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Beyond Personal Brand - From 5M Followers to $340M Revenue
(6 min read) Mike Rashid on building actual businesses through credibility, quality, and delegation.
Avi Gandhi
August 25, 2023
Mike Rashid
What other influencers need to understand is this:
If somebody is approaching you, especially if they come to you for a brand deal, they see a lot of value…
They're making a lot of money off you.
Mike Rashid ran from the US Marshalls for 7 years before getting caught…and then he beat the charges. It’s a wild story, but not the one we’re here for.
Today, Mike is a fitness, wellness, and mindset Mogul with a capital “M”.
Mike’s audience numbers ~5 million across social, but he’s built businesses that generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenue.
Very few Creators can say that, and almost all of them have tens of millions of followers.
What can we learn from his approach and his success?
Let’s get into it!
Links
Alpha Shred - Subscription fitness challenge app (owned)
The Ambrosia Collective - Fitness supplements (owned)
Trifecta - Performance meal delivery (investor, managing partner)
Snack House Foods - Healthy keto snack company (owned)
Sacred Society - Business, mindset, and lifestyle coaching (owned)
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The Business
Breakdown
Observations
When you think about quality of life, it doesn't have to have anything to do with money, right?
Credibility is a Value Multiplier
Mike started his Creator journey as a fitness coach, and that baseline experience is what enabled him to build out the many businesses he has today.
I've been managing a lot of my own online clients for years before I got into coaching other coaches. I have the credibility, right? I have the track record.
The through-line for Mike’s businesses is that they all require credibility (trust) to capture a customer.
For some - Alpha Shred (fitness app), Sacred Society (coaching), and Trifecta (meal delivery) - they’re subscription services, and recurring payments require trust that you’re getting the value you’re paying for.
For others - Ambrosia (supplements), Snack House (keto snacks), and his digital fitness content - it’s because there are lots of competing options, so high trust helps drive consumption decisions.
There's coaching coaches that had not one personal training client, you know what I mean?
Look, I can't knock the hustle…but I CAN knock the hustle because it's not authentic. It's a money grab…
Credibility is everything to me.
When choosing a vertical, segment, or creative direction, if at all possible, pick the one you have the most credibility in.
Credibility could mean:
Expertise
Experience
Skill
Recognition
The reason to go for credibility over, say, market opportunity, is this:
Without credibility, your potential upside will be capped.
Why?
Because, when faced with a choice, people on average end up choosing the more credible option.
Focus on Quality
One thing that’s clear from talking to Mike is that he’s incredibly proud of the quality of his products.
What fuels my self-belief is having actual products or services that are fucking airtight.
He doesn’t just talk about quality, though - he does the work behind the scenes to substantiate that quality.
We pay for research…We have all the links for all of the research, the peer reviewed studies that's substantiating our claims, you know what I'm saying?
So we are literally “hater-proof” when I step out and put something out.
By not releasing a product until it’s “hater-proof”, he can turn the skeptics into free marketing.
One thing that I love doing is talking about my stuff, and then somebody's talking shit about it.
“Oh, that's snake oil.”
“Oh, he's a scam artist.”
Or whatever, right?
I'm like “Perfect. That gives me the opportunity to talk about it more!”
He likens this approach to the Japanese martial art, Aikido.
It’s like Aikido. You are using your opponent's energy - their behemoth energy they're using towards you - against them…
And it's funny because I've done this so much in the past, I don't really get fucked with no more, you know what I'm saying?
They're like, “All right, yeah, okay. He's legit.”
Build Something You Can Sell
We do a few million a month in sales in Ambrosia, but that goes into the business.
We have a big 30,000 square foot facility, we have a lot of employees, we have inventory to pay for, we have research and development….
It pays well, we still pay ourselves a decent salary, but that's not coming strictly to our pockets, whereas with the coaching it does, right?
Mike has two kinds of businesses - cash businesses and equity businesses.
His cash businesses include:
YouTube
Digital Products
Alpha Shreds fitness challenge app
Sacred Society coaching
These are businesses where he is at the center of the product. $1 made means close to $1 in his pocket, but he’ll never sell more product than he has followers.
The upside of these businesses is limited to who knows him…and he’s not that interested in promoting himself.
I know people who make a good living just monetizing themselves…I'm building actual businesses.
His equity businesses are
Trifecta
The Ambrosia Collective
Snack House
These are companies with products that are separate from him.
You might discover protein powder from The Ambrosia Collective at GNC or Sprouts without ever knowing Mike owns the business.
These companies also have much higher product and operating costs - they require inventory acquisition, warehousing, shipping, marketing, etc.
As a result, Mike makes far less in cash from these businesses than they actually bring in…
But these businesses are prime acquisition targets in success, and his ownership stakes could be worth multiples on the profit or revenue of each business.
If The Ambrosia Collective hits $50 million in revenue and is profitable with 10%-20% margins, he could sell it for $50-$100 million.
That’s a lot more than what he’d make taking a salary and profits.
This is also why he doesn’t really do brand deals.
What other influencers need to understand is this:
If somebody is approaching you, especially if they come to you for a brand deal, they see a lot of value, right?
Let's say they're offering you $20 grand to do something - I guarantee they're making about $100 grand or $120 grand off of you, you know what I'm saying?
They're making a lot of money off you.
So you got to think you can do that yourself, right?
Cash flow is important, but if you have your expenses and your emergencies covered, build something you can sell (or get a piece of the companies that want to work with you).
The upside is potentially much higher.
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The Stack
One thing that will hold you back is not delegating things to other people, because it's hard to scale by yourself.
Mike has managed to offload the selection, management, and operations of his stack to a team he trusts so much, he doesn’t worry about it anymore.
That’s the dream!
Here’s what his operation looks like to him:
Partnerships - Anooj Desai
They worked together back in the day when Anooj worked at Fullscreen and Mike was in the MCN’s network.
He was a fan of the content already.
To me, that's ideal. It's a more authentic fit, right?
I just love people that's pure at what they do versus just doing a job.
Marketing / Growth
I have a CMO…He puts the structure behind the magic, if that makes sense. - the systems with the story - and we just have an awesome team on that.
Content - In-house
3 video editors
2 videographers
1 content manager
We have one, two, three video editors because content is easy to shoot but it takes time to edit.
Operations
We have two customer service people.
We have a whole shipping department in the back because we do our fulfillment here.
My warehouse space is about 20,000 sqft, so a lot of inventory back there.
I think for the size of our business, we operate pretty lean and efficient. That's important.
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