Level Up Your Life: An Interview with Steve Kamb of Nerd Fitness!

Ready to level up your life, Strongie? I've got something extremely special for you today. One of my good friends is here on Strong Inside Out to talk about his new book! You may have heard of him...

Steve Kamb in da house! Steve is the founder of Nerd Fitness, a huge inspiration for me to start Strong Inside Out (more on that in the interview). Beyond that, he's written a freaking awesome book.

Level Up Your Life: How to Unlock Adventure and Happiness by Becoming The Hero of Your Own Story is THE book of the year for Strongies. I think he wrote it for us, actually. It preaches our philosophy of taking up the reigns in your life to direct it in a positive, fulfilling direction.

The way Steve "leveled up his life" is unique and fun, making it a great way for anyone to hero up, no matter where you are in life. As you may guess, it especially applies to nerds of all kinds. You may remember I think that we're all nerds, so that means you!

In today's interview, we talk all about how we met, how Strong Inside Out never would have gotten anywhere without having met Steve and all about Steve's revolutionary technique of living the life you were born to live.

Want to preorder the book right meow? Click here!*

Because I love you so, I've got this interview in 2 formats available for you: video and the written transcript! Want it in audio? Press play and look away from your device! Juuuuuuust kidding! Absorb as you please, Strongie. It's chock-full of info and inspiration any way you slice it!

Without further ado, heeeeeeere's Steve!

Amy: Hey, Strongies. Welcome. I have a very, very special guest today. It is Steve Kamb. Woot woot!

Steve Kamb: What up! Yeah.

Amy: Steve Kamb is a really good friend of mine and he actually helped me start Strong Inside Out. A little bit more on that later, but very exciting. Steve is releasing a book. Am I allowed to show this? I am allowed to show this now, right?

Steve Kamb: Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Amy: It's called Level Up Your Life: How to Unlock Adventure and Happiness By Becoming the Hero of Your Own Story, which is what we are all about here at Strong Inside Out, so I'm very excited to share this with you because it freaking rocks. A little bit about the way that Steve and I first met. If anybody knows how to write a book about leveling up your life, it is Steve because he helped me do exactly that. I'm going to just continue to gratitude you to death, Steve. I know you're probably tired of hearing it, but I'm going to do it anyways.

When I first met Steve, I went to the first World Domination Summit, which is Chris Guillebeau's big, huge, amazing, life-changing event. I went and I was like, "I kind of what to do something with my personal training business, but I don't know what it's going to be." I talked to Steve about it and I was a fan of Nerd Fitness at the time and he was like, "We're really lacking women's voices in the fitness industry. Why don't you do something and I'll help you launch it?" It was an amazing process. You helped me choose Strong Inside Out. You helped me share my story, which I've never shared with anybody before. You just gave me a whole bunch of support in that way and guided me to do that, so thank you, friend.

Steve Kamb: I remember you coming up to me at WDS that year and you just had the biggest smile on your face and you were like, "Hi, I'm Amy and I love Nerd Fitness and I'm a personal trainer and I'm trying to do this thing." I was like whoa, I've never met anybody that is excited about just everything, like I am. You're like, "Let's go get lunch," and I was like, "Okay. Tell me your story. Let's get into it." Man, that was ... What was that? Five years ago now? Four years?

Amy: Yeah, I think it was about five years ago, which is crazy to think about. We're old.

Steve Kamb: Yeah. What a journey we've been on since then. Both of us, huh?

Amy: Yeah, man, and writing a book and everything. That's so exciting! I kind of want to ask you a little bit about your book, if that's cool? Can we just dive in here?

Steve Kamb: No, not cool.

Amy: No.

Steve Kamb: We're not talking about it.

Amy: No. This interview is not for that.

Steve Kamb: Okay, fine.

Amy: Here at Strong Inside Out, we're all about becoming stronger than your struggle and that's exactly what you've done and chronicled in your book. You talk a little bit about your darkest days and what it was like, but could you talk to the Strongies here a little bit about that?

Steve Kamb: I would love to. First of all, I think a big component of this book is built around the concept of the hero's journey and it's the idea that every great story in history tends to follow a similar story arc. It's a character that is kind of like a fish out of water. They don't know. Something's missing. They feel out of place. Something's not right and there is some sort of call to action and it brings them through this amazing journey where they transform and return a changed person from the Bible to Star Wars to Hunger Games, whatever. I started thinking about life as if we were characters in that game or characters in a story.

I think the struggle is often the most important part. Without the struggle, there could be no growth. [tweet it] Without the struggle, there's no plot advancement. Without the struggle, it's just learning about somebody that's awesome that becomes more awesome. Nobody wants to learn about that.

Amy: No.

Steve Kamb: Everybody loves the underdog. Everybody wants to know about the down on their luck or the person that is skating by, coasting, whatever and then something changes and they evolve and transform and become this kind of superhero version of themselves. For me, my darkest days I guess were probably the first year or so out of college. I had just graduated with a degree in economics. My favorite classes in college were entrepreneurship and the first thing I did was get this soul sucking sales job that I was so mismatched for and, not to downplay the sales industry. I was just very bad. I was so bad at it. So bad at it and in the wrong spot. I was a square peg trying to fit in a round hole. It sucked. I cried probably twice a week. Every Sunday like leading up to work were terrible. I lost myself more and more into elaborate video games to kind of escape. I'd spend far too much time going out partying my face off on weekends trying to forget the terrible week I'd just had or trying to like preemptively forget the week I was about to have. It was terrible.

Is wasn't until I think it was about a year and a half after I'd hung out in San Diego that, on a particularly miserable day on my job, walked into a book store and stumbled across Tim Ferris' Four Hour Work Week and that book was kind of like that matrix ... Neo discovering the matrix.

Amy: Yes.

Steve Kamb: It was like wait a second. Hmm, maybe I don't have to be miserable for the next forty five years. It was like a job where it was two weeks of vacation and I was putting in long hours and just I woke up every day miserable. God, what's wrong with me was my first thought, honestly. I was like, "This is life. Get used to it. You're acting like a spoiled brat because you don't want to work." I was like that's not it. I've busted my ass. I've worked every summer since I was fourteen. I worked through college. I worked summers between college. I graduated second in my class in high school and cum laude from Vanderbilt. I was this hard working kind of busting my ass personality and, here I am at work, like shirking my duties, crying, just miserable. It was like how far have I fallen? Something has to change.

Amy: Yeah.

Steve Kamb: I found that book and, in it, he talked about building a small business and helping people in a very specific type of way that catered to your audience. For me, I was like, "I'm a huge nerd. I'm reading Harry Potter in between job site trips at work. I built my own computer. I'm playing video games all the time. I'm a huge nerd, but I also have started to transform myself physically and fallen in love with health and fitness. Maybe I can help other people out there that are like me. They're just looking for a home online to learn about getting fit and still want to keep the nerdy things that make them who they are." I Googled nerd and fitness and nothing popped up. I guess now this is about eight years ago. I purchased nerdfitness.com and that was really the beginning of it.

Amy: That was the birth of Nerd Fitness.

Steve Kamb: That was it. The genesis, the origin story.

Amy: Amazing. Very cool. I think Strongies everywhere can really relate to that story of just knowing that there's something more out there and feeling almost guilty for feeling those feelings because a lot of us in these well developed countries have this awesome life and we're always taught other people have it worse than us, but we can get so easily caught up in that stuff, but every struggle is valid. Every single struggle is valid.

Steve Kamb: Sure.

Amy: When we start talking that down, then it's a little bit dangerous for us because it keeps us from becoming this hero of our own story. I love your story and it sounds like the catalyst was really the Four Hour Work Week. You ended up leaving your job that made you so just complacent basically. Can you tell us about the catalyst for you leaving those jobs?

Steve Kamb: Sure. Yeah, it was about a year ... I purchased NerdFitness.com, but I knew I had no idea how to turn it into a business. It was like someday I'll figure out how to make this into something. Right now, it's just an idea in my head. IN the mean time, I have a much more pressing matter and that is I'm miserable and this job is not lined up with what I'm trying to do. I want to go work for a company that I can be proud of and excited about. I had just come back from or I was on my way back, actually. I flew back to Nashville, where I went to college. I few back from Nashville. I went there for a homecoming a year after I had graduated college or a year and a few months after I graduated.

On my flight back out to San Diego, I think I actually had like a panic attack on the airplane. I was in like that inside seat and I'm like, "I'm going back to a job I hate." I was living with my brother, but he was traveling for a few weeks. I was like, "I'm going back to an empty apartment. All my friends live on the east coast. I'm going back to a job that's terrible. I hate what I'm doing."

At the time, I was like twenty three and miserable. I was like, "Something has to change." I had just spent an amazing weekend in Nashville with friends doing fun things and I was like, "I miss that. I need it back in my life," so I reached out to those same friends that I was just hanging out with and they said, "Hey, we're getting an apartment in Atlanta and we need a third roommate. Do you want to move here?" As soon as I mentally wrapped my head around the idea of like I'm going to go live with my friends and shake things up dramatically because I need it, this weight lifted off my shoulders. I was like, "Okay. I still need a job. I still need to figure things out, but we'll get there." I was looking for jobs. I was looking for like IT consulting and healthcare and all the things that I thought I was supposed to be doing.

Fortunately, I also checked Craig's List and there was a job posting for a company that was looking for a marketing assistant that loved to travel, liked music, and was creative. I was like, "That doesn't sound like a job. That sounds like something I would do anyway, but okay." It turns out this company chartered floating music festivals. They produced events on crew ships with thirty bands on each boat and each cruise ship, you know, and the rest of the sponsors sold to fans as musicians. I applied and they gave me a shot, brought me in for an interview and it worked out. I went to work for them. The company is called Sixth Man. They're still great friends to this day.

I went to work for them for half of what I was making in San Diego, but I didn't care. I had to severely downsize how I was spending money. I had to stop spending going out. I stopped doing a lot of things, but I didn't wake up miserable anymore. I was like, "I don't care what I'm doing for them. I will be the office janitor or whatever it may be." Not to downplay that position either, but I will do literally whatever it takes to go work for this company because this is lined up with what I'm doing. It was while working for them that I finally worked up the courage to get a personal trainer certification and continue studying and learning more about health and fitness and started working on Nerd Fitness on the side. By day, I was Steve Kamb, marketing assistant and, by night, I was Steve Kamb, rebel leader of Nerd Fitness and led that kind of dual existence, alter ego life for another eighteen months to two years. Then ultimately decided to roll the dice once again and take Nerd Fitness on as a full time opportunity. That has now been four and a half years at this point. Five years maybe? Geez, I don't know. It's been a while.

Amy: Yeah.

Steve Kamb: Which is crazy. Oh man, crazy.

Amy: It's so awesome though. I mean, I love that story because it really proves that there's just no right time to make the move. It isn't just like some magical thing happens where, oh my gosh, now is the time I need to change my life. Now is the time I need to make that move. It's just like you make it happen. You make it happen because you choose for it to happen and there's no magical time to do it.

Steve Kamb: Sure.

Amy: Your story is definitely proof of that.

Steve Kamb: I just did it again recently. I just moved to New York City five/six months ago, whatever it was. I came up here in May and I had the best time ever and I was like, "Oh crap. I think I need to move to New York," but I was only three months into a lease in Nashville. I was like, "I'll just wait it out," and I got another two months into it and I was like, "Dude, what are you doing? If you need to be there, be there. Figure it out." Within two weeks, I had subletted my apartment, sold, donated, or given away all of my stuff pretty much, and moved up here to New York. Found a place on AirBnB for a month and rented. Now this is my new home, but it was something I rolled around for a few months and then I was like, "Dude, waiting around is not ... Take action”.

Amy: Yeah.

Steve Kamb: If you're taking action and you set a date, then what does that look like?  Okay, that means I need to do this, this, this, and this. Okay, great. Start with number one. Do it. Move onto number two and then do that. Then worry about number three and four and five. I didn't know where I was going to live when I was going to get up here. I was like, "Dude, deal with that later. Rent a place on AirBnB and then go figure the rest out once you get there." You'd be surprised how resilient we can be as humans even when things aren't necessarily all planned out. [tweet it] I'm a big fan of, if you feel compelled to do something, fricking do it.

Amy: Yeah.

Steve Kamb: It just sounds so simple, but I don't know. I had to quit that job in San Diego. I had to move to Atlanta. I had to start Nerd Fitness. I had to travel around the world. I had to relocate to Nashville. I had to move to New York. These are instances where I was like, "Okay, this is what's going to happen and I'm going to do it and now let's just put steps in place and make it happen."

Amy: Awesome. You teach a very unique way of leveling up your life in your book and I was wondering if you could tell Strongies a little bit about what that technique is?

Steve Kamb: I would love to. It's the idea of using game mechanics and behavioral psychology, really, to get yourself to do the things you need to do when motivation starts to wane. Motivation, willpower, inspiration, we all think we need these things to ... Ah man, if I was just motivated to run more or I wish I had more willpower to eat better or I wish I was just inspired to do that thing more. I've come to realize that if you rely on those things, it's like you're fighting with one or two arms tied behind your back.

Amy: Mm-hmm.

Steve Kamb: I thought to myself, "Okay, if I'm always backing out when I struggled to do the things I wanted to do because I was too busy playing video games. What was it about those games that drew me in and got me excited?" It turns out that video games have these things built into their systems and structure that target parts of our brain that make us say, "I want to keep doing this." Specifically games like role playing games. It's the idea of taking a character who is small, scrawny, weak, whatever and slowing but surely, level after level getting a little bit better. There's some sort of reward when you reach a certain level that makes you even stronger, that lets you fight a bigger bad guy, that lets you explore a new land that then gets you to another level. It's this idea of just consistent, constant improvement. You always see progress and you see the reward you receive in the game. Those rewards are always things that reward you back. They reward you to continue pushing you farther down this path.

I thought to myself, "Why don't we just apply those same mechanics to real life?" Throughout the book, I talk about this concept of the progress principle and how we can apply those same systems and mechanics to our life. Instead of just saying, "Oh man, I have to go work out in the gym today," it's more like, "I wonder what I'm capable of this week than compared to last week." "Oh this week I can lift and extra five pounds in my dead lift," or, "I can run a mile three seconds faster than I could last week," so it takes the pressure kind of off the what does the scale say and instead puts it onto this performance or activity based thing. How can I improve this thing that I'm doing? You're not just going to the gym. You are leveling yourself up as a character.

The best way I found to do that is actually literally creating goals and quests and mission and assigning experience point values to them. Then, as you cross those things off, having an experience bar filled up, so I turned my whole life into a game actually and composed it of things I've always wanted to do, places I've wanted to go, physical fitness goals, music goals. Things of that nature, so we've actually, with the release of this book ... Starting on January 12th, you'll actually be able to go to LevelUpYourLife.com or NerdFitness.com, create your own character for free, write in your back story AKA your origin story, which is what I was talking about earlier, and then creating a list of quests and missions. As you cross them off, your character will actually level up.

Amy: Awesome.

Steve Kamb: It's taking this idea of game mechanics and helping you get addicted to the idea of small, teeny, tiny quests but consistent improvement so you don't have to worry about what happens ten levels from now. Just worry about that next quest and, when you complete that one, how does it help you get to the next one? That's probably the biggest component I think from games that I've just fully adopted into my existence and it's made for a few crazy years of some amazing adventures that I have just ... The number of stories I have is pretty nuts.

Amy: That is so awesome. I can't wait to go make that character, by the way. Strongies, I invite you to come make characters with me. It's going to be so much fun. I know you've been talking about that for a while.

Steve Kamb: Forever!

Amy: How exciting that it's actually coming to life, man. So awesome.

Steve Kamb: Yeah.

Amy: What's your next thing on your quest list is what I really want to know because you've done so much already.

Steve Kamb: Let's see. One that I'm working on currently is ... Hold on. I don't know if you can see this, but I keep a violin next to my desk on a little stand. I started taking violin lessons actually when I started writing the book. I wanted to prove the concept of this book works for people outside of just fitness too. Let's learn to play the fiddle, so I found a fiddle shop in Nashville for twenty bucks, that would rent a fiddle for twenty dollars a month, and then I took weekly lessons at like thirty bucks a month. Whatever it was, it was very reasonable and then I put systems in place. My big boss battle when it comes to the fiddle is, by the end of December of 2016, I'm going to be in a friend's wedding over in Ireland and my goal it to sit in a pub in Ireland with my fiddle and play along with locals over there.

Amy: Amazing!

Steve Kamb: I have a lot of work to do this year, but I have a very specific goal with a timetable and steps along the way, so that's one. Then, from a physical fitness goal, I'm currently working towards a four hundred and five pound dead lift. I found out a few years back that my spine doesn't actually line up. It's called splondulathesis. I literally can't even pronounce it, but it's something genetic where my L4 and L5 don't actually line up. For years, I thought that I was just kind of fragile and I would break. Over the past two years, I've been building myself back up and kind of trying to prove myself wrong. Just last week, I hit three ninety.

Amy: Nice.

Steve Kamb: It came up pretty quickly, so I think I could do it, but I've bought into this program of like slow, tiny, consistent gains every week. Every week is a personal best in some way.

Amy: Mm-hmm.

Steve Kamb: I'm just putting my faith in this process and these quests and this mission and, within the next ... I think, at this point, it should be three months from now, I'll hit 405 and then just keep right on climbing.

Amy: Awesome. Next on your quest list is also Pilates. It will really help with that.

Steve Kamb: I'm in.

Amy: Steve and Pilates. I would pay to see that. As we kind of wrap this up a little bit, I know that a lot of Strongies out there are in that same place that you were at before you decided to change your life, so if you could offer them one piece of advice, what would you say... besides buy your book?

Steve Kamb: Buy my book.  Available nationwide in bookstores. I would say what's the next thing on your list? And do it now. Regardless of what you're trying to build, identify what that next specific step is that you can take to make it happen and do it now. I know Tim Ferris talks about when his life was kind of chaotic. He was encouraged by, I think it was a former military guy to just make your bed in the morning. It's like, "What's the first thing?" Just make your bed.

Amy: Yeah.

Steve Kamb: He's like, "How is that going to make the rest of my life? I have so many other things going on." He's like, "Prove to yourself in a small way that you do have control over your environment, over yourself, and build the habit of making the bed."

Amy: Mm-hmm.

Steve Kamb: Then, from there, okay what's the next thing and do that. For me, it's like I need to write an article and then I need to go to the gym. Actually, I was at the gym right before this interview. Then it's do this interview with Amy. Then what's the next thing after that?

Amy: Mm-hmm.

Steve Kamb: Whenever I get overwhelmed, I just kind of have to scale things back and calm down and say, "Just do the next thing." [tweet it] Then worry about the rest of the stuff after you've completed that next step, so look for the next level, that next quest, whatever it may be and take action on it immediately. Like right now.

Amy: Yeah, like now, Strongie! Like right now! Do it! That's so perfect and I think that's really going to apply to a lot of Strongies out there too, so Strongies, I really hope you enjoyed this interview with Steve. It was so awesome having you on.

Steve Kamb: It is always a pleasure. Always a pleasure to see you and to talk with you and to see your smiling face.

Amy: Oh stop it!

Steve Kamb: All that good stuff. I'm excited. I'm looking forward to us hanging out again in the near future. I'm not sure when yet, but it's going to happen.

Amy: I'll be in New York soon.

Steve Kamb: I’m in!

Amy: But until then, Strongies, check out this book. I'm serious. Check it out. It's really good. It goes with our whole philosophy here at Strong Inside Out and Steve is a very inspirational guy. Thank you so much, Steve, for being here and best of luck with your book launch, man.

Steve Kamb: Thank you, Amy. I really appreciate it.

Amy: All right, see you!

Steve Kamb: Bye, Strongies.

*****

Steve's so awesome, isn't he? He's like a walking inspiration bomb that goes off every time he opens his mouth... that's a good thing. :)I can't recommend his book enough. You can preorder it on Amazon; it will be released on January 12th!

Click here to preorder Level Up Your Life: How to Unlock Adventure and Happiness by Becoming The Hero of Your Own Story!

 And I'm totally serious about coming over to NerdFitness.com or LevelUpYourLife.com to make your very own character and fill out your backstory. Come nerd out with me, Strongie. Let's level up our lives together.Stay strong,Amy

*links to books are affiliate links - read about what that means here.