Barbell Shrugged - AMRAP Mentality for Fitness, Business, and Personal Success w/ Jason Khalipa  — Barbell Shrugged #353

Episode Date: November 7, 2018

Jason Khalipa is a former CrossFit Games world champion, author, and lifelong competitor. Jason is also the CEO and Founder of NCFIT, a global company aimed at making fitness effective, fun, and accessible.   In January 2016, Jason and his family were faced with a parent’s worst nightmare. Jason’s daughter Ava was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of four. As all things in life, Jason and his family embraced Ava’s diagnosis, and faced it with unyielding positivity.   Cancer, especially when it affects a child, isn’t the easiest conversation to have, but Jason has approached the subject with compassion and a determination to spread awareness. With all the confidence that Ava will win her battle, Jason aims to support other families faced with the same adversity. Jason and his wife have since focused on philanthropy and spreading awareness for pediatric cancer.   Jason is also one of the most accomplished athletes in CrossFit Games history. In 2008, Jason was crowned the Fittest Man on Earth. He has also earned top finishes including placements as the 5th, 16th, 7th, 5th, 2nd, and 3rd Fittest Man on Earth. Jason had the honor of representing Team USA three times in the worldwide CrossFit Invitational and earned Spirit of the Games honors in 2009. Jason attributes much of his success in life and competition to the love and support of his wife and children, as well as to the AMRAP Mentality.   In this episode, we to Jason about his AMRAP Mentality, what it means to prepare for the unexpected and have a daughter with leukemia, his mental toughness through adversity, how to build an international business and stay present, how to implement the AMRAP Mentality into your own life, and more.   Enjoy! - Doug and Anders ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs_khalipa ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Please support our partners! @bioptimizers: www.BiOptimizers.com/realchalk  “shrugged” to save 20% @halo - gethalosport.com/barbell  “Barbell” to save $100   ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

Truck family, it's Wednesday. We're hanging out with Jason Kalipa this week. If you have been in the world of the CrossFits for any amount of time, you definitely know who Jason Kalipa is. I hope you've been around long enough to have watched every second counts thousands of times like I have and watch him come out of nowhere to go and win the CrossFit Games. Such a cool video. I love watching that. It's on Netflix. You should go check it out because it's really cool.

You look around. It's the who's who of CrossFit from way back in the day. And then you see this one guy in there that looks like a freaking gorilla. And no one knows who he is. That's Jason Kalipa. And he came from way behind and won the CrossFit Games this year that year and then even more impressive he went on to podium as the sport grew incredibly fast and had made an incredible career out of being a CrossFit athlete, which then turned into an incredible business,

which he has gyms all over the world, some of the biggest companies you've ever heard of. And then life happened. And we're going to get into a little bit of the story of his daughter having leukemia, how he handled it, and how he ended up creating the AMRAP mentality, dealing with life's issues, business, maintaining his marriage throughout all of this stuff. It's incredible to think of the amount of things that he has done in his career and his athletic career, his professional career, staying married

to his high school girlfriend. Stuff's incredible. All while having a daughter that got leukemia in kind of the middle of all of it and how he was able to cope. It's a really, really incredible story. And it's the second time I've actually met Kalipa. I met him a long time ago, but this is the second time I've actually met Kalipa, met him a long time ago, but this is the first time I've ever been able to really dig in and ask him the questions that

I want to ask him. Um, make sure you're getting over to hang out with Doug Larson, fitness.com. My dude has an awesome website. He's got mobility plans up for every single joint in your body and every single movement you could ever imagine in the gym. Nutrition for weightlifters. Let's get over to DougLarsonFitness.com. There's all kinds of fun stuff in there, and I need to do a better job of getting his website in your ears every single time I get on this microphone.

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I actually have a ton of information coming in future shows about enzymes, gut health, and we're excited to be working with these guys. Jason Kalipa, let's get after it. That's it, we're totally ready Welcome to Barbell Strugged, I'm Anders Varner We are at the Kill Cliff Kill Cliff Granite Games It's the first time we've been here so far

So is it the Kill Cliff Granite Games or is it the Kill Cliff CrossFit Granite Games? As of now it's official That they are Are we allowed to call them the regional events? What are we supposed to call these things? I don't know, I, it's official that they are. Are we allowed to call them the regional events? What are we supposed to call these things? I don't know. I think it's a great area for sure.

We're hanging out. Doug Larson. For sure. Made it all the way to St. Cloud, Minnesota. And that voice you hear is Jason Kalipa. Welcome to the show, man. This is awesome. I'm really stoked that we got to connect and make this happen.

Yeah, for sure. You had a keynote last night, the AMRAP mentality. Yeah. And I think that's super cool because we get to walk through your entire career, and this is kind of the culmination of the way you think about everything, all of the success you've had from maybe it started in the 08 Games, but business, your daughter, leukemia. Yeah.

And, man, global expansion of NC Fit. The first time I ever met you, actually, I went on this massive road trip. Do you remember Matt Loden? Yeah. Yeah, totally, right? So I opened the gym in San Diego, and we went on this massive road trip in 2011. Now, he lives in Santa Cruz, if I'm not mistaken. San Diego.

San Diego, okay. And we left San Diego. We hit four gyms on the way up. We worked out with, like, dude, when Kristen Clever was, like, the ultimate gangster. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hit four gyms on the way up. We worked out at what was now, I guess, the original CrossFit Santa Cruz. We thought that was so cool.

And then NorCal was the final stop, and we did our level two there. Yeah. Probably the one with all the racquetball courts. We thought that was so cool. And then NorCal was the final stop and we did our level two there. Yeah. Probably the one with all the racquetball courts. Was it that one? No, it was the second one. So we had the upstairs. Oh, the two stairs? Yeah, that was old school.

But you and so it was a year, it was like right after you had won the games and you and Kalipa, dude, Neil Maddox was there. Yo, Neil Maddox. He's like, what a fucking savage that human was. I watched him tap and go like 275-pound cleaning jerks, and I was just like, oh, I got to find a new sport.

Like, those people exist. Dude, yeah, that was a cool location. We had a downstairs, upstairs, upstairs. We had a little bit of jiu-jitsu and like a kids area. We used it for seminars. And then downstairs, just the CrossFit portion. That was our third move of our first location. Yeah, because your first lease, I think you told us, was like...

Six months. Yeah, it was like, I have to be out of here in six months. So first lease was six months. Then after that, I think we did, if I'm not mistaken, like a year and a half. A lot of times it's just I didn't have the credibility to last longer than that with these tenants or the landlord. And then also, you know, I didn't have the credibility to last longer than that with these tenants or the landlord. And then also, you know, I didn't know where we were going to be. So now we sign long-term leases.

Like we just signed a new one in a place called Campbell, and it was seven years, a seven-year option. Nice. I feel like all my landlords looked at me and they were like, you know nothing. We'll sue you at the end of this when you go out of business. Just personally guarantee this for me. Here you go. We'll take everything. You have a 401K? Awesome. I this for me here we'll take everything you have a 401k awesome i'll take that um you started this whole thing though in jujitsu before even the crossfit thing and so jujitsu was in one of our gyms just because i was looking to offset

some of the rent and especially with it being upstairs we couldn't really do any type of at the time i didn't really recognize we could have used it hypothetically for classes but i think we were so stuck on just the old school cross model of dropping weights, whatever. It just wasn't conducive to it. So I had partnered with a friend of mine who was doing jiu-jitsu upstairs. And that was originally what intrigued me with jiu-jitsu. And then over the years, I would do it a little bit. But then I didn't want to get hurt for my sport, which is CrossFit.

So I would just kind of avoid it. And now after I got, you you know kind of finished competing i started get diving into jiu-jitsu a couple times a week and it's it's something i really enjoy did you open the gym to actually start a business like start a gym or was this i need a place to train yeah um because that's very much where mine was it was like man nobody around here is training like this i i need a place that i can go to be aggressive and drop weights and and do like actually practice the skill of no i mean you know so i talked to a lot of gym owners i mean like a lot and a lot of people get started because they want to you know they like to work out and

they want to open up a gym and what they don't realize they're taking on a lot of risk and liability and you know so i opened it from day, like I need to provide for my future family. It wasn't a game, you know, and, and we started off in a small space and just kept growing organically from there. But, you know, since day one, I had a really, I was really blessed with my background. You know, when I was 15, I started working at a conventional gym. I learned front desk procedures. I learned sales and marketing all throughout college.

I worked there. And so once I graduated, I had so much background in the business that just carried over to when I opened up the CrossFit gym. You know, a lot of people don't realize this, but we talk about, we were talking about Lewis Howes and how he's been doing, you know, podcasting different stuff for years. And it takes a long time to develop an expertise in anything. And at early age i was very blessed to you know ride on the elliptical twice a week with the mentor of mine who taught me so much about the business side of fitness that when i was ready to open up my own i had this wealth of knowledge from him yeah i always wondered about that like i remember asking somebody a couple years ago i was like

does kalipa have an mba like what does he have a business background that i don't know about like how did he many athletes have gotten done you know training and gotten done with their careers and tried to do the business thing and like it just doesn't really take off like it's enough to like make a salary and not be homeless but like but like you actually like got done being an athlete and have taken off as an entrepreneur at a level similar to how good you were at crossfit like you're you're equally good at both it seems to me from the outside looking in. I mean, thank you. Yeah, no, so I actually just got done speaking at Santa Clara University to an MBA class about my experiences.

And the gentleman asked me, he says, hey, have you ever thought about getting me an MBA? And I looked at him and I said, with all due respect, like, I have no problem taking an MBA, but if I do decide to do one, I want to be in a position where I'm really feeling like I'm learning and absorbing from people that I'm inspired by. And what I don't want is getting an MBA by some PhD who just can read from a book because I could do that. I want to talk about real life experiences. You know, one

of my most powerful classes in college was an international business class because this guy had lived in four different countries for five, you know, whatever. And here, you know, sure enough, here I am years later, we have in seven countries yeah and I do business in Malaysia China Philippines I mean it's it is different doing business in China than is here in the United States well it's also very interesting because you go to do an MBA course like that so I have an MBA and when I look at opening a gym and I'm like they didn't teach me any of this nobody's looking at small business they're putting you on the fast track to be in a cube at a real a really high level cube

but it'd be interesting to go back now sometimes I think about it's like even the first semester of it of like hammering books at you like balance sheets income statements now you look at it like okay cool that's easy when that stuff was like mind-boggling. There's a lot of value to an MBA. I just think for me, I've learned the hard way with business. You can't do everything. You said I pivoted from the career of being an athlete in a business. But I'd like to think about it like I was doing both simultaneously for a lot of years. So I opened the gym in 2008.

I stopped competing in 2016 when Ava got sick. But over the years right i had to try to balance all of that you know and uh that was that was always a struggle you know we signed our first you know someone came to me and they said that they thought my father-in-law was the ceo of our major corporate account and that's not true at all my father-in-law has nothing to do with it um we we got connected to our our first major corporate account after years of being in corporate wellness. We got one Western digital that's, that that's just really just catapulted our business.

And that was in 2011. And you know, so we, and now here we are in 2018 and so a lot's changed. What's it like having to deal with a totally different culture? Like if you're in Malaysia or China, like you got different culture got different laws different expectations like yeah you gotta listen yeah i mean you know i was really blessed western digital has been such a phenomenal partner when we first interacted with them they're like hey we want to roll it out at this many locations and so they connected me with a lawyer and we started working the legalities of it and we came up with the solution to the legal tax issues.

But what we didn't come up with a solution to at the time was just understanding culturally. And what a lot of that was, was me traveling out there and getting to know the people. Like, for example, in Malaysia, there's a highly, there's a lot of Muslim community. And that changes some of the dynamics, right? That changes the dynamics of coaching. That changes whether we should have a female-only class, right? Because females are much more comfortable and they don't have to necessarily cover their their whole body and these are little things you would only know and for example in china just the way people do business is significantly different in the united states and the only way you can really learn that

is by just being in it and we've had some great partners yeah we go back to kind of where this all started though in 2008 winning the cross winning the CrossFit Games. Yeah. That story, you were like the biggest star in a movie that you had no role in. Yeah, that's funny. That's messed up, man. You won the damn games, and Savant had no love. He got a four-minute role at the end, people screaming. At the base.

Spieler was like this little miniature human with his headphones on. Yeah. So good. What was everything kind of leading up to that? And then that really was like the launch point for the next, what, seven-ish years of competing. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, 2008 was a really cool year. I was training for about a year in CrossFit.

I graduated, excuse me, I was in college. I decided not to play for a number of reasons. Football didn't work out for me. So I ended up going to a junior college for two years and really motivating myself to the gym. I got really inspired. I wanted to change my life because I was a high school clown, was a class clown, whatever.

But I realized once you get out of high school, jokes on you, buddy. Being a class clown is a skill. Yeah. And you can use that very well in your life. You just have to give it some direction. Yeah. And so I got to college. I've learned that one.

Yeah. All those detentions paid off. Yeah. And, you know, I, uh, so I found fitness and, you know, got into different stuff. And, and so, uh, I was introduced to CrossFit in 2006. And so I started doing just little challenges. Like I saw 2007 CrossFit Games got inspired. And it was right in my backyard.

And a buddy of mine was like, hey, you want to drive an hour and sign up for this thing? I'm like, sure. So we drove an hour to Aromas. And at that time, you know, things were just so different. And I went into the final day. And I want to say eighth place, if I'm not mistaken. And I was about a minute, two minutes back from Spieler. Because that year, what they did is they did every second counts. They did a culmination of all your time.

And they staggered the start. So whoever won the final event won everything, which was a really cool way of doing it. And they would never do that again because the time domains were so short right anyways um i just would watch spieler started then the next guy the next guy and i'm just sitting there just waiting chomping a bit and then you know so so the you know dave was on the microphone saying hey spieler's on 10 this and that when i started i think spieler was like on rep 12 and it was 30 reps and uh so i just went boom boom boom boom boom and all of a sudden i hear josh everett's on 20 and i'm like i think at that time i was on 14 i was like oh boy i better go then it's like josh everett's on 25 and i was like on 21 i was

like whoa okay i made some gap and then boom boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Next thing you know, I won it because I just caught up with everybody. And that was a really cool moment. But that moment for me was really cool. But it was trumped by future moments. So I won then, but I also took second and third and 13 and 14. And I think those moments were much more meaningful to me beyond the podium because I had put so many years of hard work in it. You know, in 08, I just kind of showed up.

Yeah. In 2013 and 14, I had put in the work. And so when I got back on the podium, it was really meaningful. That's actually what I wanted to ask about because in 2008, you did just kind of show up like nobody really knew what was going on. Yeah. Just everybody was outdoors kind of sweating in the dust. But that had to have been a very conscious decision

because then the sport got very real once the movie came out, once CrossFit started growing. And it was very impressive for the next five, six years of like, man, how is Khalifa staying in the mix with all these guys? Because 99% of the people couldn't hang with the new talent that rolled in. And you talk about how you have your business on one side growing at the same rate that you're growing as an athlete. And now you have to manage both of these buckets and keep up with this new dude named Rich Froning. Yeah. And that's how I came up with the Amarant mentality. I mean,

really, you know, the Amarant mentality, especially, you know, in the book, I talk about a lot, but it's like, I had no other other choice like i wanted to be successful in business because i want to provide for my family i wanted to win at the sport of crossfit because i was inspired right and um you know at the same time obviously i wanted to keep my relationship with my um you know so i wanted to do well in business i wanted to do well in fitness and i wanted to keep my relationships with my wife you know i met my wife at 14 and she was a really important person in my life still is obviously and uh yeah i mean for the next you know seven eight years i would compete and just balancing everything was just about prioritizing and there was a lot of years i didn't do it as well as i

should have and i wish i had prioritized better earlier because just this philosophy of being present and focused i just think is an art form yeah well you mentioned last night in your keynote something that i'm so good at which is being present at a room like a dinner table with your family and talking to somebody but being in a completely different space i'm actually i'm actually even really good at like throwing like a yeah out at the right time so it sounds like i'm paying attention so right now you're thinking about the coffee no right now i'm here because i'm very interested in this a lot of but but that's it's a big piece of it is you know the amram mentality is really about, you know, for me, the waking moment was, you know, I'm extremely competitive and I want to win.

And so my mindset for competition was just always thinking about winning. Yeah. But what I realized was that was really detrimental to my relationships with my wife, my kids, because I would find myself being at a dinner table thinking about, you know, my next workout or think about whatever. And that wasn't fair to them. And it wasn't fair to myself. You know, like I remember vividly one moment I was doing, um, assault bike intervals or riding the bike and I was on a conference call with Asia and this happened almost every night for a long time. What would happen is I'd finish my conference call and I'd finish my bike. I'd always reflect and say, you know, like, did I actually answer those questions the best I could? Or was I riding the bike? And then, you know, I, you know, they'd ask me a question. I put on a

mute. Yes. I think that's it. Or I'd have it on mute. I'd, I'd unmute it. Yes. It's a great idea. Mute. Great. Cause I'm breathing so hard. I'd always reflect after I was done it. Yes, it's a great idea. Mute. Right? Because I'm breathing so hard, right? I'd always reflect after I was done and be like, you know, I can't do it this way anymore. I either need to be riding a bike doing intervals or I need to be on the conference call. But I can't keep second guessing myself if I did a great job on that call or if I'm slipping, right? Because in business, you can't have any slip ups. And I always wondered if that impacted our business deals I don't think it did but maybe it did but where it really impacted

me was with the family you know it wasn't fair to my daughter it wasn't fair to my wife to be thinking about other things instead of thinking about them do you find it went the other way as well though like where you'd be like warming up to train and you'd be like thinking about your daughter and you're like wow like when I'm

yeah that happened to me in college i'd be at football practice thinking about like all the homework i would have to do and whatnot and then i'd be doing my homework thinking about the football plays and my advice and i was like god like if i could just think about football during football and homework during homework like everything would be so much better yeah i mean obviously once it got sick and once like more stresses came in of course that became a thing but But in the beginning, I was just very focused on... When I was training, the difference was I had people surrounding me that kept me engaged. That's one of the reasons why I like jiu-jitsu so much now.

Because I'm not an expert at it. And because if you don't stay mentally focused, you will get choked out. I like that about it. Because I'm so... I've, I've put so many years of CrossFit in that I could be doing thrusters now and I could be thinking about whatever the hell I want because I'm, because I've done. It actually helps because you don't think about the pain, but I've done 10,000 of them. Whereas, whereas, you know, sometimes it's nice to turn off your brain a little bit, focus on something else. And I think that's the art of

the Amarant mentality is how do you, you know, be present focused, move on to something else and i think that's the art of the amrat mentality is how do you you know be present focused move on to something else present focus move on to something else and and and really be there like with you guys right now like i'm not on my phone yeah i'm not distracted i'm looking at you guys and talking so you laid out four points i mean it is kind of the context to the entire structure of the or the way you structured your life so uh present focus um so focus yeah focus and and and know why you're focusing on it yeah right um so but yeah just can you walk through the four the four pillars of kind of what you yes so for those people is right an amrap is as many reps as possible and the whole theory is if i ask you to do as

many pushes as you can in a minute that's all you would be doing yeah you wouldn't stop you wouldn't do anything you would just be focused on that because that was your goal. And I think, how do you take that mentality and bring it into other things like answering emails? Let's AMRAP emails for an hour. Let's do this. Let's transfer it into taking my kids to the park for an hour. I'm going to AMRAP the hell out of that. And I'm going to be so focused on them that when they walk away, you know, they know that dad was there. Yeah. Right. Dad wasn't on his phone answering email, whatever. Now, so the first thing is identify what you want to focus on and why have a deep rooted reason for it. Right. Then you work hard at it, like

legitimately hard. Then you switch gears throughout the duration of your day, right. From one facet of your focus to the next. And then every now and then you reevaluate what that focus is so right now you know you i just saw you on uh on facetime with your son right obviously i'm sure you're going to call him back shortly but like so you're you have how many children do you have i have three three right so right now your focus is X, Y, and Z, but maybe you get a new job opportunity. Maybe one of your children gets accepted into some unique program. You have to shift your focus, right? You have to reprioritize based on big things that happen in your life, right?

Yeah. Lose a job, gain a job, whatever. And so that's the theory of the AMRAP mentality, right? Yeah. When did this kind of – the idea of this of this amrap mentality was there like a moment that it kind of transpired last night i mean it was like 2011 and you know we had just had my daughter and i just i just realized i just couldn't keep doing what i was doing like i was being it was really the family that really sparked it because ashley's always been such a powerful

force in my life she really forced me to you know you know, be about some shit, be a man, you know? And when I met her at 14, I was immature, but I was the class clown. I was popular. And then as I got to college and I went to junior college for two years, I really realized then, like, if I want to be with her, I got to make something of myself. And so she's always been like this pillar of my focus. And I've never been distracted by a woman because I'm just so focused on her. And so to be a better husband for her and be a better father for my daughter, that's where it really kicked in. This is one, one of many ways you could describe like the concept of being present more or less. Like it's a way to, it's a way to think about

being present and in the moment, especially for fitness people, right? For fitness, For anybody in the CrossFit space or anybody fitness related, they could totally relate. Because, I mean, there was years where people would go to the conventional gym and spend two or three hours in the conventional gym and get barely anything done. Then all of a sudden they got introduced to high intensity intervals and CrossFit and they realized, man, I'm getting jacked on 20 minutes a day of hard intensity. Well, dude, imagine if you can get jacked in everything you're doing in your life on 20 minutes a day of hard intensity yeah well dude imagine if you can get jacked and everything you're doing in your life on 20 minutes a day yeah you know i always hear these people say i'm really busy it's like you're really busy because i know a lot of people who are really busy but never get anything done right yeah it's like be busy but actually accomplish the task at hand what you'll find is people will be at work and they'll be like

10 minutes on email they'll get distracted over here from a text message and then it takes their brain to readjust back by the time you do it they're they're saying they're busy but they didn't get shit done right i find that all the time i mean especially with any computer you have where everything is so connected in it and every time i'm like i just need a flip phone again just give me the flip phone like as if that's the problem but the problem is I'm not focused on exactly what it is and everything else takes your distraction I think there's really something to like when you do an amrap you have to get the timer on the wall it starts at zero you hit the button you hear you're the alarm go off so to speak like you know exactly when to start you know exactly when to stop

everyone's doing it together which which really really helps but do you apply that to your regular life as well like 100 i'm gonna i'm gonna do some work on my computer for 45 minutes hit the timer like and when it when it when it goes off in 45 minutes like you take a break well like look at my calendar right so stacy 6 30 7 a.m podcast 8 30 podcast nine o'clock spiel 10 to 2 books 3 p.m and i set it up, right? And so I'm basically am wrapping my schedule throughout the duration of the day. And this is an example because we're here at Granite Games. But point being is that for me, you know, I would ask this question.

Are we more productive today? Are we more productive 50 years ago? And look, I'm going to be the first person to say I use technology for sure, of course. But 50 years ago, when you're at work, you're at work. When you're at home, you're at home, right? Sure, you had a TV, but how long? You can only engage on it so much. But nowadays, you know, I can't remember the last time I went to a restaurant

and more than 50% of the people weren't on their phone. And my thing is like, guys, all I'm saying is if you're going to go to a restaurant or if I'm going to sit here with you guys, like just sit here with you guys, and if you're gonna go to a restaurant or if i'm gonna sit here with you guys like just sit here with you guys and if you don't want to be at the restaurant and engage with the people in front of you that's fine if you have stuff to do go do it but just don't even be there with those person yeah you know and and that's kind of like the theory of the airman mentality i think back to your point about the clock i called it the gotta go program for a lot of years you know my training partners miranda garrett pat you know miranda was

i was she was so bad at this because her schedule was a little bit different she'd come in spend 20 minutes putting on her knee sleeves i'd be like miranda i'm starting this clock when that clock hits two minutes i'm going with or without you because i gotta go yeah right and i think if you could set that mentality where you walk into the gym, you start a clock, you say, hey, look, when that clock hits 90 or 60, I'm out of here. If I get the work done, great. If I don't, I don't.

But it's your job to get the work done. I guarantee you, you will. Yeah. I mean, you have scaled from three small locations of one gym to, was it 18 you have now globally? Interesting question. So our first location has moved four times. Like bigger, bigger, bigger, right?

Maybe five. And then we've opened up, so we have six commercial locations open to the public. Five of them are in the Bay Area. One of them is in Cabo, Mexico. So those six. Vacation spot. You need a place to train. Hey, business right off the public. Five of them are in the Bay Area. One of them is in Cabo, Mexico. So those six. Vacation spot. You need a place to train. Hey, business right off. So those six. Then we have an additional 14, 15 corporate sites. There's a gray area there

because, for example, we do classes at multiple companies. I don't know if you would really consider them a location per se, but then we also have a lot of corporate sites that are like full-blown locations. And then we have our digital arm. So there's three, for lack of a better term, legs to our table. Commercial open to the public, corporate non-open to the public. We have varying degrees of scalability from doing classes on site at a company to full-blown locations with, you know, with our newest one, for example, is with Lucas Films, and it's half conventional gym and half more training CrossFit style. We're bringing an add level of service there.

And then we have our digital arm of our business. Those are the three facets. We do session plans and programming for gym owners called the NC Fit Collective. So we spend a lot of time kind of talking about the fitness piece of the AMRAP, but are you also able to get in maybe even to the, not just the executives in the businesses, but are you able to get in and kind of change the culture of this, using the AMRAP mentality of how people are working in companies?

So I do keynotes for sales teams quite often, but with our companies that we work with, it's not like an added part of it you know it's kind of separate you know so western digital is a big partner of ours um metlife insurance lucas films uh when when we work with these people there's no like oh jason cleep is going to come and talk reshape the culture of... It's not. That's not. We've got a whole bunch of people, three, two, one, email. Yeah. No, no.

No, we don't. I mean, you know, Western Digital, because they've been such a big partner, I have done some sales stuff, conferences for them, but not anybody else. Yeah, and with Ava, this thing comes into your life and just takes over. I just had my first daughter 10 weeks ago.

Yeah. Congratulations. I couldn't even imagine. I don't even know how earth shattering that must be to have something like that happen. And now you're faced with a business that's scaling massively, an athletic career that's happening, and now you've got leukemia to deal with and a family. Like where, how are you kind of taking this mentality? Or had this mentality been created and now shifting it into a massive family stress?

Yeah, and that's the real reason why I wrote the book. So what happened is right before my daughter got sick, I wanted to write a book about, kind of like I would read these books in the bookstore. And a lot of them were like, work less, get paid more. And I just didn't see that in my life. Like I saw that the people who I looked up to achieved levels of success that I was looking for had put in years of hard work and dedication and that didn't come just through luck or whatever. So originally for like a couple of, I had this philosophy. And then Ava got sick and just changed my whole purpose. So I kind of put the book on the back burner, of course. She's better though, right? Yeah. Shrug family, I know you're loving the show because Khalifa's so awesome.

I want to give a shout out to our friends over at Halo Neuroscience. Halo Sport is the first ever brain stimulator used to accelerate movement-based learning. It speeds up the development of skills, strength, and endurance depending upon the type of training that you pair with. Us crazy CrossFitters, we have a lot of movements that we need to master. Halo Sport is there to speed up the development of all of those skills. I have been using them to work on handstands. I put it on for 20 minutes during my warm-up.

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You should go check that out. It's called Electrical Brain Stimulation for getting better at everything you do in life. I wish I could remember the whole thing. But Electrical Brain Stimulation to make you a better fitnesser. Turns out there's a ton of research that backs up the claims that neurostimulation is going to advance the speed at which you develop skills. For CrossFitters, there's a ton of skills that we have to learn. From being on the rings,

muscle-ups, kipping. All of these things are full-body connectivity, athletic-based movements. And if you can speed that up, speed up that process, be more present in your workouts, and wire your brain to work with your body better, you're going to get faster or get better significantly faster. I have enjoyed working with this product on my handstands. I really believe that it's working. I wish that there was this thing around when I was a CrossFitter because the speed at which you are able

to develop new skills seems to be something that fits perfectly with the sport of CrossFit where there's just so many things that you have to master. Get over to gethalosport.com forward slash shrug. You're going to save $100 on your headset. G-E-T-H-A-L-O-S-P-O-R-T.com forward slash shrug. Back to the show. So, okay, I'll mention that. I'll mention this, and then I'll talk about the book.

So Ava got diagnosed with leukemia called ALL in January of 2016, which just, you know, just like a bus crushing into your soul. Here we are in September of 2018, and she's completed two and a half years of treatment, and then she's now clean X amount of months. So what happens with leukemia, it's a very unique disease because it's a blood disease. It's super sneaky.

So after one month of treatment, most children, most of the time for this particular illness, go into remission, which you think is like oh yeah she's cured but that's not the case for boys it's a three and a half year process for girls is two and a half years for boys it comes back in the testicles for girls obviously it doesn't happen so they treat you for two and a half years extensively for the first year after the first year kind of it's it's still it's still another year and a half of treatment yeah a lot of chemotherapy um and then after you're done with that once you're

done with two and a half years of treatment you we go back once a month for blood work then it's once every two months for another year three months for another year four months for another year six months for another year and then then after that, then after five years, then she's technically cured. So, you know, when she got sick, you know, we went, we had a lot of ups and downs. I, a lot of crazy things have happened to us, but I made a commitment to her. I said, Hey, look, you know, we used to love to travel and she wasn't able to travel internationally. And I said to her, I was like, baby, you know, you get through this. When we get through this, I'm going to take you anywhere in the world you want to go. I'll take you anywhere. And, uh, you know, you get through this. When we get through this, I'm going to take you anywhere in the world you want to go. I'll take you anywhere.

And, you know, every time she got put to sleep, every time she was whatever, I'd be like, baby, we're going to go anywhere you want. And so sure enough, she finished her treatment. We went to Europe for a month, took her all over the place. We did some cool stuff, you know, and that was a really cool moment for our family, you know. And so our family's gotten closer over it. I've learned a lot about relationships. I've learned a lot about a lot of stuff. a really cool moment for our family you know and and so our family's gotten closer over it i've learned a lot about relationships i've learned a lot about a lot of stuff about and uh yeah i could talk about that for hours the well yeah and i man when a stress like that happens it's so easy to

get pulled away and any times i mean something that massive comes into your life a family either has the opportunity to kind of bond, which it seems like you guys have done. And you say it brings everybody closer. How, what are some of the, I guess, how does that happen? Like, it's so easy to get pulled away from that. Like, we live in the fitness space where we think we have control over our health. And then something like this happens. It shatters kind of like a belief system that you have. I mean, for me, I would be like, man, we did everything right, and then something happened.

How did you guys bond as a unit, or was that a struggle and a process in itself of getting everybody rallying around this new point? Well, you know, my wife is really the testament. She's really a testament to my wife. You know, I mean, I'm proud to say that I was at every chemotherapy treatment I was at. I mean, I slept every night in the hospital. We probably spent three months in the hospital, you know, maybe four throughout the process. And every night I was there, and I just kept telling myself, like, what's more important than being at her chemotherapy treatment? What's more important than being here in the hospital? Cause I never wanted to be in a position. So there's a few

things that happened to me that night at like two in the morning, we were told she for sure has leukemia. And I wrote an email, just basically the company. And this was sparked the Amrit mentality book is the fact that that night I wrote an email and said, listen, if it doesn't pertain to getting my daughter better, don't bother me. I'm 100% focused on this one thing. That's it. Matt, who's a good friend of mine and also runs the company, I said, you go run the company,

and maybe for a month, maybe for six months, maybe for a year. I don't care. This is what I'm doing. And now that's my inspiration to share this book is that through incorporating the M the MRI mentality for so many years It allowed me to write that email because I'd set up I'd worked so hard for so many years That it gave me this hedge just like being really fit. You don't have to work out for a month and you're still okay, right? You know, my wife is the is the the cornerstone

So what happened is we got diagnosed in this they bring you into the er and long story short the doctor pulls me out and she tells me and i kind of break down a little bit and i go in i tell ash i'm like hey like at that point it's just my father-in-law my wife my daughter myself in the er room i go in i tell my wife i tell ash i was like hey I need to talk to you right so we pull her up and we were kind of crawling in the hallways and she's just like you know basically she's like listen we're basically best pump-up speech I've ever received like we're gonna go fuck it we're no crush this thing like it wasn't even like it was just like like I mean it was like take the best football the best like

motivational speech you've ever heard. And it's weak compared to this one, right? I mean, she just looks me in the eye like da-da-da-da. And so she says to me, she's like, listen, I want you to tell our family, but I want you to tell your family that they can cry all they want, right? But when they come into our room, there's no tears. When they come into our room, it's nothing but positivity. And we're gonna get

through this together as a family and after that it was just the way it was yeah since that day no not a tear not a no sadness nothing like around ava was just positive positive positive all the time and if people had a problem go outside yeah totally you know that includes me by the way yeah you've mentioned a couple times the word hard work. Do you think people really know what that means? What does it mean to you? I mean, I think they think they know what it means. But I mean, I would just ask you, like, you've done a workout. Did you really work hard?

Well, I don't think about it in workouts anymore. I've been lucky enough to be kind of surrounded by people. And I love asking this question and love talking about hard work because it's very easy to write an Instagram post and be like, I'm working my ass off. And be like, well, what does that mean? And then you wake up and it's 7 o'clock in the morning and we're supposed to do a podcast and you roll downstairs and you've already got an hour and a half in and you're doing it. And anytime I'm around anybody that's very successful, I think I'm working hard. And then I see them in their daily schedule and I'm like, oh, wow. Like you're putting two hours on the beginning and the end.

And the depth to that work is way more than I can think about. But like, how did where did that skill come from? Because it clearly starts. I mean, there's there's the athletic side and working hard. I think everybody kind of gets that. It feels like you're grinding. But business, relationships, all that stuff is like an emotional work and very mental. I think it starts with your why.

Yeah. Like, why are you doing something? Like, for me, I've never been more inspired, more motivated, more driven than I am today, ever. Because I have seen what life can throw you. And now I'm going to do everything in my power to be as prepared as possible through hard work, dedication, and spreading this word of awareness, the am right mentality, and also giving back to obviously families. Like I'm very focused on my philanthropic efforts. And I know that we need to keep building our business to give back to more people

yeah and so what I think hard work is is this a real like you only are held accountable to yourself it's a nightly reflection on did I really do the best I could as a husband as a father as a business owner as an athlete today and did I really put in the work if the answer is no that's okay let's do better tomorrow but if you have these micro kind of check-ins, you're never going to have these big epiphanies like, Oh shit, I've, you know, I've been a terrible father for five years. Right. And I think those daily check-ins help you to stay driven and motivated. But for me, it's this deeper understanding of what, what am I trying to do? Like, why are we even doing this podcast? And for me, it's about spreading a message and growing my community. Like, why are we even doing this podcast? And for me, it's about spreading a message and growing my community.

Like, why are we opening up more locations? Why is NC Fit growing? Well, NC Fit is growing because I want to do what I love for a living. I want to provide that to as many coaches as I can. Those coaches then change members' lives, which makes me feel good and makes the coach feel good and changes people's life. But then guess what? Let's add another layer to that. With all these members, 5,000, let's just say, right? Imagine the good we could do for families who aren't as fortunate as us, supporting them with going through really tough times, right? So that's my big vision. That's how everything rolls up now.

It's like the more popular the Amram and Tully gets, the more locations we get, the bigger we get, the more people we touch, the more good shit we could do and the book sales are being are being donated yeah is that right so all pre-sale all pre-sale jason cleave doesn't make a penny on any book from now until january after that i haven't committed anything because i don't know where life's going to be but from now until january everything goes in igu minus the expense of the book and you know but but yeah my intention of this book is to impact lives is not to send my kids to college right yeah so what was the what was the foundation that you were supporting so my wife and i we got connected to this organization

called nigoo which is a never Give Up. We are connected with them soon after Eva got diagnosed. And we have a platform, we want to use it. My wife is a badass. Her event, she hosts one called Eva's Kitchen once a year with Chef Michael Mina. And she raised a lot of money. She raises a lot of money. But the Never Ever Give Up Foundation, they provide joy jars and they provide just families with just little micro gifts. You know, like, here's a baseball game, here's Disneyland, and that's where our money goes. We're going to take a quick break, and we're going to come back and talk specifically about the book. Because your publishing was not, you self-published, funded this whole thing yourself, actually wrote it yourself, which is not normal for all the cool

people writing books these days. Depends who's cool. We'll take a quick break and we'll be back. 10, 12 years and finally he invented hip thrusts. Well, I mean, and on that note, you know, we're back from break. Oh, we're back from break. Welcome back to Barbell Strug.

We're here with Jason Kalifa talking about the glue guy. You know, we're back from break. Oh, we're back from break. Welcome back to Barbell Strug. We're here with Jason Kalifa talking about the glue guy. You know, we're talking about the glue guy. And on that note, you know, so something I'd like to share is my sister-in-law, her boyfriend, 21 years old, just graduated from school. And him and I were working on the garage and I tried to have like a like a deep like a like a mentor moment yeah and I said to him I was like you know I'm I'm 32 and I look at him I was

like hey man I wish when I was 21 someone had said this to me I'm just going to share it with you now I was like you know find something you're you know find something you like find something you're passionate about and you know naturally good at and learn everything you can about it and become a an expert i'm not talking about good i mean great whether you want to be a barista a hairdresser uh whatever you want to be become the best at it because then no matter what no matter where life takes you people are always going to be willing to pay you for your service because you're that good. You know, I think about for me You know people, you know

They ask every day for consulting businesses because for over a decade and then before that, you know I mean I started in the fitness industry when I was 14 and Now we've expanded all these locations globally. I have just been centrally focused on one girl one business and just attacking it. And I try to sit here and explain to them, that means that no matter what happens, people are going to be prepared to pay me for my service because they know they'll get an ROI on that investment. And so whatever field you go into, just stay consistent, work hard at it, and become an expert. How do people do that? That was the hardest freaking thing in the world

to look at somebody and be like, what do you like? They don't know. There's too many things. But at 21, they might need to do some exploration for a little bit. But once they find something, just stay the course. I think we were all so lucky we found fitness. Like 14. 13. But like, I mean, imagine

those people who, you know, to me, it's tough to be in a career for two years and bounce another career, pass another career. And that's fine if that's what your goal is. But for me, I'd rather say, okay, you really enjoy this, but you want to make money out of it? Become the best. Yeah.

Tell me the best barista in the world is not making bank. The best hairdresser in the world is not making bank. Of course they are. They're the best. Right. And so I say this to this this guy he just looks at me like all right man you ready for another set but like no he's super cool but the point i'm trying to make is that at that age it's hard to understand what i was trying to get at i feel like it's also

man it's when you start talking about being the best at something it gets people really weird because it sounds like there's this like some egodriven thing or like I want to stand out from the crowd and now I'm talking about myself. But I try to talk about it all the time because it's about the work and about the trust that you've built with people. Everyone's going to get that ROI. It's so fucking hard. And when you say you want to be the best, that's not an arrogant thing. I want to be the best.

It feels like it's an arrogant thing for a lot of people because they don't think about it all the time. I also don't think you have to be the best. If you're interested in CrossFit, you don't have to be a CrossFit Games champion necessarily. If you love music, people growing up are like, oh, you're not going to be a rock star. It's too hard.

You're not going to be an NFL player. It's too hard. People will push you down. But if you love football or you love music or whatever like you don't have to be an nfl player like or you don't have to be a rock star you could just be like the best audio engineer for a local band and love it and you could be and you could be really good at that right and you know when i think about being the best you know i think about this concept called breaking the band which i i briefly touched base on yesterday but i i mean this is something i wrote in the book,

which is this analogy, like for years, I'd be on the track with my coach, right? And him and I would, I learned how to run in a pack. And with Neil, with others, where we'd be like, you know, right on each other, just basically for lack of a term, grinding on each other's shoulders, right? And at that moment, you're peers. But then, you know, you're fighting for position, but then all of a sudden someone decides

to break the band. What that means is maybe right before a corner, they kick it up, right? Typically, and they kick it up and they then separate from, let's just say three feet to 20 feet. All of a sudden what they've done is that they've broken the spirit of the person behind them and they've broken the band. Meaning now that person here is no longer thinking about catching this person. They're thinking about not allowing the person behind them to catch them. Right. And that's what I think about our business. That's what I think about my life. I want to break the band from everybody around me by doing things as well as I can. Right. I'm not trying to say that I'm the best at everything because I'm not, but I'm trying to break the band from everybody around me by doing things as well as I can. Right. I'm not trying to

say that I'm the best at everything cause I'm not, but I'm trying to break the band. So when people come into the fitness space, they look at our business. They're like, you know what, Jason, Cleep and NC fit, they're doing their own thing. I'm just going to focus on, you know, I'm not even going to think about them. Right. They're in a totally different stratosphere. Right. And I think what that does is that that requires you to when you break the band to constantly be innovative constantly be flowing constantly be thinking about where can we go what can we do look at companies like apple um you know uber they're they're they're breaking the social breaking the norms they're consistently innovating and i think that's what i think about about trying

to be the best at something is that you're innovating you're thinking about where are we going to be three years from now instead of just trying to do what other people are doing. I look at it differently that way. Yeah. You're talking about being the best. Like I think the people that get to be the best in a lot of cases, they're not actually looking at the outcome. They're not trying to like have this external thing like I'm the champion. I got the gold medal, that type of thing. They're trying to pursue mastery in a sense like they're just trying to be the best that

they can be and then this emergent property of winning happens to happen yep like you were talking yesterday about when you're doing your talk in front of the you know 2 000 people or whatever that showed up for the granite games you're talking about focusing on things that are in your control you don't have control over whether you win or not you only have control over over how you train your behavior how you eat you eat, how you sleep, your prep, your training, everything leading up to it. And then your effort during the event, of course. But whether you accidentally blow your shoulder out or end up podiuming, you have no control over that specifically. And I'd make the claim that that's part of the process.

For me, I've had a lot of ups and downs in my competitive career and in business, but that's all part of where we go in the future. Right. And so to be the best, these are all like a culmination of all of these experiences. Like last time was an experience for me. Like I prepared a lot. I went rehearsed multiple times, but when I actually got there, I had to go out and execute. And it wasn't what I was expecting. There was a lot of movement in the room. It was a big room. Sometimes the mic was a little whatever, but you know what? I went out there.

I executed what was in my control, but that experience, although it might not have been perfect, right, it was still good, will help me for the next one. Or in CrossFit games where I've had these triumphs where I've been on the podium or I've also been beat down. I have won a lot of events, and I've failed these triumphs where I've been on the podium or I've also been beat down I have won a lot of events and I failed a lot of events they're all part of this long-term strategy on this distant horizon kind of looking at like fitness you know I don't want to be fit for just today I want to be fit for as long as I can I want to be crushing it when I'm 70 years old yeah I

think a lot of people also don't recognize wherever they're at right now is training them for whatever that next piece is like speaking in to all the athletes at the granite games that's a big room there's a couple thousand people there and then well now i'm capable of maybe if there's two thousand people here now i can go take on five maybe yeah that five might lead to 15 20 whatever it is like they have no idea that they think it's like oh i sold out a room that's awesome, that's just training because if you keep going, there's going to be a bigger room. There's going to be more people to affect.

Yeah, and people don't see it that way. Like, for example, people see some of the stuff we do on corporate wellness. They think, like, it just happens. We have locations all over the place. No. We started off bringing kettlebells to a gym at 5 in the morning, and I coached them all. Like, you know, there's just this perception.

I think what it is is that people always want to lean towards people work aren't working that hard. They got lucky. It's like in my experience, most people don't get that lucky that often. Do you believe in luck still? You know what I believe in? I believe in doors opening and good timing. I believe that in my life through competition, right? Through business, business for sure there's been doors that have opened and there's been ones i've sprinted through and i am grateful every day for those opportunities there's been other ones that i should have closed and i didn't right but this idea of you know there is luck involved but it's more so um it's more so doors right right? Yeah. And knowing when to take them.

But luck is a really weird one because it's like all of those opportunities happen because you've created something in a place with a certain vibe that people are attracted to and a certain type of person is attracted to. And from that, opportunities happen. Like you build a gym in Mountain View. Well, there's a ton of businesses around there.

You didn't have to open the gym there. You probably at the time of opening your small little gym didn't realize like, oh, there's going to be a ton of businesses around here. And this is going to be this booming, amazing place. But you could have opened your gym anywhere. And maybe it's lucky that that became a big industrial park or tons of businesses. Or that Google moved in down the street. But you could also make the claim like, I'm lucky that I was born and raised in San Jose, California, the tech capital of the world. And that my parents provided me the opportunity to go to good schools.

And these are benefits that I'm forever grateful for. And that's why I believe the United States is a phenomenal place. You can do whatever you want. You can be anything you want. I tell my daughter that every day and my son. I say, guys, you are born in – I always tell them you're in the best country on the planet. You can do anything you want. You want to be the president.

Because I truly believe that they are gifted. We're sending them to the best schools. They're set up for success. All they need to do, though, is they need to put in the work. They need to be dedicated, focused forever. I think people also have to buy into being their own hero in that journey. I personally, just hanging out on Barbell Shrugged, this is so radical. I didn't know that this was going to be part of my career to be able to reach all these people.

And now that you're here or now that you have all these corporate locations and you're able to reach all these people and you have this book coming out it's like man i have to use this i have to like what would the character of jason kalipa do next if we were really rooting for him to have the biggest impact and you can start to live your life by being being this character this hero in your own story so you can actually see the opportunities and really start to sprint through the door like you were talking about. Yeah. You've got a book.

You've got interviews all over the place. Where can people, or not really interviews all over the place, but you've got people coming in. You self-published this book. So I kind of did like a hybrid. So what happens is I did a lot of research going into this about traditional publication or self-publishing. I wasn't very familiar. So I talked to a lot of my friends who had published books from Bob Harper, Lewis Howe. I talked to Kelly Strett about this.

I said, hey, what's going on? In traditional publishing, they take a percentage. They might give you an advance. It's a very unique model. But I think for people who don't necessarily have a reach i think traditional publishing can be great right they can get you in doors of bookstores and maybe get you on talk shows whatever but for me i didn't like the fact they're going to take a large percentage of the profits because i was my original intention and still today is to donate the profits

right and so i looked at it like you're taking money away from kids i mean that's that was my frame of reference yeah most of the money for the record like looks like 90 plus percent yeah like it's it's all gone and i wasn't cool with that and so i went through a basically um i self-published it through a company called mascot books where basically what happens is i buy the book for let's just say five bucks four whatever i buy x amount of books they host it they keep them and then they ship them or they ship them to amazon that amazon ships them out in this particular case so basically they print them they ship them they take on that that work right and and which is which has been really helpful for me because i can stay focused on just getting on podcasts like

this marketing and really sending the word out and so the pre-sales is where I'm really getting behind this. And I want to just ramp this thing up. So anybody listening would love and appreciate your support on Amazon. You can go check it out. Look up Jason Kalipa. Look up As Many Reps As Possible. And pre-order the book. They actually get released early January.

And you actually wrote the book. Yes. If you've read a fitness book in your life, there's a really good chance somebody else wrote that book. It was like a ghostwriter or something, but you actually sat down and wrote this. Yeah. So to be fair, I'll tell you exactly what happened. So I hired a ghostwriter, right? I'm not like no skeletons in my closet. I hired a ghostwriter and I read his work and I was just disappointed with the tone. I was disappointed. It didn't sound like me. And, and, and for me, it was important that my message got out the way I wanted it to. So I rewrote everything on trips to Asia, opening up new locations.

And then utilizing MDV, who's one of our team members at NC Fit, who has a law background, we kind of re-sculpted it together with with more of a you know grammatical structure flow things like that and that's where it's ended up at today so i re i wrote the entire thing all the stories everything then he came in and kind of helped format it so the actual writing process is an amrap of a 30-hour flight to asia and back oh dude i am just hammering out and there was times like honestly writing something like i would be in tears. I always thought it was interesting because I'd be crying sometimes because some of this stuff is very emotional.

And I'm typing, and I always think to myself, this person's the next. You're like, what the hell is this guy doing? What's wrong with that guy? I do that all the time when you're on the plane. You just sit there and write blog posts or whatever it is, emails, and you're like, if someone's looking at this right now, they're like, I'm in this space, and they're coming into our world, and they're like, if someone's looking at this right now, they're like, I'm in this space, and they're coming into our world,

and they're like, what the hell is this? It's like watching, when you're watching a really hard movie. This guy loves fitness. When there's like a sex scene on a movie, when you're on a plane, I always feel so awkward, because I'm like, dude, if a kid walks by, I'm really out of, because I got kids. Totally, yeah.

How long do people have for the pre-sale? So from now, whenever this goes up to uh basically january 8th it it's it officially like is available for it'll be it'll either be shipped to their house before that or on that date then it's no longer pre-sale it's actually readily available in stock on amazon and after that like now, the commitment I've made is that from now until then, Jason Kleba will make a penny on this book. After that,

I will always donate a portion of the proceeds. I just need to make sure it's an appropriate portion. And I don't want to claim anything until I figure out exactly what that is, right? But it'll be a good amount

because I hate it when people say, oh, a portion of the proceeds. It's like, one percent. One penny. It's like, come on, dude. Don't be a a dick uh yeah and people can find you at jason cleba on all the things yeah i mean i'm mainly active on instagram jason cleba uh jason cleba.com nc.fit if you're in the bay area come on by one of the gyms and then if you're a gym owner uh you know we put out session plans and programming i was gonna say you guys have

the collective yeah so for us the the NC Fit Collective is basically, you know, we provide on our own app session plans, videos for every day for four different programs we have. NC30, NC45, NC60, and Compete. And these are the programs that we use in our locations globally. And so we have, you know, over 5,000 members

just of ours utilizing the program to get a lot of feedback. And so, you know, if you're a gym owner out there for 200 bucks a month you get four different programming tracks you get videos session plans but we actually use it that's the difference is that we're we're sharing with you what we get real-time feedback on uh which i think is really valuable because we get a large sample size i like that doug larson you. You can follow me on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson. I have my own site, DougLarsonFitness.com. I have a bunch of online courses, mostly based around movement, mobility, and nutrition.

And then, of course, everything Strug Collective. Barbell Strug every Wednesday, and I got Technique Quads every Sunday. You can find me at Anders Varner on all the things, but just get into the collective. Six shows a week. Smashing it. Minimum six shows a week. We're making this thing cool. We just launched this thing.

It was super crazy. Changing barbell shrugged into a whole network. The last two months, over a million downloads a month. Feels like people finally caught up. Feel so good about what we're doing. So awesome. So vulnerable when you rebrand things. Oh, dude.

Are they really going to like it? And then all of a sudden the two commas showed up two months ago and over a million downloads. Such a sweet number. Congratulations, man. Thank you. Nice round. And you have your podcast as well, right?

Business of Fitness is our podcast for gym owners and coaches. That one's very focused. And then a new one's coming out, Amrap Mentality, which is going to be more broad strokes. Yeah. Right on. I appreciate the time. This is super cool, man.

Thanks, Chase. We'll see you guys next week. Thank you. I hope you guys enjoyed the show. Had a blast hanging out with Kalipa. Love that guy. He just works so hard, and he's got so many good things going on. And to hear his story, overcoming adversity, adversity is just really, really cool. Um,

make sure you go and check his book out, go to Jason Kalipa.com and tune into his podcast. Amrap mentality. I want to thank bio optimizers. Make sure you go to mass zimes m-a-s-s-z-y-m-e-s.com slash shrug use the coupon code shrug to save 20 and then halo sport neurostimulation for crossfitters learn things gethalosport.com forward slash shrug save 100 off your headset we'll see you guys on saturday