Six years ago, I bought the domain [www.muscleforlife.com]( for $500, got a website designed, and started posting a couple articles per week on it.
Six months later, it was receiving over 700,000 visits and tens of thousands of social media shares per month.
As you can imagine, I was floored.
I had absolutely no expectations going into this project and wasnât sure if it was going to go anywhere let alone quickly become one of the biggest fitness blogs on the Internet.
I kept publishing articles and traffic kept growing, but I began to wonder: considering how much work was going into Muscle for Life, how could I turn it into a real business? How could I leverage the readership I was building to make a better living?
I then had the idea to create a supplement company.
And not just âanother supplement company,â either. I wanted to âscratch my own itch,â so to speak, and make the products that I myself have always wanted, and that meant that I was going to have to do things very differently.
Namely, I was going to have to create products that could actually deliver the types of results that are worth paying for.
And thatâs exactly what I did.
That companyâLegion Athleticsâsprouted like a weed in a hothouse, producing $1.1 million in sales in its first year (2014).
As you can imagine, I was beyond floored.
Statistically speaking, most small businesses fail within their first five years and less than 10% produce more than $1 million in annual revenue.
Legion, then, was an instant outlier, and it was clear that I had a special opportunity on my hands.
And so I made the most of it without abandoning everything else I was doing.
For the next couple of years, I split my time between working on building Legion and Muscle for Life while chipping away at book projects, and I continued to advance on all fronts.
In that time, Legion broke $10 million in annual sales, Muscle for Life peaked at nearly 2 million visits per month, and my books surpassed 1 million copies sold.
There was a problem, though:
For all the work that had gone into Muscle for Life and for all its relative success, it was losing its strategic luster.
It was, at bottom, a glorified blog run by a skeleton crew barely producing seven figures in annual revenue, mostly from online coaching.
Furthermore . . .
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Due to trademark concerns, âMuscle for Lifeâ couldnât become a brand of, well, anything related to health and fitness without me risking litigation.
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For various reasons, both strategic and moral, I didnât want to turn Muscle for Life into an affiliate income engine (i.e., I didnât want to stuff it full of promotions for other peopleâs stuff).
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Due to the terminal decline of the expensive online course business model, I didnât want to go in that direction, either.
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While services like coaching and digital products like meal and training plans can make money, they donât make for a powerful core business offering that strongly differentiates you in the marketplace and achieves scale.
In other words, although Muscle for Life was a popular website with a large, loyal readership and strong domain authority, and thus had tremendous intrinsic value, it couldnât be effectively monetized.
What to do, then? How could I best tap into that value?
And then it hit me: the two horses I have in this race need to become one. Muscle for Life and Legion Athletics need to merge.
I loved this idea for a number of reasons:
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Legion already had a popular blog that was generating seven figures in annual sales. By merging Muscle for Life into Legion, weâd be effectively doubling the size of that blog.
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It simultaneously eliminates a strategic weakness/disadvantage (Muscle for Life) and enhances a strategic strength/advantage (Legion).
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It allows for more resources to be invested in that strength/advantage (Legion).
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Itâs easier and more efficient to run one business and ecommerce platform than two.
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Itâll be less confusing for readers and followers (for example, instead of having to search two blogs for articlesâMuscle for Life and Legionâyouâll only have to search one.)
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It diversifies Legionâs offerings and income, which improves its perceived value in the eyes of consumers (a one-stop-shop for getting fit as opposed to merely a supplement company) and its value to potential investors, should the need to raise capital ever arise.
The only downside of the consolidation, really, was emotional.
Muscle for Life is a part of my DNA. Without it, there would be no Legion, and to some degree, no âMike Matthews the educator and thought leader.â
But, as even hack writers know, you have to be willing to kill your darlings if the plot demands it, and that time had clearly come.
Fortch for Muscle for Life, a public beheading isnât called for, just a graceful retreat to make room for the new star.
And so hereâs whatâs going to happen over the next couple of weeks:
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All content published at Muscle for Life (articles, podcasts, success stories, about me, etc.) will be republished on [Legionâs website](.
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All Muscle for Life URLs will redirect to their Legion counterparts.
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[Muscle for Life coaching]( will become Legion coaching but otherwise remain the same.
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All digital products sold by Muscle for Life will be sold by Legion.
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All Muscle for Life user/customer accounts will remain separate from Legion user/customer accounts and remain accessible at [www.muscleforlife.com/my-account](.
And then, moving forward, all future content, products, services, and other things Mike Matthews will be published and released by Legion.
In other words, Legion is going to become my official home base. (Which, incidentally, is another benefit of the merger: when people ask where they can find me online, Iâll have one answer instead of two).
So, itâs a big move and, honestly, a slightly bittersweet one, but Iâm excited because I think itâs clearly the right move.
A 360-degree win, as they say.
Legion Made the Inc. 5000 List!
Check it out!
Legion Athletics was Inc. Magazineâs 587th fastest growing company in America in 2018!
And if we had grown just a little faster since our inception in 2014, we wouldâve made the top 500 list!
Iâve never been one to celebrate milestones or âsmall winsâ muchâIâve always tended to just keep my head down and soldier on toward the next targetâbut thatâs a bad habit, so letâs take a moment to bask in our greatness for a moment, shall we?
And yes, youâre a part of that âweâ because, quite frankly, Legion wouldnât exist if it werenât for people like you.
So here are some highlights since Legionâs launch in 2014:
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Weâve served over 175,000 customers.
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Weâve sold over 1.1 million supplements.
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Weâve generated over $44 million in revenue.
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Weâve sent over 210,000 emails to customers.
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Weâve received over 35 million website visits.
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Weâve collected over 240,000 email addresses.
And then there are the tens of thousands of pounds of fat and muscle weâve helped people lose and gain, and ultimately, the tens of thousands of lives weâve changed for the better.
And the best part?
Weâre just getting started because we want to turn those tens of thousands of people into hundreds of thousands and eventually millions.
We can do it, too. And if enough people like you believe in us, shop with us, and help spread the word, we will do it.
So, thatâs the creamiest of this monthâs batch of news.
Much more to come this summer, including new Legion products and flavors, the official launch of the new third editions of my books Bigger Leaner Stronger and Thinner Leaner Stronger, the new-and-improved Stacked workout app, and more.
Get ready! :-)
Mike
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