EPISODE 038

“SK: I ended up getting a personal trainer certification, not because I wanted to become a trainer but rather I wanted to have a piece of paper that I thought would be really important for some reason to convince people on the internet to take me seriously and it turns out, nobody cares. Like, “Can you get me results? Are somebody that I can trust and somebody that I can believe and you’re real?” I found out very quickly that was more important.”

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:24.6] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Fail on Podcast where we explore the hardships and obstacles today’s industry leaders face on their journey to the top of their fields, through careful insight and thoughtful conversation. By embracing failure, we’ll show you how to build momentum without being consumed by the result.

Now please welcome your host, Rob Nunnery.

[INTRO]

[0:00:51.4] RN: Hey there and welcome to the show that believes leveraging failure is not only the fastest way to learn but is also the fastest way to grow your business and live a life of absolute freedom in a world that only shares successes, we dissect the struggle by talking to honest and vulnerable entrepreneurs and this is a platform for their stories.

Today’s story is of Steve Kamb, Steve is a fitness instructor publisher and writer, best known for promoting Superhero Workout Regimes and the paleo diet at his website nerdfitness.com which is now a booming business and worldwide fitness community dedicated to helping nerds and desk jockeys level up their lives and their fitness.

He’s also the author of the book, Level Up Your Life: How To Unlock Adventure And Happiness By Becoming The Hero Of Your Own Story. In addition to his writing and coaching, Steve has also guest lectured at Google, Facebook, Ted X Emery and many other places. In this chat, we’ll be discussing Steve’s high school experience that sparked his motivation for working out and led him on his journey to actually creating Nerd Fitness.

He’ll discuss that a deciding moment when he was ready to break free from his nine to five and focus solely on creating the business and Steve also shares his advice for growing an audience, managing remote teams and how to transition from a full-time job to your own passion project.

But first, luckily, all I travel with now is a backpack for one reason only, it’s clothing form an innovative Toronto apparel company called unbound merino, they have clothes made out of merino wool that you can wear for months on end without ever needing to wash it. Yes.

This means I can travel with less clothes since the clothes clean themselves but checkout the show notes page for an exclusive Fail On discount that you won’t be able to get anywhere else. And of course, if you’d like to stay up to date on all the fail on podcast interviews and key takeaways form each guest, simply go to failon.com and signup for our newsletter at the bottom of the page. That’s failon.com.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:03:00.3] RN: So, in New York City, why are you here, why in New York City?

[0:03:02.9] SK: If you’ll notice here on the walls, this makes for great radio by the way, I have a Captain America shield hanging on my wall and Captain America hanging above my desk where I work from. The funny official answer is, Steve Rogers AKA captain America is from New York City. Where else should I be for a scrawny guy named Steve that was really trying to get bigger and stronger and become Captain America.

No, the reality is.

[0:03:31.8] RN: That wasn’t the reality?

[0:03:34.1] SK: The reality is that I’ve been running a company called Nerd Fitness for seven years now. Two years ago, I came up to New York City. I was living in Nashville at the time. Came to New York City to meet with my book publisher and I’ve been to New York a whole bunch of times, I was like, “Why would anybody live here? It’s big and expensive and there’s people everywhere.”

I decided that week that I was coming up, it’s like, “I’m really going to give New York City a chance.” Instead of coming in and out for a day or two which is what I had done in the past, I gave it a real chance. I rented a place for a week, I setup appointments with friends that I knew, I went out to eat good dinner. I went out to the park, I met up with heroes of mine in the internet business space.

I just had the best week ever and I went back to Nashville and I was like – I was only two months into a 12-month lease and I was like, “Crap. I think I need to move to New York.” I think another month went by and I realized I was like, “I’m mentally am already in New York. Physically I’m still in Nashville.”

“Mentally I’m there. What am I waiting for?” Within two weeks after I made that decision, I had sold all of my stuff, I had found somebody to rent out my apartment, anything that didn’t fit in my Jeep was gotten rid of, donated or sold and I drove in to New York City and rented an AirBNB for a month and as soon as I found an apartment, sold my car and I’ve been here for two years and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

[0:04:55.7] RN: Was it more so the city or the kind of community like you said, you were here that week and you met with a lot of good people and it was like –

[0:05:01.4] SK: Yeah, it was the community, like I said, I was trying to think bigger with Nerd Fitness and I had a few mentors and a lot of college friends actually here in New York City and I knew that anytime I wanted to meet up with somebody, they were always coming to New York City at some point.

Anytime you want to meet somebody, at some point in the next 12 months, they’re going to be here and that’s somebody that likes to sit on my butt and read books – I like when I’m here, I like being here. It’s kind of nice that everybody has to come through so I get to see everybody individually instead of only seeing them in a chaotic three day conference that everybody else is at.

You get to have those one on one moments with a lot of people that are visiting just for a few days.

[0:05:43.4] RN: I feel like, I was talking to Nick Teraso, I know we talked before we got on the air that you know, a mutual friend of ours. I was talking to him because him and I had this in common like socially awkward and like, it kind of social angst and big setting with a lot of people.

It sounds like you’re the same but I find it interesting that we all find our little ways to find deep connection like for him, he does this flight adventures, right? Where he takes somebody like his reasoning behind this was beautiful.

I can meet whoever I want because it’s very tempting for me to reach out to one of my heroes and say “Hey, do you want to fly to Connecticut today, we’ll be back by the afternoon.” That kind of thing and he’s like, well then they’re stuck in this little cockpit with me, they can’t go anywhere so that’s just like an instant bond.

It’s a really deep connection, same kind of reason like I do the podcast because I go talk to people I really admire and like, it’s the same thing. It’s deeper connection.

[0:06:30.8] SK: Speaking of Teraso, did you know he is a phenomenal musician?

[0:06:34.6] RN: I did.

[0:06:35.6] SK: I had no idea, I had met him and hung out with him a few times and then he invited me to this charity event, him and another friend of his, Nick Ganju who is – I showed up to this event and Ganju was on stage in full Prince outfit just crushing Purple Rain and then Teraso comes out and sang U2 and nailed it. I was like, I’d hung out with these guys a handful of times and they were like, “I’m doing this event.”

It’s like, “Okay,” you’re like “Ha, ha. Of course you are. You’re going to play Free Falling on your guitar? Wait, you guys are actually good at music? Okay, that was not expected.” Yeah, two really funny guys.

[0:07:17.5] RN: What were you doing in Nashville?

[0:07:18.8] SK: I went to college in Nashville actually. I went to college at Vanderbelt University and after college, I actually moved to San Diego for about a year and a half and when I was in San Diego, I had the genesis for Nerd Fitness. I was working a crappy job and ended up picking up The Four-Hour Workweek on my lunch break and read it cover to cover in two days and like Neo discovered the Matrix existed.

There’s this completely different world out there that I am completely unaware of.

[0:07:47.7] RN: What was the crappy job?

[0:07:48.8] SK: I worked for a construction equipment sales and rentals company.

[0:07:52.9] RN: Pretty crappy.

[0:07:54.6] SK: Not to belittle anybody, obviously that does that, it takes a tremendous amount of skill and expertise and knowledge in that area and obviously I was working for this company just before the bottom fell out of the construction market back in 2007/2008.

It was tough, it was real cutthroat and sales is not my cup of tea. I very quickly learned that was not for me and started Nerd Fitness on the side and ended up from there, moving to Atlanta and then I traveled a whole bunch and ended up back in Nashville for a few years because I love music.

Here in the apartment I have a banjo on the wall, a violin, a guitar, keyboard. I like to make a lot of noise, I’m never good at it but I like to make a lot of noise so that’s how I ended up back in Nashville.

[0:08:38.0] RN: I actually saw you on your LinkedIn profile and I saw you worked for Six Man and crazy enough, before I got into what I’m – before my last two businesses advertising companies. I was in this period of trying to figure out what to do and I’m originally from Atlanta so – I saw Six Man, I don’t remember where I found them from but I saw they put on this amazing cruises with all these bands.

I can start that business. You just need capital to rent out the cruise ship and then to get this bands and I was like, that’s like – it was a very clear focus for me, I was like, “I can do that” and I obviously didn’t but I just loved the model and I thought like it seemed like a really cool startup company in Atlanta, right?

[0:09:19.9] SK: Yeah, Andy Levine, the owner of former owner of Six Man, you know, they were acquired in a kind of like an amazon/Zappos type experience with cruise lines a few years back but Andy has been a mentor to me, really, since the first day I started working there.

It’s funny, a lot of other companies have come along to try to do what they do and Six Man just does it in such a way – they care and they have done such an amazing job with community building, that the artists that they work with, when they do this events, you know, most of them refuse to work with other companies trying to do similar things.

Just because Six Man actually treats both the artist with respect and the customers and the fans of those bands treats them with respect too. I learned a lot while working at Six Man about community building and taking care of the customer. I applied as much of that – I still applied as much as that as I could to Nerd Fitness.

[0:10:16.6] RN: Got you. Give me like the genesis of Nerd Fitness? Where did it come from, what made you interested in that and how did you actually start growing and building it?

[0:10:26.6] SK: Sure. I was, as I eluded to earlier, I was the skinny, scrawny, small nerd growing up. I would escape into as many games and books and movies as I could, I went through Accutane twice in high school. Puberty hit me very late. I was five feet tall and 120 pounds or something by the time I think I was like a sophomore in high school. It was tough.

Junior year I finally hit a growth spirt and went out for the basketball team and got cut, mostly because I was terrible at basketball. In my head, it was because I was too skinny. I was like, “I’m going to go to the gym and I’m going to start working out.”

I went to the gym, I had no idea what I was doing and ended up spending two years of high school, four years of college, training and going to the