You're listening to the Morning Shakeout Podcast. I love to run, period.
You can always run faster.
Forever, you're going to feel something.
You're going to run into roadblocks, but that's also going to teach you how to handle things in life.
I don't think we want to be like rocks where we're not affected by anything.
It's not maybe a physical thing, but it's a mental thing.
There's like two voices in me, Alpha and Beta.
All I was really trying to do was just keep moving forward. Every single runner knows what that means.
My life has a purpose, and maybe it's not what I thought it was going to be, but...
There were times when I didn't think I would be able to come back.
There's a lot of people that have different gifts, and they don't use it.
I think if we all use our gifts, we could do something really special, not for ourselves, but for our family.
if we're really good, we can do something for our community, wherever we live.
Hey, what's up everyone?
It's your host, Mario Fraioli, and I'm not going to call this an emergency pod because it's not an emergency, but it is a special edition podcast. I am here with my right -hand man chris douglas and as of the release of this episode the 500th issue of my newsletter the morning shakeout which preceded this podcast is now out and i'm looking at this as kind of a director's commentary writer's commentary for that issue looking back at 500 weeks of the morning shakeout email newsletter which consecutive consecutive have not missed a week.
You can call me the Cal Ripken of email newsletters if you want.
Which, interestingly, I've heard this from people in the past. There are folks listening to this who have no idea that I have a newsletter.
So, if this is news to you, please go to themorningshakeout .com.
You can subscribe to it right there.
It comes out every Tuesday morning and has for the last 500 weeks, which, yeah, I mean, I think aside from probably waking up every day is the most consistent thing i've ever done in my entire life yeah and i think uh i know i'm not the only one but i know there's a bunch of people out there who have read every single one so i remember signing up when you announced that you were going to do it at that point i knew who you were but i didn't know you personally i knew your wife because we would work out at crossfit together and i was like yeah i'll sign up for this sounds good and imagine all these
years later every single week so it's impressive impressive man thank you um that was back in 2015 november 17 2015 was issue one of the morning shakeout and christine and i were living in the bay area at the time we'd moved up from san diego in early 2014 i was still working at competitor magazine slash dot com as a senior editor for that publication.
I had been there five and a half years at the time that I launched this newsletter and it's still going 10 years later.
Competitor Magazine is not still going.
I'm very sad. I'm still very sad about that as I had a great time working on that publication with the team that we had in place.
And I mean, that was six years of my life and honestly set me up to do what I'm doing now with the morning shakeout, even if I didn't have plans I had plans for that and didn't know it at the time, but I mean, a lot of the seeds for what I'm doing now.
I mean, talk about a seminal thing.
I mean, that's indirectly how you met Christine, right, in San Diego when you moved there for the job.
I mean, it's, yeah.
You can always connect the dots in the rear view, but, you know, at the time, you're just making the best decisions that you can and no idea where they're going to lead.
But, you know, at least with this newsletter, here we are, you know, 10 years later, Christine and I are still going strong, which is great.
Uh, Competitor Magazine is, uh, is no, is no longer, but I did work on the morning shakeout as, it was just a side project.
I wouldn't even call it a side hustle.
It was a creative itch that I wanted to scratch that, that honestly I had been sitting on for almost two years before I eventually launched it.
Cause I didn't know what I wanted it to be and what form it was going to take.
Um, but it wasn't my job.
I never had plans for it to be my job.
It was just something that I wanted to do and put out into the world and uh, I dragged my feet on it for a long time and finally in uh, 2015 probably The week before it was it was like literally the week before I was like, you know I'm gonna hold myself accountable to this.
I was very active on twitter at the time I put out a tweet and said hey i'm doing this thing The first issue comes out next week if you would like to read it subscribe here and I was off to the races Well, let's, let's dive into that a little bit more because you said you were sitting on it and you had this creative itch. So what was it that finally got you to be like, you know what, I'm doing this?
Before I answer that question, I do think it's important to just give a little history here.
So going back even another 10 years from that or so, 10 -12 years, I was very active on the blogging scene in the early 2000s.
even before that i graduated no it was early 2000s i graduated college 2004 and there was a website at the time called run insight .com run -insight .com pretty small site uh the guy who ran it i can't remember his full name but it was the he went by the and i think he was based in the midwest ohio if i'm not mistaken and he covered all sorts of things in running but he He had a particular interest in the Midwest and D3, D2 cross -country and track.
I was a D2 cross -country and track runner, so I visited his site every day.
He took guest contributions, and I wrote a couple, essentially, what were columns for his site while I was still in college.
I shared my training log there, and that was sort of my introduction to blogging.
And I don't even know if it was called that at the time.
I was just contributing to this site, but I really loved doing it.
I loved taking the time to sit down and think these things through and then sharing them with a wider audience that created some conversation and discussion.
Fast forward a couple years, graduated in 2004.
Blogging was becoming really popular and tools for blogging were getting better and better.
Because in the early blogging days, you couldn't really blog unless you had some technical know -how.
could create a content management system and publish something to the web.
I mean, 2006, 2007, things like Blogger, Blogspot, maybe WordPress at the time, if not, that came just a couple of years later.
These tools were becoming more and more popular.
So I created my own website on Blogspot and I just started blogging almost every day, like most days of the week.
And I would share my training and I would share my thoughts on things and i would share things that interested me and i loved it and my blog was not huge but in this little niche of running blogs i mean it was it was fairly popular it was like kind of a tight little network where people would read each other's blogs and leave comments and really had this kind of community feel to it and i mean those were very very formative years for me and those years definitely were when the seeds for what is now the morning shakeout were were planted.
I've always just loved that version of the internet.
I've loved writing in that way.
And I did it for a few years.
I got to think, I think it was probably like three or four years that I had that blog, which is still online.
I'm not going to tell anyone what the link to it is.
If you've been following my work for a really, really long time, you're like a true OG.
You remember the name of that blog.
Someone listening just said to himself, yourself challenge accepted.
Yeah. I mean, I've tried to make it so that it's not searchable or findable, but you might still be able to, you still might be able to find, I'm not embarrassed by anything on there, but I mean, that was very early days.
I mean, that was like 20 or so years ago at this point.
And then in 2009, I started to put the wheels in motion to pursue a career year in the running media, which was then and still is pretty hard to do.
I mean, if you weren't on staff at runner's world or running times, and even the running times, staffers were freelancers at the time you had to freelance.
And that's a really tough way and still is a really tough way to make a living.
But that's what I wanted to do.
I wanted to write about running.
And I just started coaching a little bit at the time.
And I did tell myself, this is back in 2009.
I'm like, Like, if I had my way, I really would like to coach runners and write about running.
That's it. If that's how I could spend my time, I would definitely do it.
But there was no clear path to that.
But I was trying to get on with a running publication.
I started freelancing and I really hustled pretty hard to do that.
There's a guy named Scott Douglas who is still freelancing for running publications and others.
others he's authored a whole bunch of books he made a full -time career of freelancing he lived in maine i was in massachusetts at the time i shot him a note was like hey if i if i came up to maine can we go for a run and i'll take you out for breakfast and i really just want to know how you've made a career out of this and he was very gracious he's like sure i went up to maine i went for a run with him i took him out to breakfast he's like and i remember this advice very very clearly he's like you need to pitch pitch pitch pitch pitch pitch pitch pitch and and when you're tired of pitching just
pitch some more um and i i did that and he gave me some insights um for some contacts to reach out to at some of these different publications and i mean i had i had zero bylines except for my blog i'd worked at a newspaper so i had some editorial experience but i hadn't written for a publication before and he had said to me hey there's this new new group starting called the competitor group they've gobbled up a bunch of publications they're going to make a running site running .com at the time and i know they're going to be looking for contributors matt fitzgerald is their prolific endurance sports
author you should you should reach out to them and i i did i started getting some assignments and i was doing the freelance thing and i'd step back from working full -time at a running store and went part -time there there just because it was some guaranteed income.
And I liked working at the store and I was coaching a few people.
So it's like, I was kind of on my way there.
And through a series of circumstances, this position opened up at competitormagazine .com to be the web editor.
And I'd started writing for them some number of months prior and long story short, I got the job and had to move out to San Diego and that was like end of 2009 early 2010 and I had to stop writing my running blog because I had to make money doing doing other things and I was really hustling to try and try and make this dream a reality and it just it just kind of went quiet because I couldn't put the you know I couldn't put the time into it and you know that was you know call that end of 2009 2010 and so it was about a five -year period where I wasn't blogging or writing for myself my job at competitor was not to
necessarily write the things that I wanted to write though I could do that from time to time we had an editorial calendar and events that we covered and topics that we needed to drill into but the things that I really was interested in running wise and outside of didn't really fit you know quite into the content plan and as I'm I'm starting to like gain some experience and build my career and I'm in San Diego now and do all of these things.
I mean, I just had this like itch in the back of my mind that was like, man, you know, I miss, I miss like missing something.
Yeah. Something's missing.
I miss this, this blogging thing and being able to write about whatever I want to write about and not ask for permission for it.
Um, not have to wait for it to, you know, be published.
And that was sort of like festering in the background for about, you know, five years.
So that's just a little bit of a history lesson.
I totally forgot your question.
No, I mean, I think I think that's great because because it kind of you basically answered the question.
You basically had this pent up creativity, bent up sort of need to get things out of your out of your mind.
And at some point it just got to it got to the point where, you know, you couldn't deny it anymore.
more we're both big fans of steven pressfield um his book uh you know war of art war of art and for him in writing it was the same thing at some point he just ran out of excuses for reasons he couldn't do it anymore and once once he uh you know in the story you know once he finally sat down to the to his typewriter and actually pumped out which self -described trash he felt so much better and cleaned his house and you know all of a sudden he was finally doing what he felt like was in his in his soul he needed to do not obviously you know you're your own person but was it a little bit of that where it's
like hey that's it I'm gonna start doing this I I feel like I want to get I have my own views I want to get them out was that sort of like once you finally started it did did you feel sort of um that sort of release of creativity no man oh really okay it took it took some time okay because here i am on staff at honestly what was probably the second biggest running publication in the u .s if not the world at the time in terms of distribution um behind runner's world because we had this magazine that had an interesting distribution model where it was free you could pick it up at jamba juice pt offices
running running stores, sports basement, that's sports basement.
Um, you know, and, and we published, you know, several hundred thousand copies, you know, a month and a website that was, you know, really, really growing.
And, and I, you know, whether I wanted it or not sort of had this like spotlight on me because I was at these events and I was covering them and I was writing a lot of articles and I managed the training department and I, I was convincing myself why i shouldn't do it uh i can't do it because i'm on staff here i am interested in a lot of running things and i not that i didn't talk about this with anyone but this is just the narrative in my head i was like i you know i can't do it they're gonna tell me i can't do it anyway because if i'm gonna write about running i should do it for a competitor but the reason i
wanted to do this thing was to write about things that didn't fit into our content plan at competitor and finally i just i was like fuck it i'm doing it i didn't ask anyone for permission i put out this tweet just to hold myself accountable saying hey this thing's coming out next week you can subscribe right here and and from then on i mean it's just been non -stop for the last 500 weeks but i did go back and forth once i finally decided i got to do something like Like I can't just let this itch like continue to eat at me.
I'm like, well, what is this going to be?
Is it going to be a website that people visit?
Is it going to be an email newsletter, which it eventually did become?
Is it going to be a physical like magazine, zine type thing that I put out on occasion?
So I thought about a lot of different possibilities for what I wanted it to be.
and one of the things that i i got to learn at competitor was how people were consuming content how that was evolving over time and we saw at competitor oh i thought about maybe doing a social media site for for this thing um one thing we saw at competitor was that a lot of our web traffic for a period of time was generated by facebook we post these these links to facebook throughout the day because the algorithm prioritized those things and sent us you know a ton of traffic then they flipped the switch and that didn't happen anymore i was like well that doesn't you had to pay for it yeah that didn't
seem like a viable strategy we saw at competitor not many people were visiting homepages anymore they wanted to be fed specific articles if they were coming to the website about you know a workout or a training strategy or a race report or you know whatever it whatever it happened to be so i was like well it doesn't make It doesn't really make sense to do a website because people just don't really just visit websites every day like they used to in the late 90s, early 2000s.
I thought about doing a zine and just the logistics and cost of that, which I would not have been able to fund, but I kind of made that a bit of a non -starter.
And, you know, again, this is like 2015.
I'm like, well, for better or worse, people are spending a lot of time on their phones these days.
And people, myself included at the time, check their email more than is necessary.
I was like, so I'm just going to meet people where they're at and show up in their inbox.
And what I like about the email newsletter is you have to subscribe to it.
I'm not going to put – I've never put anyone who didn't ask to be on the list on the list. Like people have to opt in.
The other side of that is they can opt out, which is great because if you're not enjoying it, you're not getting value out of it, you don't want to see it every week, you can just unsubscribe.
right it's easy about so i'm like all right email is email is the way to go i'm going to meet people where they're at and i decided from the beginning i did i did not i did not think in 2015 that i would still be doing this in 2025 or that i was going to do it for 500 weeks in a row i was just like i'm going to put out issue one then we'll put out you know issue two and i'm going to keep doing it as long as it's interesting and it's still interesting which is why i'm still doing it but i did decide from the very beginning i was like well for as long as i do this i'm going to be consistent about it
and I'm going to show up same time, right.
Treat it like a publication every week, um, and create that expectation that on Tuesday mornings, this is going to be sitting in your inbox and you can make it a part of your routine.
You can make it a part of your week.
And that's something I'm, I'm really, really proud of.
And I think, um, if the newsletters had any success, that's a big part of it right there.
Um, newsletter now is like a thing.
It was like Like so many newsletters are just, it's like, I don't even know.
I mean, there's a ton of running newsletters, a ton of triathlon newsletters, a ton of newsletters that people are putting out.
When you started it, I mean, obviously you weren't the first person to put out like a weekly newsletter, but how, have you noticed like a big change from when you started to now and just like how many other newsletters are sort of following the format or, you know?
Oh, hell yeah, dude.
Yeah. It's like totally blown up.
I'm just setting them up and you knock them down.
yeah i mean it's totally blown up over the last 10 years not even just in running i mean just in general i mean to go back to 2015 when i was like okay i'm gonna do a newsletter how do i send this thing and can i just send it from my gmail account and turns out you can up to a point and then if it gets big enough like you're just not able to send that many emails anymore and that first issue went out to like 200 something people it did not go out to a lot of people in retrospect i'm like holy holy shit, like with a week lead time, 200 people signed up for this thing, which is pretty cool.
But I needed to figure out how I was going to send this thing.
And there weren't the options back then that there are now.
There was tiny letter, MailChimp, which eventually bought tiny letter.
There was constant contact.
vertical response. I don't know.
I just tell you the ones I looked at was definitely tiny letter, which was free, but up to a certain point, same thing with MailChimp which was free up to like 2 ,000 subscribers like well I'm like I'm never gonna have 2 ,000 subscribers so this seems like a good option for me because I can't afford to pay for anything right now I don't think convert kit was a thing at the time I don't I don't remember them coming into the picture for a while or like button down or sub stack definitely did not exist back then or beehive or all these things that are you know just like part of the lexicon now I decided
to go with with MailChimp and I hosted the newsletter on MailChimp for you know for for several years and um I've changed it a couple times since then but in in running there were no there were definitely no newsletters that I wanted to read that were like in the in the spirit of what I was trying to do that I was aware of anyway um at the time in 2015 the only The only newsletter that came out with any consistency back then, and the only reason I got it was because I worked at competitor and we covered the sport was David Monty's race results weekly, which we paid for at competitor, but he compiled
like race results from all around the world and sent them out every week.
And occasionally more than occasionally he profiled athletes before events type thing.
And I see David at events every so often.
Now, I'm not sure if Race Results Weekly is still doing its thing.
I think they are. They're still doing their thing.
But it wasn't like David talking about things that David was interested in.
He was doing his job, you know, as kind of a reporter and someone who is just gathering information about the sport and, like, putting them out.
And he's been doing that for a really, really long time.
But there were no personal newsletters in the running world.
There were blogs. and really I thought of this I was like well this is a resurrection of the blog and I'm just delivering it via email because that's where people are spending most of their time I like I want to meet people where they are I don't want to waste people's time uh if I'm going to show up in your inbox every week I want it to be like worthwhile for you to yeah because you want me to be there yeah yeah because you want me to be there like you're inviting me into your house and like if you're gonna invite me into your house like I'm gonna I'm gonna show up with with something of value
for you. And hopefully you want to kick, keep me around.
If not, just kick me out.
Like, that's fine. Uh, I don't need to, you know, I don't need to show up.
So that's kind of the, the mentality that I had, but no, I mean, there, there were no running newsletters like mine.
And so I launched this thing and some of my colleagues at competitor were like, what is, what is this?
Did you get in trouble?
Was it like you had to ask for forgiveness instead set of permissions?
Yeah, I did actually.
I, I had a few, uh, colleagues and some of the higher ups at the company.
Once it started gaining some, some traction and people were talking about it, we're like, what, you know, what is this thing?
Um, and I just, I kept doing it.
Uh, I left competitor like six or seven months later and not, not over the newsletter.
Um, I was sort of looking for a new, new opportunity and it wasn't just working on the newsletter full time after But, you know, I had moved on from competitor about six, seven months later, and then that was no longer an issue.
But, you know, within the company at the time, because we had Triathlete Magazine, we had Velo News, we had the Rock and Roll marathon series, and I did and still do primarily write about running.
like, well, what is this thing?
And why aren't you doing it for a competitor?
I'm like, well, I can't do it for a competitor.
But I was still on staff.
So there was always a tension there, but fortunately it was short lived.
For sure. For sure.
Now, you mentioned the news that are started super small.
When did you start really seeing the growth kind of take a life of its own?
Was it gradual or was it like something that you remember happening where where it's like, oh man, all of a sudden I got like 1 ,000 subscribers.
Man, it's so long ago now, I don't remember exactly what those waves looked like, but there were periods where I would see a fairly big wave of new subscribers, and then it would just be kind of like steady trickling along for a while, and then another big wave would come.
And oftentimes those big waves would come when I would get mentioned somewhere else, and it made people aware of the newsletter.
i'd been quoted in the new york times a couple times and they like this is how i knew i was on to something or like who writes the popular morning shakeout newsletter and they would link to it and then people would click on it and they would sign up or that would happen in uh outside magazine i was quoted for an article or something like that uh outside uh, this was probably 2016.
Yeah. It had to have been like late 2016 or so.
They included me in this small roundup of people who were saving runnings reputation.
That was, that was it.
Here are five people who are saving runnings reputation.
It was like me, Alexi Pappas.
This is like comical to me now, uh, looking back at it, uh, Lauren Fleshman and two others, forgive me for not remembering, but the two things I was doing at the time, I was writing the newsletter every week and I had left competitor to help kind of co -found this online coaching company called Ekaden at the time.
We were trying to make virtual coaching for runners more accessible and affordable.
And quite honestly, I think we were just a little ahead of our time because Rana basically did what we were trying to do and just got acquired by Strava for a lot of money.
And it ended up being a short -lived project because we ran out of initial money within a few months of me being there, to no fault of my own.
It was just resources spent poorly.
but that actually kind of opened the door to allowing me to pour more of myself into the morning shakeout because with this startup that I had joined it came to me late 2016 and said hey we can only afford to pay you for another month we'd still love to continue working on this thing and then hopefully we can get more people using the platform and that starts generate revenue and then we can pay you again.
And I mean, you know, my wife really, really well, you can imagine how she took that, uh, someone who really, um, wants, you know, just certainty and stability.
I'm an official CFO of the morning shake.
She is very much the official CFO of Mario Fraley.
Um, and she's, you know, she and I are very opposite in this way.
She's very risk averse.
I, I don't mind risk at all.
I'm willing to take chances.
I like swimming in uncertainty.
She She really just likes certainty.
And so I let her know this.
And her response actually kind of surprised me.
And she said, okay, so you got two more paychecks?
You're getting paid for another month?
I said, yeah. She's like, well, you got a month to figure it out.
I was like, okay. You've always wanted to work for yourself as a writer and a coach. Here's your chance.
If you can show me that you can do it, great.
if not like you need to go find a job because we got bills to pay and I was like okay and that is I mean I love being in that position you tell me that you put my back up against the wall it's like all right I'll find I'll find a way out of it and I was like all right well what can I do easiest thing for me to do is to take on a few more athletes to coach that'll bring in some some revenue right away and and even before that I was like well what do I want to do exactly what I I told you I wanted to do back in, you know, the early 2000s.
I wanted to coach and write and work for myself.
And I was like, well, this is my chance.
Spoiler. It did not happen right away.
Oh yeah. It wasn't like one month later.
No, it took, it took, it took a few years and I can get into what I, what some of the things I did like kind of in the interim, but I was like, well, I just want to coach athletes and write this newsletter.
Like that's all I want to do.
And having come from an editorial background, I was like, well, I definitely don't want to freelance because that is just like, I mean, it's a hard way to make money, number one, just from a financial standpoint, but it's just a, it's frustrating.
You know, pitching is frustrating.
Hearing back from editors is frustrating.
Being given the green light or the red light on something is just like, you know, kind of a pain in the ass.
And I didn't want to put my time and energy into that.
I just wanted to do this thing that really meant a lot to me.
I felt was an expression of, of myself and just brought me like a ton of joy.
Like, all right, I got to figure out how to, how to do this.
Um, and I think at this point I had around 2000 subscribers and I either had like just shy of 2000 or just over.
And I was like, well, I'm paying for this thing now to send this out, or I'm going to be paying for it soon because that was the threshold on MailChimp for like a free account versus a a paid one.
And, um, I was like, I can't be losing money on this thing because especially the situation we're in now, Christine's going to be like, wait, you're losing, you're losing money on this thing.
And you're spending crazy amounts of time on it every week.
Like that doesn't, that doesn't add up to her logical brain.
And I was like, well, I gotta, I gotta figure this out.
Cause this is what I want to do.
And Matt Taylor, the co -founder and and still CEO of tracksmith.
It was one of the first subscribers of the morning shakeout.
He subscribed week one.
Um, Matt is someone I've known for a long time.
He did. I don't know how many people know this about his story, but before he founded tracksmith, he worked at Puma for a bit, worked directly with Usain Bolt on some stuff.
But even before that, he like back in the early 2000s late 90s that type of thing he was ahead of his time from a content perspective he was doing this thing called chasing tradition where he was basically just like bopping around the country and sleeping on college cross -country teams couches and like recording what life was like for them uh between practices between the meets like during their workouts and i mean youtube was was not a thing at the time, but you know, as someone who just ate this stuff up, I mean, I consumed it.
He eventually did Chase and Kimbia, which, uh, there still is a group called Kimbia athletics.
Uh, Kim McDonald was the, uh, the founder of that.
He was an agent represented a lot of the Kenyan athletes, you know, Matt kind of, you know, rinse and repeated that model, um, with Chase and Kimbia.
I mean, he is all, Matt is just a more than an entrepreneur.
I mean, he's just a very creatively minded person and i think he he really appreciates when people are thinking outside of the box and doing things differently and he was one of the first people sign up and he had said to me like pretty early on um because tracksmith was just founded like 2014 uh just before i launched the the newsletter so they were in their first like year or two of existence which was not easy for them uh you know they they were doing things differently from the standpoint of a clothing and apparel brand people look at them now and they're like yeah tracksman's like kind of a big
player which they are but they're still like tiny compared to nike and oh yeah market share wise yeah it's tiny but they've established like a brand and an identity and a fan base and customers and they're still doing it but you know the early days i mean they were very very different and i saw what matt was doing and and i'll be honest he sent me the first pair of shorts or these long fellowship i'm like these don't fit dude like i can't i can't run these but i liked what they were doing from like a content perspective and really celebrating the history and the culture of the sport and you know
i launched this newsletter in 2015 and he's like hey would you ever consider working with a brand and when he asked me that i was like no i haven't considered that at all like i i'd like i just want to put this thing out like Like these are, these are thoughts that I have, things that I'm interested in that I am interested in sharing with a wider audience.
I've, I've never thought of working with a brand.
He's like, well, if you ever change your mind or you want to do something, let me know, then we'll talk about it.
And so back to this back against the wall position that my, my wife had put me in with this.
She's like, well, you got a month to figure it out.
I was like, well, I would really like to just keep working on this newsletter.
I reached out to Matt.
I said, Hey, here's my situation.
you know, I, I need to make this work, uh, or I'm going to try to make this work.
Are you still interested in doing some kind of brand partnership?
I have no idea what that would look like.
I have no idea, um, what that's going to cost, but are you still interested?
He's like, yeah, absolutely.
Let me, let me know what you're thinking.
I had no idea what I was thinking.
Um, and so it forced me to sit down and think about, okay, well, if I'm going to bring on brand partners, what do I I want that to look like and I spent a lot of time thinking about that um weeks thinking about what that would look like because I did not want to sell out and what I mean by sell out is I did not want to litter this newsletter with advertisements from a bunch of different brands I did not want to affect the reader experience in a negative way I wanted this to be a win -win -win and to this day i still want to be a win -win -win i want to be a win for everyone involved and that's myself
as the writer and publisher that's the the reader um who is who is gracious enough to spend time every week with me looking at this and then the brand that you know is trying to let people know about some product or initiative that they have i was i was very clear as you know better than anybody.
And you weren't even in the picture at the time from, from this standpoint, even though we knew each other, I did not want to just take on any brand that came my way.
I wanted to be very selective about the partners that I chose to work with.
I wanted these to be products that if you saw me that I would spend money on myself.
And if you saw me out, like I'm running in tracksmith apparel, new balance shoes.
Um, you know, I use precision fuel and hydration, you know, I, on the coaching side, I use final search, like all the brand partners we have now, we could talk about that evolution.
Um, I'm very, very proud of because these are all brands that I have believed in for a long time, even before I had any kind of like real relationship with them.
So I went back to Matt and said, Hey, here's what I'm thinking.
Um, let's do like, let's do a month and i want to give you a prominent placing at the top of my newsletter says presented by tracksmith you have 150 words to promote whatever it is that that you want but i i want to be able to put it like in my voice um and he's like yeah absolutely how much does that cost i had no idea and i just threw and i just threw a number at him and he's like great we'll take two months And I was like, shit, I probably should charge more money.
Um, but I was like, okay, like game on, like, let's, let's do this thing.
And, you know, by that point Tracksmith had, um, expanded their apparel line.
They had not gotten into footwear or anything yet.
They were, they were really starting to kind of like ramp up the content side of things with, um, Meter Magazine and, and their website.
And they sponsored the first two months of the morning shakeout at the end of 2016.
and now i'm like okay i figure out how to sort of keep this going and i remember that was issue it was issue 51 it was a little less than a year in um it was november 1st 2016 was the first issue of the morning shakeout that had sponsorship and it was tracksmith through the end of the year and i was like okay well i'm set through the end of the year and i didn't want to i didn't want to bring more brands in at the time and not that brands were like clamoring down the door again Again, I had like 2 ,000 subscribers, give or take, at the time.
But I was very intentional about how this was going to work and how I wanted it to look and how I wanted it to feel with everyone involved.
And it's largely still the same to this day.
And then I had – I was not just a writer anymore.
I had to become like a businessman and think about, okay, well, if this is going to be something that I am going to continue to put my time and effort into and now make money on, I have to figure out how to like, you know, sort of square that circle.
And that was definitely an evolution.
And that's kind of where you came.
Yeah, that's that's kind of where I came into the story.
And I remember it really good.
We were talking about it before we started recording that.
I think I was still teaching at Berkeley Law School then.
But I was going to CrossFit with Christine and knew who you were.
And you'd be showing up sometimes and we'd make fun of you because you couldn't do squats.
And now you're now you're a squat master.
um and we went and we went and we went for we went for a run afterwards and you and i yeah through the presidio which uh we would do basically like every week um and and you and you tagged along this time and we're just like chatting away and i was like hey man i saw your sponsorship and like what are you doing for forms and stuff like that and you're like what what forms i was like oh man it's like like you need some contracts dude i i remember saying to you I was like oh man I'm like it's going well but it's becoming like another job and I'm not very good at it and I don't I don't love doing
it and you were like well that's what I do yeah yeah so so um I think fast forward a couple months I think I sent you it's like hey man use this contract to sign people up so at least you know yeah I was definitely not doing contracts and like you have so like you gotta you gotta protect your rights like all this stuff um yeah and then I think we we had another conversation where, where it, it seemed, it was clear to me then that what you really were trying to do, like you were trying to make this thing sustainable, you were trying to actually, you know, quote unquote, you know, launch your media company
and really have a thing where, Hey, this thing is sustainable.
It allows you to do it the way you want.
You can then really focus on coaching and just doing this without worrying about other stuff.
And, uh, you know, one of the things that I really appreciated working from you from the beginning, and I still do now is just as you mentioned, when you're, when you brought on sponsors, it's like, it's always been very clear what values we were going to have around it to the point where, you know, we, we could have grown this thing way more if we wanted to, if we would have strayed from those principles, but it was always so clear that this was like, Hey, there's a high moral caliber to this stuff.
And I've, I've always been happy to work under those constraints, but it was also something that I think, I think the readers appreciated.
I think so too. And having done this 10 years now and haven't had sponsors for 90 % of that time.
I think that's, I think that's true.
And we've said no to a lot more brands and we've said yes to, and I've left a lot of money on the table.
Um, there've been some very enticing offers that if I just wanted to make a buck, I definitely could have. But I mean, I've been putting stuff out into the world for a long time.
The most important ingredient is trust. You lose your reader's trust, you've lost everything.
And that's something that I prioritize and value above all else.
And I will not compromise that.
And I've never compromised that.
And that's why when we did start bringing partners on and this did become how I now make a good chunk of my living, I never wanted to lose sight of.
I wanted to do this and have always done this.
And what I have felt is the right way.
And it doesn't mean like, you know, the brands that I bring on are going to work for everybody.
Not everyone's going to love Tracksmith and do balance and precision.
but these are brands that you know objectively put out high quality products are very like just good people involved with them um you know mean really well i mean look whether it's apparel footwear nutrition um you know online coaching is something that is alongside newsletters has completely blown up over the last 10 years so platforms for being able to do that there are a a ton of options out there for consumers but you know the ones that i have brought on and why i've limited it to to four is again like i don't want to lose that trust with the readers and i also like from the experience of like
reading the newsletter even listening to this podcast i don't want to i don't want to like sully that experience you know for sure and so i i think we've done a really good job of that you know over the last like nine to ten years and i'm again, super proud of these partnerships.
I mean, I mean, we've had them for so long too, which I think that's one of the things I'm most proud of, you know, is, and it's sort of a testament to the, I think the way we've been working with brands is that, you know, all of our annual partners, like they've all been annual partners for a long time.
Yeah. And we didn't do annual right away.
Now we do do things exclusively on an annual basis.
And Tracksmith has been an annual partner, I mean, since 2016.
New Balance has been an annual partner since sometime in 2020 so we're five years in on that relationship precision fuel and hydration which was then just precision hydration they first came on in like 2017 those guys like andy and dave the you know co -founders they were a little like seven man team back then just putting out a hydration product but they loved the newsletter and sponsor the iron man world championship yeah now they sponsor all these like huge events they've got like a 30 40 person person company and new headquarters it's amazing to see them doing really well so it's like with i
mean new balance been around for a long time with like tracksmith and precision especially like we've kind of grown up alongside them and supported one another over the last several years and like that means a lot to me like those relationships mean a lot to me like i aside from like their product like i just love those guys as people and like i respect what they've built and i admire the way that they carry themselves too i mean tracksmith everything Everything they do is like super high quality and they're unapologetic about like who they are and like that might not work for everybody but like
I respect that and like with Precision Fuel and Hydration I mean Andy started this thing to like solve his own problems and like and he's been able to do that and like help a lot of other people solve common problems and they just like they're just so generous like we talk about all times like they have this knowledge hub of articles and videos and other content that they've created, which whether you use their products or not are gonna help you and answer a lot of your questions.
And it's like, they're just good people and they put out high quality stuff and I'm proud to be associated with them.
And Final Surge as well.
There are bigger platforms that have been around for a longer time than them, but this is a platform that caters almost exclusively to runners and has just been consistent over time about adding new features and not trying to do too much at once.
And it's been awesome to like, see that grow, uh, and see like pro teams using final surge to like deliver training to their athletes, see club teams using final surge to deliver training to their athletes, um, high school and college teams. And, and that's been, you know, it's just been awesome.
So I'm really proud of these partnerships and they, they frankly do allow me to do what I do on a weekly basis.
Cause now the newsletter goes out to like over 13 ,000 people.
Um, and that's a lot.
And I spend a lot of time every week working on it.
And again, like back to like the business side of things, if I'm going to spend that much time working on something.
And if I were, if I were losing money on it, not that you can't like have hobbies, you know, someone's going to be like, what are you, like, what are you doing?
And, you know, in my case, like I want to be able to spend my time working on this newsletter every week and putting out as high quality product as I can.
And I couldn't do it without the support, you know, from these brands that allow me to do it.
I also couldn't do without the support from readers, Many of them who generously, without me prompting them, are like, how can I support you?
Almost like an NPR model in kind.
Can I support you in doing this?
And that feels really, really good.
I mean, we have readers who will email us and be like, hey, the code isn't working.
And be like, let me work on that for you and get back to you.
We'll take care of that.
It's like, thank you so much for even trying.
Yeah, and that just kind of validates my hypothesis of this win -win -win model.
it's like all right like you know the the reader is like if mario thinks this is a good product let me at least try it like let me give it a try um and you know if that's great um i'm happy i'm happy about that and if they buy something from one of these brands like they have a they have a new customer um and then the you know the the reader ends up having a you know a great product hopefully a great experience type of thing and it's like i just you know plus the reader's also been spared some truly ridiculous products yeah we're trying to be 100 and the other thing too and and i not to call out
like anyone specifically but also over the last 10 years aside from newsletters becoming a more popular thing and there's i mean there's more running newsletters than you can count now and again without naming names like one of the things i'm i'm proud of is uh is how many of these newsletters have kind of just been like oh that seems to be working from mario let me try and do that um which is cool i mean no shade at all uh i've i tried something and it worked and now it's working for other people and that's great um but there's also been the rise of like running influencers who may or may not have a newsletter
maybe they're doing most of their stuff on social media and every week they're shilling a new product like this is the greatest shoe in the entire world this feels really good it's like you know one of the things i like about my readers is they're very discerning um they're very smart and if i were to do that i would hope they'd call me out of my bullshit um type of thing because you know clearly like you know unless i don't know like you're not gonna have a new favorite shoe you know every week um for me it's all again about consistency this is the 500th issue of the newsletter but it's like
i've consistently been running in new balance shoes since even before yeah um they were were a partner of the newsletter.
Same thing with transmit basically.
Yeah. I mean, I grew up in Boston.
I ran, Christ, I ran for New Balance Boston for, you know, a number of years before I moved out to, you know, to California.
Like it's a brand that I've long believed in.
And so that's a big part of the equation.
Now they do allow me to devote an inordinate amount of time to this like weekend and week out, but I'm like, I'm just really proud of how we've done it.
Yeah, for sure. For sure.
And you know, I think one thing I want, I want to to touch on is and you mentioned it just like the consistency of it you know it's so hard to do anything week in week out but to do it for 500 weeks in a row i mean it's it's an impressive feat i'm curious like as the numbers kept getting hard you know kept getting higher in terms of issues did that become easier or harder to stay consistent week in week out now it's just it's It's what I do.
It's what I do every week.
I mean, it's, it's really no different than, you know, waking up in the morning and having a cup of coffee or brushing my teeth before bed every night.
It's just, it's just what I do.
I don't, I mean, obviously I think about it, but I don't really, I don't think about like, is, am I going to put a newsletter out this week or not?
Like, of course I'm going to put a newsletter out this week.
And it doesn't mean it's easy to do.
I've had, believe me, I've had a lot of late Monday nights and I've had a lot of weeks where I'm like, man, it would be so easy to just like not send this thing, but I've made this commitment.
And now there is an expectation on the other end that people are going to receive this.
And I want to make good on that commitment and I want to deliver on that expectation.
And that's something that's really, really important to me.
Yeah, well, that's, you know, it's great to hear because certainly if I didn't get the email on Tuesday, I'd be like making sure that my internet wasn't down or something.
thing right because you just expect it when i wake up in the morning yeah i mean it's just it's what i do every week and as much as you know 13 000 plus people read every week i do this for myself like this is still is a creative itch that i want to scratch it's a it's a medium and a form of writing and communication that i have always enjoyed and really like if you've especially if if you've been reading for long enough, you can probably see it or get a feel for it as you're reading.
Like I'm working stuff out, like on the page.
I mean, I'm sharing things that I've thought about.
I have an opinion about that I'm trying to form like thoughts about, and I'm, I'm actively doing that.
And then yes, I go back and I edit it and I make sure that it's, you know, readable is again, like I do come from like an editing background.
That's important, important to me.
um but like that's really what the newsletter is it's like my weekly exercise of like getting my thoughts down about topics that i'm thinking about or that kind of come across my consciousness um spending a little more time thinking about things that i'm interested in or that caught my attention and having record of it and being able to like you know that's the great thing about writing you can always go back and like reference it and again i write mostly about running but But I share a lot of things that have nothing directly to do with running that maybe you can tie back to running that are tangentially
related to running and some things that aren't at all like music.
And I think it really is just reflective and representative of kind of where my head is at at any given time.
And the general format of it has remained like pretty consistent since week one.
If there's anything that's changed, I'm probably slightly, I'm definitely mostly less opinionated than I was in the first five years.
You know, I did build a reputation, like I've been in this industry a long time.
You know, I've been coaching a long time.
I've worked in media for a long time.
i have always tried to stay true to my you know core values and with that comes a responsibility and some and some expectation of you know having something to say about x y and z that are going on and when i was like more on the journalism side of things and like in the media uh and something happens people what is what is mario what does mario think about this and i would right about that in the morning shakeout it was you know not every week but a lot of times became like an opinion call if something happened doping scandal um you know a race result kind of came out of usatf with their bullshit
yeah usatf's bullshit uh sub 2 projects super shoes like something to get like fired up about like carbon fiber bulls like i would get fired up about that stuff and and i think like what happened uh in the early years i would i would do that and like i'm coming at this with an informed opinion i'm not just pulling shit out of my ass like i i'm coming at this with an informed opinion and like you don't have to agree with me but like i stand by whatever it is that i that i wrote those are always the things that generate the most like internet hype type of thing and that feels good like that gives
you like a dopamine hits like people are talking about what it is that i said or i'm you know i'm having a an argument about that and i definitely got addicted to some of that early on.
With that, I felt like I had to have a take about everything.
There were a few years.
I can't exactly put a time frame.
It was probably around 2018 to 2020 where I felt like I had to have an opinion or something to say about anything that happened in the running world.
Any kind of controversy, whether it was in the sport or in the industry or something that happened on social media and and i did all this to myself and it it drained me dry dude um like it just totally drained me dry and if there was a period where the newsletter was less enjoyable to put out than than others it was it was during that period where i felt like i had to say something because people were expecting me to say something and i would get get a reaction oftentimes and that would feel good temporarily and then the next week it's like on to the next thing yeah um and that's an exhausting
way to live i can tell you because i did it for a couple years i think i mean you've been open about this before i mean let's some really unhealthy habits with social media yep exactly and all that so you know it wasn't without a cost yeah 100 and and the straw that kind of broke the camel's back uh i noted this down and And it was June 2021, June 15th, 2021.
And Shelby Houlihan, the day before the newsletter came out, so this would have happened June 14th, it was announced that she had failed a drug test and was gonna be facing suspension.
And there was a whole Zoom press conference about it where she spoke and her coaches and all of this.
And this happened on like a Monday afternoon, right?
Right, and I'm working on the newsletter throughout the week, but most of the writing and the putting together of it, and again, because I come from an editing background, it happens on Monday.
The deadline is Monday, and I've gotten a lot better about making that deadline earlier and earlier so I can get to sleep.
But this thing dropped, and it was like, fuck, I've got to cover it.
I told myself, people are going to want to know, what does Mario have to think about Shelby?
Right, if I don't cover it tomorrow, then I'm going to miss my… And so most of the newsletter was done by the time this news dropped that afternoon, and I blew it up.
And I was like, I got to lead with this.
I got to write. And I wrote 1 ,000 -plus words about it, again, kind of column length.
And I stand by everything I wrote, and I really wanted to come at it in a balanced and informed way.
but i was up to like newsletter newsletter usually gets scheduled at 2 15 uh pacific time every week i scheduled for that i was up past 2 15 um it was like close to 4 a .m when i finally like shut the laptop and went to bed so and i had to send it right away because it was already like kind of behind schedule.
Um, and I was just like, was that worth it?
Like, was it worth it?
And people had, you know, people agree with me, people disagreed with me.
Like I got the little like dopamine hit and like within a week it was like, yeah, people weren't really talking about it much anymore.
Um, and I remember something, uh, a guy named Andy Hursom, who was the senior vice president of media, uh, at competitor told me, uh, back when we were figuring out our content strategy there.
And he just goes, news is perishable.
And, and I really like thought about that.
And I'm like, well, commentary on the news is perishable too.
And so after that, I was like, I can't do this anymore.
Like, I just can't drive myself crazy.
Um, you know, having something to say about everything, like you had mentioned, you know, social media, this is like peak COVID too, you know, it's like, so a lot of stuff's happening on social media, which I didn't have a great relationship with at the time.
And I was just like, I'm not doing this anymore.
I'm still going to do the newsletter, but I'm just not going to have an opinion about everything.
And so after that, I just stopped having opinions.
I still have opinions about things.
I mostly keep them to myself.
I talk about it within my small circles.
But it totally changed my relationship to the newsletter, and I was like, you know what?
I'm going to go back to, to just being a person of value and not that having an opinion about something doesn't provide value.
Some people need that kind of, you know, perspective, but I'm like, I, I'm not doing that anymore.
Like, it's just not, it's not sustainable.
Like I'm going to have to, this is, this is just going to like burn me out to no end.
Um, so since then, since, uh, uh june 15th 2021 issue 292 i have had a lot less opinions about things that are happening in the sport in the industry every once in a while like this past week 499 yeah i had i had some opinions about the olympic trials qualifying standards because i coach a lot of athletes who are aiming for that and it was fresh on my mind and i could i could do this in a way that didn't really you know stress me out but like there are a lot of things that happen in running now i just kind let them go and honestly paying less attention to them too i might i legitimately might not have an opinion about things
there are things that happen that i do have an opinion about i just keep to myself i talk about the small um circle of people but i'm trying to share things that are mostly of value and are evergreen and to andy harrison's point aren't perishable so if you go read a back issue of the morning shakeout sure like the article i linked to or the podcast i linked to might've come out a year ago, a week ago, two years ago, whatever it is.
But whatever my takeaway was from that should last a lot longer, you know, should be evergreen in that way.
And like, for me, reading that stuff, listening to that stuff, thinking about that stuff personally, like, nourishes me.
Like, I learn from it.
Like, these are things that I'm interested in exploring, exploring working on my myself and and what i've learned over 10 close to 10 years of doing this other people are too and that's the stuff that i think has the lasting value and that has been sort of the hallmark of my work with this newsletter over the 10 years is not the fireball opinion that i that i have it's sometimes it's just these little snippets that have a profound takeaway that someone takes back and they think about for the next week, or it sparks them to make a change in their life.
Or I write about how it sparked a change in my life, and maybe that helps someone else.
And that's largely what I'm doing most weeks these days.
And it's 10 years in, it's more enjoyable than ever at this point.
And that's been a bit of an evolution.
Doesn't mean mean i won't have lols you know from from here on out but um yeah i i still it's my favorite thing that i do every week i love it i love it so this is all fascinating and you know one of the things i love mario it's almost like you found a way to find like a fuel like a sustainable fuel to keep your enthusiasm for this newsletter going right like you you found a way to make it it almost feels like you're in a place now again who knows what's gonna happen in the future but right feels really sustainable it's really sort of ingrained into your life and there's like a good place for it
um i wouldn't have done it for 500 weeks if it if it weren't for sure for sure but but my question as a reader you know before i was you know like on staff quote unquote is like what would you have told if you could go back and talk to mario from from almost 10 years ago like what what would you have told him to be like hey if you just hold the line you're going going to get to this place or if you just do it this way like it's all going to work out i don't know if i would tell him anything how interesting because again this has always been a creative itch that i've wanted to scratch yes it is how
i make a good chunk of my living now but even if it brought in no money after this year i would still do it because i still want to create i still want to scratch that creative itch like this is just something that i really enjoy doing and yeah i i need it to at this point i don't even know if i need to justify my wife like this she just knows like okay aside from the fact that this this brings in income for us like i know you need to do this you know for yourself and that's why i started i'm like i need to do this for myself like this is something i felt like was missing you know from from my
life and i have I have not had any, like, real goals and expectations for it other than I want to write about the things that I'm interested in writing about.
I think if I've lost my way at all is what I just described a little while ago is, like, trying to live up to other people's expectations.
Like, I'm writing the newsletter that I want to read every week.
You know, as, like, self -congratulatory as that sounds, it's like, you've got to create something that you want to see in the world.
And that's what I did.
And that's what I continue to do, you know, every week.
And so, I wouldn't change that.
It's led to opportunities I could never have imagined.
It's connected me with people that I otherwise would not have known.
known. It's again, like it's like, this is part of how I make my living.
I, that was not my idea from the very beginning.
Um, and I think if it was, it wouldn't have lasted because soon as it didn't work, I would have stopped doing it.
And I do think people now see a newsletter and be like, Oh, that's cool.
Let me, let me go in and I can set up a sub stack and people can pay me.
Oh, nobody's paying me after three weeks.
I'm not doing it anymore.
Um, and so I don't think you can go in with that mindset.
It's not going to last. It won't be sustainable in that way.
So I think you've got to stay true to yourself and your core values and the things that you're interested in and you've got to you know create the product that you as the creator would would want to consume and that's i mean that's been consistent since day one i mean it's such a good point just like you know if you're not feeling uh you know intrinsically motivated to do this and that isn't your source of uh if that isn't your reason and it's in something else you know then are you really making the main thing the main thing yeah it has to come from within and And that's something that I'm really
proud of is it's been intrinsically motivated since day one and it will be until it's not anymore and then I'll stop doing it.
But I don't have any plans.
Yeah, spoiler alert, no plans.
Yeah, no plans to stop doing it anytime soon.
But yeah, I mean I think that's the biggest thing.
It's like have the right intentions, have good intentions going into it and that will lead to opportunities that you never could have forecasted.
And that's been – I mean that's been part of the fun of it because a lot of this stuff, it's all been unexpected.
I never expected to do this 500 weeks.
I never expected that 13 ,000 plus people would read it every week.
I never expected that partners would be like paying me money to be associated with the morning shakeout.
Those are all kind of like byproducts I think of just sticking to my values and doing things the right way.
And they've all been pleasant surprises versus going in with these expectations of, I'm going to bring on sponsors, I'm going to have 10 ,000 readers, I'm going to do this 500 weeks in a row, and then having one of those things fall apart and then being like, oh, it's all a disappointment, it didn't live up to my expectations.
So I think for me, not having any other expectations other than to put out something that I'm proud of every week and that I would want to read myself has opened up all of these possibilities that I never could have imagined from the outset.
it well i think i'm sure i speak on behalf of 13 000 subscribers that we're really glad you scratched that itch almost 10 years ago and you continue to scratch it well thank you thank you for being one of the og subscribers and since this did become part of how i make my living i mean you manage that side of it which allows me to just really focus 98 99 of my energy on making the damn thing and making it as good as i can every week so thank you very much for being a part of this team it really means a lot to me well it's it's meant the world to me as well and you know we've talked about this offline
a lot it's like i think we've helped each other in our careers and um certainly you know i've i've gotten as much as i've given so i appreciate you for uh you know letting me part of this journey yeah and the last thing i'll say is thank you to all of you out there you're listening to this podcast right now but i hope many of you are readers of the the newsletter or have been for some number of years now.
And if you're not, I hope that you subscribe and read moving forward because that, I mean, that kind of, that's why we're having this conversation, I think.
And it's kind of made my life a lot more fulfilling.
I mean, and part of what I love about the newsletter format is like, I am an introvert.
I do not do well in big crowds.
like that is a nightmare for me part of what i like about email is people can reply to me directly and have a one -on -one relationship and i have had email volleys with readers of the newsletter like i can't even count at this point for like some of them 10 years eight years five years six years about things that i've i've written about and some of these folks i've had the privilege of meeting at different events many of them i i haven't um but we've had this it's a relationship Like I've developed a relationship with many of my readers.
And again, like that's not something I expected going in.
But now that I've been doing it for as long as I have, if I step back, like it means so much to me.
So thank you to all of the readers.
creators, this pursuit has, I mean, again, it's just what I do, part of what I do every week, and it's a big part of me and how I spend my time, but so are those of you who are reading it and responding to me via email every week.
Now that the ShakeOut's been on Substack for close to a year now, you can leave comments, and we've created some community there, and there's some dialogue, and I've really enjoyed that aspect of it as well, but this really, again, unexpectedly has It's become like a bit of a community.
You're my community if you're listening to this.
And that has really meant probably more to me than anything else.
You know, yeah, it's an email.
It's digital. It's online.
But there's a person behind it, and there's a person on the other end of it.
And that just kind of serves as the connective tissue.
And it's a beautiful thing.
It is a beautiful thing.
so with that we'll wrap up this special episode of the morning shakeout podcast I'm not even sure if I'll put a number of it if you haven't already go read issue 500 of the morning shakeout email newsletter if you had no idea that I had a newsletter I'd love if you signed up for it you can do that at the morning shakeout .com easy enough to do but thank you all for listening Chris thank you for sitting down and having this conversation with me thank you to everyone who has read the shakeout for a a week, or years at this point, it all means a lot to me.
All right, that's it for this one.
Thank you so much for taking the time to listen in.
If you could, please leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever platform you're tuning into this from.
It means a lot to me and it helps new listeners to discover the show.
Also, a big thank you to my annual partners for making it possible.
check out themorningshakeout .com slash partners to take advantage of some of the discount codes and special offers that are available exclusively to readers and listeners of the Morning Shakeout.
Before we go, I'd like to give a quick shout out to John Somerford, who has edited and produced every episode of the podcast, and also Chris Douglas, who is my right -hand man and helps to keep this ship afloat.
And that's all I've got.
I'm Mario Fraioli, and this has been another episode of the Morning Shakeout podcast.
