The Nick Bare Podcast - 167: Inside My Mind in March 2026

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

This is a potentially new ongoing series I wanted to try. I'm calling it, "Inside My Mind." The goal is to have more open and honest reflection into some of my personal thoughts and developments and have the podcast be the driver of that. Today, I'm opening up about what I’m building, what I’m processing, and what life feels like in this season. I share what we’re working on at BPN and how this chapter has me thinking differently about growth, leadership, and where my energy is going.I also talk about how becoming a husband and father continues to change the way I see my work, my purpose, and the kind of man I want to be. This episode touches on the tension between what I say matters and how I actually live, learning to lead through example, enjoying training without a finish line in front of me, and trying to hold life with a little more gratitude and a little less seriousness. It’s a conversation about growth, patience, perspective, and who I’m becoming along the way.CHAPTERS:00:00 'The Why' Behind This Episode03:12 Whey Isolate Launch05:45 Strength Line Reboot09:35 New Product Tease15:56 Upcoming Events19:22 Pittsburgh Marathon Plans23:59 YouTube Season Shift33:29 Learning Manhood Values39:29 Closing Value Action Gap44:27 Embracing Household Chaos47:07 Training Without Prep53:51 Half Marathon Run Plan54:35 Cooking Season Returns01:00:39 Bring This 90s Resturant Experience Back01:06:39 Stop Taking Life So Serious01:09:54 Becoming Over Achieving01:13:33 Waiting For New Challenge01:16:09 Closing ThoughtsORDER MY BOOK HERE: ⁠https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210FOLLOW:Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 25% off FOR LIFE ⁠https://www.bareperformancenutrition.com/collections/performance-nutritionIG: ⁠instagram.com/nickbarefitness/⁠YT: ⁠youtube.com/@nickbarefitnessThis podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal [health or profession] advice. Bare Performance Nutrition (BPN) is not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical advice.This podcast may not be republished without the written consent of Bare Performance Nutrition (BPN)

everyone and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today I'm doing something a little different. Today's episode is titled Inside My Mind of March 2006. You know, there's a lot of things that we're working on, I'm working on, I'm learning, I'm loving, I'm not loving in than the moment at all times. And sometimes that information that is in my head, inside my mind that I want to share just doesn't fit into some of these more topic-focused episodes. So this is an opportunity that we might keep running with every month.

Maybe not. Something we're kind of testing right now for the first time. But it's called Inside My Mind. and the month is March of 2006. Now things I'm going to share what I'm working on currently, what I'm learning,

like I said, what I'm loving, what I'm not loving, and then just some other stuff that's been on my mind, content that I've been consuming. And, you know, there's a lot that rattles up in my brain. Whether that's

during an early morning run or when even before I start running when I'm sitting in front of my red light panel for 15 minutes, butt naked every morning as I'm sipping my G1M sport, GUM Sport Plus. That is part of my morning routine that I love. And you got to be naked because you got to get that red light and infrared light all over your body parts. There's a lot that I'm thinking about, driving to the office, dropping Charlie off at school, driving home from work, sitting in a sauna in the evening.

There's all these moments in time. And my brain is just firing. On full cylinders, sometimes very few cylinders, depending on how tired I am. I just want to get some of that out there and share it with you guys if you would allow me and you're interested. So I'd love your feedback on this episode. if it's something you want to see and hear moving forward. But things that I'm working on right now, and a lot of this is BPN related

because BPN is my job. It is my work. It is where I spend all of my time outside of being with my family. Like if there are two places I am right now, it's either at work in the BPNHQ with the team working or I'm at home. And I say no to a lot of other things outside of that. So I can say focused and be present and have the energy and bandwidth for the team and my family.

But things that I'm working on. So let's talk products. Let's talk events. Let's talk content. First off, product, where I've been spending a lot of my time these last couple months. You know, we just launched, at the time this episode goes live, we just launched our way protein isolate powder, which we are extremely proud of. I've actually been consuming myself weight protein isolate, our weight protein isolate for the last couple months, almost year at this

point, for the main reason that my body and stomach just digest a weight protein isolate much better than a traditional weight protein concentrate. Over the years, as I've gotten older, I have found that my stomach has become more sensitive. I used to pride myself in having a stomach of steel where I could put anything into it and it would digest it, break it down, and throw it out the other side.

As I'm getting older, I'll be 36 years old this summer. my gut just doesn't function like it once did. And I'm finding that my body just prefers weight protein isolate much better than traditional weight protein concentrate. Now, I've talked about this, but what makes an isolate different is that much of the lactose has been removed. So it goes through additional processing and filtration to remove a lot of the lactose. So for people who have a lactose intolerance, you can just digest it better and easier.

So we launched our grass-fed, our truly grass-fed, way-protein isolate and two flavors. Fudge chocolate, vanilla. We have a third flavor in the bank that's been approved, and it's a mocha flavor. It's like, you know, imagine a blend of coffee and chocolate. Moka, We haven't pressed dough on it yet, but it's an approved, approved flavor system that we're holding on to to potentially launch at some point later this year or next year. But I'm really excited and extremely proud of this product that we've brought to market. A grass-fed whey protein isolate is now on the BPN website. second product or products that we're working on right now, again, extremely excited and proud

of, is our strength collection that we're launching in June of 2006. Our first product we ever created was a pre-workout. It was flight. And we still offer and sell flight. It's a complete pre-workout, energy, muscular endurance, mental focus, blood flow, pumps, contractions, it's a complete and appropriately dosed and sourced pre-workout. In my opinion, it has everything you need and nothing that you don't. We built BPN off of flight, the pre-workout.

And over the 14 years of being in business, Flight has seen some modifications to the formula. flavor system, packaging, branding. We are rebranding flight to be called pre. And there's a reason behind it. So we're bringing back our strength products in a meaningful way. We'll be launching them in June of

2006. And it's a collection. Three products. Pre, pump, and post. So flight is being rebranded to pre. Same form. However, we added Alpha GPC, which is notropic. The same notropic that is in G1M Sport Plus. So flight is being rebranded to pre. We're bringing back a pump supplement.

Now, I'll tell you this right now. If you use our pre and our new pump, between those two, you're getting 12 grams of cituline. Agmantine sulfate, nitrates, the pumps are insane. Like we've had hundreds of samples of pump, the new pump formula here at BP&HQ over the last couple of months. And we have to guard that like it is a golden brick. Like we get these samples in from our manufacturer. we put them in one of our offices

and the team will sneak in and steal servings of this new pump formula because it's that good. It's that good. So rebranding Flight DePri, we're relaunching a pump supplement and then we're rebranding our recover supplement to be called post.

That is essential amino acids, branch chain amino acids, carnitine altartrate, cherry pure. It is a beautiful product, amino acid based that I sip on during my strength

training workouts, but you can also consume post workout. This collection has a different look and feel compared to the rest of the BPN line. Black battles, black custom labels at our design team.

Cade, Josh, and Dawson worked on and just crushed. They look so clean. It's a gritty look and feel really like fits the strength vibe that we're going for. So we're relaunching our strength products this summer and bringing it back pump. I'm I'm pumped to get into your guys' hands. And then the last product focus right now that is just exploration. And I might be sharing this a little too soon.

And I haven't gotten this approved by the team yet, but I'm going to drop some breadcrumbs into what we are working on, primarily what me and Joe Pivots are working on right now. And we're just in the exploration phase. So I don't know if we're going to launch this. We might, we might not. But I'm in the exploration phase right now. And that is a BPN energy drink.

I have a name. I filed a trademark for the name. I'm not going to share it yet. So right now, what the exploration phase means? We're working on a formula. We're working on flavoring. We're working on branding.

Look and feel of packaging. And then name is trademarked, but still a work in progress. We may or may not move forward with the name that we have chosen right now. So I'm viewing this as a long-term brand building opportunity to make a bigger splash into retail. This energy drink wouldn't be something that

we focused distribution on our website and or Amazon. this would be mass scale retail, starting slow and then eventually building up too. So the plan would be to lock in formula and flavor, lock in look and feel, branding, packaging. And then before moving forward with any of those steps, run it through multiple consumer panels, surveys, studies. I want to get the flavor, I want to get the formula. I want to get the packaging, the look and feel in front of a couple hundred, if not a couple thousand people for feedback. Go back to the drawing board, make modifications, make sure that we crossed our T's, dotted our eyes, feel very confident in the ability of success for this product. and then from there it would be finding a local distributor, beverage distributor,

ideally partnering with one, two, or a select few retail partners, either convenience or grocer, and then building the brand with those partners before scaling. Because with retail, it has a huge upside and opportunity if done right, but there's also a huge risk in liability if done wrong. Where you go wrong and you earn more to decide of liability in terms of or as opposed to opportunity, if you try to get into way too many doors, way too fast and your velocity isn't there, meaning your sell through, how fast and how many products or units you are moving

at a specified rate within that retail store, if you don't have strong velocities, those retail partners will drop you. And that makes success in the future for retail very challenging. Very challenging. So we're in a very slow, deliberate, intentional exploration phase right now for an energy drink. A carbonated, ready to drink. energy drink, BPN energy drink for a larger retail scale opportunity in the future.

This might be one years, two years, three years plus from now. If we say yes to it, but we're being very intentional with it, taking it very slow. And, you know, we might do all this work. We might lock in flavor. We might lock in formula. We might lock in packaging, look, feel, branding,

trademarks, all of these things. and then say no. And part of the no would be driven by data and feedback, but then also just gut intuition. So that's kind of what I'm working right now. Like, I love product. I started BPN in 2012 because I love all things product. I love supplements and the way they support.

performance, whether that's the energy before going into a workout or the fuel required for a long run and race or protein for post-workout recovery and just to hit your daily protein goals. I love product. That's my favorite thing to work on in this business. And that's what gets me really excited for what I've had the opportunity to work on in these last couple months being the weight protein isolate, now the strength collection. And I get really excited about the potential and opportunity of an energy drink. Because I know it will challenge me in a new way as an entrepreneur, as a business owner,

as a creative. It'll truly challenge me because it's a new territory. It's a new type of product and distribution platform that I haven't had the opportunity. to really at scale, learn and lean into yet, I know it'll challenge me. And I want a challenge. I need a challenge. I constantly need some sort of challenge.

I thrive in that environment. So this is the products I'm working right now. Event-wise, we've got a few events that we have upcoming. The Go on More Ultra. April 10th at Bear Ranch. Last year, we hosted our first ever last man standing style ultra at Bear Ranch. It went viral. I'm not sure how many of you who are listening now were watching that race last year.

We didn't expect or plan for it to reach as many people as it did. I mean, it went nuts. There were people all over the world that were streaming, though the race. as it was happening. And we didn't even plan to live stream the race last year. You know, we kicked off the last man standing, going more ultra, which is a 4.2 mile loop on the ranch. It restarts every hour on the top of the hour until there's one person left. And we weren't planning on live streaming it. But once we kicked off the race and people started finding out what was going on, everyone was sending us messages asking us to,

live stream it. So Trey Freeman, who was on the backside of our social, just started running the loops with the runners and live streaming it. And millions of people were tuning in all across the world. When we were getting photos from people, there were watch parties in people's living room in Germany, in California, in New York, like all over the place. It was wild how viral that race went. So year two is coming up, April 10th, 2012, 2006 on the ranch. And one of the reasons I believe this year will be even potentially bigger than last year is because last year the race ended, there wasn't just one person left, there were two.

Because this crazy storm came in through central Texas. Destroyed the ranch, destroyed the course, destroyed the house that we remodeled. on the ranch. And we spent in the last year, pretty much, getting the course, the trails back up to condition, the house back up to condition. We essentially had to re-remodel the house. So the race ended last year as a tie between Kim and Kendall

because this wild storm came through and ended the race. So this year, they're both coming back for a day, They both want the win, but we have some other hard hitters showing up for this, this race. My prediction is that it might go four or five days. I mean, Harvey Lewis is coming this year. And I believe, don't quote me on this, but I believe Harvey's record for a last man standing style backyard race is somewhere around 450 miles. It's like four and a half days.

So that's coming up. April 10th, going more Ultra Bear Ranch. And then a few weeks after that, we kick off the Pittsburgh Marathon. It's a huge activation that we're working on right now. I'll be running the half marathon with my dad. So my dad is going for PR.

Mike Bear. I'll be pacing him to hopefully achieve a PR at this half marathon. And this is the first time he's actually following a training block. So I have him on a training program from now until May 3rd at the race. He's never really incorporated speed work into his training program. So we've incorporated some speed work. And he's never progressively increased running mileage.

in a structured way. So what I have him doing is five miles Monday, five miles Wednesday, five miles Friday, and then a structured long run on Saturdays. And then his speed workout is Wednesdays. So right now what I have him doing is a one mile warmup, three one mile repeats at a fast pace, with two minutes of rest in between each and then a one mile cool down.

That's his weekly speed workout right now for the next couple weeks. He called me after the first speed workout he did. He was like, dude, that smoked me. I'm wrecked. So I'm excited to see what this training will facilitate come May 3rd in Pittsburgh. But we're showing up to Pittsburgh in a meaningful way. We're hosting a shakeout run before. the race. We have a really cool new booth set up for the Expo. And then we're essentially

branding the entire city, BPN and go on more. We have billboards that we've rented and posted. We have signage throughout the city. I mean, this is a race that means a lot to me. Pittsburgh's my hometown. We're not Pittsburgh. Sorry. Pennsylvania is my home state. And then I went to college an hour from Pittsburgh in Indiana, PA. So it feels, it feels extra special for me. It's a home state marathon. And the people of Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania as a whole are very special and unique. You know, living now here in Texas and the Austin area for the last 12,

years. I love Texas and I love this area, but it's very different from Pennsylvania. A lot of people who live in Austin aren't from Austin. And to be honest, a lot of people that live in Austin aren't even proud of Austin. In Pennsylvania, in Pittsburgh, people who are from PA are proud of being from PA. People who live in Pittsburgh are proud. People who live in Pittsburgh are proud. to be from Pittsburgh. They're proud of their sports teams, proud of the city, proud of the history,

loyal to the city, loyal to the area, loyal to the state. It's just a different community there. And as I've gotten older and when I go back and visit Pennsylvania, I'm really proud to be from PA. There's a lot of just

there's a lot of just good feelings about being from from Pennsylvania so I'm excited to be back excited to throw down on a race with my dad and just excited to be in the city so if you haven't signed up for it yet I would highly encourage you come to Pittsburgh Pennsylvania May 3rd for the marathon do the half or do the full we'll be there with the whole team a bunch of our athletes are coming in for it. It's going to be fun.

It's going to be a good time. And the last thing I want to talk about in terms of what I'm working on, content-wise, I've spent the last 11, 12 years documenting my entire life on YouTube. Like, I've shared it all. And for those of you who don't know the story, before I If you go back on my YouTube channel, my current YouTube channel, and you filter the videos by oldest first, it's a full day of eating video where I really don't show my face much. If you're a frequent viewer of my YouTube channel, I would actually highly encourage you. I do this frequently. Go back and watch old YouTube videos of mine from 2014, 15, 16.

it's just this baby of a kid who's trying to figure it out. No strategy behind content. YouTube and even fitness YouTube, the niche of what fitness YouTube was back in 2014, very different than it is today. I was filming what I was eating, how I was training, me traveling into Austin to try different meals and foods.

At the time, I was in the Army. I was an infantry platoon leader. Just graduated from Ranger School. After spending a year in Fort Benning, Georgia, just arrived my first duty assignment being Fort Hood, Texas, and just sharing and documenting the journey. If you haven't watched any of those videos, go back and watch them.

I encourage you. Because my YouTube journey, documenting my life these last, 11, 12 years, you can watch someone. I can watch myself grow and mature and learn and fail and succeed and transform and evolve

over different seasons of life. If you back and watch the first YouTube video ever, that's actually not the first YouTube video I ever filmed. I tried on two separate occasions to start a YouTube channel and then I was discouraged by the feedback on those videos in the comments. So I deleted the videos and deleted the channels. And then I finally just said, screw it, film the video, left it up.

And from that moment, have uploaded over a thousand videos on that channel documenting my life. Being in the army, transitioning out of the army, building BPN, launching, new products, moving to new offices and headquarters, hiring people, signing up for races and competitions, getting engaged, getting married, having kids, it's all been documented and shared. And I'm so grateful and fortunate that I've done that because one day when my kids are older, we can go back and watch those videos together and they can see what it was like. building this brand and pursuing your goals and identifying a goal and writing it down and calling your shot and then spending weeks, months, years chasing them down.

It's such a valuable resource of a platform and collection of content that I get to hand off to my kids to watch. It's not me just telling them stories. It's showing them it all happening. and I'm really grateful to have done that because it's not only this great collection of home videos. I have to share with my kids, but it's why I'm doing what I'm doing today. It's why I'm where I'm at. But I'll be really honest in this current season of life, I don't have the same drive in passion to document everything as I want.

once did. It's one of the reasons I prefer the podcast platform over YouTube in this current season of life. Because life for me just looks different now. I'm married. I have two young kids. When I'm home, I want to be present and active with my family. Before having kids and filming and documenting everything, it wasn't just setting up a camera and living life. It was setting up the tripod, getting the shot right, the lighting right, the audio right, moving the camera around for certain shots. If I were to do that now at home, I wouldn't be the present father and husband that I want to be in this season, chapter of life. Now, maybe I'll have a new approach to YouTube that I'll discover in these next couple weeks and months and years. And I'm not sharing

is to say that I'm going to stop uploading on YouTube because I'm still uploading videos on YouTube but just not as frequently as I used to. It used to be one, two, sometimes even three videos a week. Film, edit, publish, film, edit, publish, film, edit, publish for years and years and years and years. And like I said, it built the business, it built the brand. It got us and me to where we are today.

but I don't know I'm still trying to figure out what I want to share with the world on YouTube moving forward and how I want to share it especially being a more committed husband

in this chapter of life a committed and present father in this chapter of life and I'm trying to figure out how YouTube and filming and documenting fits into that equation if it does.

So I don't really have like a this is what I'm doing, this is why, this is how. But I'm just sharing what's been on my mind in terms of the YouTube platform and how it's been a huge part of my life these last 11 to 12 years. And I'm sure it will in a meaningful way.

now and into the future, but it's definitely going to look different because I don't know what and how I want to share parts of my more personal, intimate life like I did years ago. I mean, me and Steph and the team here, we'd film and share everything. And now the last thing I want to do

when I'm home with my kids is pick up a camera. But I love creating content. I love sharing behind the scenes, of what this team is working on and why and taking people along for the journey. So I'm in this, just like the energy drink, I'm in this exploration discovery phase with what my content on YouTube looks like moving forward because it's been such a meaningful part of my life for the last decade plus. It's a long time to be doing something.

11 to 12 years of spending a lot of time, energy, money, documenting your life. But that consistency got me to where I am right now. But I like the platform of the podcast. I like the conversation style. I like the length. I've always been a fan of long format content. That's why I've been drawn to creating and sharing on the podcast. even more so now than these YouTube vlogs.

So that's where I'm planning on spending more of my time and intentional energy is the podcast. But we'll see. Things may change. What I'm learning, I'm learning a lot in this season of life right now. Again, which I'm very grateful for. And as I was kind of making some notes of things I want to talk about and just in reflection of what I believe I'm learning in this season of life right now. One, what it truly means to be a man in today's age, society, and world, we were sitting in church

two weeks ago, and our pastor, who's Pastor Joe champion of Celebration Church, he's He made a comment that I had to write down, and it's been in the back of my mind since. And he said, the world is constantly, especially right now, trying to deconstruct men. And it's our job. And he's talking in terms of the church, but I believe I have a responsibility to build men back up while the world is trying to deconstruct them. deconstruct us. You can build men back up physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I feel that calling. I feel that responsibility. I can also feel the enemy working against it and against us. Like the enemy is attempting to distract men, to deconstruct men,

to make this world a more dark, dangerous, evil place. So what's it truly mean to be a man? There's a book that I recommend by Pastor Joby Martin, titled Stand Firm and Act Like Men. It's a great book. Highly recommend it to all men. What's it mean to me to be a man? A man is rooted in values.

the values and beliefs that he personally believes in, not the values and beliefs of the world or the values and beliefs of people he follows or values and beliefs of his balls so the people in his inner circle. Now, like, what do you... This is applicable to men and women, but what do you believe in?

What are your values and are you rooted in those values and beliefs? Or are you a chameleon and your values and beliefs evolve, transform, and change based off who you're around? That's a dangerous person. That's a dangerous man. A man is stable, has stability, emotionally consistent. Steph said something to me the other day that she heard from a friend and it was never trust a moody man. I was like, yeah, that's fair.

Moody men are inconsistent and unstable men, emotionally inconsistent. Nah. Nah. A man is a provider and a protector. A man is a leader, values leadership. A man is a servant, a selfless servant. that's something that I've really learned as a leader and as a father and a husband these last couple years. My job as a father, my job as a husband, my job as a leader is to serve other people, to make myself smaller and put other people in front of me and sacrifice for the betterment of other people.

It's much easier said than done. But when I wake up in the morning, that's what comes to mine. I have to be a servant today. I die to myself, take him my cross, follow him, being Jesus Christ, and then serve other people. A man is responsible, has ownership of responsibility. I mean, there's men out there who have children, and then they abandon those children in their families, and they go live a new life, that is lack of responsibility of ownership.

And that's not a man. As a boy, as Pastor Jobi Martin would say, that's a dude. But a dude is not a man. A man takes responsibility and ownership of what he is responsible for. Going back to the first character. characteristic that I mentioned rooted in value and belief.

There's this thing that I talked about in my book, Go on More. It's called the value action gap that I find really interesting. And I think a lot of people struggle with. The value action gap, and I'll be honest, in previous seasons of my life, I have struggled with this as well.

So I'm not standing on top of this tower saying, I've never missed or failed and I still don't make mistakes. I still make mistakes. I still fail. I still sin. Like, I'm human. But the value action gap is the inconsistency between a person's stated values or beliefs

and their actual behaviors. We want to close the value action gap. People say they value one thing. They believe in one thing. And then their actions, reflect otherwise. That's a problem. It doesn't matter if you're man or woman. If you say you believe in one thing and you value one thing, but then your actions say otherwise, you can't be trusted with anything because you don't even know what you believe in. You don't even know what you value

because your actions say the complete opposite. I think for many of us our goal should be to close the value action gap so that our actions reflect what we actually believe in and what we value. Another thing that I'm learning right now in terms of parenting is you can't control everything, like obvious, right? But it's perhaps the most humbling and profound lesson that I have experienced as a parent so far to two young kids, two toddlers. Steph and I recently recorded a podcast. And if you listen to that episode, we talked about how we're trying for our third this spring.

Who knows if we're going to have three kids, or we're going to have four kids, how big the bare family is going to be. But I've learned, and I'm learning still every single day, that as a parent you can't control everything, as much as you want to. And that influence and or teaching is much greater to embrace than control.

So here's an example of what I'm learning through control and the difference between influence and or teaching and control. I am a neat freak in some situations in my life. I don't like clutter. The team here knows that BPN that if I'm a neat freak, walking around and there's empty boxes sitting on the floor next to someone's desk, or there's a pair of shoes that were sitting in the locker room for a few days, unclaimed, or there's a weight out of place in the gym, I'm either going to put it back to where it belongs or I'm going to throw it

away. There have been many instances over the years, the many years, where people's personal belongings have gotten thrown away because they left them out, uncleaned, unorganized, unclaimed. So I pick it up, I throw it away. Boxes that are just empty, scattered throughout the office, I pick up, I throw away. I don't like clutter. Like when things have a place, And once they are used, they are put back in that place. I just like organized stuff. Our home used to be the same way. And we'd finish a day, Steph and I before we had kids.

And at night, we'd clean everything up. And then next morning we would wake up and it looked like a brand new house. No dishes in the sink. Everything put away. Counters cleaned. bags stored in closets, papers on the table, shuffled, organized, folded,

put in drawers. I like waking up to a clean, organized home. I always have. I've always kept my things in places clean and organized. As our kids started getting older and they would make messes, I would find myself running around behind them, picking things up, putting them back.

And it was exhausting. You know, when my daughter was young, she'd get toys out, play with them, make a mess. I'd pick them up, organize them, put them away. And as I'm doing that, she's in the kitchen cabinets, pulling Tupperware out. And I found myself just running around, exhausting myself, picking things up for no reason

because they were going to get pulled back out five minutes later. my son right now, Nico, he's one and a half. He's wild. I mean, today, he was in the laundering, pulling all the towels out of the cabinets. He was in the kitchen, turning the gas stove burners on, opening the oven, pulling the trash out. We've had to put locks on all our cabinets in drawers. Because the kid is chaotic in a mess. And this drove me wild for the longest time. Because I wanted control. I wanted cleanliness. I wanted organization. And I eventually learned the hard way that you can't control everything in the moment.

And sometimes you just have to embrace the chaos. And allow yourself to live in the chaos. and teach and influence your children how to clean up, what to do and what not to do, but not follow them around and clean it up for them. That's, like I said, perhaps the most humbling and profound lesson that is applicable not just to emptying cabinets and drawers and trash and all of those things, but realizing that you can't control everything,

especially as young parents. and they have to teach them the way of living and life and right verse wrong and hard versus easy, but it's been humbling to learn. But I'm learning it now that chaos is going to happen, messiness is going to happen, but it just has to be embraced. What I'm loving, I'm loving my training right now, specifically because I'm not in a prep. I'm training for the love of training, which feels really good, especially coming out of an Ironman prep that was so structured and high volume and high intensity and just a ton of training.

Not being in a prep right now feels really great. and that fitness isn't my entire life and controlling my entire day and weekends. And then I'm trying to build my schedule and my energy around fitness. But fitness is facilitating just a healthier lifestyle. That feels really good, especially not having done that for a long time. So what I actually just did yesterday, that we'll see how this ends up working out. You know, for forever I've been wearing a Garmin watch. But wearing a Garmin watch since probably 2018.

So maybe for the last eight years, I've been wearing a garment. Tracking all my stats. Every time I go for a run, I log that run. Right now, every time I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is I turn on my watch and I look at my sleep score and my sleep stats. I look at how long I slept, how much a week time, my REM sleep, my deep sleep, my steps at the end of the day, calories burned. I use my garment for a lot of performance stats that really just, in my opinion, at this point in my life, consume unnecessary energy.

truthfully. Like when I wake up in the morning, I look at my sleep score, my sleep stats. Is that going to change anything I do the next night? No, probably not. But I do it and I obsess over it. And I obsess over the amount of steps that I get at the end of day and how many calories my watch says I burned. And if I go for a run, I'm not running 6.87 miles. I'm running seven miles. Not running seven miles. Not running 9.4 2 miles. Now I'm running 10 miles. I got to finish the run on the mile. Obsessing over these things.

And I want to shake up my routine. Really, for the main reason, which we'll get into towards the end of this episode, I want to unlock some new levels of growth. I want to challenge myself. And I feel that being so rigid and structured, with some of my routine, even though it facilitates consistency and discipline, it can actually work in the opposite way of holding you back from exploring new creative outlets of life. All that to say, I'm leaving the Garmin family.

I bought a new watch yesterday. This vision came to me. I acted on the vision right away. I ordered a G-shock. Now, the G-shock watch is what I wore when I was in the Army. And back then, I'd go for a run. I didn't track any of my mileage when I run or my pace. I'd go run for an hour.

I'd go run for an hour. All right, it's 1 p.m. I'm going to go run until 2 p.m. and I know my average pace is roughly 7.30 minutes per mile, so I'll probably get roughly eight miles in. When I was in the Army, we all wore G-shock watches. We had garments, but it wasn't a garment watch. We wore a Garmin GPS wrist mount on our kits, and the only reason we wore those garments was to pull a 10-digit grid coordinate. So we could pinpoint where we were on a map. When I was in the Army, that's what a Garmin was for.

It was a pool, a 10-digit grid coordinate to triangulate yourself on a map to figure out where you were at and then how to get to where you're going. And the G-shock watch, I wore in the Army, did everything I needed to do. I never had to charge it. Told me the time. It didn't affect any of my runs. And I'm going back to G-shock. I order the G-shock. I don't have to charge it.

It tells me the time. You know, when I run in my neighborhood every morning, I know my 5-mile route. I know my 7-mile route. I know my 9-mile route. I know my 10-mile route. I know my 12-mile route. I don't have to clock it every morning.

I don't have to track all the stats. I'm still going to run, but I'm going to run for the love of running, all-based off feel. So we're going back in time. This G-shock doesn't give me the sleep data that I'm going to be wanting and needing every morning. It's not going to tell me my heart rate and my pace and my distance after a run. Nope.

That's a change I'm making. So it shipped. The watch shipped should be here in the next couple of days. and when it does, I'll turn my garment off. I'll take it off. I'll put it in the drawer. I'll put the G-shock on. We'll start rocking that moving forward.

So when I take a picture of my watch after my run in the morning, it will probably just be a picture of the time. And maybe a little caption that says, you know, run complete, run check. But I'm excited about that. So that's what I'm loving right now in terms of training and running. Right now I'm running roughly 45 miles a week. I've ramped up running mileage a little bit in preparation for this Pittsburgh half marathon with my dad in May. So right now I'm running seven miles Monday, nine miles, Tuesday,

9 miles Wednesday, off Thursday, 7 miles Friday, and then I have a long run Saturdays, which is 10 plus miles. Sunday off and been repeating that. So it's my current run structured training. I'm also loving cooking right now.

And I go through seasons where I love to cook and I get through seasons where I don't love to cook. Like when I was in Iron Man prep, I wasn't loving cooking because I just wanted to get the nutrients into my body for what I needed to fuel that day and recover from the workouts. And my dinners were pretty much the same thing every single night during Iron Man Prep. It's chicken or beef. rice veggies.

That was pretty much it. All of Iron Man Prep. I didn't experiment much outside of that just because I was extremely dialed and meticulous during that prep. Now being outside of Iron Man prep and not really in any sort of training prep, I've been loving cooking again and experimenting. I get a lot of recipes online, whether that's Instagram, social media. I really don't use social media for much other than, to be honest, cooking content. So I get a lot of my recipes.

I've also recently subscribed to the New York Times app, and they have a recipe section that's really good. So our family's current favorite recipe. All right, let me break this down. This was, I saw an Instagram post by this guy who's making the New York Times top rated recipes of 2025. And this was one of them, grabbed my attention. So we tried it. And Seth and I have made this probably 10 times in the last month and a half. So we buy, we love chicken thighs.

Nothing against chicken breast. I think if you cook a chicken breast right, it's beautiful. But so many people don't cook a chicken breast right. The way that I like to cook a chicken breast, you get a meat tenderizer. So you take the breast out, you tenderize it until it's about, I'd say, three quarters of an inch thick. If you tenderize it, season it. The seasoning we use for our chicken breast is the hardcore carnivore red seasoning. throw it in the Trager,

and then I cook it until it's at internal temperature. I use a meat probe thermometer. 165 degrees. As soon as it hits 165 degrees, I take it off the Trager. I let it rest for 10 to 15 minutes, slice it up.

Perfect. It's not chewy. It's not dry. Perfect. But I think you've got to tenderize it. You got to season it. Cook it to 165 internal. Now, this is a separate recipe.

Chicken thighs. Chicken thighs will always beat chicken breast, in my opinion. We like to get the bone-in skin on. You get that skin nice and crispy, but I like to cut the bones out. So we get our bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs. I cut the bones out. I'm very deliberate with this to make sure not to lose a lot. lot of meat in that process.

And then in a cast iron skillet, I put olive oil. I let it get really hot. As it's heating up, I season the chicken with salt, pepper, garlic powder. And then I add once that pan and that oil is hot, really hot. I put the chicken thighs, skin down in that skillet. and let them get a nice crisp. I want that skin to be crispy. And then

flip them over, cook the other side for a little bit, take them out, put them on a pan. As they're resting for a little bit, I'll start making the sauce. Now, at the end of all of this, I will put the chicken thighs back in the oven. So I'll put them in the oven 400 degrees until they're an internal temperature of like 175 to 185.

You can get your chicken thighs a little bit hotter than a chicken breast because there's more fat so they're not going to dry out. But I'll finish them off in the oven. In that cast iron skillet that has the residual olive oil and renderings of just chicken fat, we add garlic, minced garlic, butter, chicken bone broth or chicken stock,

and lime juice. And we'll let that sizzle and boil a little bit and de-glaze the skillet. And then when it's all said and done, we've got our bowls. Put a nice layer of fluffy, freshly cooked jasmine rice, white jasmine rice.

I slice up the chicken thighs, lay the chicken thighs on top of the rice. and then I pour that sauce on top of all of it. On the side, we'll do some roasted broccoli. That meal, incredible. Incredible. So that's been one of our go-toes recently. Been loving it.

Also, shared it with Steph's mom. We made it for Steph's mom when she was in town this last time. Also, loved it. And as well as I made it for Preston and his wife, Val, a few weeks ago. And they loved it. You got to try it. It was one of New York Times top-rated recipes. Something else that I've been loving.

Nistalgia. I've had a nostalgia for more in real life, connected lifestyle moments. Now I'm 35, I'm going to be 36 this summer. I grew up in the 90s, early 2000s. Life was much different than, compared to today. We were more disconnected from technology in social media, but we are more connected with people.

I think it's hard to argue against. And I came across this article in the New York Times, which again, I've been really enjoying being a subscriber to the New York Times. I get updates to my email. I log into the app. I logged into the app a few weeks ago, and there was this article about the old pizza huts. I grew up going to Pizza Hut with my family.

It was all these images and photos of the old pizza huts. It was the red and white, checkered tablecloths. It was the stained glass lights and windows. It was a salad bar. Ours in Hershey, Pennsylvania, had a jukebox, dimly lit. It was the best. The Pizza Hut on a weekday night while I was in school, or a weekend evening jam-packed, every table filled with families.

Busy, loud, energetic. I remember we would show up, and there was this program in our school, I believe it was called book it. So if you read a book, either that week or month in school, you would get a Pizza Hut bucket coupon. And you could redeem it for a personal pan pizza at Pizza Hut. So when we would get these tickets, our family would take us to Pizza Hut and we'd get our own personal pan pizzas. So we go to Pizza Hut and it was in Hershey, Pennsylvania. it's no longer there.

It's now a bank, I believe. We walk in and just families everywhere. Dim lit. I'd walk over to the jukebox as my family was going to our table that we got assigned to, seated at. And I would put money in the jukebox

and I'd play two songs. Every time, I would play Creed, My Sacrifice, and I'd play Will Smith getting jiggy with it. Those are the two songs that I would play every time we went to Pizza Hut.

My family would sit down if we had bookie coupons, me and Preston, we'd get our own personal pan pizzas. And then my mom and dad would get a big, a big pizza. And we'd go to salad bar and get breadsticks,

the best breadsticks. Just remember this salad bar, just loading my salad up with, I don't know why I remember this, ranch dress. and sunflower seeds. I don't remember what else I added to it, but just a bunch of ranch dressing

and sunflower seeds on just iceberg lettuce. It was so good. It was such a good time. And my memories of the old pizza hut just represent to me slower times,

dining with friends and family, community, not being distracted by a phone, like settling in for the evening there, knowing it was going to be a long dinner of just enjoying each other's company. Those are the best.

Pizza was the best growing up. Now, you might disagree. Like Steph, for example, her family wasn't a Pizza Hut family. I believe they were a Little Caesar's family. We were a Pizza Hut family. And there's so many memories in my childhood that just take me back to that restaurant in Hershey, Pennsylvania. And I truly believe that if pizza wanted to crush it in these next couple years, I'm not sure of their financial stability or status.

But I believe if Pizza Hut brought back the old Pizza Hutts. because now it's these new in-and-out, convenient, fast, pick up your pizza, go-home type options. It's not the same. I think if pizza brought back the old pizza huts, salad bar, dining in, pan pizzas, jukebox, the stained glass, lights, and red and white checkered tables, Man, they would crush. I would love to take my family with my two young kids to an old Pizza Hut. Like that nostalgia of just slower, more personally connected times, less distraction,

that nostalgia has been pulling me in recently. But I'm telling you, Pizza Hut could crush bringing back the old style restaurant. What I'm not loving, this was actually a hard one to come up with. And I had to really sit and think on this. And I was having a conversation with Steph about this last night. What I'm not loving is the pressure we put on ourselves to constantly entertain the seriousness of life and the stress, the unnecessary stress or stressors that we add on to life. when they're really not that big of deals.

And I believe, and I want my kids to see this as they grow up, and I teach them and mentor and disciple them, that you can work really, really hard. You can be ruthlessly ambitious towards your goals, but still have fun and still joke around and not taking things or yourself too serious. And I want my kids, to see that from me.

I'm very aware and conscious of that. What I don't want my kids to see for me growing up is this dad who is always serious, who was always on, who was always working, who was always stressed. Because I don't think that benefits anyone,

especially not yourself or the people in your life. But I think we put this unnecessary pressure on ourself to take things too serious, everything too serious, when in the grand scheme of things, there's a lot that we entertain and manage and have to address on a daily basis that isn't that serious, that isn't the end of the world,

that isn't going to be life or death, or even lose money or security or financial status and stability, but we unnecessarily stress over dumb stuff a lot. I do it myself. And then sometimes I have to sit back and truly ask myself, why am I stressed? Why am I so serious about this?

Why am I making this a bigger deal than it actually is in ruining my day and the day of the people around me as well? So I think it's something I can always improve one. I think a lot of us could probably improve upon is be ambitious, be ruthlessly ambitious towards our goals, work really hard. I believe in hard work. I always will. I want my kids to know what hard work looks and feels like.

That is a priority for me. That is a goal of mine. But at the same time, no one to let loose and be easy and have fun and laugh and rest. and rest. And the last thing I want to share what's been on my mind as of recently. So I thought about this yesterday

or a few days ago. I was going back through all my old photos on my iPhone, which I have 20,000 photos on my iPhone. I don't know if that's good or bad. Some of them are screenshots and just random things.

Half of them are probably, you know, when I park in in the parking garage at the Austin Airport, take a photo of where I parked in like 2K or 2E, the row in the floor to make sure that I can find my car when I get back. It's like half the photos on my iPhone probably. Exaggeration, but for real.

I was going back through all these photos in my iPhone and picture of these big life milestones. and I posted all these on Instagram in a carousel came across the photo of me graduating Ranger School in 2014 and running my lifetime PR

marathon at the 2023 California International Marathon 2 hours and 39 minutes of running my first ultra marathon Leadville 100 finishing the speed project the race

from L.A. to Vegas relay race that we did. The last man standing race in Pineland Farms, Maine, 2003, where I was first introduced to the last man standing style. Building BPN, being in the manufacturing facility. There's a lot of life milestones reached and accomplished. And when you go back through your iPhone photos, you realize all the work that went into this stuff.

and you can almost re-celebrate some of these wins and victories that you experience but I've come to realize it's not what you have accomplished in your life that matters but who you are becoming

and have become along the way that's been on my mind a lot recently I don't want to live this life to just have a portfolio of all of my accomplishments, a resume of all of the things I've done, a LinkedIn profile

to say where I've worked and how long and what positions I held and what we achieved within that organization during my time there. That's not the intent. The intent is who are you becoming? Who have you become in that process throughout that journey,

that transformation that we, experience. The man, the woman, the leader, the father, the husband, the follower throughout that journey. That's what I'm most proud of throughout this journey of not what has been accomplished and what I've done, but who I've become along the way. And like I previously mentioned earlier, what's been on my mind is, I feel like I want and need to be challenged in a new way in life. And the old me would have said, okay, it's time for a new race or competition. In order for me to experience unlock and breakthrough and transformation, I need a new

physical challenge to test and challenge me to grow in this next season of life. But I'm pretty confident in knowing that I want and need to be challenged in a new way. I don't know what that is right now, but I'm patiently waiting for it, not even necessarily searching for it. I'm patiently waiting for it to be presented to me in front of me. I know, I'm pretty confidently know it's not another race. It's not a competition.

I've experienced, in my opinion, all of the perspective and breakthrough and unlock through these races, through these preps, through these competitions that I've wanted to achieve. Doing another one is not going to provide me with the breakthrough that I'm wanting next. So I'm patiently waiting for that new challenge to be presented in front of me. I've shared this concept before and people were like, well, you should try a jitsu or MAA. no, it's the same vein of a different physical challenge. I think I'm being called to a new challenge that is not physical fitness related.

And I don't know what that is right now. And I'm learning to be patient in a season of waiting for that to be placed in front of me within God's timing and God's will. And that obedience in itself is a challenge. Maybe that is a challenge. maybe the obedience and faithfulness in the waiting, in the patience is the challenge that I'm hoping and looking for. I haven't thought about that until now. That could be it. Well, those are some of the things that I wanted to share in this episode. What I'm working on, what I'm learning, what I'm loving, what I'm not loving, what's been on my mind.

Thanks, guys. Appreciate you. Love you. Go on more.