Intro: 00:00 From ABC News Radio, KIBT 1490 in Southern California, this is BizNinja Entrepreneur Radio, with your host, Tyler Jorgenson.
Tyler: 00:14 Alright, everybody. Welcome out to BizNinja Entrepreneur Radio. I’m your host Tyler Jorgenson and today we get to talk to one of the OGs in the ClickFunnels world, and one of the legends in crushing it in this space. Anthony DiClementi of Biohacking Secrets and Biohackers Guide. What is up Anthony?
Anthony: 00:33 What’s up Tyler? Man, I’m feeling old with that intro. OGs already. We are man. We are. I just didn’t realize that I was coming in at the beginning. It was like, it was my start. I didn’t realize a lot of it was also Clickfunnels.
Tyler: 00:48 Yeah, I was a…, I think it was three years ago this week that the Funnel Hacking Live in San Diego happened, and so it was a four years ago, but only three years ago, and I’m like, “Holy crap. A lot has happened in three years.” I mean people have launched entire new businesses. People have completely scaled theirs, or completely changed industries. Let’s go back to the very first, like the beginning of Anthony DiClementi. What was the first thing in your life where you realized you’re an entrepreneur, you’re not like everybody else?
Anthony: 01:19 Ooh, well I think there are a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of people like us who really value freedom and contribution, and want to make an impact, and leave a legacy behind. For many of us, it requires a moment of brutal honesty. For me, it was trapped in a cubicle at the LaSalle Bank building, not even a year after I graduated from the University of Illinois, and I was miserable. And, there’s sort of this dance that we need to come to grips with where, if there’s something that we hate about our life, and it’s not going to change, or we’re not going to change it. It’s almost easier to ignore it, and just put your head down and plow, and like try affirmations, and you know, looking for the good in this situation. And I was doing that for close to a year and then I was like, “I’m lying to myself. I hate this. I’m trapped. I feel like a prisoner. Every Sunday night I don’t want to go to bed”, you know?, and that was sort of the first moment where I was like, “I gotta escape, like Shawshank Redemption style. I got to start digging my way out. I gotta figure out something.” And I started looking into…, I bought like my first URL in 2006, and it was called Phoenix Health Systems, cause I thought it would be like a cool…, the Phoenix rising from the ashes and all of that, and hook people up with all these tools for…, for taking their mind and their body to a higher level, and living their best life to sound like a hashtag. And, and I was just terrible with tech and I kind of fumbled around for a while.
Tyler: 02:54 So, let’s unpack that a little bit. So 2000…, you’re working in a cubicle. So you went the nine to five route. Yeah. Felt trapped, but how did you already know that you wanted to do something in the health and wellness space? I mean, that’s been…, that’s still what you are and what you do. Like…
Anthony: 03:13 That’s been a passion since I started playing sports when I was five and was actually not the most athletic kid, but I worked real, real, hard and it went from barely making the team. And like, the only reason I made the soccer team was because one of my neighbors, Bryan Sheppard came out and he had no idea how to play soccer, but he’d just toe kick the ball at me for like two hours every day. And like, I got barely good enough to make the travel team, but then over years I got a little bit…, over the years, I got a little bit better. And, I would see that there were things that I could do like if I did extra stuff that the other kids weren’t doing, I would get better faster. And I was able to compensate for this, like lack of natural what I perceived as a lack of natural ability with hard work and seeking out tools.
Anthony: 04:00 You know, I was ordering like VHS tapes from a buyer in Munich and some of these…., you know, English and German, and Italian club teams to see what they were doing with their kids. And then I was going outside and like trying it on my own, you know, and then, and using that. So, I became very interested in the tools that we had in the health space, and the sports performance space, and what they could do for us, because of what they had done for me. I just didn’t think I could make money as a personal trainer, or sharing health information. I didn’t even know that existed until I read a Tim Ferriss article in 2011 about Mike Geary, and how he was doing over 1 million bucks a month selling eBooks. I’m like, “Who is this dude? Who is this Mike Geary guy? This is brilliant.” You know, I’m like, “I gotta write a book. I can reach way more people. It doesn’t…, I don’t have to just personal train or teach yoga.” Both things that I was doing from like, you know, 5 or 6:00 AM in the morning until eight, nine at night, running myself into the ground. I was like, “I can make this a business and I can impact a lot of lives.”
Tyler: 05:02 Yeah. So, my major entrepreneurial shift also was from Tim Ferriss. And so, I’d been an entrepreneur since I was five years old. Always coming up with ways, but because my life path had been through kind of normal jobs, I always looked to entrepreneurship of like, I owned a restaurant and I created a real estate company, and because those are the jobs I had, so I created businesses in those jobs. Right? But Tim Ferriss…, you saw it, “Okay, I’m a personal trainer, but there’s a way to leverage this that’s way bigger than just me and my local market.” And, you’ve ran with that, right? So, how did that evolve to become, you know, biohacking and biohacking secrets?
Anthony: 05:45 Yeah, so there was, there was a couple flops along the way that I don’t talk about a lot. The first was after, after some inspiration from the 4-Hour Workweek, I created my first supplement. That was what really forced me to start learning some online stuff. So, I had read a few books and there was a book that was very convincing, talking about category creation, and how like, you know, when you create a category you can own the category. And I’m like, it’s brilliant. What they don’t talk about is the marketing budget that’s often required in order to create a category and own it. So I’m like this kid in Chicago that just read the 4-Hour Workweek and a couple of other books, and I’m all pumped up and like, you know, mostly balls and probably not enough brains. And I dove in and created this supplement called SocialTrope.
Anthony: 06:33 And I actually got a bottle here is like a reminder of what became a, not an epic fail, but a pretty big fail. So this was it. And I don’t know if you can see the bottle. A lot of people are listening, but it says social enhancement. So this was, this was a supplement that was designed as like natural anxiety supplements, you know, sometimes lift mood and help with anxiety. But I was like, those categories exist. What is, what does this help me with? It makes me a lot more social. It makes me a lot. I feel like I’m much more on my game. And so I was like, all right, let’s create the category of social enhancement with this supplement. I bought a, I put all my money into one run of inventory, tested it by a third party. It came up short and a bunch of the specific ingredients I wanted.
Anthony: 07:14 So like the manufacturer kind of kind of dropped the ball. And when I was like, what’s going on man, this is, this is our word of mouth right here is this. They went radio silence. So then it was like, do you sue them? And an amount that like wouldn’t even really make sense going to court for right. So, um, it wasn’t, there wasn’t anything dangerous about the supplement. A lot of people still got results from it, but it ended up, I ended up selling it to another company along with a lot of the intellectual property, the web presence, Twitter, all that fail number one.
Tyler: 07:46 Well that’s a pretty, like if you are able to sell your failure, that’s a pretty solid failure. Yeah. I mean, I still lost money though, I’m sure. Yeah. It real.
Anthony: 07:54 Yeah. But look, I mean, I’ve been paying my island next to Richard Branson.
Tyler: 07:59 Yeah. But you know, for every, every one of those guys is doing a million a month selling supplements. There’s a million people selling, you know, hoping to get their first sale. And so like, you know, to even exit with a fraction when you bought inventory and when you bought all that stuff. Right. Like that’s pretty positive momentum direction. So what did you parlay that into?
Anthony: 08:20 Yeah. So then, um, I had learned a good amount about online marketing and through a couple other things I was able to kind of get in after I left the corporate world, which was like 2008. So I had a job, I was doing commercial mortgage back securities, which is like a Wall Street investment vehicle. I was the analyst underwriter. I would do the loan committee presentations, financing like hundred million dollar buildings in downtown Chicago. It was, it was a great job, but the CMBS market, if you’ve ever seen the big short crash, so a lot of that had been going on. Um, and you know, it was like, that was my big opportunity to make a run for entrepreneurship. So I started doing more of like the personal training and the health and fitness stuff, but it still wouldn’t even really pay my modest bills at the time. So then I also started a, uh, hospitality marketing company and we built an email list of like 20,000 people in Chicago and I would work for a lot of the top flight, uh, restaurants, lounges, bars and nightclubs in Chicago. So like, let us entertain you is one of our clients. Um, MTV spring break with like Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa, Neyo, and like 2011, that was one of our clients. So we did that and we built a pretty great company. But, um, after like three years, I recognized that it was indirect conflict with the health and fitness stuff, which I was much more passionate about.
Anthony: 09:44 It was, it was keeping me out far too much and I’m, so we got that to like, uh, around the, the three, six figure range. Um, and uh, and then I was like, well, it’s, it’s cannibalizing the other stuff and that opportunity to grow red. The Tim Ferriss article started working on a program of what I was doing with clients called it. Uh, The Health Blueprint. Worked on that for a few years, launched it, had no idea how to market it now. Hired Russell, became friends with Russell, all that stuff. And then we sort of transitioned it to Biohacking Secrets. He’s like, you need to do more to distinguish and differentiate your uniqueness. Um, and some of these things…
Tyler: 10:25 So, kind of coming back to creating your own category, right? Or at least owning one category, right? Going deeper into like the biohacking secrets niche as opposed to just general health, right?
Anthony: 10:35 Yes. Yes. And I waver back and forth because on one hand I’m so passionate about biohacking and what it can do for people. On the other hand, I know that 50% of the time when we talk to a mass market, if I’m on the street with someone, the follow-up question is what’s biohacking? So there’s a little bit of that, like don’t make me think aspect that I know is impacting. Like if some of the names that we have for future projects are much clearer, much more benefit driven, like they’ve complete the sentence, I want blank. And uh, you know, like not a lot of people, if you were like, I want Biohacking Secrets, they’d be like, ah, I know what you mean. Tyler. Me Too. Yes, I know exactly what those secrets are. Wait, no, I don’t. Their secrets.
Tyler: 11:21 Yeah. And you know, it’s funny because there’s, there’s so many different ways to attack the market, but clearly this has worked, right? It’s, that’s for you, it doesn’t mean the one strategy deployed is going to be the next strategy use as you grow the business. But it’s, it’s kind of helped, uh, establish where you’re at and do what you’re doing. What, um, what has been like you’ve overcome a couple of challenges. What would you say is the one thing that you did in this last three or four years that was, that gave you the greatest yield or the greatest momentum?
Anthony: 11:51 So, I believe that when I am really, okay, so I’ll show you this. This will give it a little bit of context. I’m an extreme personality and I’m the type of person that needs to create goals and deadlines and structure to really thrive. And it worked well when I was in sports and college and things like that. And now more than ever it has to be self imposed.
Anthony: 12:19 So I find that when I am very focused on my health and not just the visible aspects of health, like do you have a six pack? Are you in shape? That type of stuff. But like a truly healthy life, inclusive of the things that we know human beings need, social relationships, family, friends, you know, spirituality for a lot of us in whatever form that exists. Good food in your body, moving your body, nature, stress management, those types of things. When I have a well rounded life and I’m focused on that almost from the perspective of what’s possible. Like if I want to see what’s possible in the next 90 days and go all in, it’s usually during those periods that the business really takes off. So I’m like tending to my vehicle, my mind, body, and spirit and, and consciously elevating that through the right habits and these tools that we talk about in the biohackers guide.
Anthony: 13:18 And you know, some of the other programs we have. So I put up something like this, it’s like all around my room so you can see that’s the picture of Conor McGregor and knocking out José Aldo, which was, um, are you familiar with that story?
Tyler: 13:32 Just a little. Not probably not at your level.
Anthony: 13:34 All right, so I have at the top here it says, um, world championship fight camp, which is like the mentality that I approach it. Like I’m going in for a 90 day sprint, three months into a world championship fight camp. And that fight is taking place on June 18th and I better be ready. So I started this on March 18. Right. And then I have my goals for mind and some of the process goals that are going to get me there. My goals for body and some of the process goals daily and weekly that are going to get me there and spirit my goals for spirit and some of the process goals that are going to get me there.
Anthony: 14:06 And then I have that picture, which is one of my favorite pictures. Um, you can barely see, I dunno if our people are gonna watch this on video or no.
Tyler: 14:12 Yeah, yeah. It goes on Youtube and, and um,
Anthony: 14:15 So that, that picture right there is Conor McGregor standing over José Aldo, which coincidentally mirrors one of the pictures of Muhammad Ali. That’s, I’m not going to say that’s our generation’s Muhammad Ali. Yeah. And like the actual pictures look very similar. But that was so exciting to me cause I got to see it unfold. And you saw this guy and José Aldo who was undefeated in 10 years, the best pound for pound fighter to ever do it. And Conor was going in to prove that he was the best pound for pound and no one thought he had a chance and he was talking so much crap so much. There was so much riding on that fight.
Anthony: 14:49 I mean went in and Merck them in 13 seconds. And what was even cooler about it was he said exactly what he was going to do. He watched all though fight a couple months before they did. And he was like, I want to give him more than one round, but I can’t. I feel like he’s going to come, he’s going to come in swing and too hard with that big right hand. I’m going to set back, slip the right, I’m going to bang the left and it’s going to be over. And that’s exactly what happened in the fight because Conor’s mentality was, stay ready, any minute the UFC could call. And if you’ve got to drop 25 pounds and get in shape or you know, work on your takedown defense, you’re going to get smoked. So you gotta stay ready as if any minute that big call could come and you know that you’ve done everything in your preparation to execute.
Anthony: 15:39 When the opportunity presents itself, that’s where I thrive and where the business stuff tends to follow.
Tyler: 15:45 All right. So coming back to the question was essentially what’s the one thing that you’ve done in your business to build the most amount of have had the most success and it sounds like too, like kind of summarizing that, stay ready then you don’t have to get ready. You don’t, and also create 90 day sprints like you found. It sounds like you thrive really well if you can have, um, a whole like whole well rounded a objective, but for a time bound amount of like period.
Anthony: 16:12 Yeah. Yes, I’m good.
Tyler: 16:13 What do you do after your 90 day sprint, do you have to go through like a decompression period?
Anthony: 16:18 No, I give myself a little bit more leeway. Um, I give myself a little bit more leeway, especially because some of the social stuff and the community stuff, um, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s fun for me at least occasionally to go out and have a couple drinks. Nothing crazy. But I, I have a good time with that and I have to be honest with myself about it, but I know that it dampens my energy and it affects my cognitive function and my performance with, with work stuff. So I do believe that there is a value in those social relationships and creating a space for them. Um, I like to travel and, um, you know, I’m going to some march or I’m sorry, May 15th through June 2nd I’m going to a buddy’s wedding in Sayulita, Mexico. We’re going to spend some time there and I’m going to meet my brother in Costa Rica and we’re going to go to this retreat at Rhythmia and have some like brother time. So I create things like that and, and all of that is also going to be, you know, I’m going to be like the Rhythmia place has yoga and breath work and meditation and organic meals, so I’m going to be recharging anyhow.
Anthony: 17:23 It’s just a little bit less less grind focus.
Tyler: 17:26 Yeah.
Anthony: 17:27 And less rigid around the my routine that I feel facilitates peak performance for me.
Tyler: 17:35 So I think, you know, maintaining peak performance at the same time, I’ve also allowing balance in your life. Right. How do you, it sounds like you addressed that by just being patient with yourself, right. By giving yourself permission to ebb and flow. Is that right?
Anthony: 17:50 Yeah. Yeah. I’m working on that. That’s a work in progress. I realized in recent years how hard I’ve always been on myself and just sit her and that was, you know, I considered that that was normal. Um, and I feel like a lot of being hard on myself has gotten me to where I am, but it’s also one of those situations where as you get older you kind of realize that if you’re not giving yourself that love, getting it from a lot of other people will always feel kind of empty.
Tyler: 18:22 Sure.
Anthony: 18:23 Because like, you know, it’s not coming from you. At least I’ve felt that. Um, yeah. So I’ve tried to be a little bit easier with it. I’ve tried to create for during some of these sprints to make sure I’m still happy to make sure I’m still carving out time for, uh, to fill myself back up and not just packing my schedule with as much stuff as I can possibly do. Um, but what Russell talks about with like the letter gold, like I kind of need that stuff too where if, you know, if it’s not done by this date, don’t go to bed, then, you know, stay up, stay up and finish it. Cause otherwise…
Tyler: 19:00 Yeah, there are times where you’ve got to just dig your heels in and say, this happens.
Anthony: 19:04 It just tends to bleed into the next week and the next month. And you’re like, how has this been on my to do list for like eight months?
Tyler: 19:11 Yeah. I, I’d be lying if I said it. Don’t have a couple of those right now. But, um, you know, it’s just, but it is, it is a balance. Like I have four kids and like, man, like being in sports and doing all of that kind of stuff, I recognize like, hey, it would be amazing if I could allocate all of my energy into work, but it’s not realistic. My goal right now, one of my main goals is to be a good dad. Yeah. Oh, that means like there’s a natural ebb and flow. It also has Maine means I have to be more efficient. Right. So I loved what you said earlier when you said you, uh, you look for ways to get better and faster through like tools and hacks and what’s working because I have to find ways to create efficiency that can’t be done through just simply time. So what are some of those, what are some of those hacks that you’ve done in your business, right? I mean, you’re phenomenal at biohacking. What are some of your personal business hacks?
Anthony: 20:00 Yeah. Uh, so a big one is either getting good at Facebook ads yourself, which I am not, or you know, working with people that are and uh, and, and media buyers that can help you there because the, there’s only so much growth that can come from email marketing and social media marketing and the organic side. If you want to do half a million copies of your book, you want to do 500,000 copies, your free plus shipping offer, you’re going to need some scalable traffic. And that’s what, right. That’s one of the things that we want to do. So,
Tyler: 20:37 Yeah, so I think, and that can be true about whatever your, like your leverage point is in your business, right? So, um, if for you like your business grows by increasing what’s happening at the front end on your free plus shipping is on, your books are on those guides, everything really. And some people like that’s where we were talking about this offline a little at the beginning. Some people like the entrepreneur is going to inherently have some strengths, right? But by nature of that also have some weaknesses. Now the problem is a lot of us entrepreneurs are really good Swiss army knives. We can go in and we can do better than average work on a lot of things. Uh, and so we also though have to then accept, okay, every once in a while I need to bring in scalpels. I need, you’d bring in specialty tools to scale. In your business as you’ve grown, you know, you went through your, your supplement company and then you started your first as an end user and you’ve, and you’ve continued to grow, when have you, or how have you decided when it’s time to pivot from doing something yourself to bringing in a specialist? Harbuck cause we talked about this earlier.
Anthony: 21:40 So just being straight with you. I’m terrible at that. Like I’m bad at it. I was the guy that was just doing a whole bunch of stuff at like below what would be my average and spreading myself so thin trying to do it. And when Carrie, who’s now our vice president, he, you know, he worked with me in Chicago and guys amazing, you know, one of my closest friends and energy bus when he came to me after doing a few of these biohacking weeks and we’d both moved back to Florida while he moved back. I moved here for the first time. He came up to me last April. I was like, dude, let me help. I can see you’re spread so thin. Let me help. And I was like, I’m too busy. I’m too busy so…
Tyler: 22:24 I don’t even, you don’t even have the bandwidth to delegate. Right?
Anthony: 22:27 Yeah. I was like, I can’t even take the time to delegate this stuff. And then I said, I realize the ridiculousness of that position brought him on and was able to at least get a little breathing room to come up for air a bit. And we’ve been gradually taking stuff off of our plate, like the things that, that are siphoning resources away from those key performance indicators of our business.
Tyler: 22:54 Right.
Anthony: 22:55 But not really moving the needle. Um, and, and unfortunately one of those was our event that, you know, biohacking week, which has changed a ton of guys lives and everybody loves it. And it’s like when you’re doing another one, but we, we knew how much preparation was required for that. And like looking at the numbers of the first four and where they’d kind of shaken out, we were like, man, we may be better doing a killer annual event. Like one making it amazing, you plan everything once cause like that, that biohacking week, once a month model or once every two months. It’s like you’re constantly in the launch loop. Yeah. It’s like a finish. You take a breath and you’re like, when’s the next one? Start promoting it, you know? Yeah. So it wasn’t, so we had to start cutting some stuff too.
Tyler: 23:43 One of, and I think you answered that really well. Um, but I’m also asking you in your areas of weakness, right? Like we talked about this, but what your strength is in the biohacking world, how do you know in biohacking when it’s time for you to bring in someone who’s a specialist to help you versus just taking care of your health on your own?
Anthony: 24:01 Yeah. I make an honest assessment of where I’m at, what’s starting with, what’s important to me, and where are the bottlenecks, you know, what are, what are the, the weaknesses that I have in that area. And if I don’t have the skillset to, um, to deal with or overcome those, those situations, then I bring someone in. Sometimes it’s just having a conversation with them on the Biohacking Secrets Show Podcast. Sometimes it’s going to see them. MMM. And, and I collaborate with a ton of people. I mean, even just this morning I saw a traditional Chinese medicine doctor, the next town over. That’s great. He’s using this innovative ozone practice where he takes saline and saturates it with ozone. It was pioneered by the Russians. And then he injects the saline solution and this ozone oxygenates your body at boosts immune function and improves how well you’re the energy powerhouses of your cells.
Anthony: 24:57 The Mitochondria work. And uh, I started my morning with that. Well, I started my morning with work, then I went and got that and uh, and then came back and did some more. So like I’m always weaving some of these things in based on what I need and I’ve got an Evernote of my health. What are my goals? Where are my weaknesses? How am I going to do that? I may I track to to make sure that the things that I’m employing are working. Then if they’re not, I bring in help. I’m, I’m realistic. Like if this, if this is happening in three months, I need help.
Tyler: 25:28 What’s funny is in, in held, it sounds like you’re really, it’s easier for you to do that, but it sounds like it’s really the same evaluation process in business, right? Like you set your goals. If you’re not meeting, if they’re not being met, if you’re not getting to them, then you need to bring in help. Right. And I think a lot of us are able to do certain, like it’s funny how in parts of our life we’re able to delegate or, or look for help and then other parts we struggle. Um, but if we just deployed the same method, uh, things come together
Anthony: 25:55 For sure. Yeah. And like there’s, there’s been some things on the business side that have thrown little monkey wrenches where, because of our space, the health space is watched pretty closely. So we’ve had so many Facebook ads account shut down and like those little pickups and things and when, you know, but you move through them and you’re just like, all right, no matter what, I’m going to keep going no matter, you know, fall down seven times, get up a, uh, you’re just like that, that mummy Frankenstein, man, who’s, who’s going to keep coming no matter what. Hey, relax. Cool. Um, so yeah, at least that’s, that’s my mentality.
Tyler: 26:31 I love it. And I think so. I think that’s awesome. And I think I really appreciate you sharing with us a little bit of your journey and kind of how you, where you started and where you’re going. Um, if you want to learn more, go to BizNinja.com/Biohacking. Appreciate you all listening. Now it’s your turn to go out and do something.
Outro: 26:49 Thank you for listening to BizNinja Entrepreneur Radio with Tyler Jorgenson. Please make sure to subscribe so you’re first to hear new interviews and episodes. If you found this podcast to be valuable, please share it with a friend. Don’t forget to visit our online talk show at BizNinja.com to claim your reward for listening to this show.
