Well if you've been coming to this website or have been a customer for a while then you'll have noticed that we've been down for a few months. So I thought we'd kick off starting back up with explaining where we've been, what's going on and what the new direction is.
As always happens when you have any kind of a problem with a public business people talk bad about you. This is especially prominent both on the internet and with anyone who is in the information business. There is simply an amount of the population that doesn't believe that you should "sell" a book, or video or information or if you do then certainly not for more than $9.95. This is particularly true in the hardcore weightlifting and fitness world. Partially because it's a very blue-collar world and because the internet makes it easy to say anything about anyone anywhere with no repercussion.
We had a problem with the computer and our website hosting a few months back. That caused our whole set up to crash. Because of that it was impossible to get hold of us and a couple of people
- I literally mean a couple of people - not massive amounts of customers bought a product that we had limited released. We were not notified via email that they had bought it. So we didn't think it was a problem. Those people received refunds through their credit cards. We did not and have never intentionally taken anything from anyone and not given them a product or refund.
We had trouble with this a couple of times before because companies that we worked with had shipping issues that caused us to be late in getting merchandise to people. However when we did we more than made up for the delay by giving people lots of free merchandise. But because it happened and it's my company, ultimately it ends up as my responsibility. And I'm big enough about it to say that in the end it's my fault.
A friend of mine said to me recently, "You can do nine things right and the tenth thing wrong and people will only remember the tenth thing." That is the case and a big reason why people on the internet have said things about me. I do apologize to anyone who was inconvenienced.
It's funny how most of the people who gripe are not even the people who ever actually buy anything. In fact I suspect that many of these people are the big culprits behind the pirating that is (whether everyone wants to admit it or not) fairly crippling the smaller guys in the information industry.
So in the "nine things we've done right," we produce a very good product. We've never gone for high Hollywood type production value - this is an underground kind of training anyway. But as far as amount of information given, amount of live demonstration, quality of instruction, quality of information - I don't believe anybody has done any better than us. Only a couple of people have actually done as well. In fact there are many examples of people who gave much less information, but got ten times the money for it, because they were better at marketing.
About the time that all of this happened I was ready for a change in these matters anyway. Once again I'm big enough to admit that I'm not that great at the business side of this industry and had significant trouble keeping up with it. So from now on I'm not going to sell any physical products. I might do an e-book, but more than likely everything will fall under a different format. We have created a massive catalog of products. Four full-length written books and over 20 DVD series. (Many with multiple discs in the series so you're actually talking about something in the neighborhood of 60 45-minute to one hour or longer DVDs).
We are contracting with a company who will handle all of these products and do all of the business side. It will not be me anymore. For many reasons certainly the business side being that I have made mistakes that can't be undone no matter what I do to make up for them. Even though the majority of our customers over the years received things in a timely manner and were more than happy with their products it again fall under the nine things right and one thing wrong. Personally I'm through with this particular part - I have other things that now take presidence. I will continue to write articles, blogs and newsletters and I will continue to produce periodically new products, but I will not run the business or be in charge of selling or shipping/fulfilling or any other part of that end.
In the future you will see bigger changes with our website making things easier and clearer to work with. You'll see someone else picking up the sales-end. You'll see the website will be made so you can navigate it very clearly and we'll probably be more neatly divided so you can find individual topics easily such as strength, conditioning, or martial arts or weight loss.
The only other thing I do have any apology for is that it gave people an opportunity to take a shot at my Christian faith. Deserved or not. I apologize for that. Many of these people also because they did hear that I had a health problem during this time took the opportunity to allude to having health problems because I'm big. Whether they came out and said it or not they were insinuating that "he's fat and has heart problems and we told you so." This is absolutely not true. I never have had a health problem related to that. It did factor into what was happening because I was not able to function for a while. What actually happened is that I had a serious infection and a serious dental surgery related to having my jaw broken in an accident several years ago. It made me extremely ill for a while. However my health is now excellent. Not related to the surgery, but just from training and dieting I have lost over 70 pounds in the last two years. My resting pulse rate is 60 beats per-minute or under and my conditioning and strength are excellent.
I will be reporting on all this training and other developments here both in the blog, newsletters and articles coming very soon. I think you'll truly enjoy some of the new training and challenges and some of the new products that will be to come.
I LOVE training and creating training programs and materials and frankly I'm glad to be out of the business aspect of it. Even more glad to still be able to have someone get those products and the benefits and gains in training that people can make from them to the general public. One of the things that makes me happiest in the world is to see someone get the tangible benefits from training that I've created. 50 pounds on a lift or incredible endurance or losing 20 pounds - whatever the case may be. So I am going to stick to the area that I'm good at. Creating training that will make the greatest gains available to the hardcore, hardworking lifter or martial artist or all around physical and mental training enthusiast that gravitate to this kind of out-of-the-box work.
So look for more soon.
Until then God bless and let's all get ready to have a great new year.
