to the next one, right?
It's not live or die on what I did today.
And so that, but that's a mindset shift, right?
That's a, I got to get to that mindset point where If it's misspelled, obviously I don't want it misspelled, but occasionally it happens and it's like, okay, we just move on.
Yeah, it's just part of the journey, right?
And I think part of that struggle, and part of the struggle in that pivot for people, especially coming out of, unless you came of age as an adult and your very first job was a content creator, independently as your own business owner, 99% of people, that is not the case.
But we are trained to fear failure through the nature of what traditional work.
looks like because if you are an employee of someone or a partner in a business, your quote failure, your lack of execution, whatever it is, affects them, i.e.
the business owner, more than it does you.
And so there is a long, slow conditioning process to feel shame or to feel some level of emotional connection to the quality of execution.
at a higher level than the thing itself justifies.
Because as a marketer, if I am doing an email marketing campaign for a corporation and I misspell a word in one email and 50,000 people on an email list see it, that's not ideal.
I didn't want to misspell it, like you said.
But it doesn't hurt me, the marketer, who is unnamed in that email, who has no identity tied to it.
It hurts the brand that you send it for.
And so how, and as a, as a marketer, for example, or as any employee, let's say you could do an accountant, you can do a lawyer, you could do any professional.
Perhaps you have no stake in the thing that you're executing individually, but you must be made to feel that way.
Or you don't have to be made to be feel that way.
Historically, you may have been.
that might have been cultivated in you to feel that way.
And then we take that with us.
Once we go back to the creator account and we go to start making something of our own, we're like, but if I publish this email, if I send this to my mailing list and there's a misspelling in it, it's just a misspelled email.
There's this really weird moment where you say, oh, am I damaging the brand?
It's my brand.
I decide what damage is.
I decide what's bad.
And it's both empowering and a little bit of like Stockholm syndrome, psychological reversal of I'm used to the bounds of feeling certain things in certain circumstances.
Um, and some of those roots run deep and it's going to take a long time to grapple with them.
And that's, that's where I think.
You know, we're the sum of the five people we spend the most amount of time with comes into play.
If you're around your coworkers and everybody's Fearing the big boss coming down on you for making a mistake.
You're going to steep in that and you'll start mirroring that and bringing that into yourself.
And then if you surround yourself with other people who are putting themselves out there and creating content and trying to develop offers and make their way on their own, whether it's diversification or their primary focus, you're going to start taking that in too.
That confidence can be contagious, but also the normalization of the process.
provides you with greater context and perspective that you otherwise may not have had doing it alone reflecting only back on your prior experiences as an employee.
I like that normalization that you talked about because I think that's something else too.
If you've never been an entrepreneur, and maybe you're first, I've heard this term, first generation entrepreneur, right?
You grew up and everybody in your family, they went to work for somebody else.
They clocked in, they clocked out.
You did the job, you went home.
even in marketing, you know, working for a corporation, doing whatever, it's that same feel.
And so everybody around you has that.
And suddenly, you're like, I'm going to build something on my own.
like, you are considered weird.
I don't know how to describe it.
It's like, yeah, what's your real job?
Right.
You hear that.
And it's like, huh.
It's like, I'm a content creator.
Oh, so you're unemployed and make content on the side.
Like, you know.
I've seen this as a joke played out there, as a meme played out there, but it's like, yeah, that's, that is the sense.
It's a meme because there's a grain of truth that it's based on, right?
And that is what we hear.
And that comes externally and it comes internally.
We have the tiny voices that we've internalized that we hear in the back of our mind.
And then we also, sometimes hear it from, if we're not surrounded by the right supportive tribe, that's what we hear too.
Yeah, actually, this Friday, so we're recording for everybody listening.
We're recording this on Monday, last Friday afternoon.
I had like this panic attack moment, like panic attack moment.
So, you know, I deal with anxiety and panic attacks are not uncommon.
But like I had this panic attack moment and I emailed my editor.
So for everybody listening, I'm in the process of writing a book and.
My editor has the first draft and like literally I emailed my editor and said, okay, this is a dumb question, but do you think this book is going to actually be helpful?
Like I'm not, I'm not looking for bestseller.
I'm not, I'm not looking for New York times.
Like that's, I mean, it's, it's niche cause it's on podcast preparation, but like literally I emailed her and I said, do you think this is going to help?
And I was just totally transparent.
I'm like, I have this panic attack moment.
I just need to know based on what you have read, is this gonna be okay or not?
Like, I trust you, you're gonna do great, but like, I'm not, this isn't about you, this is about me.
I'm just, so, and she was very kind, she replied back with a very kind email, but it's true, you second guess yourself all the time.
Yeah, it- I guarantee you, like, if you, I've watched some interviews with, you know, I'll pick like MrBeast on YouTube, right?
Huge, long time, I would call like Gen 1 creators who got in very early in the content game, like, you know, early YouTube and they built that long runway and then they've been riding some high level, high profile success for the last five, 10 years.
But like, they struggle today with things that they, publish and things that they create and.
I don't think if you are, if you, it's not a sign of failure to question yourself.
I think that yearning for something, the questioning the things that you are doing and creating in the world is a sign that you are doing things worthwhile because you care enough to question them.
And that alone is a mindset edge that should fuel us as we move forward.
Because We try to make data informed decisions.
We try to look at market analysis.
We try to look at our funnel metrics.
We try to understand things in an objective way, but there is a introspective psychology that we have like, why am I yearning so bad for something I don't have yet?
Why am I desiring validation in this idea?
Why am I hoping beyond all hope that this does not fail?
And it's because it's important.
And while you feeling it's important doesn't make necessarily a financially viable outcome, it does prove you're putting enough into something that if it was a viable product, the quality is being added so that viable product will be executed in a way that is well received.
And so that pain is kind of proof of the process working.
I like that.
That pain is proof of the process.
When you care, when you're doing something, when you're invested, it matters.
So having those twingy, cringy moments, it's not, it almost should be expected from time to time.
And so don't, don't shy away, just like acknowledge that, okay, it's gonna happen.
Exactly.
It's like, I have my workout journal here for anybody listening.
It's like on my desk.
Like I literally, my content studio is in my home gym.
And when I am training, one of the things that I write down sometimes is failure achieved.
So you think about, let's say you're doing something either for endurance or strength and you're saying, I want to get 10 reps in.
and you get to nine and on your 10th one, you get halfway through it and you just hit that wall and you're driving against it and driving against it and then your strength or your endurance gives out and that is your limit.
Is that mean you've invalidated your entire workout?
No, it's a failure achieved.
You have trained to failure in that moment and it's actually something to be looked for and that's why I use the phrase achieved, not like 10th rep.
is an abject failure and I'm a failure and therefore I'm a bad person and I should throw my weights out the window.
Like that's not what you write down in your journal, but that's the mental process we feel as creators sometimes where we're like, oh, this did not work or this hurt or this was harder or I am doubting these things.
You actually need to look for those moments of pain or frustration or failure or setbacks as like companions on the journey because they will always be there.
And if you could set a relationship with that, of If you talk to people who are longtime weightlifters, they're like, yeah my muscles burn.
That's a signal of xyz happening It's all of a sudden It's a it's Expected and once it's expected you shift the power dynamic It's not happening to you You are not victim to it You are you have agency in that moment and you are able to kind of reclaim that So whether fitness or business same thing you reclaim those moments of self-questioning of like i'm questioning this That's a sign that I care.
That's a sign that I might come up with some way to upgrade this or I might validate something that already was done right.
So those are some mindset tricks that, it's not even a trick, it's just a shift.
It's just, and you gotta keep practicing it.
It's like use it or lose it.
If you go through a long window of time where you're not doing those things mentally, you can fall into some mental habits of questioning without and being stuck in that.
Uh, low agency where everything's outside of your locus of control.
Everything is happening to you as opposed to no, I stepped into the hot water.
And I'm feeling the heat, but I walked into it and this is a sign that signal that the water is hot.
And like, you just, you just take it in as part of the information of the journey.
And maybe that, you know, Marcus Aurelius, right?
That obstacle becomes the way forward.
It becomes part of the information on the journey.
That is true.
And that really kind of leads us to the gym, not the one with the weights, but the other gym that you've created.
So for everybody listening, would you just kind of, yeah, what is the gym?
The gym is an online private community that I founded to bring together creators and solopreneurs from across different platforms and sub-sectors of the creator economy so that we can be there for each other the way training partners are there for each other in a fitness journey.
We want to grow stronger revenue.
And to do that, we need people who hold us accountable, who can help us execute with better form, who can.
keep us focused on making sure the things we are doing connect to our goals.
And to give us that, that edge that not only do we know when we chose to sleep in or skip the thing that we wanted to do, but somebody else knows that we know.
And to gain both the skill sets of execution and the mindset of perseverance that we need to take that long grind through growth in the creator economy.
Because Despite how exciting it is to see these breakout successes and viral stories of creators, most of us are going to have to work for a long time before that quote unquote overnight success kicks in.
And the gym is a place for us to be together during that time and provide that skillset and mindset support for the long haul so that we don't quit, so that we don't give up, so that we can stay true to the ambitions that we have and make sense of the things in our head and in our way.
when we get stuck.
That is true.
It's, yeah, I like that imagery of training partners, just walking through it together.
So you have, you started this back the first part of 2023?
Yes, it was the beta launch went out in early mid-spring and it opened to all members Q3.
Okay, okay.
So we are now recording in 2024.
So that is, so it's been going on for a decent amount of time.
What?
up on month 10 at this point.
That's exciting.
It's surreal in a little way.
Yeah, it's like, wow, okay, 10 months in, like, this is a real thing.
It's been going on for a real amount of time.
Um, what, what differences have you seen in the people who have been a part of it doing this, doing this journey together, training together, encouraging together, cheering each other on and holding each other accountable together.
What, what differences have you seen?
The early members who, um, adopt, who joined and helped me found the gym, um, have a remarkable personality to themselves.
I was very deliberate in bringing people together to set the culture right.
But what surprised me is even with that deliberate selection process, it's like building a baseball team where you pick everybody who's a good hitter, who's got a good fastball, and you pick folks who are doing things that you want to collect to make your team, right?
And then there's this.
Synergy that kicks in and you start seeing things in people in aggregate that they didn't display individually And we've had members in the gym Whether they're the founders or folks who have joined afterwards Go through major life pivots things where Personal circumstances have forced them to pivot in their business where economic shifts have affected their business and Folks who are Looking to do creator activities on the side of a full-time career working for someone facing new moments of inflection where the arc of their personal life history is changing and them really leaning on the other members in the community.
And what I see happening that it's a remarkable transformation is this imbuing or like osmosis of skill and mindset between people.
Like you're not going to see the podcasting experts all of a sudden becoming writers if they were not already ready or vice versa.
You're not going to see our content writers become podcasters in the tactical sense of execution.
But what I see is people who are...
Confident and established in their business.
I'm seeing that get absorbed and internalized by people who weren't I'm seeing That it literally mirrors and I had hoped this would happen, but I'm humbled that it happens on its own There was a gym.
I was a part of where we used to line up for a class within the gym of martial arts It was a commercial gym and they offered this And you lined up all the students would line up left to right from the newest student on the left to the most established student on the right and the idea was you could always look to your right for the next level of execution if ever you didn't know what to do and I'm seeing this because There is no linear path of learning for Creators, but I'm seeing the members in here be able to Look from Oh, let's say a member is currently out of work unexpectedly and they turn to their side and they see someone who is employed and doing creating and they can take something of that creator's execution and then implement it for themselves.
And then they look further down the line at somebody who's a full-time creator and they can borrow some of that behavior.
And then pretty soon they internalize it all in this first person is now acting as if they're a full-time creator.
And opportunities are coming to them as if they're a full-time creator.
And then all of a sudden, if you're as if all of these things and you have opportunities and the actions, you're, you're a full-time creator now.
It's you're no longer unemployed and creating on the side.
You are a full-time creator because you have internalized all the things it takes to be one.
And that process is not taking a course and checking a box and getting a certificate.
That is not being.
taught something that is just a process of being steeped in a culture and a community of people doing the same thing you are trying to grow the way you're growing that level of transformation abounds in the gym and from subtle ways to very profound ways and that's the magic of the community.
It's really not meant to be just a umbrella for courses or knowledge transfer or access to coaching time with me.
It's the magic is those.
subtle Almost I wouldn't call them passive but unintentional moments of that compound to for people absorbing and transferring execution and then it results in them being Transformed themselves and that's why I say that the gym is about helping people become a stronger creator We're not changing you from one thing to another in a deliberate a to a specific B outcome you are becoming stronger in ways that I as an individual couldn't just map, but we as an aggregated crew can facilitate and share.
And I like how you describe the, there was what you hoped would happen but you weren't sure it would happen.
You weren't sure that this type of thing would happen.
Has it, it sounds like it has developed kind of, I don't want to say to plan, but at least kind of some of your vision, has it surpassed it?
Has it equaled it?
Just kind of, what do you think so far?
It is...
I use the word humbling in a way, humbling on purpose because it is very...
I have to sometimes take a step back and realize, what have I created?
I have one of those moments of like, wow, this thing is, it's not a passive or static asset.
It's not a blog post that has data surrounding it.
It's not like it gets this many views, it generates this much conversion and I get this much revenue from that source.
It is not that sort of essence.
It's very much like a culture.
It's very much an identity unto itself.
It's almost a personality unto itself.
And I kind of describe this, it's a semi-sentient thing, right?
So like I built it, right?
I planted the seed, I nurtured it.
I gave it good water and sun.
And this is my little plant in a pot that's growing.
But unlike a plant, You know, I can give the ingredients in, but this thing is now choosing in many ways what it becomes.
It is not a cult of personality around me individually.
It is not like to torture the metaphor.
It's not a bonsai where I'm like pruning and keeping it and like training the branches to go a certain way.
It's more akin to.
driving a car when you only have one hand on the wheel.
So I'm steering it.
I've got my foot on the gas of how fast things are going and I can break it and I can do things like that, but I'm steering.
But there's this other, and it's not any one person, it's the sum aggregate of the entire culture of the gym that is the other hand on the wheel.
And so I had to...
realize this lack of control is intrinsic to founding and managing a community, I can set community guidelines, I can help shape conversations, I can plant seeds for new conversation to take place and I can prompt certain connections between certain members.
But there is always input that did not come from me occurring.
There are conversations happening, not between me and members, but between members and members.
There are DMs.
that I will never see.
There is a private DM function that even an admin cannot see in the gym.
And so, yeah, I only have one hand on the wheel of this car and we're cruising down the highway, it's full speed now.
We're coming up in a couple months on a full year of running this thing.
And I may not have a full two-handed grip on the thing, but I really do feel like it works better than walking somewhere alone.
And that's...
That's the power of community is that you can go far.
You can go somewhere fully in control if you're walking by yourself.
You point your feet and you walk in that direction.
But if you're willing to get on board with this crazy ride and have one hand on the wheel and have the other hand be the sum effect of all of these like-minded people who are.
walk or were walking the same path you were at different stages to slightly different destinations, but using the same compass, trying to get to the same sense of true North for themselves.
You're going to go a lot farther together than you would alone.
I love that and that makes so much sense in terms of the way it functions, the way it's structured.
Let me ask, what's something that most people think is true about building a community, community building, that you would disagree with?
I think there is potentially, there are two thoughts that I think kind of come from the same mindset.
One, there's a stigma of the communities are a lot of work for what they give you.
And then there's the perspective of, that you can use it like a traditional marketing asset to create a direct ROI.
And I lump them together because they're both founded in this.
mindset of control and direction, almost the old broadcast mentality.
So a community is not an email list.
A community is not an ad that you pay to get content in front of people.
It's not those sorts of assets where you direct it fully and you can shape it to get a very deliberate outcome.
And I think what this creates is people who look at running the community as like, where's the return on the investment?
What am I getting out of this?
And that leads to it being perceived as a lot of work because direct conversion is not really the aim of that game.
You're not using this, like a lot of community led growth models, which for those listening is just.
ivory tower marketing for using a community to drive more revenue for the real thing that you're selling.
A lot of those models try to use community as part of the funnel to move people into whatever your high ticket offer is or if you're a business, whatever your enterprise offer is.
And I think while that can work, the community in and of itself needs to be seen as an offer, as a deliverable, whether it's a free community or not.
And I think people get it wrong from a mindset perspective and because they're obsessed on treating it like any other marketing movement as far as what is the direct ROI from it.
And for me, there is an, the cure to that, if you will, that wrong perspective is to look at community as the the sum total of what the people in there are doing and the value creation that starts to build its own inertia and take on its own life.
And so.
A traditional marketing asset is a distribution of value.
You can use email to send value out there.
You use a blog article to put value out and then attract in organic traffic.
You would post a YouTube video, again, to get attention.
It's an asset that does a thing.
You still made the thing.
You created the content and then distributed it in a certain format with community though.
The interesting thing that makes those two early points I mentioned irrelevant is that the value creation is not something that you have both hands on the wheel for.
The value creation becomes conversations between members.
It becomes moments in the group training sessions or the meetings that become content that alone you did not ideate, that you may not even have ideated at all if you facilitated the place for two people to talk together.
And then sometimes even the questions that come up and the desire to do more, to perhaps invest more in their business growth or whatever it is, are not ever manually directed.
It is very much a...
It's not even automatic because that applies that you built a perfect system that can automate itself.
It's semi-sentient.
I have no other way to describe it except that it has...
an agency to it and you are shepherding it as the manager of a community, as the founder of a community.
You are putting in the shoots and the fences and things, but that flock has its own decisions of what it's doing and you don't have full control over it and I think embracing that is part of what would shift you away from the mindset of community is something as a means to an end when really it's an end in and of itself.
Is that something you knew before you started or is it something maybe you had an idea that's the way it worked, but maybe you understand it differently now?
I think it's fascinating what you were describing.
I'm just curious if that was something you knew going in or if that was a realization through the process.
You know, I understood it academically, and I think I came to a deeper, more visceral understanding of it by experiencing it.
For me, the...
My experience with community before founding the gym was a collection of counterpoints.
So I had been a member of a bunch of communities where I said, ah, so this is this thing I don't wanna do, and then this is that thing I don't wanna do, and this is, you know, and those specific things could be, you know, communities that turn, to have all these channels that turn into ghost towns that nobody engages with, right?
Or.
It's a free to join community and everything is a call to action to the, the actual thing that they're selling or, um, it's forced and contrived in a way that it becomes stifling because the, the founder of a community may want to keep it tightly controlled.
They're trying to put two hands on the wheel as far as the conversation.
They put too many bumpers or too many guidelines and, um, It becomes homework, not a place to engage with.
It becomes a task.
And I knew from those negative experiences that I wanted the opposites of those to be true.
That I wanted people to go there when they wanted relief, not when they had bandwidth to do more work.
I wanted people to go and experience what I experienced going to a gym and seeing the regulars and having familiarity of place and feeling that you have spotters to catch you if you fall and feeling that you have frameworks to push yourself and push your limits a little bit in a safe way that didn't result in you truly being damaged or hurt in any way.
And I wanted to have a space where people could practice and refine new skills.
And so I understood that, I think academically.
But I think what hit me was, in a more visceral way, was I didn't fully appreciate.
how fortunate I was in choosing, I think, the right, or I chose a list of initial founding members and how fortunate I was that the ones who said yes did.
And I think those early adopters are the ones that came in and set a culture early on.
And I did that intuitively, but I have seen that done wrong where people either picked the wrong culture early on.
Or they don't establish it and then members who are paying come in to a blank slate.
And I, I just, I tried to be extremely empathetic of like, would I want that?
And I didn't, I wanted to come into a place that had a buzz and an activity and like, and, and a vibe already established.
And I could go back and look at the history of conversations if I wanted to.
And so I, I built it to start that way.
But I think since starting the gym and having, you know, continuing to feel out what's the community marketplace look like and how do different communities work.
There, there were more examples after I started of folks who didn't do some things that I did instinctively that I now realize I would consider essential to having done what I've done and having it set up right, because I don't think.
the results we're seeing now and the transformations we're seeing in members would have taken place without some of those early steps of the right mindset and setting up the right culture.
Mmm.
No, and that makes total sense.
And just full disclosure for everybody listening, I had the opportunity to jump in the gym early on and it's been a very welcoming place.
Like that's the one, like if I could put a tangible descriptor, it's like it's a welcoming place to share.
and to have questions answered and asked and just to be gently nudged forward as you are going forward, right?
It's not to beat you over the head, it's not to, you know, it's not like you say, it's not more work, it's more like, okay, we are in the work that you are doing, let's have a conversation and just...
kind of help prop each other up and walk with each other as you go forward.
And yeah, that's, that's been really neat.
I'm so glad that you say that because, and that's unprompted listeners.
That was, I didn't say, hey, Eric, say this thing.
No, he just, and I'm so grateful that you feel that way, that I have earned that in building the thing.
And my goal was to create that.
And I say a gym, and I know people have had some pretty toxic negative situations in different commercial gyms, and I just.
My biggest thing is back to the first topic we talked about, or maybe even it was in the warmup before the call, that there is this, when people go to build something on their own, like we're so conditioned to identities of, maybe you're a first generation entrepreneur, right?
Where you're used to your whole family and your whole social circle having a job and you go to do this creator thing, whether it's providing services or coaching or you're creating content for brand deals or whatever your means of go-to-market is in the creator economy.
And then you have this whole nagging voice, whether it's internal or external of, get a real job.
It's not a very, it's hard to find safe places to be unapologetically the creator, to let down the guard and say, I don't know what to do with these things, or I am questioning the things that I am creating, and not having that external voice be like, well, that's an example of why you need a real job.
What you need to be able to say those things, in a crew of people who are doing the same thing you are, meaning like, I felt that way on Tuesday.
Let me tell you what I did on Tuesday.
I ate a bucket of chocolate chips and then I felt better and then I went and I created a content.
Those are the things, right?
And that's, in the end of the day, it's not about, it's not a boot camp.
It's not drill sergeants forcing you to achieve.
It's providing the thing that most people I think lack when they go into the entrepreneurial space, which is.
Especially if you're a creator entrepreneur.
Support is lacking because there is stigma still about creator economy, entrepreneurship not being real entrepreneurship because you're not venture capital fundraising, buying assets off its space, websites en masse.
You're not doing these things that are the archetypal business space.
And I just, I had a suspicion intuitively and in talking to people that I used to do agency work and help people execute and help people deliver things as my first movement in the creator economy.
And I still provide that coaching, but I provide it as a secondary to providing access to support first through the community.
Because execution help or strategy help.
Yeah, that's what you need when it comes to driving revenue.
But if you're a one person or even a two person partnership business and you're crippled by self doubt or half of the year are non-productive days or a quarter of the year is non-productive days because of the questioning and the things that you're doing, none of those strategies and tactics that a consultant or an agency marketer would give you are going to be used as effectively as they could if you had support.
And so I realized.
The main barrier to people using modern marketing, that makes sense, is to having the support to keep going.
And so I provided that first with the gym.
And I think that's just what has facilitated a lot of the transformations for the members in the gym is because when they have been down, they had somewhere to go.
And when they have been up, they had somebody who understood.
Why it mattered that random piece of content they posted hit with the audience when if you shared that with a former co-worker They'd be like neat cool Why do I care but a creator is like yeah, I know you went out on a limb and I know that was a thing You did that was different.
I know you were struggling to find a way to distribute it and it hit and I'm happy for you and It sounds so simple But it's not the act of validating that does it It's the elimination of that deafening silence that makes all the difference.
Because if you sit alone in that deafening silence, you will start not just questioning things that you're doing and creating, but questioning your conviction, questioning your sanity, questioning your intelligence and your self-worth.
And down that path is not self-actualization and empowerment.
It is, it's despair.
And I think in a way, a community membership can be insurance against despair and failure.
Yeah, it's like you're walking through this, you're taking the journey with people who understand sometimes what that when means.
Like you said, it's like when you hear somebody say, you know what, somebody reached out to me and they want to buy my services, right?
They want to buy.
And everybody cheers because everybody knows what it's like to get that first customer and to get that second customer.
And it's like, I mean, to go from zero to one is like the hardest act in the world.
It's scaling a vertical cliff face.
It's not one step.
That first step and that staircase to success is like El Capitan in Yellowstone.
It's that vertical sheer cliff face and it's a thousand feet and you're climbing that sucker with no rope and like that's, that's what it's like that zero to one.
That's a brilliant example because it is and unless you have gone through it or are going through it, like you say, if you are just at a let's just say you're at a corporate job and you're just doing the thing and it's like, well, what's so big about, you know, getting a customer, right?
I mean, we do that every day.
And it's like, yeah, but it's, it's different, right?
It's not like You're you're building from scratch Right.
You created new value that did not exist before, that would not have existed without you.
That is a, there is a gravity, there is a momentum, there is an impact of realizing that this thing that happened only existed because I made it.
It's not because I moved beans from pile A to pile B and there were beans already on the table.
It's not because um I greased this wheel that was already made.
I carved that wheel out of igneous rock myself, put a hole in it, and put a pin in it, and it rolls because I saw a rock and thought, huh, what if?
And then you made the thing and it worked.
And that Experience is so fundamental to the creator economy experience as a player in the creator economy and whether that again whether that wheels a service or a course or a digital download or Brand a content that you're trying to get brand deals for it doesn't matter what it is.
All of us have had to make a wheel because there's There's nothing like that because even in a business Unless you are the founder of a larger enterprise and you're on the product team and you're making a product that didn't exist before, that I think is fundamentally different because it is either A, collective or B, building on something that already existed.
Like, hey, this wheel is round.
We have a hexagon on a peg.
Let's make it a round wheel instead of a hexagon.
It'll roll better.
people who are on product teams or people who are like product marketing, things like that, will have experienced that.
But when you go from absolute zero, I don't know, it's more than even a blank page syndrome.
There are people who have not experienced that true creation from zero, or they have tried it a couple times and they quit after three, four days because it's just, there is no feedback loop.
There's like, it just does not happen the way it does in other professional capacities.
And this is why creators are truly modern, are entrepreneurs.
They're just doing it in a scale that is aligned with the individual versus enterprise.
Like most creators are not trying to make billion dollar valuations.
They're not trying to raise capital.
They're not trying to, you know, exit in the traditional sense.
But I'm telling you to get that first dollar, that first inbound inquiry, even if it doesn't become a sale, just the first time you're like, hey, I've been following your content, you're doing amazing things, what is the cost to work with you?
And they say, you know what?
I respect you and I'm still following you but I can't afford that today or I'm not buying that today.
That first, even that first note, what you realize is, That only happened because of the things that I created.
And so what we create as creators is not just content.
It's our own manifestation of value and it's our own sense of, of meaning.
We, we ascribe meaning to the things we make because otherwise it's just a rock that's not round yet.
That is true and that's a great description of it.
It's creating in some ways very much from nothing.
You have an idea, you put it out there, you develop it, and you get that feedback that yes it has value and it's one of the hardest things in the world.
It truly is.
And that's what we talk about in the gym.
And that's what makes people feel a sense of belonging, is people who get it.
Other people who have felt that high of doing it, the low of being in that long ramp before it takes off.
Or some people who had a high start and have a slight decay and they're hitting a little bit of an ebb in their success.
That's when, like these are the moments, the equator economy is a war of attrition.
You succeed by persevering longer than the competition.
And then your secret to doing that is to not do it alone.
And so having people who get it, who can be there with you, who can help you talk you off the edge when you're ready to quit and put more wind behind you when you get momentum, that's the secret.
And that's the thing that I wanted to facilitate, but I I am just blown away by watching the process happen because now I'm seeing in a way, so many of the things that I myself wished that I had take place as a creator who had to build things alone, who didn't have validation externally, who didn't really have a great tribe.
I had wonderful friends and colleagues and supportive followers on LinkedIn that I never would have met across the world, many of whom wound up joining the gym, but the access to this hive mind of continuous support, um, has been an unexpected benefit for me as the, as the manager and founder of it, as much as it is for others.
And I think it's just, I see myself in many, I see myself from three years ago in some of the people that join and I'm happy because that means three years from now, these people will be unrecognizably successful because I got to where I am with none of that.
And if they got the same amount of time with all the support that I'm seeing them get, I hope everybody outperforms me.
I hope every member in the gym passes me in every possible metric because they have what I didn't have and they're going to be outstanding.
That's powerful.
That is powerful.
As we wrap up, any takeaways you'd like to leave the listeners with.
Ah.
When it comes to success.
you really can't achieve it in a vacuum, right?
Success at the cost of your wellness, success at the cost of your health, of your relationships is not really true success.
And a lot of creators that understand how long a road it is to achieve success that is holistic, that you don't sacrifice those things, the ones who realize that know that it's going to be a long journey, that it's going to be Again, longer than you expect it to be, it will make you question yourself more than you expect to and And it'll be harder than you think is fair at sometimes But I think with the right accountability partners, not the people who judge you but the people who Know what you're capable of when you are doubting yourself the Critical support the people who can critique you the people who can support you unconditionally and provide optimism when you're feeling down, and the advisors, the people who can give you the advice because they've turned over that stone before.
When you can combine those three types of support, you're able to persevere in that longer journey.
You're able to make that long road.
I just want everybody to remember that the days are extremely long in the creator economy.
You may...
spend eight, ten hours editing a video.
You may take days to put together a podcast or a blog or you may work late at night, the other nine to five, booking stuff if you're working a day job at the same time.
But the years are extremely short.
Looking back, I started my content creation journey in earnest a little over three years ago.
I swear it was like a couple of months.
It doesn't even feel that way.
It doesn't even feel like it was that long.
continuing to show up to keep putting in the partial reps even the ugly posts the ones that aren't fully done the Bad pitches where you get told no by the prospect the Half baked offers that nobody wants to pre-buy all of that in aggregate is worth it and It's something that while it feels lonely.
Sometimes you don't have to go it alone And I really, in my mind, would want everybody to be able to feel that sense of belonging, validation, and encouragement to continue persevering because I really do believe that the creator economy is a path to economic empowerment for people.
Whatever your specific outcome goal looks like, if it's full-time, part-time, diversification, it's a path that we can all take if we decide to go there together.
Well, you have you have definitely encouraged me not just today, but, you know, since I've gotten to know you.
And I really appreciate what you've built the environment you've created.
So let me let me just throw it out there.
If people want to know more about you more about the gym or about what's going on there.
Where do you want them to go.
The main place to go to learn about this, if you want to talk to me directly, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn.
So I'm on LinkedIn.
I'm Mike Phillips with the Flexi Bicep emoji before the mic and a saxophone after Phillips, because there are 80 million of me, 80 million Mike Phillips on LinkedIn.
If you want to learn about the gym, it's join You can learn...
A little bit about what to expect in there.
There is a full 10 minute tour of the inside of the gym on video that you can see it before you join.
And remember that I made the gym as a means of helping people get from zero to one and then go from one to 10 to 20.
So there are different offers that are a lift within everybody's means.
You can join for free.
You can stay a free member forever.
There is no obligation, but if you do want access to higher levels of support, more of these community meetings.
You can try out being a pro member or higher.
And we do have a seven day free trial right now where you can become a pro member for free for seven days.
And you do not have to even put in a credit card, just walk into the gym, learn where the equipment is, learn where the water fountain is, learn where the juice bar is, get a feel for things, join us for a few meetings.
No pressure, no expectations, but I want you to get a sense of what it could be like to have that sort of community and support around you.
So that's joined on marketing muscle.com.
You can connect with me on LinkedIn.
I also produce content on YouTube.
My channel is hashtag marketing muscle there.
I love it.
So if you're listening, we're going to put all those links in the show notes.
Definitely check out the gym, follow Mike on LinkedIn and YouTube.
He, he writes and creates some incredibly pertinent information and that, that I learned from, I always take something away from it.
So I would encourage you to check it out.
Mike, this has been a blast.
I knew it would be.
I was so pumped.
Oh yeah.
to get it on the calendar.
So thanks for joining me today.
Always fun, you're a great host.
I felt like you do such a great job in preparing and bringing the best out of me.
So always so much fun.
I feel like there is a synergy that happens in these calls.
Anytime you want me back, man, I am here.
Awesome, man.
Awesome.