A Major Announcement From 2%

The 2% newsletter is expanding to make you better, and I need your support.

Why it matters: You’ll start receiving more practical and actionable information that measurably improves your health, fitness, and life—delivered in new and more convenient ways.

I’ve spent the last 15 years traveling, researching, and writing on health and performance.

My work has taken me into war zones, remote reaches of the Arctic, outposts in the Bolivian jungle, cutting-edge labs worldwide, and more. I’ve interviewed thousands of experts, from Nobelists to the world’s greatest athletes. I’ve poured over thousands of studies and books.

The goal is and always has been to find the best practical ideas and tactics you can use to improve your life today and for years to come.

I’ve spent the last six of those years writing books. The Comfort Crisis is two years old. My next book, Scarcity Brain, comes out September 26. The next obvious move for an author would be to write a third book. I love writing books.

But I’ve got this file of material on my computer. It contains some of the most valuable and exciting stuff I’ve found and written on my journeys. The file grows every day.

I’m always asking too many questions of experts, reading too many studies, taking too many notes on my travels, and writing about too many ideas. (Just ask my editor at Penguin Random House … I wrote 300,000+ words for an 85,000-word book).

I sift through this file often. I get excited afterward because I know its contents can help people everywhere, no matter their goals or background. But I haven’t quite figured out what to do with it all.

The ideas may not perfectly fit the theme of one of my books. Or I may not have wanted to publish the ideas in a traditional media outlet for fear that they’d get oversimplified and rendered useless to you.

I began sending The 2% newsletter regularly in September to trickle out some of the information in the file. It’s been fun and rewarding for me. I’ve loved the present-tense, communal aspect of this newsletter.

But the coolest part is that The 2% newsletter has helped people.

Since September, readers of this newsletter have lost collective thousands of extra pounds, covered untold miles on foot (usually with a heavy ruck!), spent more time outside with friends and family, taken on epic Misogis that irrevocably changed them for the better, made business and life decisions that gave them a huge return, and more.

That’s the tense of living we’re after.

And I think it’s easier for all of us to stay in that tense when we have constant reminders of what that tense is, where we find it, and how we stay in it and milk it for all it’s worth.

To help us do that—(clears throat to make an official announcement)—I’ve decided to devote myself to The 2% newsletter.

I’ll now publish here at least three times a week. But I’m also going beyond written words in your inbox. Many new things are happening:

·  I’ve created a website, twopct.com, where all past and future 2% posts will live.

·  I’ll be doing audio versions of 2% posts for those who like to consume material over audio. (You can listen to this post in the audio bar below my photo. Just click play.)

·  We’ll have Q&As so you can ask me and other experts your most pressing health and wellness questions.

·  We’ll have unfiltered conversations with leading experts.

·  We’ll have workout and nutrition programs I’ve created with experts and used myself.

·  We’re dropping an entire series elucidating the highest ROI acts you can do to live longer and better, called HAVE FUN, DON’T DIE (hint: It’s none of the stuff you hear from longevity gurus).

·  And much more …

In short: I’ll begin releasing the most fascinating, powerful, and actionable information and ideas I find. In the present tense. In a way that makes it most effortless for you to consume and, in turn, benefit from.

Before I explain how this will work, please allow me to quickly explain why I think this is so important right now (clears throat again, stands on soapbox …).

Why Now

The short answer: We need a place for people to find intelligent and practical health information—a useful middle-ground between the dumbed-down clickbait from major media outlets and the 17-hour-long podcasts from health influencers.

The longer answer: Well-researched, balanced, nuanced, practical, and exciting health and wellness journalism is needed now more than ever.

Information about health and wellness—from fitness and nutrition to mental health and longevity—is in a strange place.

Health coverage from major media focuses on clickbait about losing X pounds in Y days. Or another flawed study telling us to either rejoice or freak out because some food we eat daily is the fountain of youth or a one-way ticket to death and disease. Few journalists pick up the phone to speak to an expert anymore, much less travel to really get the story and its most helpful information.

Then we have online health influencers. And not just the ones on social media telling us everything is toxic and to please buy their supplement. Some of today’s biggest health voices are MDs and researchers at elite universities.

These people are well-meaning. But many go so far down the rabbit hole they can’t see out of it. They don’t account for critical perspectives from other scientific disciplines and approaches to living that have existed for thousands of years. It’s a lot of 75-step morning routines that will help you “optimize” and “hack” this and that. But life isn’t a laboratory. What looks good in a tightly controlled study rarely works as we think it will in the real world and often just sucks the soul out of living.

We need objective health information that is as broad as it is deep. It must come from groundbreaking new science, yes. But it must also view topics from multiple lenses and leverage wisdom from real conversations with experts and cultures across disciplines. And that information must be human. It must account for tradeoffs and different perspectives and work for real people in the real world—changing them for the better.

That’s what we’re after with The 2%.

An Agreement to Save You Time and Money

I’m delaying writing a third book to focus on providing us with information in real time. I couldn’t do this without your support. The goal is to use the resources from this project to get the best information for us all. I want to be able to go to the places where the most important ideas in health and wellness are unfolding—I always get the best stories and most useful and interesting information when I go there.

Hence, I’ll be offering tiers for subscribers to this newsletter: free, Member, and Founders.

Please note that for the next month—from May 1 to May 31, 2023—I’m making everything I post free. I want you to experience what this project is about and whether it’s worth becoming a member of 2%.

Once 2% goes behind a subscription paywall, on June 1st, one post a week will always be free. Just like it always has been.

But I’ll be encouraging everyone to become a Member subscriber. This project is supplanting my books for the near future because I think this direction can help more people.

The goal with the Member subscriptions is that you gain more money and time than the monthly cost.

Some context: I recently had a conversation with one of the world’s top doctors. He only works privately with billionaire types and charges well into the six-figure range each year for his services. I asked him what his clients most need to improve their health.

“Honestly,” he told me, “they need to do the stuff you write about.” 

Consider the people who finally lost weight because of something they read in this newsletter. Scientists at Johns Hopkins ran all the numbers and found that people who drop from obese to overweight or overweight to normal weight save an average of $18,000 to $36,000 across a lifetime. Or there’s the lady who applied some of the principles from a recent newsletter to business and increased her revenue by 50 percent.

When we talk about time, we’re talking about getting more of it. It could come from cutting out unhelpful habits hindering you or clogging your schedule. Or it could be more years of life. A guy emailed me the other day telling me my work led him to lose 120 pounds. Different studies suggest that his weight loss likely added 10 to 14 years to his life. Or there are the people who started exercising again, whether through rucking or other activities. That’s giving them, on average, seven extra years.

But it’s of course not just about money and future years. It’s about living better—right now and always. Riding this strange ride we call life well and with everything we’ve got. Again, that’s the tense of living we’re after.

The Three Tiers

I’ll be offering three subscriptions to this publication: free, Member, and Founding Member. Here’s what each gets you.

Free Subscription to The 2%

A great but limited place to start

• One of three+ 2% posts a week

• Access to the last three weeks of free posts.

Member of The 2%

Life-enhancing information that gains you far more money and time than its cost

• Every 2% post (three posts each week—all the good info, all the time).

• Audio versions of every 2% post (great for people who like to consume information while driving, rucking, exercising, cooking, cleaning, etc. You can listen to this post in the audio bar below my photo. Just click play.)

• Access to the full archive of 2% posts

• Answers to your personal questions (killer Q&A posts … AMA)

• Audio and video reactions (expert-reviewed takes on breaking health topics)

• Unfiltered conversations with experts (I’ve interviewed everyone from Super Bowl Winning MVPs to billionaires to Nobel Prize-winning scientists)

• Exclusive access to our HAVE FUN, DON’T DIE series (the most essential information for living better and longer today)

• Exclusive info from our team of scientific advisors (I’ve recruited who I think are the best and brightest in the world of health, performance, nutrition, fitness, mental health, and the outdoors to advise this new version of The 2%. We’ll do regular Q&As with them to get your questions answered)

• Exclusive discounts from the health, fitness, and adventure brands I use (I only recommend products I’ve used regularly for at least 12 months)

• Free expert-validated workouts (the workouts I do to prepare for different adventures and to live better every day, all with variations for any ability level)

• Free, easy, and effective nutrition approaches validated by multiple experts (the no-BS stuff that works)

Cost: $6.87/month or $68.70/year (get 15% off of the yearly cost if you sign up by 5/31)

(Again: You’ll gain more time and money in the long run than the cost.)

Founding Member of The 2%

For those who are all-in on living well

• Everything in the “Member” subscription above

• Free 2% Dad Hat (the perfect workout hat … $30 value)

• Free Personal 15-minute consultation call (AMA. Live. $200 value)

• Free access to future e-books, paid training programs, and paid courses (The upcoming Rucking book; complete HAVE FUN, DON’T DIE training and living plan; future courses etc … $300+ value)

Cost: $249/year

That’s the deal. That’s the tense we’re after.

You’ll get your next 2% post in your inbox Wednesday. Remember, you’ll get all 2% posts for free from today to 5/31. You’ll also have access to the archive at twopct.com.

Want to become a member now? I’d appreciate that. I’d like that so much that you can get 15% off an annual membership if you sign up by 5/31. Get the launch deal here.

And remember: Have fun, don’t die.

-Michael