Adam Torres and Nick Shaw discuss RP Strength.
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Show Notes:
RP Strength is helping millions around the world through its apps and educational content. In this episode, Adam Torres and Nick Shaw, CEO of RP Strength, explore the growth of RP Strength, culture and plans for the future.
About Nick Shaw
Nick Shaw co-founder of RP Strength (RP), a multi-million dollar health and fitness company. Nick helped coach numerous world-class athletes including CrossFit Games champions, international medalists in weightlifting, UFC fighters, Navy SEALs, and Olympians.
About RP Strength
At RP, they live and breathe fitness, nutrition and sport, as well as educating whoever wants to learn. Whether in university classrooms, international scientific seminars or at their local gyms and sports events, they love to share our know-how so that more and more people from all walks of life can apply and benefit from it. Though all members of our highly qualified team also live the fitness lifestyle, what sets RP apart is our commitment to data driven analysis over personal anecdotes. Everything they do is built on a foundation of peer-reviewed literature and experimentally confirmed theory.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today’s guest is Nick Shaw and he’s CEO over at RP Strengths. Nick, welcome to the show.
Hey, thanks for having me on, Matt. I really appreciate it. Great to be here. All right, Nick. So RP Strength and talk more about your work and , a lot of listeners that tune into this show because , they’re either wanting to get in shape , or they want to get further in the, in the better shape.
So I want to get into RP Strength a bit and kind of the work that you’re doing there as well. Well, and I guess just to get us kicked off we’ll start this episode the way that we start them all with what we like to call our mission matters minute. So Nick at mission matters, our mission and our aim and our goal is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs and executives.
That’s our mission. Nick, what mission matters to you? Yeah, ours is all about fitness really is getting people in the best shape of their lives. And a lot of our core demographic at RP is people that are already into fitness and they’re sort of a little confused, frustrated by all the, it’s just so much misinformation out there.
So, what we do is we really just cut through all that and bring an evidence based approach to it. We say, hey, here’s what you really got to do to get in shape. And so what we’re really doing and what we’ve done, you know, probably the last year, plus it’s positioned ourselves as, The go to place in fitness.
If you want to know anything about hypertrophy training, and that just means basically growing muscle. So if you’re a male, you want to get in really good shape. You want to get a little bit. Basically, you come to RP and you go to our YouTube channel, and that’s going to be the spot. That’s our whole mission.
And it’s fun, you know, giving back, helping fund high pressure training, training in the evidence based space in fitness, and hopefully setting up some scholarships here in the future for people that want to go to school to study kinesiology and things like that. That’s our mission. We want to be the place to go for all things fitness.
And you guys have been doing this for a while. Am I wrong on that? Like you guys have been, have helped a lot of people. I mean, you got, you have a big platform. Yes. Yeah, so this goes back to about 2012 when they first started. So we’ve been around for a while now. Yeah, you guys are old school. I call that old school at this point, right?
That’s amazing. I love it. Yeah, it is really cool though, because we kind of repositioned ourselves. Like we launched our Hackers Free Training app a little over a year ago, and that is really Kind of came at the perfect time because our YouTube channel really started to blow up and it’s probably the number one Fitness YouTube channel on the whole internet right now.
It’s just been this like perfect combination of those two melding together , essentially if you want to know anything about how to get in better shape and get more jacked I guess the best way to To view it, like you want to come check out our YouTube channel. And like, it’s just really been really cool to see it all come together here the last year, because we haven’t been around for a while, but we’ve gotten really kind of clear who it is we want to go after and who we work best for.
Yeah. What do you think , , some of the secrets to the success are like , , to grow it so high to grow the, , not the YouTube channel specifically, but the platform overall. Like, why do you think so many people are attracted to it? Yeah, so it kind of balances the best of both worlds.
It’s like we have people that are high level athletes, so they can, walk the walk, but we also have people that are PhDs, that are researchers, they know all of what the evidence actually says, so it’s no fluff, it’s no BS, so it’s like we can walk the walk, and we can talk the talk. And my buddy, my co founder, Dr.
Mike, man, he’s just a personality, and he’s really nailed it on YouTube, and people just really, really appreciate it. Or entertained and educated from him. And so people love that because, you know, if you remember back to , high school or college, he had people that weren’t able to keep you engaged and check out, you can’t really learn it.
And so he’s able to crack jokes. He’s funny. And he’s really great at taking complex ideas and breaking them down. So people come, they watch all this, like, Oh, wow, that makes sense. Oh, and by the way, this guy’s hilarious. And so it just keeps them engaged. They want to keep coming back. They want to hear, you know, the little crazy stuff.
And so people can really stick to it. And it really tends to just sink in and be easier for them to understand and then go and, do the work. Yeah, that’s really cool. Talk to me a little bit about more about the fitness side of things. Like, where do you recommend people start when they start engaging in your platform and overall, like , where do they start?
Yeah, so I’m going to say there’s probably two best kind of tips to start one is this one’s a little bit tricky, but a lot of times I want to say, hey, you got to start with some type of fitness that you really enjoy because you don’t enjoy. You’re probably not going to stick with it very long. But having said that, I think if people could start sort of a bare minimum of lifting weights two times a week, That’s going to really change the game for people, help them get them in a lot better shape and just sort of feel better all around.
So I think that’s probably like the best way to get started. It doesn’t have to be anything crazy. Just start lifting. Just start doing something. So that’s probably number one. Number two would be every time you eat a meal, you know, whether that’s two, three, four times a day, whatever that is, Your meal should be centered around some type of lean protein, you know, that’s your usual, your chicken, your ground turkey, your dairy, yogurt, eggs, you can do fish, you know, something like that.
And if you start a meal based around that, it’s going to help you be a little bit more fuller for longer. And if you’re also, Starting to weight train, you’re going to really see some body composition changes. And that’s where we really specialize, is helping people change their body composition. So that means losing fat and gaining muscle.
And when you do that, whoo, you know, again, even if you are an entrepreneur, you’re in the business, you should start feeling so much better. You have more energy, you’re going to think better. It’s just, there’s so many benefits to it. Where do you find a lot of people and when they just start and just to set it up where I’m talking to the demographic of those that maybe you know they go to the gym every once in a while they don’t see like maybe the gains they want or they don’t see you know get the necessary result and they kind of fall off the wagon get back up come on every start every once in a while like the stop and starters where do you find a lot of people like kind of go like kind of miss the mark when they’re getting going like on their fitness journey like where do you find them?
I don’t know. Yeah. Yeah, so I think a lot of times when people do that and they hop on for a while and then they hop off is they make the mistake of thinking that when they come back, they have to be like all in and it has to be all or nothing. And so that all or nothing mentality, which like, Hey, I get it.
Right. I kind of think like that from time to time, but for sure, it’s a really big mistake because you end up. Getting so kind of disappointed or distracted by yourself when you make one little slip up. You miss a workout or you kind of go out and eat something that you know you shouldn’t have. A lot of times people have this mindset.
We’re like, oh, well, I, you know, I missed this. Wow, well, you know, my whole day’s ruined. Now I’m just gonna eat a bunch of junk or whatever. It’s like, no, no, no, no, no. If you do make that little slip up, you make that little mistake, you just get right back on track and that’s kind of the secret. So it’s the idea of just being consistent.
More than trying to be perfect. So we always like to say consistency is more important than perfection. Yeah, you know the same kind of applies to anything in life, but that’s probably the biggest mistake that I people see. The mistake that people make. Talk a little bit about the app. The app and like how people engage with that.
Like I see it’s a diet coach app and just some other things you have there too. Talk a little bit more about the apps. Yeah, totally. So we have two apps. So we used to just have a diet coach app, and so this would be something where you go in, you tell it your goals, you’re like, hey, I want to lose, you know, 10 pounds over 10 weeks, and it’s going to lay out your macros for every single meal.
So you’re like, okay, well, I need to eat this much protein, carbs and fat. So it’s definitely for someone that’s, I would say, more of like an intermediate, even more maybe advanced in the fitness space. If you’re brand new we actually just came out with like a, Ultimate beginner bundle. It’s kind of, if you’re really brand new to all this stuff, you need to start there because , you want things to be as simple as possible.
That sounds like the nutrition side. On the fitness side, if you’re into lifting weights, you kind of just get confused. It’s like, man, there’s just so much stuff. Like, I don’t know, what’s the right form? How many reps? How many sets? How much weight should I be using? All this. It can be a little complicated.
It can be a little intimidating. So what we did is we created the RP Hypertrophy app. And it kind of lays everything out for you. So you don’t really have to think too much. You can use some preloaded templates and it’ll pick the exercises for you. And really all you have to do is enter a weight in week one and then it’s going to tell you kind of how many reps to do.
It’s going to give you a little video of tutorials. So again, I would say this is for someone that’s already been lifting, is familiar with good form already, probably more intermediate advanced. Everything we do at RPStrength is more so tailored for folks that are intermediate or advanced. You’re brand new, you might want to start with some coaching, maybe hire a personal trainer or something like that in person until you get the hang of it.
Then after you do that, you’d probably be great for the RP apps. That makes a lot of sense. And you can see that like just the way, the way it’s set up. So this is, is this trying to get something, this is trying to get somebody that’s maybe been kind of like , they’ve grown up lifting, they’ve done a lot of lifting and some other things, but maybe they want to get to that next level.
Am I off on that? Like that’s kind of , the target market. Yeah, no, I think that’s pretty fair. Basically, people are just, they’re kind of. I’m tired of all this like BS information out there that maybe works a little bit but there’s no like kind of long term plan or not really super clear what to do like after you die to lose some weight and it can just throw you back into the wild.
So what we see a lot of times is people get a little fed up with like, I’m just kind of sick of trying all this random stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I just want someone to tell me exactly what to do. And when you know that person, you’re ready to go. You’re going to be perfect for us. I get it. I get it. What’s some of the vision for the CEO of the company? Like, what’s some of the vision of what you want to do with this platform going forward? Like, let us in, the behind the scenes a little bit. Yeah, yeah. So a lot of it goes back to, , really being authentic and being ourselves. And that’s something that I’ve.
Probably the biggest thing that I’ve realized here the last couple of years and kind of just leaning back into who we really are, we just really love fitness and we love people that are also serious about fitness, just really take it. They want to get in the best shape of their lives. And we just started talking to those people, marketing to those people.
And it’s worked great. And so it’s like, what’s, what’s the vision? Well, we want to be the number one go to place on the internet. And on YouTube, when people want to search for hypertrophy, there’s a reason we named it the Hypertrophy App. Because if you don’t know what that word is, okay, maybe you’re not quite ready for RP yet.
But when hypertrophy is, and you’re like, yeah, I want to, I want to train to grow some muscle. I want hypertrophy training. And you start searching for that on YouTube, or internet, wherever. We want to be that spot that’s going to pop up. You’re like, oh, okay, these guys know what they’re talking about. And so that’s kind of vision, sort of one.
And I talked a little bit about this earlier. But as we’ve seen the YouTube channel rise, like we’re probably going to be at 2 million followers here or subscribers here next month, which is pretty crazy. But as we start to see lots of wins and benefit from that, we want to be able to pay it forward. So it’s giving back to research labs all over the world that are doing research into fitness.
And then we also want to be able to set up some scholarships because we do have one at my alma mater, University of Michigan. We don’t really have a lot of control over it. They kind of pick it. But you can all meet. Basically most of it goes into the endowment and you can only actually give money to students.
It’s a very small percentage. So what we want to do is we’re setting up a non profit where we can have kids that are like, you know what? I’m really into fitness. I love it. It’s my passion. I want to go to school to study this. We want to be a source where we can then help give out scholarships for these folks.
And so it’s like, well, the better the YouTube channel does, the better our apps do, the more we can put right back into it. Hmm. And so it just becomes this win, win, win all around for everyone. Like that’s kind of really the vision that we want. And that sounds amazing. That’s great. it’s kind of like, it’s kind of the 360 of it.
Like, that sounds awesome, because you’re going to be giving back as well and you’re also I can see it kind of the flywheel of it, like it’s feeding off each other, and then it just gets bigger, right? Like, more people know about it, you’re giving more, , you’re obviously receiving more, the company’s growing, like, it’s, it’s awesome.
Yeah, I get it, I see the vision. Yeah, that’s it, and it’s great because then everyone wins, everyone benefits. Yeah. Did you come from, I’m curious Nick, did you come from a marketing background? No, not really. Not really, per se. Yeah. . How did you get the idea to join this? I’m just cause it’s an interesting platform.
How’d you get the idea? Yeah. And this goes way back to my buddy and I, when we started, we were just digging fitness and we were coaches and we just thought, Hey, if we can just coach people, but we realized that we had this opportunity to, to scale the one on one coaching model, because we kind of know we have sort of algorithms.
It’s like, you know what, if someone’s trying to lose weight and they stall out, this assumes that they’re actually following the program though, of course, of course. we know exactly what the next step is, like we know what we’re going to do, because we’ve done it so many times that it basically became systematized.
And so we created these original diet templates, they were like Excel, PDF files, but helped prove out the model. And then we use a lot of that because usually in digital products, the margins are crazy. Yeah. But we knew we could use that to basically, because we were bootstrapped. To use that fund to help paying for on the back end internally to help building out apps.
So that’s what we were doing all along. And then, when I talk about being more authentic, I kind of got lost in this land of, I thought it was better to be more like Switzerland. Mm hmm. , it’s just like be neutral. Don’t really ruffle any feathers ever. Just be very Vanilla. I was completely wrong on that and it wasn’t until I really took a deep dive and started taking a lot of marketing courses, certifications, and learning more that I kind of figured that out.
I was like, oh , that’s actually completely backwards. And so it makes sense when you start watching our content and you see my buddy, because he makes jokes, he’s definitely not a PC, and I was always really nervous about that. But people love it. It’s funny. It’s education. It’s informative. It’s like, that’s what people want.
They want to be, you know, that mixture of, well, they learn stuff, but they’re also laughing. They’re having a good time. People love it. And so it’s like, I’m more than happy to admit I was completely wrong on that. And we’ve done a complete 180 on it since. Man, it’s amazing. It’s amazing. It’s an amazing story.
Dory and I have zero doubt that you’re gonna be over 2 million subscribers really shortly. You’re already at one point over 1.85 or nine or something like, like I already see it. And you then you put out quite a few videos too with over 2000 videos. So you guys are like, are putting in work. Like I love to see that when I see a channel that has like substantial catalog of it means it like that’s not easy.
You guys are putting in work. That’s amazing. Yeah, so actually when you go back to talking about the vision, that’s actually really, really important because I didn’t mention that, but this huge part of what we do is we just give out so much free information. Like it’s endless. So my buddy is a PhD, he’s a former professor of sports science at a couple different universities.
You could go watch all that and it’s like getting a free college education. It’s an exercise science, kinesiology, like for free, just from the YouTube channel. But again, it’s our way of give. That’s what we do. We give education. We give knowledge to people and we have so many people that they’re like, Hey, I didn’t even go buy your products.
I just watched a bunch of your videos and I started implementing it and Hey, I got in the best shape of my life and now I’m down 40, 50 pounds. Wow. What does that do? Right? It just, it kind of builds that reciprocity where it’s like, they see that we’re just always giving. And so they’re like, Hey, I want to go and support these guys.
So maybe the support is just to watch the YouTube channel. Great. Now that’s doing really well. But then we also have, our apps and stuff in the back end for the people that want to take it one step further. And so, yeah, it’s like all about the giving mentality as well. So that’s a huge part of the vision.
Well, Nick, this has been great having you on the show today, getting to know more about you. Also about RP strength. If somebody is watching or listening to this and they want to learn more, they want to follow the journey. They want to connect. how do they do that? What’s the best way? Yeah, just go to YouTube and just search RP Strength.
Or you can probably just go to Google and search for rpstrength. com and you’re going to find our website. But, yeah, I would really tell people to check out the YouTube channel. It’s just, man, there’s so much great content on there. And it’s funny. You’re going to learn a lot. You’re going to get some laughs.
That’s what I would say to start. Awesome. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll put the links to the YouTube channel, to the website, to everything in the show notes. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with us and you haven’t hit the subscribe button yet, I welcome you.
Hit that subscribe button. We have many more mission based individuals coming up on the line and we don’t want you to miss a thing. And Nick, again, thank you so much for coming on the show. Appreciate it. Adam, thanks for having me on, man. It’s great being here.