Epic Real Estate Investing - As Many Reps As Possible (AMRAP) with Jason Khalipa | 609

Episode Date: March 14, 2019

Meet Jason Khalipa, a CrossFit Games champion, a founder of NC Fit, a podcast host, and the author of the book, As Many Reps As Possible. Jason is talking about how he built that work-life balance and the right mindset, which is essential for serious multitasking. Furthermore, he shares how he manages his business, organizes charity events, and faces life challenges while remaining devoted to his family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Terio Media. With money, that's kind of the motivation. I want to get to a point where it becomes a non-factor, where, you know, to help these other families, we want to get to a point where for us, it was a non-factor in the hospital, but for them it is a factor, how do we give them the hope

and just a little something to get them through the day, get them through the month, and maybe that's, maybe that changes their life. I'm Matt Dario, the epic real estate investing show and welcome to another episode of Thought Leader Thursday. All righty, so on today's episode of Thought Leader Thursday, I'm joined by a devoted father, 2008 CrossFit Games champion and recipient of the Spirit of the Games Award at the 2009 CrossFit Games and is the founder of NC Fit, not to mention being selected to participate as a member of Teen USA in 2012, 13, 14, CrossFit Games invitational.

So please help me welcome to the show, Mr. Jason Kalipa. Jason, welcome to the Epicure Estate Investing Show. Yeah, thank you very much. I really appreciate you for having me. Yeah, no, I'm glad to have you. And we have a mutual friend and he made the introduction. and so I'm really looking forward to get to know you. What you've accomplished is amazing in CrossFit.

So congratulations there. Oh, thank you. You bet. Having been a recovering Crossfitter, I did that for a couple years, and I don't think I had one day out of those two years where I wasn't sore. So I was like, oh, I'm getting too old for this. Anyway, what were you doing just before CrossFit and what inspired you to take it on at such a high level? Before I was introduced to CrossFit, I was doing the, me, the conventional gym thing,

a lot of bodybuilding type workouts. I was also doing some jiu-jitsu, some wai, but primarily, you know, I got introduced to it really young, so I was doing mainly high school sports. And then when I got out of high school and went to college to go, I was going to pursue football and end up not working out. And that's really when I found bodybuilding and then I got in a cross-edged shortly after that and been doing it ever since.

It's great. You're not competing today anymore, are you? You're all done? Well, I have a, so I competed. eight times across the game, seven times an individual and one time as a team. And then in 2016, I stopped competing. Our daughter got sick and stopped competing then. She's doing well now. But in May of this year, I'm competing in a what they're going to call a legends event. So that should be interesting. So I got invited to do this event. And so I'm pretty excited about it.

Fantastic. So what is life looking like for you right now, getting prepared for that? I mean, obviously, from a, from, you know, I have our business, my family and the fitness. So, you know, for me, I mean, we have locations all over. So trying to make sure we're growing the right way with our company. Trying to be as good of a husband and father I can be. And then obviously I'm trying to get in the training protocol at least, you know, I add in jujitsu about three days a week. But I try and get in at least, you know, 30 minutes of fasted cardio in the morning.

Some type of like mainly like crossfit high intensity training midday. and then every now and then try and get something in later on in the evening for like 20 minutes of just stamina work to try and get me ready for that. But I'm not putting in nearly as much volume as I used to put in. Got it. You know, you just said something and I was going to ask you a self-serving question. So is there something to the fasted cardio in the morning? Yeah, I mean, it's just something I like to do. You know, for me, I think your body is just kind of like your own laboratory and just tests out different things.

Try doing cardio while fasting. Try it after eating and see how you feel. For me, I like doing that kind of stuff without much in my stomach. Also, I've been playing around obviously with different diets, different coffees, different this, different that, just to see what works and what I like, what I don't like. Is that the answer? Because, I mean, someone will say eat sick small meals a day, the other person will eat, say, the intermittent fasting. So is it just a testing thing to see what works best for you? Yeah, I mean, I've been in doing this long enough to realize that everybody has their opinions.

And it's important that if you're going to have your opinions, you need to find what works for you. and everything's going to be a little bit different for your lifestyle and all you have going on. Because you have intermittent fasting. Then you have eat six small meals a day. Then you have, you know, looking at how many hours you actually eat versus not eat. So like intermittent fast, you could be not eating for 24 hours. Whereas just consolidating the amount of time, you can give yourself, let's just say, an eight-hour window to eat. Or you can start talking about keto, which is high fat, you know, moderate protein, low carb.

Or you can talk about paleo. There's so many different options out there. Most people, you know, they wake up and they kind of feel like, crap and they go throughout the day and sometimes they feel like crap and a lot of that has to do with your nutrition and what you're feeling your body with and if you play with that you never know what you can do got it all right we'll get back on track here but i'm gonna keep all that in mind because i'm always just wondering which one do you follow because you said everyone's got their own opinion but it seems like everyone has a study to back up their opinion and i'm just like well

all these studies seem to contradict each other well i'll tell you what i like right now what i think is pretty powerful right now i mean if i was a you as an entrepreneur i think mental clarity is super important. And I think that a lower carb diet generally leads to better mental clarity, meaning you're not going to have these spikes up and down of these highs and lows. You're not going to have this brain fog. You're just going to feel more consistent. Now, there's various ways to do that, but that's just something I've found success with is a lower carb diet. And then also, when you start looking at your body, if you're feeling like crap and you constantly, your stomach is constantly in pain, you might need to look at gluten. You might need to look at dairy and start

taking that out. And just listen to your body. Right. Cool. Thank you. The NC fit, did I say that correctly? Yeah. Okay. What does your business do? So we used to be called NorCal Cross, which, where the NC came from. And we used to provide CrossFit. And over the years, we've been able to do is we've now pivoted from just CrossFit to a variety of programs. So we have three main verticals of our business. We have our open to the public locations that you could go to. We have our corporate locations, which we have corporate centers, inside companies all over the world. Western Digital will probably be in our biggest partner or definitely being our biggest partner.

And we have Lucas Films and other partners that we basically provide service-based fitness in. So that's a second vertical. And then lastly, we have our digital products where we have our own app and things of that nature. got it so did that that start after uh competition or kind of go and coincide with it coincide yeah so i graduated from college in 2008 i won the cross the games then and then i opened up our gym at the same year and then they basically kind of both grew as as the time went on so you're an entrepreneur you're an amazing athlete and you're an author you got the book as many reps as possible yeah yeah so you know basically what happened was i wanted to write a book i don't

I mean, like four years ago. Just about, I used to travel a couple hundred days a year. I don't know how much you travel, but when you're traveling a lot, I pick up books in the airport bookstore, and I'm looking for some type of, I don't know, insight. And I just, everything I saw didn't align with what I was actually seeing in real life. So it'd say work less, get paid more. And from my experience, it wasn't that way. So I wanted to write a book about just kind of hard work.

And it kind of took a turn. Our daughter was diagnosed with leukemia in early 2016. and so it kind of shifted my mindset. And so what the book is about now is about, you know, basically being as present and as focused in each facet of your life as you can to get as much productivity throughout your day so that if, God forbid, anything ever happened to you in your life, you're best prepared to attack it.

That's kind of how it's shifted from just being out of hard work to being about being present, focused, and having hard work across all the things you do in your life. Nice philosophy. The as many, the Amrat philosophy, right? I remember that from well yeah I mean if you if you've done crossfit I mean you know that basically am raps are so valuable because you're pushing against the clock right and so for me basically in each area of my life I'm trying to get as many reps as possible so from with my kids I'm am wrapping I'm with my wife I'm am rapping and when you take that philosophy someone who's never heard of an am rap just think about it this way if I ask you do as many push-ups as you can in one minute right that's all you're going to focus on you're not going to do anything else but that and now imagine if we could take that focus from push-ups and translate it into emails or translate into something else. Got it, got it.

Yeah, I wish I would have picked it up before we started recording, but I went ahead and I bought 10 copies before we started recording. Oh, thank you so much. I hope you liked the book. Yeah, I'm going to check it out for sure. And if you're watching this on YouTube, the first 10 people to comment below, we'll go ahead and send you out a free copy. I'll pay for the shipping and everything.

We'll send it right out to you. All righty. So that's a good way to get Jason's book. Check him out. I'm going to check it out. So, Jason, what do you like best about what you do? Well, I mean, I like the fact that I could help people, right? I mean, I remember when I first got out of college and I was looking at different finance jobs and different things like that.

And I remember I decided to open up a gym. And at the time, it was pretty nerve-wracking, right? I mean, you're a 21-year-old kid about to start a business. I had no money, no credentials, nothing. And I remember my dad said to me, he's like, hey, look, you know, this is obviously this isn't the path that he would have chosen, right? You want to be more conservative. He's an engineer. but at least what we were doing was ethical and helping people.

And so for me, what I like is that we have a business and we're not a nonprofit. So we do make profits, of course. But we're founded on trying to get people in better shape. And then our coaches provide for them and et cetera. So it makes me feel good that we're kind of doing something bigger. And then how do we take this community and then do even bigger things for the rest of the community is the next step that we need to kind of dive into. Got it. You know, in today's world of social media and so many different avenues for people to

promote their business. I'd imagine you're leveraging your celebrity to promote your business as well. How is that, what does your marketing look like? Well, I mean, obviously we have a decent social presence. We have a couple podcasts and things that nature. But for us, the digital products have been a good way to reach the greater audience. I think that's something I wish I would have recognized earlier. As I was competing in the highest level, you know, we'd make money off selling T-shirts

and things that nature. But what I never recognized is that we had our gyms. that we're doing great. But if you lived in Germany and you wanted to be a part of our brand, the only way you could do it was through our T-shirts. What I wish I would have recognized earlier is that how do we create a digital product to allow this person in Germany to feel a part of what we're doing? And so now that's one of the things we've done.

We create our own app for gym owners and for athletes at home. And that's been a really good way to leverage our digital presence and social media, to your point. Got it. That's great. You know, I'm looking behind you. I'm seeing all the awards and the medals and the trophies. Which one is most special to you and why?

It's a great question. I think this one is a third place at the CrossFit Games in 2014. I took third overall in the world. And I feel like at that point, you know, I stood on the podium with both my kids. And that was a big accomplishment because it took a lot of time and effort to learn how to balance competing at the highest level, building a business and also trying to be the best father. and husband I could be. And so that was a good representation of all that culminating together.

And then after that day, I was my last time competing as an individual. And so that was a big accomplishment for me. That's awesome. Congrats. You know, I read a little bit about your daughter. So I know your personal life has been, had some ups and downs. And thank God, it's up right now. Your business is going well.

You have the training to always consider. So there's an amazing amount of things there. to balance in life? And I know a lot of entrepreneurs look for any advice they can to get that work-life balance. Is that something you strive for? Is that something you've attained? What have you learned along the way that might help another entrepreneur? Yeah, I mean, I think it goes back to the Amrat mentality. I think for a while you'd find me on conference calls with Asia on a headset like this and riding a bike trying to get in my cardio. And I'd be the guy who'd, you know, be on mute the whole time and then all of a sudden they'd ask me a question. I'd unmute it. Be like, yes, I think it's a good

idea. Mute back again because I was out of breath, right? And what I didn't realize at the time was I was actually cheating myself on both ends, meaning because I wasn't getting the most out of my cardio, that's for damn sure. And I also wasn't getting the most out of that call. I would always finish the call and ask myself, could I have done a better job then, right? Could I have done a better job? And so, you know, when you talk about work life balance or life balance or this and that, I've known so many people, I'm sure you have too, who are so busy, but never seem to get anything accomplished. And I think it's because they get about 80% of the way. And they, for lack of a better term, just kind of, they don't finish, right? And I, so something I've incorporated

is this idea that I wake up every morning, I say to myself, okay, what are my priorities, what am I trying to get accomplished? How do I segment out my day, Amrap each focus, and then kind of at the end of the day, reevaluate, how did I do today to am wrap that? Look at a big picture, to get a small picture, but basically when I'm at work, be at work, I'm at home, be at home, and when I'm training, train. And that's been a great way to kind of get more work done in less time. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

You know, Jason, with being so immersed in your sport and in your business, what do you wish you could talk about more that you don't get the opportunity to? Well, I mean, I'm a big sucker for some great coffee. I'm a big, you know, obviously I'm, I wish I could start a business that's a coffee, bar and a gym put together. But I mean, obviously, I talk mainly about the fitness business and because that's what I'm really passionate about. That's what I live in day in and day out. And obviously, I'm very passionate about our philanthropic efforts, pediatric cancer. I think that, you know, my wife and I fundraise heavily for that. We put on a lot of events for that.

And so that's something else I'm strongly pursuing right now. That's something that you're actively involved in right now? Yeah, my wife and I, we host events. And we, we, we, do a lot of blood drives. And I mean, that's something, you know, when our daughter was diagnosed, we recognized that we were so fortunate to be in the position we were in. And so now we kind of want to pay it forward and help other families because a lot of them don't have the resources that, you know, guys like you and I might have.

And, you know, money, it's a weird thing the way money works. Like money, I just want money, just like my fitness, I want to be a non-factor. Meaning with my fitness, like if someone's listening to this and they've never really been motivated to work out, like, I get it. If you don't care about a six-pack abs, like, I get it. If you don't care about the health benefits, I get it. Like by now, if you're 40s and you don't care, you're probably never going to care, right? But maybe what you do care is that, you know, one day when your kids get older,

you just don't want fitness to ever play a role where you can't do something if they want to do it. And with money, that's kind of the motivation. I want to get to a point where it becomes a non-factor where, you know, to help these other families, we want to get to a point where for us, it was a non-factor in the hospital, but for them, it is a factor. how do we give them the hope and just a little something to get them through the day, get them through the month, and maybe that changes their life. You know, if my audience wanted to support you, what would be the best way for them to do that? My wife hosts an annual event called Ava's Kitchen, and it's with Chef Michael Mina,

and we do it every February. It actually just passed. It was an incredible event. I'd wait again for that. Also, if you purchased the book, a lot of the proceeds from that benefit pediatric cancer. and that's a great way to get involved. And then lastly, you know, look, if you don't have any money to share and that's fine, no big deal, just go ahead and go donate some blood.

You never know what kind of impact I can have. That's awesome. We will do that, all right? I've got a good audience and then they've got big hearts. Cool. So, Jason, what commonly held truth do you disagree with? What commonly held truth do I disagree with? Just the hacking mentality.

Probably I disagree with. I would probably, you know, I think this idea of life hacking has an allure, you know, it's, it's sexy, right? It's like, hey, I'm going to hack my way to this. But I think what we oftentimes forget is that any time that we hack our way to anything or create some type of shortcut, oftentimes it comes with some type of long term or some type of potential downside. And I think sometimes we don't talk enough about that. I'll give you an example. Let's just say you're a guy at a company and you're a, you know, middle level manager,

and you get brought up to a CFO position or whatever. At first, you're saying yourself, man, I got the salary, I got this, I got that. But all of a sudden, you then shift your lifestyle towards that because you've been given this. But maybe you didn't have the earned confidence, right? Maybe you didn't have the background to actually deserve that position. And eventually it's going to catch up to you. And when you get let go, you don't have the foundation to be structured on to then go do it again and again and again.

I think that's something that people need to realize is that with any hack, They're generally some type of potential downside. That's all. I like it. I really like that question. I always get a really interesting answer from people. And that was one of the better ones. I really liked it.

I think the shortcuts is, especially in this fast-paced, you know, immediate gratification society we live in. A lot of people are doing themselves a disservice by looking for those hacks. Yeah, I mean, it's something,

I was talking about it earlier today. You know, like you get what you pay for. And when I was in a high school or college, I bought this car. And long story short, I learned a valuable lesson that, you know, if it's too good to be true, it probably is. And with hacks, I think there's a way that you can, like when we talk about like fitness hacks, like, you know, at the end of the day, you got to put in the work. I mean, and that's one of the things I love about fitness is that it doesn't matter how much money you have, doesn't matter where you're from, doesn't matter anything.

If you're not willing to put in the work, no one else can do it for you. And so I think it's a great equalizer for most people because it doesn't matter your ethnic background. It doesn't matter. You got to put in the work. What is something that few people know about you that you wish more people did? I mean, a lot of people know, those who have been, you know, following our story for a long time have a lot of information about me. But, you know, I would just say that I'm not just a CrossFit Games athlete.

I think I get pinned a lot as an athlete because my accolades in that. But I think what oftentimes people, what I'm really passionate about is improving people's lives and building these businesses that could do that. And the entrepreneur side of me is something I'm really passionate about that. Often people don't see that as much of the side because it's not as like sexy as saying, oh, I was on ESPN doing crosswood stuff, whatever. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

If there were three guiding principles for your success, what would they be? You know, I mean, I think it's important to identify what you're passionate about, but also at the same time, you can't be all foo-foo about it. Like, just because you're passionate about something doesn't mean you should actually pursue it. I think you have the earned confidence in the background to be able to go ahead and get yourself into it. So like take for example me, I was really passionate about fitness, but I knew that if I wanted to start a business, I need to educate myself on that. And just because you're passionate about it doesn't mean you should open a business. But for me, I've

then seeked out mentors, seeked out experts to allow me to feel more comfortable and confidence to do that. So I'd say, you know, obviously following my passion, knowing what I know and knowing what I don't know, right, are two really important things. And then obviously incorporating this Amrat mentality, I think it's been really important for me. I think it's allowed me to have some levels of success, not only in business and crossfit, but also trying to be a good husband to my high school sweetheart and trying to be the best father I could be. So I'd say those three things, you know, like knowing what I know and knowing I don't know,

identifying what my passion is and having like the confidence and the earned confidence to be successful at what I want to do. and then obviously incorporating this mindset. Right. Yeah, you know, repetition, they say it's the mother of skill. I think it's the mother of success as well, right? If someone wanted to get in touch with you, Jason, what would be the best way for them to do that?

I mean, my Instagram's probably where I'm most active on. If you want to check it out, it's Jason Kleepa. If you want to check out my website, Jason Kleepa, we have a podcast. We interview interesting people, just with unique backgrounds in athletics and business. and yeah, I have a YouTube channel. I have a lot of other stuff, but in general, it's Instagram and my website.

Fantastic. Well, Jason has been a pleasure. Let's stay in touch. Let's do this again. Yeah, no, thank you very much for having me. Really appreciate. I hope everybody has an awesome day, and thank you again for having me on your show. You bet.

Yeah, we got 10 copies of Jason's book as many reps as possible, so the first 10 people to give comments down below the YouTube channel. We'll go ahead and make sure that you get a copy of that. And, yeah, God bless to your success. Terrio, and I'll see you next Thursday on another episode of Thought Leader Thursday right here on the epic real estate investing show. Take care. This podcast is a part of the C-suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.