Barbell Shrugged - The Mission After: Finding Purpose After Military Service w/ Michael Bledsoe, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash #755

Episode Date: July 10, 2024

As a seasoned entrepreneur with 16 years under his belt, Bledsoe has dedicated my career to guiding others to enjoy physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. His journey began after serving in the Navy, where I embraced the mission to optimize my own health, relationships and discover a greater purpose. My passion extends beyond profession; as a health maximalist, I thrive in the great outdoors, whether it's hunting, swimming, backpacking, or immersing myself in the vibrant energy of music festivals. My life is a testament to the belief that true growth and fulfillment come from embracing adventure, direct communication, and a principled approach to decision making. These values guide both my personal and professional life, driving a relentless pursuit of health maximization and continuous improvement. I'm committed to empowering veterans to rediscover their purpose, establishing a firm footing in society while maintaining the spirit of adventure that defines us. With a professional yet direct approach, I strive to cut through the noice, offering honest, actionable guidance that respects the unique journey of each individual. For those looking to reclaim their health and chart a new path forward, I stand ready to light the way.   Work with RAPID Health Optimization The Mission After Podcast Mike Bledsoe on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrugged, a very familiar face to the long-term listeners of Barbell Shrugged, Mike Bledsoe is back on Barbell Shrugged. He's got a brand new project that he's going to be working on that is going to be called The Mission After, aimed at military veterans, which he is. He's built a team of military vets that are in the fitness, wellness, health space, some functional medicine pieces as well in there, and really building a community around veterans and helping them with their transition into the civilian world. For those of you that have been a part of this show for a very long time now, or not been a part of it,

I should say, Mike was one of the original founders back in 2011 of the podcast, was here for about five and a half, six years, somewhere in that range. And then about six years ago, I took over the show and the company with Doug. So it's very cool. We spend a good chunk of time talking about coaching. We spend a lot of time talking about kind of the early days of Shrugged, his transition out, some of the things that he was going through mentally, emotionally, lifestyle, the lessons learned in building a large podcast from the very early days. His relationship with Doug, which probably many people don't know that those guys are still great friends, talk regularly and have a lot of respect for each other. All in all, I love having Bledsoe on the show just because we share an interesting relationship in that we're the only hosts of Barbell Shrug that have ever existed, which is very cool.

I love this podcast. I love the people we meet. I love everything that has happened over the last 11 years of the show, specifically the last six with me being a part of it. And then just having him back on is always great to hear what he's up to. As always, friends, make sure you head over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where Dr. Andy Galpin is doing a free presentation, a free eight-minute presentation on the exact process we use

to unlock your true physiological potential. That's over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Warner. Doug Larson, Coach Travis Smash, Michael Plezzo coming back. Oh, gee, I'm Anders Warner. Doug Larson, Coach Travis Smash, Michael Plezzo coming back. OG.

I'm back. We've got a new podcast coming out, The Mission After. All things working with the military again and their journey after getting out. I think it's awesome. We've been down to fit ops and done some work with those guys. I'd love to hear that journey. But most importantly, dude, what's going on in life? Tell the people.

They're ready to hear your voice again. some people might not know at this point actually six years six years i've been the host of the show just as long as you were at the beginning now we're going on year 11 of this mike bledsoe was the original host of barbell shrug from 2011 to late 17 18 yeah yeah there's a six-year stretch there yeah yeah on the beginning we recorded chris moore and i started doing some podcasts at a coffee shop didn't post any of them you're just screwing around i um you know i really think that the one of the things i've done a lot of reflecting on Barbell Shrugged, part of it is I still have some clients. I consult some clients that are in the fitness influencer space. And so I'm always reflecting back on what made Barbell Shrugged, like when we kicked it off, what made itbell shrug like like when when we kicked off what made it so special and um one of

the things was that we were just it started off with playing around we were yeah there was no there was no like grand business plan there was no i want to become an influencer so that i can have a online coaching business and make all this money that didn't exist back then. It just, of course, Doug and I, we were definitely like, yeah, this will obviously make money. You know, we were aware enough that if you got attraction on the internet, like you attracted attention that you can monetize that and you could build your business. It's a great marketing engine engine but we didn't know what we were gonna sell i mean that stuff that we thought we were gonna sell uh was not what did it we had like what mobility posters i think the most we had made in any one thing we sold that's

right mobility poster yeah yeah we sold it we sold a 27 dollar mobility poster i actually remember getting the the shopify notification on my phone in like 2000 probably 2012 is when that when it first came through and i was like holy shit we sold something on the internet i totally remember the same we didn't have instagram like there weren't influencers weren't even a thing it was like you had to have you had to have a podcast or a youtube channel or like a facebook page and that was about all those of all you could have facebook page yeah that never really took off but it was kind of early too wasn't it it was pretty yeah well yeah to be the you guys uh at that time hit these like three waves of podcasting becoming a very real thing. Like everybody then could create their own radio show on demand.

And then online training programs that that graph went up into the right very quickly. And then CrossFit at the time, which was kind of like the meat of the content and framework of performance. Well, Olympic weightlifting and CrossFit, those two kind of go together. But those three things took off in 2011 and 2016. And you guys were just like right at the very beginning, riding all three of those waves at once. Perfect. Oh, yeah. very beginning riding all three of those waves at once perfect oh yeah yeah i mean i i say like crossfit and youtube that intersection yeah remember technique quad oh yeah yeah i use

technique wide a lot with my i have a little uh app and a lot of the videos are doug you know because you can like use youtube as like demonstration things. So it's Doug demonstrate a bunch of stuff. Sure. Our current audience probably doesn't even know what that is. A lot. Yeah. That's why the whole fitness industry, how to, how to lift weights and, and do the movements and the proper way. Uh, when did you first post your first technique? Uh, actually remember the exact date because it was it was fourth of july which is july 2nd right now so it's oddly oddly this week yeah it was fourth of july 2011 so technique quad actually came first and then and then shrug started about

six months later and then since shrug was uh people may not know this these days we used to be 100 in person and and it was all video. We put the audios on on the podcast app as well. But really, we were like we were more like a video show than an audio show, even though certainly a lot of people listen on audio. But like we got big because people they knew us. They knew our faces like we did funny show intros and behind the scenes stuff. And like it was way more of a video production back then. So Technique WOD was, though it was first, it was like pure educational content. It very quickly got slotted into like the middle of the episodes as like, there was like this fun show. And then there was like an intermission where we did like an educational in the gym thing. And then there was like the rest of the fun show. And it was it was very obvious that the show was going to be like the big thing. And then Technique WOD kind of took a backseat to like, just like a part of the bigger

show. But yeah, it was it was 100% just weightlifting education back in time back back when me and Mike used to we owned a gym together for about a decade there. And initially, we were just making weightlifting videos to teach our clients how to lift weights because we were saying the same thing all day long every day about how to do your first pull correctly and finally we just started making videos on how to do it correctly and then it scaled into this much bigger thing the original iphone yeah i didn't yeah that was that was actually exactly when technique quad started was when i got my first smartphone and it had hd video on it but it wasn't it wasn't even an iphone i didn't have an iphone quite then but

yeah the second i got a real phone where I could take, I could take a video, there was a five limit, a five minute time limit to this at the time I'd see, I could take a video and upload to YouTube directly from my phone was, was right when technique quad started. I was like, oh, now I can do this because it's not a pain in the ass to record the video on a fucking digital camera and then put it on my computer and then and then edit it and upload i could do it all from my phone and that's when the youtube thing took off for technique one yeah yeah yeah i was hanging out with some friends hanging out with some friends this past weekend we were talking about shows because i'm i'm uh playing around with creating

a new youtube show as well uh Cause I, I miss it. I miss the high production value doing something really fun. So yeah, be on the lookout for that. I'll be putting out a new YouTube channel here. I'd say in the next two to three months, that'll be highly produced. And,

but I was telling some friends about it this past weekend. I was, I was telling some friends about it this past weekend. I go, we may have been the first like TV style level show on YouTube because there was YouTubers, but to actually put together something that had the intro and then you had intro music and there was these quick cuts. Every week. Yeah, it was,

yeah, it was, you guys were putting documentaries together. Shark family. You guys are putting real documentaries together. Shark Family, I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com. When you get to rapidhealthreport.com, you will see an area for you to opt in in which you can see Dan Garner read through my lab work. Now, you know that we've been working at Rapid Health Optimization on programs for optimizing health.

Now, what does that actually mean? It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs. That means the inside-out approach. So we're not going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you. Nutrition, supplementation, sleep, and then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns, and then we're going to

also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world-class program, and we invite you to see step one of this process by going over to rapidhealthreport.com. You can see Dan reading my labs, the nutrition and supplementation that he has recommended that has radically shifted the way that I sleep, the energy that I have during the day, my total testosterone level, and my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to rapidhealthreport.com, watch the video of my labs, and see what is possible. And if it is something that you are interested in,

please schedule a call with me on that page. Once again, it's rapidhealthreport.com, and let's get back to the show. It was so much fun watching you guys debate on such little details, you know, like you get mad at each other over the most small detail. I loved it. It was so funny. I mean, it was interesting. I went back and watched your, I think it was maybe the second show you were on

down in Miami. I think it was in Waterpalooza. I had some, we had, what did we drink that day? It was maybe the second show you were on down in Miami. I think it was in Guadalupe. I had some. What did we drink that day? I was going to say, because I talk to you all the time now, going back and watching you on your second episode of Barbell Shrugged, you were slightly drunk enough and just hid in a candy store. I was happy to have a microphone on.

I had so much fun. Talking weightlifting. And it was like, it wasn't, it was like my favorite match. That's what we had. He's excited. Of course.

He's talking smack to all of the old power lifters. Like, Oh yeah. Best weightlifting coach in the country. And I used to kick your ass when I was competing too. I was young and. I know. I was young and silly. It was funny that way.

It was funny to go right there. Yeah, if I had a glass of scotch, I would say the same thing now probably. Get this man a scotch. Yeah. When we were down in Austin the last time we all hung out uh that weekend was uh the action you have all these coaches down there and they're coming to have this like transformational experience and bring um just kind of like a bunch of energy i love weekends like that when everybody's one there's the presentations but just the hanging out with a bunch of coaches and everyone's like

purely focused on like why uh retreats and all these things like actually work. Cause there's no outside noise. There's no kids, there's no distractions. Everyone's just purely there to become better at coaching. That weekend will be one of the most important weekends of my life. Dude, that was like the first weekend of the business that we run now. And we made our first big sale. We had our first real client that signed up for a year with us.

I actually was, I felt almost bad because that weekend changed my life so much that I had to get away from people. And I walked in a circle and stared at the skyline of Austin because my life changed so much that weekend. And I just needed like this massive separation.

I was like, this is what blood does. Let's say it was like the king of the transformation. He brings all the people together and everyone walks out a different person 48 hours later. And yes, I was like, I went there thinking like,

ah, but I see some friends. It's going to be great. Little does he know. He definitely had a huge impact on me as well. I met Bledsoe big time at, we were at the, it was the American Open in like 2013. We had like a, it was an ice storm in Dallas, Texas. And I had lunch with him and John North.

And I didn't know my Bledsoe at the time. And I was just sitting there and he starts talking and I had lunch with him and John North, and I didn't know Mike Bliss at the time. And I was just sitting there, and he starts talking, and I'm listening, and I'm hearing, like, all the stuff that you guys are doing with Barbell Shrug, and I'm like, wait, this guy is onto something. I stopped eating, and I was totally focused on everything he was saying. It definitely changed. John should have been listening, but he wasn't.

But, like, I was, and so he changed everything. I'm like, oh, this guy is sharp. And so, yeah, changed everything. That show in Miami, that was such a huge change to my brand. When you guys launched it, I was on the beach with my wife, and we had launched some silly T-shirts and an online little uh coaching thing and it blew up the minute they launched it was like bing bing bing bing it was so awesome anyway like i can make money on the beach right now yeah on the beach i'm like what am i doing

on an order of the drinks crazy We're cash flow positive right now. Yeah, I'm like, all my athletes, you're fired. I quit. Yeah, I'm out. Mike, now that there's been like some distance even between, obviously the starting of Marvell Shrugged, but we're five, six years from kind of leaving the show. When you reflect back on those times, where does your brain go now? When I reflect back on the show, specifically kind of like the, the end era,

like the last couple of years, I'll frame this, my experience kind of like running the gym where you, where you, you start this thing because you just can't believe that you don't have to chase having a corporate job and you all you want to do is be a meathead your whole life and then me personally six years later i was like oh i built this dream and it turned into a jail cell and now i gotta get the hell out of here like i can't run these gems anymore i don't even believe anything that's going on here like the right way to do it um but it's also taken me you know many many years and lots of things to kind of like recognize that that's just part of the path

um but yeah i look back on it your yeah i look back on it and I realize how much more I could have enjoyed the process. I realize how much harder I made it than it really needed to be. I look back on how much work was actually required of me to make it work. it's so much less it was we had we had such a good team that the show dynamic was good uh having doug as a business partner uh was like the just a huge blessing i i i look back on that now and i just like i see how how valuable Doug is, like how like just what an amazing businessman he is and what how fortunate I was that he was willing to put up with so much of my own shit for so long. And so it was, it was being more mature. Now I can look back and I go, Oh, wow. Like there were so many things handed to us on a silver platter. And I do think that I look back and I go, I do wish there's no regrets, but I do wish I could have appreciated more in the moment because the, the mind tends to want to focus on the problems and not what's going well in our lives. Yeah.

And so, uh, but I do, I do remember, like, I do like the gyms, there was a point where I was like, oh, I, I don't necessarily want to have these conversations anymore. I want to have a, I want to expand what I want to talk about. And the reality is I really didn't know even what that was. And so I have this, I can look back at a pattern of behavior for myself where I basically, it's almost like I have to walk away from something, not knowing what I'm stepping into next in order to really find out what that is. So it's, yeah, it was just, I look back on it very fondly.

Very fortunate. The things I got to learn, the partnerships we got to have, the, you know, having CTP as our producer and having Chris Moore there as a co-host and a creator and a writer. And just the amount of characters that we got to interact with constantly was insane like we put out a show every week and the people that we would seek out i mean travis mash being one of them it's like yeah i i would say we became the most uh uh network people in strength and conditioning nobody knew more people on strength and conditioning well we would go spend an entire day or two or three with somebody and it's not like now where we get on a podcast for an hour and i see you on zoom and yeah and then two months later it's like oh man remember that podcast we

did i'm like shit i don't actually i'm sorry i don't remember because it was just one of three or four podcasts i did that week. I saw you on zoom for an hour. We didn't really connect. And so that was one of the other big blessings of, uh, barbell shrug was being able to, uh, connect with people on and off camera. Like so much of what I learned happened off camera. And then the people who watch the show and they go, wow, it changed my life. It, it, uh, it it was i learned so much from y'all and i go dude you got like less than 10 of what i learned i was the one that was learning it was insane yeah yeah it really did make podcasting that much easier and more fun to grab a meal

with somebody lift weights together and then shoot a show right like we're still sweaty we just got done training like we're lifting weights while the crew's like getting getting set up and then like we fucking drink a little bit of water and like we're like right into the show and we're talking about what we did that morning and like we have conversations that were just that just are now extending into the show now that was way more fun and way i miss doing that and in person like the broadband connection you get having a conversation in person where there's no like Zoom lag. What did you say?

Oh, you're talking over each other? All that shit didn't exist. It was so much cooler in person. It totally was. I miss doing that. I wish we could do that more. One of the things that hit me when we were in Sweden, we were hanging out with a weightlifting coach in Sweden at a Laco. And I had this epiphany of,

I, I stopped listening to what the guy was saying. And I walked away from the conversation and I realized that I had had a paradigm shift in regard to training from just hanging out with the guy, even though there was nothing in particular that he said that, that was groundbreaking for me. And I realized that, you know, in the beginning, when you're, when you're in the fitness space and you're learning, you're usually attracted to a single method, right? Like I I'm going to follow Travis mash's

program, or I'm going to follow what shrug is doing or OPEX, or I'm going to follow one of these programs and they have their way of doing it or CrossFit as a method. And then you, and then you learn, and then you go a little deeper and you realize, oh, there are principles that these methods are on top of. And I go, oh, well, that's why these 20, 30 different methods all work is they're all based on the same principles. You could do it a lot of different ways. You could slap a name on it and market it and all that. And then, so I started, we started getting more into the principles of things. And then the deeper than that was, how are you being like, what's more of like, what's an energetic frequency that somebody who is the best at what they do that they hold. And that's something that you can really receive in person where I was learning. I go, Oh, I just, I was actually paying more attention to

how a coach was coaching the athletes and, and like how they were showing up energetically with the athletes. And I go, that's actually what's making that coach. Great. Yeah. You got to understand the, you get the the principles you need to be able to communicate a method so that people will follow along but what makes a coach great and what makes an athlete great is how they're showing up at a very getting down to a very root level of their being and i started studying that instead i i stopped hearing the words and and looking at more of like, just what's happening for them emotionally, the tone in which they're speaking, all of that really started

standing out to me. And that, that happened when we were, I remember the moment that we were in Sweden and I walked away, I go, man, I didn't care. Like I know the principles. I actually remember you telling me that when i started hosting the show and i jumped right to the front of the line that like immediately started to recognize that stuff because and i it's it's one thing that is kind of tricky on zoom because you don't spend the time with people like i remember that when i when i first i think the first show that i did was at the glute lab it's a great place to train if you can get in um and we all went in and did like a huge glute session with brett contreras and i couldn't believe that we were just like trained at like with this world-class dude and all this stuff and

then we just by the end of it we were all all just hanging out. That training part eliminated all of the surface level pleasantries, and you could just immediately go right in. And I also remember we went up to, we were at Deuce for a day, and I had no idea that we did the training thing before. And all of a sudden, Colton has a camera in my face. Doug and you were like, intro this thing. We're going to go train. I'm like, guys, I haven't been here for six years. I don't know what I'm doing. And,

but as soon as you start working out, as soon as you start doing those things, everybody just like falls into line. Like the, the crew gets formed, everybody's best friends. And then you really do absorb a lot of like who that person is versus like the the technical knowledge that they're going to be uh telling you on reps and sets and programs etc you know i think bledsoe is onto something that what he just said that i don't know that if if you guys like thought about it you know mike you're gonna you're going to love what i'm about to say like uh friday i met with hampton morris's coach it's his dad trip

morris and hampton is undoubtedly the best american weightlifter in the history of american weightlifting no doubt and then there just so happens there's olivia reese i met with her coach yesterday trying to figure out what is the similarities now here's the catcher here's what proves mike's statement right there is that hanta's dad is incredibly scientific number one he's a chemist so he like he molded weightlifting down to this formula and it's awesome you know i'm bit you know i'm a data guy too i i love it but i mean he he tracks even the amount of recovery like the modalities like how many times did you do the ice bath anyway and they do i mean i could go on and on what they do however libya's coach doesn't write anything down he

doesn't write shit down like he doesn't you know like every day he goes by feel and like and here's what i got from both here's the common thing that that helped create and by the way they've both coached those athletes from the beginning to the end wasn't like you know sometimes you'll get somebody and they're already really good now you're at the olympics and you're looking beating your chest saying look what i did did you i don't think so anyway these two from the beginning in the common thing was this is that both of them go on a daily basis like even though uh trips you know trip will have a plan more more set plan than living's coach he goes by feel like if hanton isn't feeling good then he switches it and uh the way they communicate they both communicate it's very process driven they don't

they don't even tell them hey you need to hit this amount today they focus on a type of the movement and that's all at the end of the day the only thing that was the same was that every day they communicate they talk to the athlete they see how they're moving and then no matter what they have in their brain they do what the athlete's capable of that day and they both communicate in a very process driven way and yeah they had total trust with the athlete. And that was all. And so you can have all the math and the best program in the entire world. And Tripp does.

I love his program. Or you can have, like, nothing really, just what's in your head that day. And you still created the number one athlete that's ever been in America. So I feel like there needs to be more study done on what my just said that needs to be done on all the scientific math and i'm like i consider myself a scientist now and like maybe i just spent three years wasting my time in school is what it boils down to you know if i had an athlete now if i was training athletes right now i would spend a lot of time in the beginning uh teaching them how to tune into their feeling world right what what's actually happening and not just by sensation but what's happening emotionally sure because if we're if if you can get an athlete to actually because most

people they have no idea what's going on their their feeling world. Right. Totally. But now I've gotten to the point where I can read body language. And based on what you're saying and how you're moving and what you're doing with your hands and your feet and all that stuff, I can see if there's a disagreement between your conscious mind and your subconscious mind. So if I were training an athlete now, I would teach them along the way of like, yeah, you're saying this, but you're biting your lower lip right now. So I know that there's a disconnect and then I'd be able to read that. And then I would be teaching them how to actually tune into that themselves, but also reading it for them and being able to adjust the training and recovery and all that stuff based off of what's going on there would be the key. That's,

that's the thing that I doubt. I, I wonder if there's any coaches that are really, uh, coaching athletics that are dialed into that degree. Cause I think that most people who acquire those skillsets end up coaching, you know, executives are going to pay a lot more. Sure. So it's, you know, there, there, there's that type of a, you know, if I'm going to the amount of attention that's required to put into

somebody, you can only do that with so many people at once. Totally. And both of them only coach a few, like leave his coach might coach three or four and Hamptonpton's dad coaches just Hampton and maybe one other. And I don't think – I think if they would have maybe spent more time in maybe boiling down to the, you know, learning the process. But I think every time what they did is by, you know, just by sheer volume of being with one human so much, they just came to know it without being able to really

measure you know what i mean like right they could just tell oh olivia isn't feeling it today you know and it's probably body language a part of it subconsciously but they don't know that but they just know i'm not going to make olivia go heavy today i can tell she's not feeling it and so it'd be cool for them to spend more time on understanding that process a little bit more and knowing when to say when and when to address it when to talk to them you know like what i started doing is using like a subjective questionnaire and like and then you start to learn some people are lying because you can measure it you can measure fatigue like that's that is scientific well people don't know yeah they don't know what's going on for themselves

so how can they even you can't answer honestly if you don't know because we're but in sports we're we're usually at a very young age in sports yeah taught to dominate the body instead of listen to it and uh crazy you can't good luck with that yeah you are are there any coaches coaching like duos out there like we've had this conversation in the entrepreneur space many times. And Mikey just said a bunch of very nice things about me, about appreciating my side of the skill sets of entrepreneurship. I tend to be more on the numbers-driven, logical, more management side of things. You tend to be more on the creative ideas, connection, emotional side of things. These are stereotypes and generalizations, of course. We both know parts about all sides, quote unquote, of business. But it tends to be that if you have one person who is more on the right side and one who's more on the left side, and if they can work as a team and they share values, then as far as running a company, it seems to be that having that pair of people or even the trio of people, if you're looking at CEO, COO, CFO, like those small teams of people who are very different,

they have similar values in this in a similar mission, but archetypically personality wise, they they have different strengths. So applying that to sport, if you're a weightlifting coach, do you guys know of any any dominant duos, so to speak, who there's a team of two people who are coaching athletes? Where, Anders, when you were partners with Brian, you were more like the fun guy and he was more like the technical programmer guy. And the two of you worked very well together running a gym. My job was training environment. Yeah. You're the being guy and he's the doing guy, so to speak.

It would be better but no i wonder if that that really could be like a a powerful force in the coaching realm as well i'm sure it would be i think you just said a mouthful the problem is such right now the culture in weightlifting is like the coach wants to dominate what's going on and that's such a terrible thing like i mean like i'm the only one who's reached out to olivia's going on. And that's such a terrible thing. Like, I mean, like I'm the only one who's reached out to Olivia's coach. Why would you not at least ask some questions? He just created, you know, he was, I mean,

well, her mom and dad created, but he's just been a part of this amazing thing. This girl's unlike any that's ever existed in America in the history of women in weightlifting. Why would you not reach out? But they just want to, they want the world to see whatever it is, their dichotomy, they want it to be true.

They want the whole world to see that it's true and that it's correct versus trying to figure out what is the truth, like what is the reality? What do I need to get better at? So it would be awesome, though. And I think that just – maybe I need to find that second person even for my athletes. that's a brilliant thought yeah i was on a i was on a call with um so in my the program i'm running now is a mentorship program for military veterans and on the call we were on last night we were discussing like you can either be right or

you can be successful right and there's uh if you want to be successful you have to have humility um and and some people would go well i'm not humble and i'm still successful and then that brings in the question of are you as successful are you actually at your potential right without success you know yeah you you may have really forced something you know i think we've seen some people who are really successful and then they're like beating their chest and then two years later they're in the hospital uh so it's it's you know are you successful over time is is really the question you got to ask right and are you the number one in your industry is there somebody better if there is you know yeah you're successful someone's better maybe you're

still missing a lot or maybe you're successful in spite of yourself maybe you just have the best staff underneath you and you got lucky even hiring them like you gotta analyze you know what it is you're doing you should you should not just say look at me i know everything if you are you no matter who you are it's only a matter of time before something fails you know the best people are always going to be looking to find the truth and whatever that truth is and like how to perfect the craft like it's an ongoing process should be yeah the magic's in collaboration too and so you got you got to be right if you really do want to be the best you have to be willing to hear some things coming in from the outside there's like in in the field that i'm in now uh there's definitely a tendency to um for for people to work in silos um i i find that

like i work with some non-profits in the veteran space and things like that. And like people are siloed. And usually what happens is I think this happens in fitness as well. Well, I know it does because I witnessed it is you find something that works and then that becomes this the the it becomes sacred. Right. And you you won't sacrifice it. You're like, well, I found, you know, like a veteran drinks ayahuasca one time and they're like, oh my gosh, I healed like a lot of my combat trauma and this and that. And then that becomes the only solution when, but if you've been around long enough,

you realize, oh, there's a lot of different things and there's different things that work for different people. And actually we should be combining a lot of different things instead of just saying there's one thing that works. And I don't like, I don't think it's that way so much in fitness, but you know, there's, you know, there, when, when we were, when I was, you know, eight years ago, when I was participating, there was like this secret squat program going on, you know, and like and like yeah you were on that one too i mean this is all the way back to your comment about methods and principles right right yeah and so yeah there's like these it's like oh this thing works i don't want to hear anything else and it's like well know, you might be missing out on potential here.

Let's dig into this new project, man. The mission after. I'd love to. I don't know exactly when the idea kicked in and when you felt kind of like driven to make this thing official and start putting out the message. But let's dig into it. Yeah. Yeah. So it was last September. So September, 2023. I, I just, I woke up in the middle of the night one night and I go, oh shit. I want to work with veterans. I've been doing, I had been every six to 12 months. I would take some veterans on some type of retreat experience.

I've taken veterans down to Costa Rica to do ayahuasca. I lead sacred hunting trips, which is a hunting immersion that we primarily do here in Texas, where we use a lot of the indigenous ways to introduce people to hunting. Involves a sweat lodge and a number of other things, some warrior rituals from back in the day. And it's really powerful because a lot of military veterans, they go through the rites of passage of a warrior. So you have the warrior archetype. But the problem is, is that in the military, they don't actually fulfill on all the rites of passage. It's a partial rites of passage into being a warrior. And so we get to fill in the gaps by using a lot of the, we use a lot of like more of like a Lakota, as far as Lakota Nation, some of their rituals. And if you study a lot of the rituals of warriors from hundreds of years ago, they had everything that's included now in a, in a military bootcamp,

but it also, uh, it, it, there's some things that are missing. And so we get to add those back in. And I witnessed so many guys go through a hunting trip, just a four day hunting trip. And at the other end, they're just like, Oh my God, I have so much peace with what uh with my whole life and it's it's really transformational and so you know there's 200 000 so what i was what i was sitting with was one um you know can i really make this my uh the primary thing i do because every time i would work with veterans it'd be like every six to twelve months i would i would take some veterans on some type of experience and i would help them prep for and integrate i would coach them and they were having phenomenal results and i mean they were going from suicidal ideation to having a lot of peace in their life and being able to move forward

and and create something new that they're even more excited about than what they experienced in the military because in the military they there's this belief that this is the pinnacle of your life. And then what happens when you get out is going to be, you know, whatever. And I had the experience of that, of thinking that I would, you know, who knows what I'm going to accomplish when I get out. I had this, I had this little ember burning of belief inside that there would be something greater for me. And there definitely was and has been. But every time I was working with veterans, I was so lit up. It was so satisfying. And I didn't quite know how to make that my full-time gig. And I woke up in September and I realized, okay, there's 200,000 new veterans every year. Me working with a dozen veterans a year,

I'm unsatisfied with the amount of people I can impact with that. And it all came at once. I go, Oh, there's, there's no basic training for getting out. You know, there's some really good programs out there to help you when you get out, you know, you got the fit ops, you have programs that help you find a job. You have programs that help you start a business. You have programs that work specifically on emotional healing. You know, they're working with plant medicine or psychedelics or some type of EMDR, some type of therapy. But even the therapeutic stuff is about getting someone to baseline. And so baseline's not good enough. If you went in the military and you wanted to be a high performer, baseline's not good enough. You're not going to hit baseline after doing what you did in the military and be like,

oh, I'm crushing it now. No, you want to go further than that. And so I was looking and there's some really good organizations out there doing some good things and the organizations that do really well, they're not scalable. That means the most they're able to help in a year is maybe 200 to 200 people at a time. Again, there's 200,000 new veterans every year. That's how many people are getting out of the military. And mental health issues, physical health issues, everything.

Like if you look at the veteran population, it is always worse than with the civilian population. So there's a higher incidence of disease in some way. And so I go, oh, well, we get to create a scalable model. There's no basic training for getting out. Obviously, they can onboard a couple hundred thousand people every year into the military, and they figure out a way to put them through an indoctrination process, basic training, something that gets them bought into whatever it is, gets them to take on this lifestyle that's dramatically different than whatever they were experiencing before. And they're able to live that life, and they're able to, you know, live that life and they're able to conform to that. I mean, the way you live life and the way the mindset of being in the military is dramatically

different than being a civilian. And I don't think that any civilian would ever really be able to comprehend it, to be honest. It's so deep. And so when people get out, even though they may get assistance in finding a career or starting a business or finding some emotional healing for some of the things that they experienced, there's still a really big gap there. And so one is, can we create a program that scales, something that creates community, something that doesn't end? The way I've designed

it right now is there's a 90-day foundational know, we come in, you got 90 days where we start unwinding some of the program that was running and we're really, we're really good about, okay, these are the things you learned that are really good. Keep that. But also it's tied to this other thing. We don't have to hold all of it. You don't have to take all of it and you can let go of some of this and replace it with this. And so I've been out for 18 years. Other people on the leadership team, you guys know Michael Anders. He's on the leadership team as well. Chase Tolison. We have a functional medicine doc, Lance Cutsforth. We have Christy Campbell, who runs Coaching Biz Manager, and she's a solid nutrition coach and businesswoman.

So I have this solid team of leaders who've been out of the military for a while as well, have done their own personal development, have started their own businesses. They've succeeded as coaches in one way or another. Everyone is familiar with plant medicine. No, we're not. We're not a psychedelic company. We're not pushing psychedelics at all. This is meant to be for everyone who's getting out of the military so that they can find their footing. And I would recommend that people do that before they were to go try out ayahuasca, mushrooms, ketamine, MDMA, all these medicines that are coming up in the

research right now and being popularized. They're really fantastic. But if you were to do a good foundational program where you understand how your mind works, how the emotional body works, and then you step into one of these experiences or come to a sacred hunting trip or whatever it is, once you do that, then you know how to make more sense of it and actually integrate it into your life. And so one is, can it be scalable? So we're using a lot of leadership structure from the military in order to create a scalable model where people are in community

and holding each other accountable, creating teams where community is scalable, education is scalable, mentorship is scalable. And then it also doesn't end. So yeah, there's a 90 day initiation process, but if someone wanted to continue to participate, there's always more to get out of it, more to learn, more to develop. And so, and then, so one, what I see is not scalable. Two, most programs that are good, they have an end date where it's like almost like the same experience of getting out of the military. It's like, all right, you did good, bye.

We really don't have anything other than like a GI bill and whatever, what other benefits you might get. And then the last thing is making it affordable. So most veterans are, you know, again, if we're looking at a scalable model, if I were to price it really high, I automatically cut a large segment of veterans out of it. And so I priced it at a point where it's really just reorganizing some of your bills. You know, if you're actually going to show up and prioritize

it, it's affordable. And so those are the three things that I've been able to create. I've been able to create a model for an effective model for people to be able to go into after they leave the military, that's actually going to put them in a good place and i one of the things that i get from a lot of veterans is they ask you know like i wish the military would do something why doesn't the military do something i go well they can't how would anyone who's been in the military teach you how to be a civilian you it requires somebody who's got a military and became a civilian and and built a successful life as a civilian and and was paying attention to what was working what wasn't working as they as they went

along i've had i mean maybe you could say that the military could pay for that though it'd be cool like if they realized there was a a problem it could go to someone like you and maybe invest in that for them, you know, see it as they did, you know, risk their life to give us freedom. That would be fantastic. The problem is,

is when you start, if they're going to, they want to look under the hood of everything and, oh yeah, you know, they wouldn't understand what's under the hood. It's a good point. As soon as the government gets involved,

you're not going to be allowed to run a good business great point yeah and this is why you know just gonna slow it down that's why i'm building in a way that we it's totally internally um uh sustainable it's internally sustainable we're not relying on outside funds. Like the veterans actually paying their own way, which the model's built to do that. We don't have to have some, somebody with money giving us money and they're going to dictate whether, whether it be the government or corporation or, you know, a wealthy individual.

So it's all self-sustaining. You mentioned the kind of like the, the brotherhood side of it. I have, I have two real experiences kind of with that community. One being coaching in San Diego, the wheelchair basketball team, and then the fit ops group that we went down in Arkansas to go see. And it was super interesting kind of pairing those or like having those two experiences, because if you were to just kind of look at the people, the wheelchair basketball team of people that are paralyzed from, it could have been,

most of them are like waist down, incredibly happy people, mostly filled with gratitude for finding a group of people that they can still go play sports with, talk crap with, just be like in the game. And then when we were down in Arkansas, we were kind of in like the first week or two of this in-person thing where everybody was still dealing with a lot of the trauma, like the heaviness of coming back, finding themselves in the real world. And I remember kind of thinking like, this group doesn't have the brotherhood. They don't have the community. And that's what they're here for. They're doing this experience in Arkansas

so that they can become personal trainers. But the thing that they're not talking about or not realizing is like, they're here to find a group of people that get it. And the basketball team had found their crew. And every day they showed up. And I'm sure there's stuff that was going on kind of behind the scenes. But basketball was like their outlet with their friends.

They all had the same dragon to go slay. And they were all motivated because their energy was directed towards whatever they needed to do that day, training, playing, whatever the games were, tournaments were, they knew something was coming up. They all had to be prepared for where the fit ops group was still trying to find their place. And when you kind of also see some of the documentaries that are like Restrepo and things like that, where the guys are like, I would do anything to go back to the scariest place in the world. It really comes down to having that awesome brotherhood, like a group of people that have your back

and we're able to find our tribe. And that group specifically, because they go to such intense theater of the theater of war, and then they come back. It's like, how do you find something that is that intense with a brotherhood of people that are going to really be able to like,

take you to the next place? Yeah. Part of it is a lot of people that I'd say the majority of people who joined the military didn't come from an ideal home living situation. And so when they get in the military it they're experiencing love in a way they never got in their home yeah and so now they now they got to go home and create that for themselves they create their own community create their own home and they have no idea how because the military provided it there's this outside structure that created this it was a forced camaraderie right it was forced family

like you had to work things out like if you disagreed with somebody well they're going to be right there they're not leaving anytime soon and then when you get out the military it's so easy to isolate uh because it's not forced on you like it is the military and you most people were never they didn't learn in their childhood what a healthy home environment is like so they just go back and and repeat whatever it is yeah they learn the opposite yeah yeah um for the show are you having many guests on? Is this kind of your coaching method? Like what's what can people expect when they tune in? There's two types of interviews on the show. I'm interviewing veterans who have basically quote unquote made it. You know, they they've achieved some level of success. They've achieved

a happy home life, succeeding in their career, feeling purpose in what they're doing. And I'm also interviewing people who would help them make it there, like people who have tools and methods. They may not be veterans themselves, but they hold the keys to certain aspects of living a fulfilling life. So there's two different types. So it's like subject matter experts and veterans who've achieved success themselves. Fantastic, man. What are you doing? Real quick before we wrap here, I want to hear more about the name.

It's called The Mission After. How did you come up with that name specifically? The Mission After was, we were down in Costa Rica in 2021, shooting a documentary with 10 combat vets as we were doing ayahuasca and there was there were names being thrown around for the documentary and uh I do believe it was the wife of one of the producers she came up with that and so during the the uh the documentary filming i would be interviewing these guys uh before during after their experience not during their experience but in between experiences and uh we go oh i you know i would ask them you know uh now that you've had this

experience what's your mission after and then they would talk about what their mission, now that you've had this experience, what's your mission after? And then they would talk about what their mission is now that they've left the military and they're here now and they would tear up. And the idea is the mission that you have after you leave the military is so much greater than what you had when you were in. You get to create it. You get to discover it for yourself. It has, it's not going to be handed to you. You're not going to find somebody that says, oh, here's your next mission.

You get to create that yourself. So the mission after is your greatest mission. And so we're here to help you identify that. So that name ended up not being used for the movie. And I ended up being able to use it for this brand. And yeah, so excited. That movie that we were shooting will be, I think it's going to go to some film festivals this summer.

When's the YouTube show popping off? Said two months? Yeah. Three-ish months? Two, three months. Is it going to be aligned with the same thing? There may be multiple shows, and there will be a show that is the Mission After YouTube show that will be directed at veterans. And I am envisioning there being one or two more where I'll be producing some fun content.

Fantastic, man. Where can people learn more? Podcasts, websites, all the things. Yeah. If you go to themissionafter.org, we have a wait list for the mentorship program that we'll be launching in the next... By the time this comes out, we'll be in the middle of launching that. So you can apply to get into the mentorship program and go to the mission after dot org. You can follow me on Instagram at Mike underscore Bledsoe. And you can find the podcast. If you go to the mission after dot org, there's a podcast link. It'll take you over to the podcast page and you can search and we're on all the platforms. I'm also posting the show on on

YouTube. So, yeah, if you just look for The Mission After, you'll run into us. Dude, what are you doing August 10th? I will be probably sitting on the beach at Lake Tahoe having a drink because I'm getting married on August 8th in Tahoe. And we're throwing a rager on the 9th. There you go. Cancel our trip, buddy. You should have told everybody that.

No. Yeah, I'll be in the honeymoon phase August. I love that. It's going to be hard to get you down to Dallas. I was hoping we'd be able to connect from Austin to Dallas,allas but we're gonna be down there for for galpin seminar um done it with parker university so right oh yeah galpin just posted a podcast holy shit he shot up there right number two and number two right behind that huberman guy hell that huberman guy. Have you heard of him? Yeah. Coach Travis Mash.

Mashlead.com. You can read most of my articles and everything else on Jimware.com and then in the blog section. There you go. Douglas E. Larson. That's me. Yep. Douglas E. Larson on Instagram. Mr. Mike Bledsoe, my friend.

Always good to see you. We need to catch up more frequently over the phone, but awesome catching up with you here today. I'm going to go check out. I saw you dropped a whole block of episodes, right? It didn't just start with one episode. You got like 10 episodes out now? Yeah, there's 10 up right now.

I dropped eight all at once. By the time this releases, there will probably be about 15, so plenty to listen to. Very cool. I'm going to go check that out. Good to see you, man. So plenty to listen to. There you go. Cool. Yeah. I'm going to go check that out. Good to see you, man. Good to see you all. Always a pleasure, man. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner and we are barbell shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged to make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That's where Dr. Andy Galpin is doing a free

eight minute video on the exact process we use to optimize your, what the hell is it? I forgot already. It's a new video. Colton, cut this. Colton, cut it. I totally spaced. Mash, that's embarrassing. To optimize your health and fitness? Man, Mash gives me credit all the time for getting these outros correct,

and that was a total... Mike's making you nervous. Five years, I've screwed up. Mike is making you nervous. Right? You're trying to overperform. I'm getting judged by the OG. Mike is just you nervous. Five years, I've screwed up. Mike is making you nervous. Right? You're trying to overperform. I'm getting judged by the OG. Mike is just a human.

He's just a human. You're perfect just the way you are. You are perfect just the way you are. Make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where Dr. Andy Galpin has a free eight-minute video on how you can unlock your true physiological potential and how we make the best in the world better. You can access that free video

over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.