Alicia McKenzie (00:00.034)

You haven't earned balance yet. have not earned balance.

Yeah, if you want ballots go work a nine-to-five job and cool like I got nothing against that like my parents grew up working nine to five jobs So you want to become the 1 % you want to stand out you want to be something other than average it comes with trade-offs and it comes with those choices and Have you earned the pass? No, you haven't fucking earned anything yet There is no balance go work your ass off for a few years and then you might get a little bit more balanced

Thanks.

Alicia McKenzie (00:26.802)

Welcome to Married to the Startup. I'm Alicia McKenzie, a wellness entrepreneur and digital creator. Alongside me is my amazing husband, George, the CEO who's always ready for a new challenge. We've been navigating marriage and running startups for over a decade, and we're here to share the real, unfiltered journey with you. Join us for insights and candid conversations about integrating love, family, and entrepreneurship. This is Married to the Startup, where every day is a new adventure.

episode 61 of Married to the Startup. I am your host, Alessi McKenzie.

And I am the co-host, George Mackenzie. I said it right this time.

job, baby. today we have a special guest. Joining us is Nick Shaw. He is the founder and CEO of Renaissance Periodization, also known as RP Strength, which he bootstrapped from nothing. So this is a really fascinating story. Nick, go ahead and introduce yourself. I don't think I can do you justice.

Stop it. You're far too kind. Anyways, thanks for having me on great to be here Yeah, so co-founder of RP strengths along with dr. Mike was the face of our YouTube channel We started in something like 2011 maybe 2012 the official dates kind of it's been so long that I don't know what the technical official date is But yeah, we started just like a couple

Nick Shaw (01:53.006)

you know, gym bros, bodybuilders who like lifting weights. We were just a couple of meatheads. I always liked the joke. Maybe slightly smarter than meatheads because we both went to Michigan, but yeah, we just love lifting. And that's literally how we got started. Never in a million years did we think it would become, I guess, kind of what it is today, but it's pretty cool. It's been an awesome ride experience and kind of wouldn't trade it for anything else. been awesome.

Yeah. And my experience with RP strength is that my weightlifting coach, I was competing in the 75 kilo weight class and I was trying to figure out like the best way to diet and get all my macros and find my protein. And Jacob was like, just try RP strength. And I'm like, I don't want to try it, but fine, I'll try it. And this was back in 2000. my gosh. Was it maybe 2014?

15, somewhere around there. And then you guys were still really small then. So it was very much like found it, tried it, loved it, and then used it for rehab and recovery post childbirth number four and five.

Right. And then you guys develop the app and then you just exploded and watching the growth and the people just fall in love with it and use it and recommend it. Like it was just it was really fascinating to watch.

Yeah. I also used it. I remember back in the spreadsheet days, doing the spreadsheet, spreadsheet days for the macros. And then also the, the exercise program. I was doing that as well on the spreadsheet based stuff. So I guess you were saying, you know, you guys were just meatheads in the gym. So how did you come up with the idea to start a company? And then like, did you see a problem in the market and you're like, Hey, I'm going to go solve this or how did it come about?

Nick Shaw (03:48.142)

Yeah, so this is like really early, let's call it 2012, probably just sounds better. So yeah, 2014, 2015, it would have been my guess when you said that you started, that sounds about right. So I graduated from University of Michigan in 2009. Mike was two years ahead of me in school, was getting his master's degree at Appalachian State. So we both were graduating at the same time. He was moving to New York City to become a trainer for like a year. And he's like, Hey, what are you doing? I had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

He's like, why don't you come out here? Why don't you get a job as a trainer? So we both moved out to Manhattan. We were training people. Now these are folks that we were training people, like some of the smartest, you know, most, I don't even know what the words describe them. You know, top hedge fund people were, you know, literally hundreds of millions of, five billions of dollars sometimes. So it was awesome, awesome experience. But at the same time, like we were training ourselves and we thought we kind of knew what we were doing, but we would see some questionable things from other people at the gym. You know, like the, big bodybuilders were like, wow, they do things.

really differently than we do. like, huh, that's really interesting. You try to talk to them and ask them questions and the answers that they would give would be interesting to say the least. And so the whole idea of RP at the very, very beginning was like, all right, if we get people that are really well educated, so you've got like PhDs, you got a master's degree in sports science and all that. Let's take the evidence-based approach and then let's combine it with people who also love sports, actually love competing and all that. And if you have both of those together,

Gee whiz, it's really hard to argue with that because a lot of times if you talk to someone in fitness, they're one or the other. So like example would be like a 300 pound bodybuilder, the typical meathead. And you ask them questions and they can kind of barely string together coherent sentences. And you're like, huh, I don't know how much I can gather. Like what can I get from this person? I'm joking here a little bit. Like I've got all the respect in the world for those guys.

It's true though.

Nick Shaw (05:43.342)

Like a little bit, right? There's always a little bit of truth to these kind of, you stereotypes. And then on the flip side, you've got someone that maybe weighs like 140 pounds and can like read you every PubMed study. then you're like, do you really even train though? Like it's just, if you get both, really can't argue with that. And so that was really the whole premise of starting RP. So yeah, we kind of thought that there was a gap in that if you could combine people with really high level like genetics and work ethic, and you provide an evidence-based routine, like

you're going to have some awesome results. And that's really kind of what we base everything on. You guys might appreciate this. the Renaissance, so was like the rebirth, was the rebirth of evidence-based nutrition into the space and training. And then also there's a hedge fund out on Long Island called Renaissance Technologies, which was formed by Jim Simons, who's no longer living. But he, I think it was like in the seventies, maybe, or eighties, rather than hiring stock pickers and all that stuff, which is kind of random.

He hired mathematicians and basically created a formula on how the market works. And I don't know if you guys know anything about, you know, rent tech. So in, when we were training all these people in New York, they would always mention rent tech. We're like, is that? Then we finally looked into it. They created an algorithm that essentially beat the market and it beat the market for, know, for 20, 30 years straight. had the medallion fund, which crazy returns and all that. We're like, huh, what if we could kind of create an algorithm for fitness? It's that was kind of what we set out to do. So.

People want to look up that story. It's pretty cool. Jim Simon's Red Sunsack that one, Jason.

So, so when you started and I'm, I remember personally like the spreadsheet stuff and it was great. So when did you guys decide, like you went from the, you were trainers, you were training in hedge funds guy, hedge fund guys, and you said you had an idea, you thought there was a gap in the market. And what was that light bulb moment where you're like, Hey, this is a real company. Now this is not just like the side hustle we did on the side. This is, this is something.

Nick Shaw (07:40.722)

So when we got into online coaching, so Mike was doing it first, I wasn't even into online coaching, called 2012. We were referring people back and forth to one another because he was living in Tennessee, I was living in New York. So like, hey, let's start a business and just join forces. And then I started helping him coach people online. And at the time I was, you know, 95 % of my income and revenue, which was not a lot, well, back in the day, being a personal trainer in New York City, was from training people in person. So I'm having to hustle, I take the subway all over the city.

climb all the subway, you know, stairs in and out, walk a bunch of blocks. You got to get up early. You got to be out late. And I was like, I just can't keep doing this forever. I'm like, this sucks. You know, shout out to all the people that are trainers for, you know, an actual career. But I was like, I wonder if there's a way to sit at home and help coach people. Cause when I started doing it, I was like, wow, I can write like a couple of programs in the span of an hour and make some decent money. And I don't have to leave my apartment. I was like, light bulb moment, huh? How can we scale this?

So Mike and I were coaching a ton of people online and this was at early days of Facebook when like you could post something and people actually saw it. Did people actually use Facebook? Like nowadays, whatever. don't even think no one uses Facebook anymore or meta, I guess. And so it was all just based off of working mouth and referrals. We ended up scaling that a little bit. We hired some, some other coaches, which, you know, Mike was in a PhD program at East Tennessee State University was like best in America.

So he had all these other people that were really interested in sports and were really motivated, you know, because they're getting a PhD program. So we hired a bunch of those folks to help us coach. And so we went from, know, I don't know, let's say you can have 30 to 50 clients yourself to now we've got probably a couple hundred. And then the, the inherent limitation of coaching is that you're, it's still hard to scale because it's just people coaching people. So it's all time-based. So we, uh, we created an ebook in 2014. Are you guys familiar with Juggernaut training systems? Chad Leslie Smith.

Yeah.

Nick Shaw (09:33.326)

When we released that ebook, we didn't even sell it on our own site. we I think the only way people could pay us was like manual payout payments for coaching. So it's like Completely. Yeah, completely. All right, you know embarrassing right you look back at the early days. I can't believe we actually did that stuff But that did really well. That was another light bulb moment. Okay, this is now scalable The information is scalable into an ebook. Yeah, we sold like maybe a thousand copies and it was selling for real 25 30 bucks

So in the span of a week, you make $25,000, $30,000 right? Huh.

Nick Shaw (10:09.134)

We're onto something that's really something. It would take a really long time to coach that many people to make that amount of money. So we're like, okay, this is a way to scale it. And I remember telling Mike, I'm like, Mike, we got to figure out how to scale the one on one coaching process. And he's like, okay, give me the weekend. And he literally took a weekend and created some Excel spreadsheets, sent them over my way. And I was like, holy shit. I was like, this could be something. And so.

And this is prior to AI, which is even more mind blowing that Mike is just that brilliant, like to be able to sit there and visualize what he wants it to look like, produce it, and then shoot it over to you in 48 hours.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, yes. So Mike makes brilliant. He really is like, did you guys take ACT or SAT where you were like, okay, okay. Um, in Michigan, that's AC. The highest score you can get is 36 Mike out of 36. So he is super, super smart. Way higher than I got by the way. Like I won't even say my score. It's embarrassing compared to that. But,

So too.

That's it.

Nick Shaw (11:12.654)

So we knew if we were coaching people, we knew like what the first step would be like, okay, someone's struggling to lose weight and they're following it. Cool. Here's where we reduce calories. And then if that sells out, here's where we do it next. And here's where we do it next. So we kind of know, right? Like there is a little bit of like algorithm built in, obviously it's a little bit more advanced than that. So he already knew that. So he's like, okay, well, I'm just going to go in and kind of like create these phases because we generally know. And then we launched those in February of 2015.

And I remember because you guys will really appreciate this, I was manually sending out every single one when we first started telling them. Like manually copy, pasting emails, attaching the files, all that good stuff. And then quickly I realized, holy crap, this isn't scalable, this isn't sustainable either. And then like a few months after we launched them is when people started posting about the results on social media. Now again, this is 2015, so this is pre like everything's paid, you can't get any traction.

So we got a lot of traction out of it and Instagram was a killer platform for us. People love sharing their before and afters and all that. And it's just such a visually appealing platform. And obviously when it comes to fitness, it's just kind of like, you see that transformation. There's an inherent like kind of emotional response to it. Like, holy shit, that's awesome. I want that. And it really started to take off. And then that's when I had to look into solutions is so like,

how do we automate this? Because I can't send hundreds of these a day because it's just, no one can send that many emails a day. Without AI. think it's with AI now, Yeah.

Yeah.

George McKenzie (12:43.052)

I think it's a powerful story to founders too. Like I talk to people a lot and their first instances or instinct is, Hey, I need to raise money because I need to do X, Y, or Z. And I think what you were just showing is a lot of the entrepreneurs that do make it it's, you you grind it out, you do whatever it takes to make it work out of the gate. And then once you start to get some traction in the market and you're like, okay, I've got something that works. Now I can, you know,

scale up, can find solutions to meet problems that I'm just throwing labor at today.

We were very much lean startup, MVP model, but I didn't know that was a term yet. later then read the book and I was like, huh. This is literally what we did. Yeah, because the, the MVP, the minimum viable product were the templates. And then once I started to do well, cause again, you know, these are, mean, I don't know the exact number of files. Let's call it, there's 20 total files. Let's like, that's it. You build them. Like they're that's it. And it costs you no more.

I did this.

Nick Shaw (13:43.606)

So the margins are sky high. And so we did quite well with that, but we always kind of knew like, hey, we need to make this into an app at some point. So that's where we were using all that high margin of the revenue coming in to then on the backend. And again, this is a couple of your process, of course, building apps isn't something you just kind of do overnight.

then I think back in 2015, 16, 17, making an app was hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Yeah, it wasn't like it is today where there's, you know, kits for everything and you can, you know, every app looks about the same and you just, you know, change the back end change the wording.

Because I remember everyone was like, I want to make an app. And then when you finally go down the process of trying to make an app, you're like, holy shit, I can't afford to make an app.

Yeah, that's when people even nowadays not nowadays a little bit different I guess especially with the rapid rise of AI and so, you know the next couple years might be really really interesting for apps But yeah, I remember having lots of conversations with people. They're like, hey, I'm an influencer. I'm a creator I'm gonna create my own app and I was like, okay Interesting I was like, you know much about it? Like but yeah, I've got a lot of people that follow me So I should sell them something. Okay, I get that logic

Alicia McKenzie (14:47.798)

I a door.

Nick Shaw (14:58.062)

And so I always told people, especially now, because there's some different coaching platforms out there, I'm like, all right, go use one of these. It's already pre-built and get like 80 to 90 % of the way there, what you want that other 10 % that you really, really want or like, or it's like a nice to have is not worth the headache of building it yourself. Like use the custom built stuff that you guys were talking about. So worth it.

So how did you guys make that decision of, we're going to, we're going to build the app now. And then you guys obviously aren't app developers. was it, Hey, I'm going to just research, call people, figure it out.

Unless Mike does that on the side too.

No, I wish that'd be that'd be much better. Sorry So there's kind of a three-part process here the first was we talked to an app developer flew down to Miami inspect some stuff out and spent like roughly forty to fifty thousand dollars I think just on that and You know because you could ask Mike this nowadays and so recently I just joked about some of this to him on a call literally yesterday and I was talking with him, but we we the guy and I won't say his name any of that stuff, but he heavily insinuated that it would cost

You know, let's say it's a hundred thousand dollars to build the app. Okay. Let's do it. And that we had, were already like 40, 50 K in. So this is another additional like a hundred K on top of that, which we're like, okay, that's fine. And then he finally comes back with a proposal that was a literally seven X and we're like, come on, bro. Like, we're like, that was a hundred. He's like, no, no, it's like seven 50. And we're like, I don't know if we can do this.

Alicia McKenzie (16:22.359)

What?

Nick Shaw (16:32.256)

So we shopped around and we found someone else and then they were like, okay, we get it. And they started to build it. And then the guy that was leading the project decided to one day just up and leave and go on sabbatical. And like nothing happened for a while. And no one understood what was going on. So we just sat there and we're, you know, starting to get frustrated now. This is our second attempt. And then the third attempt was someone that had been using the RP products for a long time, Andrew Zay.

Reshot the mic and was like, can I help you guys build net? I like, cause he had reached out before. Yeah. He had reached out before and like, I, know, we think we're okay. We were, you know, working with some other people. Obviously that was complete failure. And so he came in and we're like, shoot your shot. And that was, call it like, hmm, timelines are a little hazy, you know, but let's call it early 2018. And he is our CTO technical founder to this day. So he's basically the third founder with, with Mike and I. So.

That's really cool. That's really cool how he just kind of slid into your DMs and now he's your CTO.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it's me, Mike and Andrew. Yep, the three of us is kind of the founders of our P.

George McKenzie (17:48.218)

So I guess, so it sounds like you guys were bootstrapped. So which is, you know, kudos to you. It's a hard way to do it because you have to, like you said, you have to squirrel away the profits from the high gross margin stuff and save it to build the app versus a lot of people want to enjoy those profits and then try to raise money to,

build the next thing as opposed to invest in their own company.

I guess I at least have the mindset of, I'm not like a frivolous person where I just like to spend tons of money on all sorts of fancy stuff. I've definitely done that a little bit, but, you know, Mike and I, again, most of us at RP were all kind of the same where it's like, okay, we just kind of invest a bunch of it into like boring index funds and things like that. Like, obviously we put money back into RP, but, yeah, it's like we're out, you know, flying private all over and visiting.

I, you know, listen, I've been on some nice vacations and stuff like that, but it's not like, it's not crazy. Cause I don't get that. It's like, I grew up like very lower middle-class rural, like small town. So the idea of having money in general is just this kind of like, I'm, I'm astonished by it. Like I remember early on when we first started making a good amount of money, just being like, I can't believe what's happening right now.

I actually remember setting in Miami one time when we had a template sale and just staring at the website and the e-commerce thing, just seeing all the purchases come in. And I just remember thinking, this is the coolest thing in the world that I've ever seen in my life. And I'm like, I don't ever want to forget this moment because not that many people get to experience it. So it's like this infinite gratitude. I vividly remember just sitting there in my hotel room by myself, cause we were down there filming or something, just being like,

Nick Shaw (19:45.228)

I can't believe what's happening in front of my eyes.

And I think what's really cool is that a lot of founders are like, we have a scaling problem. We have a scaling problem. We need to scale. You don't have a scaling problem. You have a sales problem. If you don't have a product that people will buy, there is nothing to scale. Right. And I think you guys figured out right away that you have a product that sells. And then from there, you're like, OK, now we need to scale. It's you got it right. Right. Like, there's a lot of people that are like, we need to scale, but

That's not actually what you're talking about.

Yeah. So our philosophy was, cause again, like if you were to ask me in 2015, like about scaling it, but I don't even know you're talking about. So Mike and I were always on the opinion of like, all right, let's get people results. Let's deliver something that's good. Now again, you gotta remember what's good is a very relative term. We were selling Excel templates that were not fancy. They did not look nice, but what was the thing that actually worked? They got people results that I could guarantee people. And so like at the beginning it was people saying, do these work?

Okay, fair, right? Cause they're new. And then it wasn't too much longer where that wasn't a question anymore. wasn't a question of do these work. It's like, am I willing and able to do the work that it takes because they absolutely work and you cannot, you can't argue with that. So it's like treat people well. So again, for the longest time, I was running a lot of our customer service early on and you know, replying to all that stuff. was a 24 seven, 365 time consuming thing.

Nick Shaw (21:16.386)

But again, hopefully it helps set the reputation of like, RP is not going to screw you over and their products work. So like, feel okay. I feel fine paying a hundred dollars for this because Mike and I have tried to frame it as when we were in college, we couldn't afford one-on-one coaching with people. And we knew a lot of other folks couldn't, but could we maybe scrap together enough money? Like even if it was a couple of people pushing in to buy like a set of temples for a hundred bucks. Yeah, it probably could. so we just, rather than limiting

the amount of people you can reach with, with a higher, you know, price point. just were like, all right. So kind of by, I don't want to say accident, but in a bit, we then did scale it because it was scalable. But yeah, make a good product that works and then hopefully treat people well. like, probably going to do a lot of the heavy lifting.

Yeah. did, so was it a conscious decision that we're not taking outside capital? And you know, was that influenced at all by like, when you were in New York working with all the PE guys and the venture capitalists, you're like, yeah, I don't know if I want to get involved in that world.

Honestly, there was never a need to because, I mean...

Because you were just that good.

Nick Shaw (22:24.142)

We made a lot of money because again, we didn't have offices. We just had like laptops and I worked from home in my office, same with Mike, wherever he was. And then we hired coaches. was the same thing even nowadays. Like we're so a hundred percent remote. So we had pretty high margins from the beginning, which then just allowed us a lot of app patrol to, if we needed to, you know, cause again, they sell digital products for, you know, 2015 to probably let's call it like 2020.

It's a pretty long runway to have high margins. if we needed to, and then even when we brought on people, was more of like, how do we limit our downside risk? It's like, you know what, let's just do. Yeah. Profit sharing, you know, get people in. like they share and the ups and downs. if shit hits a fan and we fail. Okay. Well, these people, they got skin in the game too. So that, I don't know, that's kind of how we approach it. So we didn't really ever.

have a significant need for capital.

And I think it's, interesting what you just touched on, the culture that you built inside of RP. And then the fact that your CTO was basically a consumer, right? Like someone that used the product and said, Hey, I love this thing. I want to be a part of it. So from your perspective, like you started out, you were a trainer, you're, you know, self described meathead. And then you went from that to, you know,

entrepreneur to business leader and then now you're kind of you move from and maybe you still do the personal training and stuff on the side, but you kind of had to have that switch of I'm an expert in the field to now I'm a leader of a company. Like it's a it's a it's a juxtaposition to say, it's hard to do both. And then it's like you said, you get taken care of people wanting them to feel a part of it and share in the the wins and losses. It's just a different emotional move.

Nick Shaw (24:16.392)

It's, it's, it's very hard. Cause you go from literally being involved in every single thing, basically every single day in the operations of the business. Now again, that comes with trade-offs because absolutely was going to get burnout and like 26 see them. I can't keep doing this. We had two small kids at the time. You, you can't take a day off because you get so far behind in customer service emails that like, it's not even worth it to take time off. You're like, no, I, cause then I got to work twice as hard tomorrow. It's just not worth it.

So there was a time period of a couple of years where, every single night before going to bed, every email is answered. It was just like a non-negotiable, like this is what's going to happen. I'll wake up in the morning and you know, more stuff's going to come in. But then it was like, okay, got to get some help in at some point. And then once we did that, cause it's, it's this really hard thing because you still have to take time to train the new people to do stuff. And when you're in that moment, it's so hard to do it because it's.

You can't see above like the water. You're like, we are basically drowning until you can't get your head up to see above it. But once you do that a little bit, cause you have to pay that cost at some time. Otherwise there's literally burnout. But like, then once you do you send you, know, you could, your head above body, you're like, I can see a little bit. cool. All right. Here's where I'm going to invest a little bit of time, but it's super, super hard. mean, nowadays it's, it's again, it's something I still struggle with probably every day. I did for a couple of years, cause I was like,

What do I do with my time now? Because I don't need to be sending stuff. I don't need to be answering all the Instagram DMs or applying to all the comments. Cause we got people that are like so much better than myself at that. But it's really hard because it's a really big identity shift. I joined a group like EO, I was in that for a while. And then I switched to Vistage, I love Vistage. Read a ton of books, would go to like some conferences and things on leadership. I'm like, I had to do-

Yeah, I wrote a book. that was more of like a personal project in 2020. Cause I was like, I'm literally stuck at home for six months because of health issues and things like that. So literally couldn't not know my own personal health issues, just, um, you know, all that. we just couldn't leave the house. So yeah, it's fascinating and interesting way to do things. But it was sort of like, um, more for the soul. Cause like I needed something to do during that period.

Alicia McKenzie (26:41.944)

For sure, for sure. So what is the future of RP look like? Have you guys even thought about it? Are you just going to continue to run? Like, what's the plan?

I like how he is continuing to run. it's a joke that I'll make from time to time of, you know, a lot of those early days, there's a lot of running and gunning, which I love because that's just a bit more of my personality. Like I'm not that I'm not like an accountant type of personality where I'm going to sit down and be like really focused on the exacts and the numbers and tons of spreadsheets and all that stuff, which is funny. I'm saying that like we've made a living off of spreadsheets. Don't get me wrong. I love the diets, but that's just not.

going do it.

And Mike's kind of the same way. So inherently had to be a little bit more of that than him. Cause Mike's really willing able to, to run and gun. And, but you know, Andrew, the CTO is, I don't want to say the exact opposite, but he's very detailed oriented. Our COO, Jacob, very detail oriented. So it's like the perfect compliments to Mike and I who, we would all admit this. I'm not saying anything that's going to surprise him if they, if they listen to this, like,

It's a very good match because we're willing and able to let things slide a little bit and they'll be like, what about XYZ? okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. We'll show the breaks a little bit, but yeah. So like what's in store, more app updates always. hopefully with, with the rise of AI, that'll become faster and better. then, you know, knows? mean, but there's a lot of different ways. think AI is so interesting right now.

Nick Shaw (28:17.678)

in coming so rapidly that, I don't know, it's hard to predict a couple of years from now, but I think that there'll probably be a push into, we've got, we're sitting on a lot of data. So I think in our hypertrophy app, we've got something like 10 million workouts completed in the data set, which is pretty cool. The number of sets completed is, I don't actually know, 30, 40, it's probably more than that actually, it's probably more than 50 million. So I think there's a lot of cool things that we can probably,

use some AI to uncover. It's like, hey, exactly. We actually got a couple of guys coming in this year. They're going to start looking into some of that data to see what we can pull. And when you have that much data, because if you think about it, the types of studies being done at fitness, it's not uncommon to have maybe 10 or 20 participants. And like that's pretty good for a study. If you can look at tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of sets.

Research, extrapolation.

Nick Shaw (29:14.856)

That type of data has never been seen before, so there's probably some really cool stuff we can do for

I wonder if there was a way you could figure out where a woman was in her cycle and compare it to the kind of sets and if she completed it or so on and so forth. just, I feel like women's health and the menstrual cycle and women tear their ACLs more when they're at their, when they're on their period versus when they're not. Like, I feel like there's, I don't know, my mind just went a little off the wire there.

I get it because you because what if you were able to join forces with a wearable I don't know an aura loop or something like that because they have all it so what if you could somehow combine that yeah that's I think that's probably when you ask about the future I think that's probably where things are heading is so like it becomes more of a data game and data becomes really important because you can sort of combine all this data from probably different sources and do something cool with that

Yeah, right.

George McKenzie (30:08.194)

Yeah. And probably, you know, become more predictive in the app. Like, I know you're at this point in your cycle. I'm going to take down your reps dynamically in the app to say, I know you should do less or the based on, you know, how you've been lifting or what your sets have looked like compared to the mean and what your body looks like. Hey, it's time to put on an extra five today. You're going up. the stuff that you would do in a personal trainer, you'd be like, Hey, you're going up and those sets look great. Let's put more on.

Yeah, right.

Nick Shaw (30:36.418)

Yep, AI kind of becomes the coach. Yep. And it can become a lot more predictive of things. That's probably where I would... I'm joking when I say bet my money, because I don't ever bet money. I'm... Again, that comes back from the way I was raised. was like, you don't just throw your money away. But if I was a betting man, that's what I would bet.

Very cool. in my mind, RP strength is... Remember that scene from Forrest Gump where he's just running and just starts running and then keeps running and then one day he's like, okay, I think I'm done. I feel like you guys will get to that point in maybe 20 years, but it's just... It's easy right now and it works and if it ain't broke.

Yeah. And I think that's the, a personal user of it, that was the one thing that, you know, you read all the generalized templates of, you know, it's a, you know, just a caloric deficit. Do this, do that. Where it was pretty easy. I'm a creature of habit. when I had the app, I had the app too, but before that, when I was doing the spreadsheets, just easy to follow, I made my day's routine and then the results happened. Like it wasn't one of those.

see the muscle mag and then try to do that. And then, yeah, you don't really have any, any data to go on what you've been doing. And do you see any real results where RP, we did it when we were competing and the whole team was on it and everybody was getting leaner or for me, I was trying to mass at that time. Everyone was getting what they wanted out of it. And it was, it was awesome to see.

Alicia, I'm pretty sure I met you in Atlanta. You guys were competing in a regional, across a regional. Yep. In like 2015 or 16, don't remember the exact.

Alicia McKenzie (32:19.438)

2016, I had a six month old baby boy and I had used RP strength to cut weight once I had him. Yeah.

Yeah, sm-small world,

It's a very and it feels like it was yesterday, but that was a decade ago.

decade ago when people talk about and you we start talking about the dates. I was like, Oh, the templates were released in 2015. So I remember last year saying that and big, holy crap, that was 10 years ago. we're coming up in February, 2026 with that was 11 years ago. You know, I'm, I'm 38. That's basically a third of my life has been spent doing that. So, you know, I think one of the other notes you guys had was something about like identity. And so when people ask me enough marriage to the startup, right.

Like I have three kids. I've got two kids. My son is 14, just turned 14. My daughter's 11, will be 12. And then I've got RP. That is my third child. Absolutely. 100%.

Alicia McKenzie (33:16.362)

Yeah, mean, absolutely. And I think we use that that analogy on last week's episode. were like, there's something about just being attached to your first baby. Like that is your baby. and trying to bring somebody come in and tell you how to run your baby or tell you how to raise your baby. Like that's no, it's fine.

yeah.

George McKenzie (33:35.918)

It's like you talked about before, you see it grow and become more than what it was when it started, much like raising a child. And then as being a parent, like being a CEO, you learn a lot from your mistakes. You didn't know everything out the gate. You're just like, oh, let me figure this out.

Alicia McKenzie (33:56.398)

So how many employees does RP Strength have right now?

All of our coaches are 1099 contractors, so it depends on how we want to classify things there. It's six, somewhere between 30 and 40. Something like that.

That's a good size company.

So the whole time you've been running RP and I think for people that may be listening, it's, you know, we always focus on, you know, it's a balancing act because when you are running a company, it's a full time, like you said, you're up late at night, you don't take days off, but your health is important. And for you, it's part of your business. So how are you able to balance, you know, being a father, being a CEO, and then also

working out regularly to stay, you know, jack. Exactly.

Alicia McKenzie (34:44.994)

being a specimen of a man you are.

I, as far to kind, trade offs and priorities. So running a fitness company, finding a time to work out is like, is, this is part of my job. So back in the early days, it was wake up, answer emails, sort of get caught up for the day, then go to the gym like early afternoon, you know, before.

Uh, you know, kids would be at, well, I guess kids of preschool, that's like a half day thing, but let's say if they were in school, it's like, okay, you know, they're not home until two or three. So if you go and work out 11 or 12, like you're done. But it was always a priority of this has to be done. This is just part of it. know, again, it goes back to identity. I'm just, I'm never going to stop working out. Even if Mike's correct and the aesthetic revolution comes and we're able to just take pills to like, doesn't matter. I'm still going to train at some capacity. What that.

training is, don't know, I'll find something though, but I love it. It's part of who I am. It's been part of my life since I literally 13 years old and you know, came addicted to it. like, is awesome. So priority there for sure. And then there's absolutely some trade-offs involved. And I remember early on the trade-off would be like, we had to have a nanny, we had to have a babysitter sort of help on weekends sometimes because you know, it was not uncommon where.

A highlight of the weekend would just be going to Costco shopping and maybe stopping to get some food while there's a babysitter for a few hours on the weekends. Because you would then get home and you have to hang out with the kids because they're young. And then once you're able to put them down, okay, cool. Now the work starts. I got an hour or two of emails to catch up before you're able to go to sleep. Very vividly remember that.

Nick Shaw (36:40.204)

trade-offs early on and you just have to make those trade-offs because here's the thing that people kind of ask, right? And I'd love your guys to take on it as well, but if you want to be successful, you have to go all in. You can't put, you can't dabble in it. And so sometimes people get this misconception of like, well, hey, you're like, don't, don't want to burn out and I want to have balance. You're like, I understand the idea of balance. Don't get me wrong. Balance doesn't come early on. Balance comes later on, years later. Yeah.

You haven't earned balance yet. have not earned balance.

Yeah, if you want balance go work a nine-to-five job and cool like I got nothing against that like my parents grew up working nine to five jobs so But you want to you want to become you want to become the 1 % you want to stand out you want to be something other than average it comes with trade-offs and it comes with those choices and Have you earned the pass? No fucking earned anything yet. There is no balance Go work your ass off for a few years and then you might get a little bit more balance. Do I have more balance now?

This goes back to the idea of a couple years ago when I decided to compete again. I was like, I'm now at a point where we've got enough people working for RP that yeah, like I don't need to pour 24 seven, 365 into it. Don't get me wrong. I still pour a lot into it, but it's not the same. It's just different now. It's more of like meetings and you know, calls and all that stuff. So I was like, what's one of the best uses of my time? Maybe it's, well gee whiz, we're launching a hypertrophy app. Maybe it's.

using this as my own training to go compete again and to showcase and highlight it and you know things work out pretty well. I was able to you know only spend I don't know a little over a year, year and a half like competing until I reached the goal that I wanted there but it was all about trade-offs there for sure.

Alicia McKenzie (38:24.866)

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, I think that's a great lesson for people is the balance is earned. And I say it all the time, like life is, you know, it's a air and a balloon. That's all the air you have. And when you're working, sometimes your personal life gets squeezed. So all the air goes to the work life. And that's just the way it is. It's never going to be balanced everywhere. Something's going to have a demand and all the air is going to go there until it's solved.

So in, going back to, think, 2013, let's call it, my co-ed competing in a bodybuilding show when they were living in New York city. And then my daughter was born March 29th, 2014. And I remember thinking to myself, I've got RP, I've got two small kids.

Is it worth it to compete in bonded building, which is a full-time job by itself. If you want to be competitive, I was like, I can't do three full-time jobs. can do two, but I can't do three. So the choice was, okay. The second guys are saying the choice is pretty in my head. was clear. I was like, what does competing get me? I had like, maybe get a trophy. That doesn't seem worth it, but I can keep training. never stopped training, but it's just to go from like training.

to like full-time competition is a very different level of commitment. I can still train five times a week or whatever. Like I never stopped training, but in order to make the sacrifices and to diet and to get into that sort of exotic leanness that you need in order to be competitive, that's a whole nother level of commitment. And honestly, why I took nine years off from competing and then when I came back, I only competed twice. I competed in a local show to qualify for nationals, where I went to nationals and was...

Nick Shaw (40:09.418)

I lucky enough, fortunate enough to, I won my class and I was like, it kind of reached the goal that I needed to. Like my idea was like, now I'm out. I'm not going back into feeding. Like my goal was to get it done. did it. Like I'm not, you have no plans to touch competing. mean, you know, never say never, but because

I love that. Like, dad competed twice, won to qualify, and then I won and now I'm good.

Yeah, because again, people don't understand that the trade-offs to come with it. Like it's one thing to diet to get lean. Don't get me wrong. That's hard. But it becomes exponentially harder to get lean enough to stand up on stage, you know, a little like whatever board church or speedo depends on what you're competing in. it's not something you want to do lightly. So it required a big commitment and a big, again, trade-off of like, am I ready to make this commitment? And for nine years, the answer was absolutely not. And then once we got to the point.

Again, it fit in perfectly with a launcher like the RPI Pertree app. It's like, I don't know, the stars aligned, whatever it was. Super again, super grateful for that because yeah, I have to compete very long and I was like, I'm back to more of that balance.

Yeah.

George McKenzie (41:19.38)

So do you think, and this is something we talk about a lot. Do you think being a competitive athlete, do you think that helped you in terms of, you know, being a CEO?

Uh, absolutely. I've got the, uh, I've got the competitive driving me for sure. Um, better person. don't like to lose. So is there a little like editiveness in, you know, business and entrepreneurship? Yeah, absolutely. On the flip side, I'll say, maybe I'm just wired like that. Like, so I'm of the opinion and not everyone will share this opinion that having that drive to not be average.

is a gift and it should be celebrated. It should not be seen as a negative. Some people view it as a negative and those people are not your people. All right. You want to be very careful if those people are around you because then they make you feel like it is a negative. And it is something I've thought about a lot the last six to 12 months. It is not a negative. It is a gift. am thankful every single day that I don't know how, why.

I was born with it, but this goes back to like high school. I was always wired like that. And then it goes back to being competitive. Didn't want to lose. I wanted to set, I wanted to stand out. Like that's a fucking gift. I'm going to celebrate it. I'm going to take advantage of it. And I'm going to be super grateful for it. And hopefully in this part, you got to be careful with you guys have way more kids than I do. I only have two, but

You know, I hope they get some elements of that and are able to channel it for, very good things.

George McKenzie (42:59.683)

Yeah.

It's interesting that you mentioned the kids because we see it in the five and that some of them have that competitive element where they just want to be great at everything. And then some of them don't. And those, the ones that don't are way more creative than the ones that do. It's just really interesting watching the nuances in their personalities and like one wants to win at

It could be like walking through New York and she's like, I beat you. I'm like, girl, we are walking down a street. So it's so funny just to watch. But I agree that I think you're born with that little bit of like fire in you that I'm going to do whatever it takes to be great at what I'm doing.

Yeah, yeah.

George McKenzie (43:50.274)

Yeah. Like you said, it should, it should be celebrated. And I think you talked about it a lot the whole time during the podcast here is it's one thing to be competitive. know a lot of people that are super competitive and you know, maybe they go over the edge when it comes to competition, but it's, that drive and then the ability to focus everything you have to win. And you need that in business. Like you said, you need it in training where you have to be able to say,

I'm going to take all my effort and energy and pouring it into this to win. And I can't half asset. You can't, you do it on Mondays and Fridays and the rest of the day, do whatever.

Yeah. On the, uh, philetic side of it, I was training jujitsu. was doing like a little bit of CrossFit, not at the high level, of course, not like you guys, but, you know, during like COVID in 2021, I basically had a goal where like, if someone was like, Hey, we're doing Merph today. I'd be like, all right, cool. But let's go. I was like, let's sit down. And then when I made the conscious choice in 2022, was like, you know, I'm going try competing again. I stopped doing high intensity cardio. I stopped doing CrossFit. I stopped doing jujitsu because I was like,

Hmm. I can't do it all. I'm like, Nope. All my time effort is going to be funneled into hypertrophy trading and competing in bodybuilding with a very specific goal in mind. is to win and do well. Canoes a very different experience when you know, nine years later, because the first couple of times I competed, I got my ass kicked. I did not do well at all. And then in 2022, I've remember this, this will be etched in my mind forever.

You walk out, you're immediately called to the center, which in bodybuilding, think the best thing you could ask for, because everyone's being compared to you. And I remember thinking, oh, this is why people do this. It feels kind of good for this. Cause I'd never had that experience before. And then sort of the same thing on the national level. And I was like, this is why people do it. This is a cool feeling. This was worth it. This was worth all the trade-offs and sacrifices that I gave up for this. Cause it was a very conscious choice and trade-off because it's very hard to do multiple things.

Alicia McKenzie (45:54.83)

Okay, so now I'm going to switch gears a little bit. I've got a couple of rapid fire questions. What was the last thing you put on your credit card?

boy man, that's probably some recurring charges. I just bought some energy drinks from Amazon. So that was probably the most recent thing. They'll be here like tomorrow or so. Maybe today, right, with how awesome Amazon is.

Yes, seriously. It's probably in your garage right now.

It probably is. Yeah.

If you could un-invent one piece of technology or business trend, what would it be?

Nick Shaw (46:31.788)

Hmm, man, that's a hard one. I want to jump towards like, you know, social media and that's like a pretty common, kind of, you know, punching bag for people, but I, I wouldn't be here today. We wouldn't be chatting if social media didn't exist. So it's hard for me to say that. So that's kind of a cop on answer, but that's where my, I want to say that because sometimes it sucks up a lot of my time and I know I shouldn't be just sitting there scrolling randomly looking at soup itself.

TikTok.

I don't have the app on my phone, actually. I've never used it. So I'll say tick tock. There we go.

What's a business decision that you made that people thought was crazy at the time?

People saw it was crazy at the time, launching Excel templates, because they look like people were like, what the fuck, you're going to sell this? And I was like, I'm going to try it, see if people like it. Get it, MVP, we didn't know. People could have been like, yeah, these suck. And then, wow, things will be markedly different here a decade later, but they caught on. People liked them. And then we slowly iterated over time and eventually led to the app. But yeah, it wasn't a thing back then. I mean, now templates are a little bit more common, but not the.

Nick Shaw (47:42.828)

certainly wasn't back in 2015.

shit. So we kind of touched on this, but what is the worst advice that you've ever received that people swear by?

Yeah, the illusion of balance. I almost feel like balance, cause we talked about this a little bit in a couple of different ways, but the idea that you should just like do a bunch of things. It's like, that's actually not how it works. The, the ability to focus on sort of one thing. And this was a big like RP lesson that we learned because we were trying to do multiple things in like 20, 22, 23, something that probably 21, 22. We were kind of stuck because we were trying to do a ton of stuff because everyone's like, Oh, like just do more.

do more stuff because, we've got a lot of people, you should be able to do more. I was like, okay, that makes sense. And then you just spread all your resources really thin, and then you become not very good at anything. And then there was a couple people that were like, rather than this go wide, why don't you focus on one or two things and try to be like the best in the world? So it was hypertrophy, the hypertrophy app.

And it was YouTube and we're like, are going to blast content like no one else can with Dr. Mike, of course, very rare talent that he is. So I'm not saying everyone can do this, but there's probably some stuff you could pull from it. So we blasted that content and that's what led to the YouTube explosion. And we wanted to be the best in the world at hypertrophy and you know, sort of like that free hypertrophy fitness content.

Alicia McKenzie (49:09.23)

Amazing. Any final questions, babe?

No, think, you know, everything that I wanted to cover covers a good conversation. I love the backstory, like just how, and you know, the MVP of, you know, we're going to do spreadsheets back in a time where people are like, what the hell, what? They're charging for a spreadsheet. I don't understand. And like, yeah, well, we'll see what it works. Right. And you build that minimum viable product and see if people like it. Don't spend a billion dollars inventing something before you test it.

Yeah, think that could be the answer to that last question of like common business advice that kind of went into the opposite of. do that. Like you actually have to get your stuff out there and let people try it and give feedback before you go all in on it. So if there's a way to limit some of that risk, it's probably a good idea. And then just in general, I would say the title could be of our P like accidental entrepreneurs.

Seriously, Nick, this has been so good. Where can people find you? Tell me your details, all of it.

Yeah, artbeaststrength.com is the best spot, Renaissance Periodization on YouTube. The reason that we go by Renaissance Periodization is no joke because we're terrified to change the name and see it might negatively impact the algorithms. Otherwise we would be RP strength on there. So no joke. You can search that. That's why it's slightly different. But yeah, if you, if you go search like RP strength, you're probably going to find it anyways. If you're into fitness content whatsoever, like you're going to find.

Nick Shaw (50:38.766)

You know, something on our channel about it and Mike has what I call the gift of the gab. So he's going to be funny. He's going to be informative and you're going to learn a bunch about it. And then I guess, so RP shake this, the Instagram handle as well. There's a lot of good stuff there. I'll shout out to Liz. She, she handles all that. She's awesome. And then my own Instagram, which I'm on there. I don't know. It's not like a huge focus priority for me, but, at nick.shaw.rp.

Okay, and one last question, peptides, what are your thoughts?

Peptides. So I think GLPs are technically classified as a peptide. Real big fan of those. Just the more and more stuff coming down, you know, because before 2R and we're attached, your tide will be out.

Alicia McKenzie (51:26.519)

Have you done any of the BPCs or any of the Tessa Morellans or Ipa Morellan or anything like that?

I have used BPC 157 before. I don't know if I noticed a huge impact for like injury recovery, because I definitely used it. Like my forums were just beat to crap from jujitsu and CrossFit and all that stuff. Could very likely be helpful. I think it's pretty early for some of that stuff in terms of BPC 157. As we get more more evidence, man, I hope it's just all good.

The, the GLPs have so much evidence behind them now that, and people are struggling with weight issues. It's something to consider very strongly. Retatratide works on a few different, pathways now. So it's not just like, Hey, it'll help you not be hungry. It very much just has a general health promoting effects. I'm someone just as just like family history, genetics had not great cholesterol.

especially if I was ever trying to gain we using GLPs, I don't have these issues anymore. I don't want to call it a miracle drug because that, I don't know, we'll see, right? But they've been around for a really long time. I think people can feel pretty comfortable with them. And I think it's just time goes on with AI and technology and all this stuff. Like they are just going to keep getting better and better and they just have less and less downside. So.

Talk to your doctor is probably a very real thing. I'd say peptides in general, uh, lots of optimism around them. Maybe try to stick with the ones that are very well studied and supported. If you start dabbling in some of the other ones that may or may not, you know, I don't know, right? Cause there's just not a lot of evidence on them. Just be careful is what I'd say, but probably in general. Cool stuff coming.

Alicia McKenzie (53:19.736)

There we go. We got a thumbs up from Nick. We're good.

Yes, there you go.

All right, awesome.

Thank you so much for spending your morning with us, Nick. We really appreciate it.

Likewise, it was great to be here, great to chat with you guys. Thanks for having me on.

Alicia McKenzie (53:33.282)

Thank you for tuning in to Mary to the startup. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, please take a moment to like, rate and subscribe to our podcast. Your support helps us reach more people and keeps the conversation going. If you have any questions or topics you'd like us to cover, drop me a message. I love hearing from you guys until next time.