EntreLeadership - #333: What We've Learned from CrossFit with Jason Khalipa and Rich Froning

Episode Date: July 29, 2019

While most think of CrossFit as a means to a really challenging total-body workout, it represents so much more to CrossFit Games champions Jason Khalipa and Rich Froning. In fact, they credit much of their success outside of the gym to the lessons learned in pursuit of their extreme fitness goals. Tune in as Jason and Rich share what CrossFit has taught each of them—and how those invaluable insights have set them up to win in the business world. Spoiler alert: You’ll have a hard time not getting inspired by this one.   entreleadership.com/podcast First: What It Takes to Win by Rich Froning Rich Froning's website As Many Reps as Possible by Jason Khalipa Jason Khalipa's website 10 Lessons CrossFit's Rich Froning Jr. Wants to Teach His Kids Review this episode for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you're comfortable, you're never really growing because there's no need to grow. When you're winning, you're winning, and that's great. But when you lose and you overcome it, you learn more about yourself and how to overcome things that then translates in a real life. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Entree Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders by leaders for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation.

Here's what we got coming up for you. How about a double feature interview with two people and two serious dudes? Rich Froning and Jason Kalipa. These guys are CrossFit megastars. We've got pretty good business and leadership skills as well. Our own Alex Judd sits down with both these guys, really good stuff. So don't miss this conversation. Let's get right to it.

Alex Judd joins me in studio. If you don't know who Alex is, you need to. He's one of our Entree leadership. coaches, and he's also the host of our Entree Leadership Summit and the Entree Leadership Master Series. Alex, welcome back. Thanks so much, Ken. Glad to be here. Now, on a scale of 1 to 10, how excited were you to interview Rich Fronning and Jason

Philippa? I would say I was probably a 12. One of the things we believe around here is that great leaders learn from people that are best in the world of what they do. And these are two of the best in the world whenever it comes to CrossFit. but these guys are world-class competitors in the business world. They're both operating and leading multiple businesses. They're world-class competitors in every single thing they do.

So I'm going to challenge our audience to open their mind and really think about, okay, how can I take the principles they're talking about from their specialty and apply them to my everyday life? Because ultimately, we're all competing, not necessarily with a clock, not necessarily with a competitor that we can see. We are all competing with our potential. So here's my interview with Rich Froning and Jason Kaliba. I thought it would be cool to have you introduce each other.

Jason, I'd love for you to tell me about Rich. Rich, I'd love you to tell me about Jason. So Jason, can you tell me a little bit about Rich Froning? Rich Froning, four-time Cross the Games champion, affiliate cup champion as well many times. Yeah. Husband, father, he has three kids through adoption, which is beautiful. And he owns Cross of Mayhem, which is an affiliate.

out here in Cookville, Tennessee, crushes it out there, has an online program called Mayhem Athlete that does really, really well. And he is a future farmer. So his aspirations and goals is to have Froning Farms. And he's going to create the best bison jerky every. He's and send me some for free. And he currently just got into the coffee game with the good dudes and they make coffee and he sells a bunch of apparel through Cross of Mayhem. And he's an entrepreneur, family man, and has crushed the CrossFit Games. Man, this is why we decided to do this. Have that go, Rich?

All right, and my turn for Jason. First of all, was that accurate. Yeah, pretty accurate. That was right on. So you're actually starting a farm? We've got some fence up now. Yeah, we're going to get some bison out here. Start relatively small.

Probably just six cows and one bull to have out here. I want the kids have some chores to do, you know. Very good. Well, that'll do it. Okay, tell us about Jason. Oh, boy. Jason Kalipa, 2008, CrossFit Games champion, three-time CrossFit Invitational Champion,

NC Fit founder. It was across at NorCal for a long time, but NC Fit now. Jason owns 50 million affiliates across the world. Also a family man as well, married to Ashley for going on, what are you, eight years? Nine years?

I'm about to be 10 years next week. 10 years. Congratulations. Yeah, thank you. Beautiful daughter, Ava, son Caden. One word to describe his personality. Passionate. Passionate.

All right. Yeah. Yeah, no, Jason's a man. Jason's into everything. It's kind of cool that when I started CrossFit, I used to watch videos to Jason, and he was kind of the one I looked up to and to be able to compete against him for many years and become friends. It's been fun too.

Very cool. So I think a lot of people know y'all certainly for kind of the rhythm and the string of victories both of you have had, and then certainly for what you've done since you were competing in CrossFit. I'd love to start by just hearing what is a setback that set you up for those victories, or what is a setback that kind of you look to as a defining moment that made those victories actually happen later on? I know his. Yeah, I know yours too, I think.

I'll start with Riches. In 2010, we were at the CrossFit Games. That was his first year. And he hadn't really practiced rope climbs. And rope climbs came up in the final event. And at that point, he was in good contention to win, actually. It was leading. And for the people that aren't familiar with CrossFit, CrossFit Games is the championship,

correct? James just represents like the world championships. Yeah. So he was at the final event and couldn't get his rope climbs in. Got second by three points, three positions over the whole weekend. Golly. That lit a fire under his ass. Yeah.

Then he came back and won four times in a row. Big thing on that too was, you know, I'd let CrossFit kind of become who I was and my identity. And I've told the story multiple times that, you know, I grew up in faith. And faith has always been a huge part of my life, but it was more of a one-sided faith. what can I get out of that faith? And when I would pray, it was, God, help me. How can you help me versus what can I do for you? And so for me, at that point, it was more of, it was a wake-up call that, hey, CrossFit isn't what defines me as a human being. It's, you know, my faith in Christ and who I am, that he died for me. And that's what defines me. And it was very freeing and

took a lot of pressure off the next couple years. And I always say that if I wouldn't have gotten second that first year, I wouldn't have won the next four. And now we have three on a team as well. So for me, that was a huge just wake-up call and realizing that, you know, things of this world are very fleeting and they're not what necessarily defines you. And, you know, now having kids and stuff like that, now that's another thing that's on top of that is, you know, I want to be there for the kids and want them to see that type of stuff is, you know, I'm always always a role model for them and they're always watching. Yeah. What's the life lesson there behind that setback? How does that change the way you view and perceive things? failure or getting second place for that matter. I mean, I think both of us have failed many times very publicly. You know, and that's, you know, that, hey, you got to kind of pick yourself up and

keep moving forward and that, you know, every day is a new day. And it's not always, you're not always going to win every event. And that's kind of the beauty of what we do in CrossFit is we may win the CrossFit games, but we probably lost a lot of events in there, you know. And I think you learn a lot from those opportunities, those look like opportunities to me because through adversity, you could learn so much about yourself. and you know for me I've passed out the cross of games I've had some events that had gone that's my way out in the middle of the game yeah first event of 2009 I mean I literally blacked out

it's my it's my only time but I learned a lot from that I learned that if I wanted to compete at a high level I need to know why I was there you know you got to know why you're doing what you're doing otherwise when it gets tough you're going to just kind of back out and back that up with work ethic and kind of get into the games with this confidence you've built through all these daily tasks and through adversity you can learn a lot about yourself and I think that's that you're that is what sport gave me more than anything because when you're winning, you're winning and that's great. But when you lose and you overcome it and then you go keep moving forward, you learn more about yourself and how to overcome things that then translates into real life. I mean, take for example,

this guy, you know, he falls off a rope or whatever and he relates it to faith. The way I related to is a little bit different where he had to then come back the next years and dominate and perform really well. But then how does that translate when, you know, he's trying to build a family and they're having challenging times, and then they find, you know, how do they overcome adversity in real life and how it relates to sport? And I've felt that same way when my daughter was diagnosed leukemia. It was the exact same thing. It's like you overcome these things here and then they translate into real life. So, you know what I mean? Growth only comes through adversity. That's right. I mean, when you're comfortable, you're never really growing because there's no really need to grow. And so having adversity, and I think both of us are similar as we go at adversity. We go at challenging things because we need some type of challenge always or else it's what's the point in living? Is that, like that handstand walk? Like the 30 minutes ago? Yeah, for those of you that are listening, we were recording this from Ridge's house. He was nice enough to have us over here, and we got here, and they were doing hands.

These two guys, you don't understand. These two guys can do more from a handstand position than I can do on my legs. Like, they're amazing. And you completed the handstand walk. Well, I was having a tough time with this obstacle. Your defense, it was the first day you've been on it. First day I've been on it. But this is a great example that we could have easily just been like, hey, man, I'm not trying to win, like, whatever.

I'm just going to do this thing over here, but I wanted to challenge myself with that. And the clock is still running on that workout for me. So I got to go over there and go finish it. That was good for me because I wanted to put myself an uncomfortable position and then overcome it. And I think that fitness is a really great way to do that with not that big of like repercussions if you fail. Yeah. For both of you, like you just described sometimes you'll have a bad day. And certainly in CrossFit, the CrossFit games, you have event after event after event.

Sometimes you'll have a terrible event. A lot of times you have a terrible event. Both of us have had terrible events. But then you have to turn around, and if you're going to win this thing, you have to turn around and not just perform decent. You have to perform better than everyone else in the next event. How do you have the mental tenacity to do that 180 and be ready for the next day or the next event? I think practice and having done it for so many years, both of us, you realize, you know, the first couple of years, you're like, I screw up an event, I'm done. You know, like, there's no chance.

and then learning that, hey, all right, now I can have a bad event. I need to have a couple good events. Like, I can't have a couple bad events and that I need to bounce back and, you know, need to capitalize on the things that I know I'm good at. I need to make a statement here. Well, I think it's a numbers thing. You got to be logical about it too. If you look at it, okay, we're going to have 14 events.

If you have one bad event, well, that only represents X percent. Well, let's take a step back for a second. If I allow this to define my whole games, it's over. It's over. It is just 5 percent. So now I need to go after that 95%. And you know what they say? If you finish in top 10 for every other event and you had one bad event, you're probably going to finish off pretty well.

Okay, so this is bizarre. I was talking to someone yesterday. They wore a shirt with a buffalo on it. And the shirt said run into the storm. And they said that the reason why they were in that shirt is cows run away from storms. Bison, they run into the storm? They're just bison or like we were talking to one of the guys trying to learn a little bit more. more about it before we do. That's where we're starting relatively small. And he was like, you can make a

bison go wherever it wants to go. And that's about it. And so, I mean, they're, they're pretty incredible animals. You know, like, they're, it's a tough animal and they just, they go into everything. Okay. So they're known for running into the storm and y'all are telling me we go towards adversity. We go towards challenge. Is that something that was naturally why? Like, were you born with that desire to just maybe push your limits a little bit, or was that cultivated and grown? I always talk about I'm one of 32 first cousins, 25 of us are boys just on my mom's side. And so there's a lot of 25 of 32. Yeah. And even the girls are, most of them are better athletes than a lot of the 25. So it was a lot of competition, a lot of just, you know, growing up, it was, you know, we're fighting

wrestling, a lot of testosterone, a lot of just, you know, our parents like trying to tire us out. They're like, hey, once you guys go race around the pond or whatever for, you know, whoever wins gets It's an extra whatever. And so my parents were incredible. Both of my parents were the hardest workers in the room, no matter what room they were in. They weren't real big on pep talks. I didn't get, you know, like no incredible speeches growing up, but they were always out there working. If they gave us chores, they were out there with us, making sure we were, we saw them working too.

And so kind of a perfect storm of all of that growing up. Yeah, I think for me, I knew that if I wanted to get to the place I wanted to get to, financially, school-wise, whatever, I just woke up one day and realized that if I don't put in the work, no one owes me anything, and I need to be the hardest worker to get to where I want to get to. And primarily it was my wife at the time. You know, when we were 14, 15, and then when we tried to go into college, I didn't get accepted. And she did. And that was the first time my life that, like, there was a fork in the road, and I didn't

earn the right to keep going because I didn't put in the work. And it really bothered me. And I was like, well, what can I do about it? Start putting in the work. And that's kind of what instilled in my own self is that if I wanted to get to the financial independence or whatever I want to get. No one's going to come and save me. No one's going to come and do it for me.

I have to do it for myself. Why do you think a lot of people either see adversity and turn away or hit a challenge and quit? Why do you think people do that? Because it's hard. And naturally as easy to quit. That's right. As we've evolved, right?

People have identified ways to make things easier. For example, cars and this and that, they're making things easier. We're avoiding the challenges of chop wood, right? as an example. Do you think convenience is making us softer? Yeah. Now more than ever, you need to put yourself in a position to get uncomfortable more than what you did in the past. Because in the past, if you wanted water, if you wanted wood, you had to put in the work to get that. Now those things are just at your disposal. And so you have to kind of find opportunities to push yourself more because of all these common things that we have nowadays.

And I assume that's what CrossFit does for you. It kind of enforces a sense of struggle into your life that otherwise if you're not careful one. Yeah, I think any fitness, you know, there's some adversity. There's times where in your head you're like, man, I should quit this. Or it's a lot of fun too. Like, you know, Jason doesn't train competitively anymore. And so we write up a bunch of workouts on the board. And he's like, I'm going to do this one, do that one. But then everybody starts doing the workouts. He's like, I'm not going to do this one. And then five minutes later, he's loading up a barbell. Because he can't just sit there and watch, you know, but it's in you know, it's in you know, and stuff like that. But it's the same type of people.

It attracts those same type of people. People that want some type of challenge, they want to push. You know, they want that. But what's cool and what we do is it's shared most of the time. Like, you know, we're going through this a similar type of, you know, it may be a completely different workout. You know, same movement, stuff like that.

Stimulus may be relatively the same depending on, you know, your fitness level. But you kind of have that same feeling going on in your head. You want to quit. You shouldn't know, should I have done this? You know, this is a little excessive, you know, whatever. Creeps in your head. Should I do one more rep? should I take a break here?

And there's just a lot of things. You've got to get comfortable in that space. Yeah. The shared suffering is obviously good when you can do that with other people. So when you do it on your own, it's great because you learn how to kind of overcome these things. But if you're not prepared to do that yet,

do it with a shared group. You know, at our gyms, we see people overcome things all the time because they have others to support them. And I think we're missing that sometimes when it comes to fitness in general. Obviously the clock was something that was introduced in CrossFit that really kind of changed the game

because for a long time, I'd be in the gym doing traditional bodybuilding type stuff. And I think there's a lot of people out there that do it. But I would recommend, especially for anybody listening, who's not doing this, they could start thinking about, you know, starting a clock and then utilizing movements that are hard. You know, if you ride the elliptical and read a book, that's better than nothing. And I'm encouraging it if that's what you want to do. But just recognize that if you're not putting like a lot of force on your body, you're not going to get the adaptations you're looking for. So sometimes you got to start a clock and kind of go after

it a little bit. It's got to hurt a little bit. It's got to hurt a little bit. And then the results come by as a byproduct of that. You spin your, entire year when you're competing. Not knowing what you're going to do. And you're preparing for that week, right? So how do you deal with the mental psychology when you're on month six of 12 getting ready for something that's that far away? For me, I've been doing it. This is 10 years. You know, like I've been competing for 10 years. It's a third of my life. So for me, it's easy. Like, I know when I have to be ready. I try to stay ready almost all year long. Like I just feel better when I'm moving. You know, like there are some times of the year where I'm going to take it a little

bit easier. And especially with these sanctionals, they're kind of spread out a little bit more. You can hit a couple more of them. And that's how you qualify. Yeah. Yeah, that's how you qualify now. There's no regionals. And so I feel like this season's been longer than most because we, you know, we started getting ready in January for a competition. The hardest part has been keeping everybody else's head in the game, you know, for me, yeah, for me, I'm great. I'm good to go. Like, I'm ready to compete whenever we have to. I enjoy this. I love being out there. Different people need a little bit different motivation and need a little bit different, I don't want to say coddling, Some people, like, and I'm not. Is that a personality difference? It's a personality difference, you know, and that's been the hardest part for me is, and it's been great for business is learning different personalities. You know, for me, I know that I don't really need a ton of motivation, external motivation. You know, I have enough from the inside. And most of my teammates don't really need an external motivation. But some people, like, it wears on them doing this long season and day in and day out and crushing each other. And there's some days that are going to be better than others. And some days you're going to feel like crap. And when they have days that feel like crap, you know, some men.

melt down a little bit. And so it's been, hey, take a day off, you know, do what you need to do or half day off, you know, come in, hit the morning session, take the afternoon off because it's a grind. But that's been fun to kind of learn how to deal with people in that way. That's way different than just motivating yourself. You know, I grew up playing team sports. And so that's something I believe you learn, and kids learn in team sports is how to relate to people and how to, you know, adjust on the fly to different people's personalities. Yeah. Yeah. So for me, I mean, Back to what Rich was saying, this was really hard for me to pick up on in the early days.

When we started our company in 2008, it was just me. And I didn't really need someone to, for lack of a better term, motivate me, coddle me, whatever. Like, I was internally motivated. And what I learned is that, you know, other people needed guidance and direction. I wasn't providing that for them. So like early on in our company, I would just expect, hey, go out there and go get the job done. And I would just assume they'd just go get it done. Like, hey, Rich, go get the job done.

Okay, got it. But people want guidance and direction. They want validation for what they're doing. And they want to know they're on the right track. And I wasn't providing that in our company. And as our company grew from one employee to 50 to 100, whatever, we needed to put systems in place to clearly describe what we're looking for and set the expectation because I wouldn't do that.

I just assumed everybody was kind of like me, hey, go get the job done. But people want to know exactly what that job was. because it was like this, go get the job done. It was kind of like this broad strokes thing. I learned the hard way that I should have implemented more systems and processes and clear expectations early on. It seems like for both of you, there's kind of this thread of purpose that's woven through both of your stories.

What is the thing? Because I'm sure that goes through your head, or at least it's in your heart somewhere whenever your backs against the wall and whenever you are just spent. So when you think about your purpose in competing, your purpose in doing what you do, your purpose in pushing yourself. What is it? Mine is kind of a couple different layers, I guess. You know, like I talked about, my faith is a huge part of who I am and why I do what I do and why I push every day. And other parts of my kids, you know, I've never once told them, hey, let's go work out or let's do this. My kids just come out there and they, you know, Lakeland wants to swing

around from the pull-up bar. She wants to, hey, dad, let's do a workout. So I'm like, heck, yeah, let's do it. And just watching the things that they pick up on good and bad, you're like, it's really eye-opening to think, hey, I need to really. I need to really. control my emotions and control, you know, how I make decisions. So they see that. So they have, you know, a solid, you know, something to look too, you know, and not necessarily, definitely not perfect in any way. But, you know, every day is going to be different. Like there's days where I go to bed and I'm like, man, I did not do that dad thing very well today. And so it's like, knowing that every day is a different day and I need to do better each day. And even days where I have a good

day where I'm like, all right, I crushed it. And then I'm like, all right, tomorrow's new. you got to keep doing it. And so my kids are a huge part of it. And then, you know, that's really, it's my faith in my kids are the reason why I do a lot of what I do. Yeah. You talk about purpose. And I think Rich hit it with Lakeland and going out into the garage. And I think when I was competing, I had a strong reason. I wanted to kind of back up all this work that I put in to go see how I could test against these guys. And I enjoyed competition because it pushed me to get a little uncomfortable. Now it's more like, hey, I want to be there for my kids. I want to set an example. Same with him. as fathers, we have a responsibility to be active so that if our kids want to go do something,

we don't, like later on, if we want to go play baseball with our kids or throw a ball, whatever, like we could be there and we don't have to worry about it. I think that's really important that if you're not motivated by six-pack or even good blood markers, right? Those things don't motivate you. Like, other things could motivate you. Like, if your kids want to be able to go do something, you should have the energy to be able to go do it.

But in business, really, what I'm all about is reaching my potential. Like, I don't want to look back and be like, man, you know what? 2019 was a good year, but I could have taken these steps to catapult what we were doing. And when I'm 60, 70, 80 years old, I won't want to look back and see that there was really big opportunities that I was too afraid to take or didn't want to put in the work to take. I want to look back and be like, we reached our potential in those different areas. And I could safely say for competing professionally in CrossFit, I felt like I put in the work to reach my potential there.

And life called it differently and I stepped back from it. And that's what was important to me. But now I got to switch gears for business and reach that same potential. Yeah. It's fascinating in reading both of your books and kind of following your story. Both of you have a piece of your family story that seems like has informed your perspective in a pretty big way. I'd love for our audience to hear the story of what Ava went through whenever she was four years old and how bad informed your perspective, Jason. My daughter was diagnosed leukemia January of 2016.

So now she's one year out of treatment. she's been one year. And her treatment plan was two and a half years. Wow. So that's a long time, right? And we've gone through some pretty rough stuff. But we're also super blessed and super fortunate. You know, my daughter's leukemia was treatable.

Others sometimes aren't. And I don't know if my wife and I would have acted the way we did had it been a different diagnosis. But in her diagnosis, my wife and I really came together. And it was like, you know, I've had pump up speech from this guy and from football coaches and whatever, but no better pump-up speech than when my wife, as soon as we found out Ava was diagnosed, I told her, and I was in the hallway, I was just really crying. And, you know, it was just a lot.

It was a lot, right? And I pull Ash down, like, hey, Ava was diagnosed leukemia. And I just, I'll never forget it. She just said, like, I think 10 words. She's like, Jason, tell our family that Ava's been diagnosed leukemia. Tell them there's no tears in front of her. We're going to go crush this thing. And she's walked right back into the room.

And I was like, all right. I was like, you let's go. You know, like, I was all fired up. And so that set the tone of everything to follow. And look, I could attest a lot of our competition experience for my wife and for myself. They go through a lot that we don't really recognize. You know, Hillary's gone through a lot with Rich competing. She's seen his struggles.

And I think it was just as hard on them as it is on us. But that makes them stronger. And my wife, you know, I've seen a whole different, you know, our families came closer together. We've learned a lot from the experience. But that's not to say I would ever wish it upon my worst enemy. I mean, we've, you know, we're, it's, it was rough. Yeah. Rich, can you tell us a little bit about the story of your family and how you adopted your kids?

And then what I would really like to know is how is that story and that experience affected your priorities? Growing up, I told you one of 32 first cousins on my mom's side. So, you know, always wanted to be, you know, big family. I think my mom is actually the only one with less than three kids of her sisters. Did your wife want a big family too? Yeah, my wife. Well, she wanted a really big family until she met me and then she decided, hey, that's a couple kids right there at least.

So, yeah, you know, so we, you know, we had our plan of maybe having two or three and then adopting one. And that was kind of our plan growing, you know, when we got married and all that stuff. And after a couple years of it, you know, we tried a couple different, you know, treatments. And doctors were always like, well, you know, you're both healthy. Your numbers are good. We just don't know why you can't have kids. And so. Was that really hard on your wife?

Oh, it was beyond, you know, just watching her. It's hard for me just to see it. It's hard for her to go through. it, but then me to have have to go through it and then see her go through it, it was, it was gut-wrenching every time, you know, because she would get so fired up and like, I think it worked this time, you know, I think it worked. I just feel different. And then to not see it, you're just like, man, it's, it's hard watching that. You know, I can deal with disappointment myself, but watching her go through it was rough. And so, you know, she, she came to me,

I guess it was in, uh, 2014. What was that? 2014. It was last year I was going to compete as an individual. And she was like, I think we should adopt our first. And I was like, uh, you know, for me, selfish at the time, I was like, I just don't think I could adopt my first child. How stupid now? Like, you know, my kids are my kids. Like, it doesn't matter, you know, the blood side of it. And so I'm like, I don't know. I prayed about her bunch. And I was like, you know what? All right. Instead of, I don't want to do in vitro because you're paying for a chance of a kid. And so many things had gone wrong. And I was just like, let's, let's do the adoption thing. And so Hillary found this birth mom through a friend of a friend of a friend. And it was like,

she was eight months pregnant, the family that she had picked. It just backed out when we were introduced to the girl. And so she was like, you know, I need a couple days to process this. I'd like to meet Hillary and talk to her. So she talked to her and she loved Hillary. So she was like, now I want to meet Rich. And so I'm like, all right, well, I don't want to screw this up. And so we had lunch and she was like, yeah, let's do this.

And so that was, we found out a month before my last year as an individual competing. This must have been just a handful of years ago, right? Almost a day. Yeah, Lakewood just turned five on Sunday. She just turned five. So, yeah, she's awesome. So two weeks before the game. we actually had Lakeland. Having her was, it was incredible, you know, realizing, you know, like I said,

I talked about my faith a ton and broken record, but you realize what unconditional love is, you know, like you don't really understand that, I guess, until you have a kid personally. And then, you know, we went through a couple different failed adoptions with, before we had Trice. That was a whirlwind. That was right around regionals. And then, so we had Trice. He was in the NICU for like 10 days. So Hillary had to stay down in Jacksonville. I had to come back here. So have a two-year-old. by myself training for regional. This was a ton of fun. And then the next year in February, we got to call Hillary keeps in touch with Lakeland's birth mom and said, hey, I had another baby and can't keep it. Would you guys take her? And we're like, of course. She's already born.

So that was on a Monday. On Thursday, we were in Florida again and we got violent. So now we have, our oldest two are biological sisters, half sisters. And then Trice's own man. But Trice is actually Richard the Third. So we just called, we just called Tris. Yeah. Unreal. So, it's pretty remarkable. I mean, there are so many stories out there of people that compete or certainly lead at the highest level. And then that goes away and they go away. And their entire life is gone. We've got two people in front of us that, I mean, have been the best in the world. Rich, you've been called the fittest person in history by many people. And now you're done with the games, both of you. Rich, I know you're still competing as a team, but you're done individually. And both of you are still thriving. why do you think that is? Well, I think personally, CrossFit games never defined who I was. And I think that's the first thing

that we all need to recognize is that if you're defined by one thing, when that one thing goes away, your foundation is broken. And so from the beginning, and same with him. We got into this because we loved to train hard. We got into it because we liked to compete.

We didn't get into it for money, fame, whatever. Those things became byproducts of all the hard work. So those weren't the things we were founded on. And then on top of that, you know, we started businesses. We have families, and that's how we define who we are. And I think when competition for him, when it goes away, he'll continue to find other things to push him forward, right? And for me, it just became, I'm just not competing a couple times a year, but I'm competing in the garage of myself all the time. I'm competing with other people at the gym all the time. But then never defined who I was

was competing at the crossfee games. So when it goes away, was it hard for the first year or two? Yeah, it was. And for me, I had an extreme case. So my case was not like most people's, because some people keep competing when they maybe shouldn't. For me, it was like, you know, when you find out your kid has cancer, like, it's just a very simple situation. Like, it's like, okay. I'm done. I'm done. And frankly, if I had spent three, four hours a day training instead of being there for those hospitals, like, then what would I be? You wouldn't be a dad. Yeah. So my situation is a little bit extreme, but still, I think it's all about not being defined by a single characteristic,

but being defined by multiple things. Yeah. Yeah, I think we both just found success in something that was very public and people like to watch and that's what it is. However, I think we would both find success in things that are more private and would be fine. You know,

it's just, we just happen to find something that was a little bit more public and people enjoy it. That's why I try to tell people when people get so like, and it's great that people, you know, get nervous or whatever when you meet them, but it's like, hey, I just work out a lot.

And that was just like, I'm sure, you know, they're better at their day job than I would be. So it's just how it is. You know, it's not that necessarily that we're better than anyone, but it's, we found something that we were good at that people like to watch, you know, that it got a little bit more exposure than just the average everyday type of job. Yeah, I mean, he wrote an article one time, I don't even know if you know this, but I read it. It was 10 things that I wish I could tell my kids.

It was really good. And one of the things he wrote was to tell my kids that just because you're good at something. It doesn't, everybody's good at something. So just because you're good at one thing and people might come up to you and get all giddy like someone doesn't mean you're better than anybody else. So we at Entry leadership, we love the definition that if someone depends on you, you are a leader. And so certainly from a family perspective, you all have people that depend on you. But now, I mean, CrossFit has become so big over the past decade that there are so many young people that look up to both of you as role models. How do you handle that response?

I mean, I think it's just the way you act, the way you talk, the way you represent yourself. And, you know, for me, it's about trying to find ways to add value to people's day, utilizing the platform that we have because we've been given a platform. Now, how do we spread a positive message, but also provide some type of like in business, for example, I try and share what I've learned because that's going to help the next foundation. And with the youth, letting them know that this is just one thing, but it's not the only thing. Like his cousins here. and you know, I mean, you both of us said the same thing to them, right?

Yeah, yeah. So like my big thing with kids, especially kind of a little bit sidetracked, but on the same lines is, you know, these younger kids are 12 to 16, 12 to 18. You know, they get so caught up and like, oh, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to go homeschooled. I'm going to quit all my sports and I'm going to concentrate on CrossFit. Drives me insane. And so Brayden, my cousin, Braden Bruss, he qualified as the games as a 15-year-old. And I said, all right? He was the guy that was working out up there, right?

Yeah. Incredible football player has some opportunities. probably play some D1 football. I was like, this is your last year to compete at the CrossFit games as a teen. Like, I want you to concentrate on football. Like, this was a good year for you. Take advantage of it. Have some fun. I said, but football is you're like, I tell kids to play as many sports as they can and enjoy that because you're not going to have the rest of your life to do those types of things. And I learned so much playing team sports, you know, from adversity standpoint, from dealing with people, from, you know, that it probably applies to everything. To everything. To sport, to business to, you know, like I have an athletic background because I, you know, from, you know, from adversity standpoint. played a ton of different sports. I was outside. I was, you know, climbing things, doing, running around. Luckily, I live here. I grew up just up the road and, you know, my parents were

like, if you're inside, we'll find you something to do. But if you go outside, you know, you can play as long as you want. And so luckily, I have that. So I tell kids like, hey, play as many different things as you can, you know, you'll have the rest of your life to do CrossFit. You know, when you get 18, 19, if you're not playing a college sport, if you don't want to, if you want to play a college sport, if you don't want to play a college sport, then by all means to do some CrossFit. But I would play sports as long as I can. Because I'm, that's what I'm trying. I'm 32 now. or I'll be 32 in a couple weeks. I thought I was 33, but I'm 32.

I'm trying to find sports to play. I'm like, man, I want to get back out there. And we played in a flag football league a couple weeks ago and finish that up. And so I missed those things. CrossFit, it'll be there. I had someone on a coaching call. It was literally yesterday. And I was so excited whenever she brought up this challenge because I was like,

I'll ask the two CrossFit guys this tomorrow. She said, man, I've got all these people on my team that they're killer individual performers. She's like, they crush it as individual performers. knock it out of the park. She got a pretty, I think she had 30 people on her team. And she said, but what I realized is the traits that it takes to be an individual performer is way different than the traits to be a leader. And so now you have both gone from being an individual performer. You've crushed that.

But now, Jason, you're leading a business with locations across the United States, leading multiple ventures, multiple verticals. And Rich, you're leading a team. You also have all these other ideas that you're pursuing and chasing. you have the gym here and everything else. So how have you been able to bridge that gap? And what are the trait differences and the quality differences between being an individual performer to being a leader of people? You know, I kind of talked earlier about how my parents, it was a lead by example. You can't be afraid to, you know, get in there with people, but you have to learn people.

You've got to kind of be willing to your idea is not always the best idea, even though you may think it is sometimes. you have to be willing to listen, be willing to, I think, you know, communicate with people. I think that's the biggest thing is communication. People don't communicate well. And whether that's, you know, if you have a relationship with somebody, truth. Some people need truth. Jim, one of my buddies, he talks about truth and grace. Like some people need truth sometimes. Like, you got to tell them, hey, this is what the deal is. And some people need grace sometimes. Hey, maybe when they're being an idiot, you gently tell them they're being an idiot type of deal. And that's an art for them to figure that out.

Yeah, it's knowing people and understanding people. And that's hard. I don't know if you can really teach that, to be honest. Well, I think what's really tough, too, speaking from this woman's perspective, is that when you're an individual contributor, you're all about, I need to get this work done. So you're only responsible, you only need to rely on yourself. But when you start scaling, right, when we get multiple locations or multiple, you have to start scaling if you want to build anything with any type of substance. And as you scale, right, like Rich and I were talking about yesterday, he has different people

in each vertical of his business that control retail, control this, control that. What he's responsible for and saying with myself is, that we have locations all over the world. I can't be there all the time. And so as an individual contributor, you're like, okay, hey, if I need to get the work down, I'm going to put in the work. And for a long time, I used to do everything. But I found myself that I would be doing everything at 70% instead of delegating it out and then letting that person, my 70% will never be with that person's 100% is or should be as long as you set the expectation accordingly. So I think what's really important is that when you shift from an individual contributor to a leader position

is being okay with delegating and allowing that. to kind of create those plans and not hovering over them the whole time because if you're doing that, then you're really not trusting in that process or that person. Maybe they're not the right person for that job. Yeah. So we use the quote all the time. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Yeah. Do you feel like sometimes you have to slow down to get other people on board with where you're going? And if so, is that hard for you to do? Yeah, I mean, for sure for us. So we rebranded from NorCal CrossFit years ago to NCFIT. And at the time, I didn't think it was that big of a deal. we probably had maybe 80 people working for the company, maybe 100, I don't know, something around that.

And I thought, oh, we're just rebranding. Everything's the same. But I found that these people were so attached, the employees were attached to the term CrossFit. So when we reduced it, they lost a sense of their identity. And we did a poor job explaining what our identity was as a company. We just said, hey, guys, we're still NorCal CrossFit. We're still the same company. We're just rebranding.

But to them, it was bigger than that. To them, they lost the sense of who they were. So after like a year of kind of like resentment building, like vibes weren't right, culture wasn't right. We sat down as a company. I brought everybody together. I was like, all right, guys, enough is enough. This is our culture. This is our mission.

This is our vision. This is what NC fit stands for. This is who we are. This is where we're going. This is what we're about. You're either on the bus. You're off the bus. But that was something that really helped us kind of create this team environment.

And I learned the hard way. You got to have that clearly defined so that you could then move in one unit together. And I thought that we were doing that. we didn't do a good job of it. Being a business leader demands a lot of your time, obviously, and just having a full-time job. So not everyone's going to compete CrossFit at a world-class level, but so often it seems like you talk to so many people that aren't competing in the fitness world, and they just feel guilty about their fitness. So what would you tell the person that does work a full-time job or is

leading and running or owning a business? What would you tell them they should strive for when it comes to fitness. I think fitness should never be an inhibitor of what you want to do. If you can get to that point in your life, then you're good, right? It should never inhibit your ability to get up off the couch. It should never inhibit your ability to go play with your kids. If they want to go do something, you should be able to go do it. And if you can get to that point, then you're probably fitter than most people. I always tell people, fitness should be a stress relief, not an added stress. Yeah. You shouldn't stress. Like, go out and do something, but don't get so caught up and, you know, have to hit this number. I have to do this. I have to do this many steps. Yes, those are some good,

you know, things to think about when you're doing it, but don't make it an added stress. I mean, that's kind of the beauty of CrossFit. You can literally warm up, workout, cool down, and really you can be done in 30, 45 minutes and have a really good workout if you're smart about it. And you just have to be smart about it. You know, don't people get so caught up and, you know, I've got to hit these numbers. I got to hit this amount of time. I got to hit this many, you know, whatever. Do something. Something's better than nothing. Consistency is what really matters. And that matters in business, I mean, how many times have people came up with these big goals in business and they do it for like a week or two? Every day I'm going to call 50 new leads.

About every new year that happens, right? This year I'm going to do 50 new news. It's like, hey, man, like start off with something fundamental and then build from there. Because, I mean, it's going to be hard to change these things that have been habits in your life for so long. If you're looking to incorporate fitness, start really slow and then build your way up. So it becomes something that's a lifelong journey because like Rich and I don't want to be fit for another year or 10 years. want to be fit for as long as possible. So it's a long trajectory,

and we need to stay on a path that's going to get us there. What are you most excited about right now, both of you? Oh, man. You got the CrossFit Games, baby. CrossFit games in two or three weeks. Are you number 10? Yeah, feel good. It's different.

This year's going to be completely different. There's a lot less teams. It's going to be some cuts. There's going to be a different format. So this year has kind of been a learning experience. So this year we'll play by year and have a better plan, I guess, for next year. But, I mean, trained harder the last couple of the last couple of things. months and I have in years. You know, health has been good and I'm happy about that.

Excited about my kids. I'm excited to get some bison, actually. Into the storm. Into the storm. That's right. I like that. Yeah. I'm just generally pretty excited. I'm excited to be here. I mean, for me, you know, I constantly evaluating my life, hey, you know, what are we doing well? What can I be improving on? And right now, you know, our family's out here in Cookville, Tennessee. Everybody's happy. Everybody's healthy. Business is going well. And so I have a lot to be grateful for. And so as long as we can continue to move forward like that, then hey, we're winning. If people hear one message from both of you that sticks with them and that impacts the way

they live day in and day out, what's the message you hope they hear? Do what you do for something bigger than yourself. For me, it's my faith in my family. It's a huge part. But yeah, make your life about something else, somebody else, rather than yourself. I think every day there's going to be challenges. There's going to be things that are going on and people can find themselves kind of going into this rut where they get into negativity and they look at things through the lens.

of a negative lens. But I think if you take a step back for a second, there's always something positive that you could look at through your day, through your life. And if you could focus on those things, it'll help you get out of those negative positions and help you thrive. Because being negative about stuff

is never gonna help you in any situation. You gotta identify these little positive slivers, focus on that, and then it propels you to the next step. Well, Jason and Rich, one of the things we stand for is people passionately pursuing something they deeply care about and bring others along for the ride. And certainly you've, both exemplify that. So thanks so much for your time today. Appreciate it, guys. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, big thanks to Alex Judd and Rich Froning and Jason Kalipa. Great conversation. And if you want more of this kind of conversation, then we want to hear for you. Specifically, we want to know who you like, what you don't like, what kind of content you want. We need to hear from you because if we're going to serve you, we've got to know what you think. So we'd like you to also consider rating and reviewing. So if you love it, give us all those. stars. And if you'd like to give us a review, we would really appreciate it. You can do that wherever you listen to podcast. And if you subscribe or you're about ready to hit the subscribe button, also share an episode. Really easy to do wherever you listen to a podcast, share with a friend

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