The Nick Bare Podcast - 172: Are You an Asset Or a Liability? | DJ Shipley of GBRS

Episode Date: May 4, 2026

In this episode, I’m sitting down with DJ Shipley of GBRS (Global Battlefield Research Solutions) to talk about how a life dedicated to becoming the most elite at your craft can the ultimate asset for your family. Especially when that craft is elevating your physical and mental health and abilities.Be an asset, never a liability.ORDER 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)

I want kids to grow up to want to join the military. Nobody wants to do those jobs anymore. Why? I got an eight-year-olds now. I'm like, I want to be a TikTok influencer. Like, oh my God, dude. What you're talking about? Like, be a fighter pilot.

What you were being asked to do required every ounce of your focus. The hostage rescue stuff is so dicey. If that door goes and your buddy goes, you are going right behind him. What separates Tier 1 units? Commitment to the craft. They wake up every day and they just live that life. You get out and you realize that you've been developing a skill set that no one needs. It's the hardest thing we've ever done, right?

So I want to talk about GBRS. I'm here to change people's lives. I'm not chasing a dollar sign. I'm chasing a feeling. I think that's one of the reasons we've been so successful. If you can get the people right, you can get the culture right. Not enough people have physical presence to themselves anymore. There's an internal mechanism you have to turn on to make yourself self-morefated.

I'm chasing what I did last week, pushing myself just a little bit further. It's a universal formula. Surround yourself with people that are better than you. Magic, one lot. All right, ladies and gentlemen, today we have DJ Shipley on the podcast. Navy SEAL for 17 years, SEAL Team 10, part of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, also known as Dev Gru, medically retired in 2019, a husband and father to two daughters, co-founder of GBRS Group.

Welcome. Dude, thanks for having me. How are we doing? Great, man. Awesome morning. Dinner was awesome last night. Got a super cool crew. Yeah, it's great having the boys in the building.

Good workout this morning. Awesome. Yeah, vibes are grid. Facilities amazing. Yeah, you guys are killing it, dude. Thank you. Your team has been great. Yeah.

I love having these conversations, but I love spending time with the person, the people, the night before the day before, having dinner, get to know each other a little bit better, introducing to the team and then diving in for a more meaningful conversation. Yeah, man. It makes it more natural.

You have to walk around, sniff each other's ass for 45 minutes, like it's out of the way. But everybody here, everybody here's got the exact same five that my team does back there. It's like they get it.

Got to wake up, got to live the routine. You got to hold the standard. When you walk in every day, better clear that threshold holding the BPN standard, the GPRS standard, whatever it is.

And it's usually just a little bit farther than you went a day before. It's the same vibe in here. I love it. But the fact that everybody in here lists, they all work out, the meals. That's exactly how it should be, dude. Yeah, we were talking about this a little bit last night at dinner. The power and complexities of culture and culture is all people.

And if you can get the people right, you can get the culture right. You get the team right. You get the mission right. But people is the best part, but it's the hardest part. It is, man. It is the hardest part. So I'm going to talk about being a part of a tier one unit. And as I was preparing for this conversation and studying your story and your background and your experience and I was thinking about being a part of a team, you being on and a part of this tier one unit, this tier one team.

And I was applying it to my life right now of what's going to take to get my business to the next chapter of the next level, building BPN continuously. And going back to what we just said, it's the culture, it's the people. I want to build my team, my business as a tier one special operations unit. And I was thinking about what are some of those components and things that came top of mind, trust, candor? The ability to have hard conversations, standards, readiness, performance, competence, selflessness, the will to fight, the will to win, and experience. From your perspective, you know, 17 years in the military, what separates Tier 1 units from Tier 2, Tier 3, and then conventional military? commitment to the craft. They are professionals.

They're no different than professional hockey players, baseball players. They wake up every day and they just live that life. Not the best to be in husbands, not the best to be in fathers, but they are committed to the craft. And I think that's what, I mean, you were in the military. You said even the guys who are disciplined. They wake up, they do fitness, and then you do whatever the Army needs for you do the rest of the day.

It's the same way in a SEAL team. That might be a block of training. It might be whatever. at a certain level, into the tier one level, the Army is the exact same way, the Air Force is the exact same way. They wake up and they look at that day, how many things can I touch today

that are going to make a difference, my overall readiness. Is that waking up and doing fitness every day? Is that fight club three to five days a week? How many sessions on the flat range? That's outside of what the team is going to ask you to do anyway. The team standard, even though it exceeds every other unit I've ever been a part of,

that becomes the minimum standard. How much further can you take it past that? When you see the entire team do it, you walk in. Brand new guy off the street, you know, you've been a seal for six, eight years, you walk in, everybody else has more experience than you, everybody has more deployments than you, they have more reps than you. They're better than you. They're better already. How are you going to match them?

Not by meeting the minimum standards. It's like if I'm trying to play professional basketball, I walk in, I only do the workouts a team prescribes. It's not what Kobe Bryant does. It's damn what LeBron James does. how much time he spends, sleep schedules, diet, everything in between. It's the same thing. They just take it further. Have you experienced that level of commitment standard anywhere else in the world other than being a part of a tier one unit?

No. You see individuals who do it. I haven't seen entire teams adopt it. Not in any sport. You see three or four dudes per team that are just devourable. foul. And I think a lot of it is it increased your confidence and it gives you no more excuses. But it gives you the ability to look like, hey, win-lose-or-drawn, it's not because of the lack of preparation or commitment to the craft. I've been exhausting all of my resources to be as good at

doing this one thing as humanly possible. Some days, the car just don't fall in your favor. Like, I'm trained as much as I can. I'm on a purpose-built diet. My sleep routine's there. I'm really just focused on this one thing. I'm not going to get it right ever. single time, but it won't be for a lack of discipline. I'm showing up every day trying to be better. And they just do it. And you see the guys, I mean, you're in the military, you get it at a certain rank. You don't have to be the best dude. You don't have to be the best fighter. You damn sure don't have to be the best on a flat range. It's not like that over there. You got guys that have 14, 15 combat rotations. They're in the gym, five days a week. Their fight club,

five days a week. They've never missed a session for a fucking decade. Why? Because they're obsessed. They are. Like, if they would have been born in a different city, a different family, they'd be playing professional baseball. Like, they're addicted to whatever that is. And when they transition out, they have to find something else. If not, there's a huge fall from grace. What is the military to facilitate that, that commitment, that work ethic, that culture, that we haven't been able to recreate outside of the military? I think about... They end up covering all your logistics. So you only have to focus on the craft.

Yeah, like if you were, if you were a professional baseball player, you've got the talent, you got the drive. What do they really want you to do? Not be distracted. They don't want you to get divorced. They don't want you to get a DUI. They don't want you to get hooked on drugs. No drama, no social media bullshit. Just focus on the thing.

That's the same thing. They don't want you to have social media. They've got a full legal team. They've got full medical, dental, in-house. Whatever you need, it gets salt there. I just want you to focus on being the best assault you can't be. Perfect. It's the same thing for any other craft inside of that building. I just want you to focus on that.

So when we call you and ask you to do the thing, you're ready to go. That's it. Cut out all the distractions. I was out talking to the Houston Rockets. Kevin Durant's out there, one of the best players ever lived. It's the same thing. They cut out all distractions, just focus on the thing they can't control, and it eliminates all the excuses. Look at Steph Curry.

Pretty amazing to watch. it's not genetically given. It's discipline. It's work ethic. It's blocking out everything else and just focusing on the thing you can't control. You have my brain turning right now. I was in New York City this past summer for an event around my book launch. And one of the employees from Google was there and toured us around Google's facility.

It was my first time I ever seeing a Google building. And I was mind-blown. I mean, they have dining facilities on every floor. You can get any meal, any food for free at any point in the day. Coffee, gyms, recovery setups, doctors, barbers, hairdressers. Everything you need logistically is taken care of. Google has the top-tier talent, and these people have owned their craft and was also super unique about being there. People are coming into work when they want to and they're leaving

when they want to. It is on them to get their work done and they're getting paid a whole lot of money to turn some pretty big levers. That skyrocketed, that organization makes me think of the way that I could take that same approach to turning the environment here in my business to eliminate as many logistical and operational distractions so the team can just. just focus on their craft. Have you applied that at GBRS at all? We certainly tried to, but I mean, you have capital constraints. You have all the other things.

For sure. Where you guys are at now, I'd say, is a pretty good solution. Like, we've got laundry, we've got showers, dryers, sauna, cold plunge, hyperbaric chamber, got the gym, we've got all of that stuff there. We've got snacks. We try to do catered lunches when we can, all that kind of stuff. But ideally in a perfect world, that's what it would be. We're serving breakfast and lunches every single day.

Come here, stay here. You don't have to go out in town. I don't want you to spend money. I got that. Stay here, focus on you, focus on the embroidery, focus on this, focus on designing tech packs and media and all the other things. Just focus on the main thing. And we'll take care of everything else.

I mean, Google's a great example. That's what it is. I just want you to walk through here in a clear head space, no distractions, and just be you. Like, when you talk about a tier one organization, that's what I tell all the guys and they all laugh at me. There's no system in place. The entire place is run off a whiteboard. Like, there are no KPIs.

You show up every day and be the best you can be at that one thing. We ask the whole team to jump in here, do this thing. You have to be able to pull it off first time. There's no mulligan. There's no get back on. I'll just reset and send it again. It's the only opportunity. You got to be ready.

Okay? What do you do? You create Disneyland for operators and put them in there and don't let them leave. Build a team, keeping together for a decade. It's how you build a dynasty. Awesome. It makes life so much easier. It makes it so much harder to leave, though.

Do you miss being on a team? Oh my God, more than anything on this planet. I don't. What do you miss the most? The routine. Waiting up every day with a purpose, knowing you're either prepping for a thing, you're just getting back from a thing,

or you're on standby and a 30-minute phone call away from doing the thing. It's an amazing rush. It is. Like SWAT team guys get it too. Like you're one phone call away from doing the thing. A random Tuesday it's going to pop, go. Ours is a little bit different, but you're always training five days a week, no matter what. I mean, most nights you're not coming home until the kids already in bed Monday through Friday. You train a lot.

And it's awesome. Yeah, I was listening to your conversation with Andrew Heberman. And it was a great conversation discussion. but I heard you discussing early on in the conversation how when you would go to work you would almost have to forget about your family when you go on deployment you forgot about your family and I'll be honest I had mixed emotions

while I was listening to this conversation of dude how can he be saying this? How can he feel that? Because I couldn't relate and the deeper I got into the conversation you were having I then was able to receive respect it and understand it on a whole other level because what you were being asked to do required every ounce of your focus in any distraction, no matter what that distraction was,

ended up being a liability not just as yourself, but to the team. And as I was listening to this conversation, it all started clicking and making sense. or initially it was like ah it's a little harsh sounds rough but I get it what was that like how did you how did you learn how to turn that off

or was that an instinct from the beginning it was kind of by default and it was almost my own fault and that's what I talk a lot about dials not switches there's a way to have a balance and if you do it correctly you can totally have that balance

to where you can think about your family you can power them off and you get so good at spinning that dial now it's time to go to work nothing about my family. The moment work is done, I'm thinking about them again. But everybody has hesitations. There's natural human reactions you just can't get around.

And a lot of these operations you prep for, it's dicey. It is. I mean, the hostage rescue stuff is so dicey. The training methodology goes behind it. You're so committed to the tactic in the SOP that if that door goes, it opens and your buddy goes. And we'll just say a million rounds of AK pour out of it. You are going right behind him.

It's very hard to know that I'm not going to orphan my kids and make my wife a two-time widow in NSW. It's very hard to just, yeah, fuck, I'll just go. You have to build that in. So every single training run, Kamikaze pilot, man, if you go, I'm going. Here we go. Then you get really obsessed in a craft. CQB, noise mitigation, trying to buy down as much risk as humanly possible. But it's so hard to do because every time you power on your phone, I need this, I need this.

You've got to stop to the grocery store. we're going to take kids to ballet and dance. None of that makes me better. It ends up becoming a distraction. And that's why I tell the guys now, if you can commit your first four years to being a monk, like just being a Navy SEAL, don't rush to get a girlfriend,

don't get a fiance, don't have a kid, don't get a dog, show up every single day, Monday through Sunday, and just cry, just lay a foundation, shooting five days a week,

always in gym, fight club, living the culture. Then by the time you transition, you can be a true professional. You can get a girlfriend, make her fiancé, then we can work on the balance point. But so many guys rush into it, now you're not laying all those foundational blocks, and now you get to the tier one organization.

It's like, I still get some baseline. I got to iron out here. I got to burn all these reps, and it takes you away from home. Now you're not building that rapport with your wife, not building that relationship with your kids, and it's like you're living two separate lives. And every time you converge, you don't feel like you're supposed to be there. You knock them out of the routine. She resents you.

She resents work. She's asking you to leave the job. you're not going to leave it. That's why we got 100% divorce rate. It's over 100%. That's wild. It's crazy. If we would focus on building that team the same way you build the assault team,

you can get through anything. I'm truly blessed to be married. I shouldn't be. But I married a unicorn. But she's also part of the culture. That's the only way we got through it. Do you think it's even possible to, at that level of professionalism,

and for the job that is required, the mission that's required, can you live a balanced life and still be an effective operator? I want to say you can, if you have laid the foundation down thick enough to withstand all the external stuff, I never did. And if I'm honest, all the guys that I looked up to that I chased the most didn't have balance. They weren't doing college online, they weren't doing this, like they lived at work all day, every day. they were clearing the threshold 5, 6 a.m.

They'd be there until 8 p.m. at night, Monday through Friday. Like, they lived inside that compound. If you went there Saturday and Sunday, you'd be shocked with how many people were in there. On the range, Saturday and Sunday, in their cage, tweaking gear, packing for this, packing for that,

just always in there. I'd love to say you have a balance point. There's very few people I've seen. And again, you don't live with them, so you don't know how it is truly at home. It certainly looks like they have a balance because if you look at him on paper, jumping, amazing jumper. Look at his CQB, amazing CQB.

He could beat the brakes off at 95% of anybody you ever walk in front of. Okay, he's super well-rounded. Got a great relationship with his wife, great relationship with his kids. He looks like he has a good balance, but you don't know how it really is. And you see him he gets out and he gets divorced two years later. Like, did he have balance? Was he just faking it? What is it really?

Man, it's so hard because it's so addictive being in there. Because you feel the progression. You can see it in real time. The day you come in, your confidence, it takes six months to a year to, like, really gel with a team, but you keep that team together for so long. The culture remains. Even guys cycle in and out, it's like, man, dude.

Like, I feel like, I feel like you're one of the Spartans. It's just so very few people to do that job. It takes a lot out of you, man. But the model for making great assaulters, it's the same thing for making great anything else. I wanted them, Google, it's the same thing.

Take people that are super passionate about that one thing, put them in this building, knock out all the logistics for them, just let them focus on the craft. That's it. Okay. Everywhere I do that, it's the same thing. Go to the Army side, it's the same thing. Okay. Now I know the model.

Now it's repeatable. How do I maximize all the opportunities throughout the day? Because you could spend all day. You could spend 24 hours a day and never get tired. There's cryo. the deprivation pods, mind gym, everything. You could spend the entire day and just do physical rehabilitation, strength training, whatever you want to do.

Strength coaches for everybody, rehab specialists, underwater treadmills, they have everything you'd ever need. It looks like the Olympic training center. Like you get guys that get way down the rabbit hole. Talking about longevity, they're freaks, dude. They live it all day. because you have every opportunity to be whatever you want to be. You want to be a professional scyadduber.

You could do. I know guys who have done a thousand scyadives in a year. That's while deploying everything else. That's an ungodly amount of jumps. They do it. That's what they got to ask to do. I need you to be the best jumper. Jump.

All they do is jump. You'll make subject matter experts. Let them be a subject matter expert. Don't ask them to do these 55 other things right now. Just focus on one, increase your baseline, touch other things you got to be. good at, increase your baseline, touch all the other things. It's like playing drums. Just break it down. What are the five things I really got to be good at? Let's just focus on this. I couldn't tell you who does my taxes. I couldn't tell you who redid my roof. My wife does it all.

I'm not involved in any of that. It's been the same model since I got out. I don't do that. I get to focus on this. You do all that. I love that. It makes it because then you are a team. She's running everything. I need to do. I trust you. Go. She's got it. Put some new roof on, read us the kitchen. I don't know anything about it. I couldn't tell you how much you cost. Couldn't you. Who did it? I'm just going to focus on J.B.R.S. So I need to focus on. Makes it wildly comfortable. Because now I don't have to be everything to everyone. Yeah, if people make fun of me all the time because I hire handymen to do a lot of work at home. And my argument is that's not my focus. My focus is building this brand, this business.

And every other thing that I focus on, I spend my time on hanging a photo or fixing a broken faucet or mending a fence, that is a distraction from the job that I'm called to do. So I have no problem hiring people to do all of these crafts and skills that I am not an expert. I'm going to hire the experts. I'm going to pay the experts to do it better. I'm not going to watch a YouTube video for four hours, read a PDF online for another three hours, and then learn how to do it after buying all the tools. I'm going to pay so on to do it. Yeah. My own thing. She's like, you can't do anything around here. I've never spent any of my ability to learn these skillsets. That was my job. I would have learned it. If I wanted to be Bob Vila, I'd be Bob Vila. I don't want to be. I don't need to be 10 Toolman Taylor. But he can't do what I can do.

So what do you want? If somebody kicks in the front door, you're in a really good spot. I can give you a handyman, couldn't fight himself out a wet paper bag if you want that guy. It's not what I'm best suited for. So no, I don't do the same thing. The refrigerator breaks, I call a guy. If it's down hard, I'll just replace it. I don't know.

I'm not going to sit there and start changing stuff. No. Yeah. I don't have time for that. Because then you think about the amount of time you spend military guys, you know, for us, 275 at a minimum to 300 days a year. on the road. Think about that, even on the days you're in town.

I mean, you're at work until 8 o'clock at night. You're not seeing your family. There's no integration time. Just none of that. Now I look at it as I've got to buy back all that time. I don't want to be on the road. I don't want to do all this stuff. Like, I'm trying to,

I don't want to go cut the grass for two hours on a Saturday. I'd much rather grab my kids, making breakfast in bed and watch stranger things. Like, I'm going to be like a normal dude. I don't want to spend my time doing this stuff I don't want to do. I owe them a huge debt. I'm trying to buy back. time now. If that's doing nothing, doing nothing is something. I'd much rather just sit there on

Saturday and do nothing. Sitting pajamas, you just put some on TV, eat shirios, man, I don't care, let's just hang out. I'd much rather do that. How old were your daughters when you got out of the military? My oldest was eight or nine, and up until that point, she called me DJ. Oh, wow. Yeah. Like, and not very uncommon, because you're never home. And when she hears you on FaceTime, it's always DJ, DJ, because me and Patsy talking back and forth, so she hears it and that's just what it is. Now it's transition. Now they all call me Papa.

But, I mean, it took a while. Thank God my youngest was, we just had her probably a year and a half before I got out. So I came home, I came home for my last deployment. Two weeks later she was born. So pretty much going for the entire pregnancy. What was that transition out in the military like for you going from? I've seen a lot of my guys that I was in with transition out and struggle, but we're coming from a conventional mechanized infantry unit at Fort Hood, Texas.

Coming out of a tier one unit where the standards, the routine, the lifestyle, the Alpah tempo is so high and different. How hard was that transition of coming back to the reality of you're now being surrounded by, for lack of better terms. a bunch of lazy men. It was the hardest thing we've ever done, man. No one ever talked about it. Because, you know, you have the deal.

When you get out and like, oh, you're going to have freedom, do whatever you want to. You know, rich guy's going to pay you a couple hundred grand a year to teach them out of shoot on their flat range and there's millions of jobs and Google's going to hire you and Amazon, all the nonsense people throw out there. And then you get out and you realize that you have been developing a skill set that no one needs. Unless you're an officer or unless you're like senior, senior, you're enlisted, a bunch of leadership schools that they like. You went to Wharton Business School.

The enlisted guys don't do any of that because we're so obsessed over the craft. Now, for me, medically retired 17 years in, if I would have done 20 or 22, it would have been the same thing. I was never going to college. I can shoot really good. CQB's nasty. My jumping's great. Mission planning. I can do all of those things.

Google's not going to pay you to do that. No one is. What are you going to do? Contract. That was the plan. But it was terrible. terrible man, that first Monday, like I retired on a Friday. I had a really good transition job for a little bit. I was teaching selection for the Air Force guys for their tier one dudes. That was one of the best three years of my life.

But personally, the worst. Never been more depressed, suicidal on all kinds of meds, got electrocuted, went through multiple shoulder surgeries, hand surgeries, everything in between. It was just terrible, man. Not having a group chat. There's no purpose. No one's going to call you. You're never going to to put the thing on again. Like, what am I doing here? I don't have any transferable skill sets. I can't do anything else. Like, now that my shoulder's blown,

jumping hurts so bad, now I can't even do it, and it's the thing I love to do the most. I can't even do it. What would I do? Like, I never got to finish a bunch of chapters that I started, and now it just haunts me. The transition is the worst thing I've ever done, by far. I'm curious, you know, leaving the team

how those lines of communication maintained for an example that is somewhat similar but different when people leave this organization on their way out, say, hey yeah, we're going to stay in contact, we're going to keep hanging out, we're going to keep talking. As soon as they exit that door,

this thing keeps humming and moving. And if you're not in it, you almost become forgotten. Is it like that in the teams where, Yeah, we're going to keep talking. But once you leave, they're still doing the job. It's hard to maintain communication. It's a bullet train, man.

It's going. You jump off. It doesn't even know you left. At the end of the day, and I think that's the hardest thing is because you're so committed to it, all the guys are, and you love it so much. Because the end of the day, you're a magnet on a whiteboard.

You get shot, you get killed, you get retired, you get whatever. Madden gets thrown off and then it goes in your place. So it's very hard to come to terms with. So, I mean, when guys get out, that's usually where you reconnect is now you're out, I'm out, hey, what did you do? You start talking a little bit, but the guys that are in are gone. See them every now and then, but no. Because, I mean, all the stuff they're doing, they can't talk about it anyway.

Yeah. So what are you going to do? What are you going to talk about? There's nothing outside of that building for them. Nothing. And now that you're on social, forget about it now. Now it's a huge resentment. I could see that.

I talked about that last thing a little bit. Yeah. I mean, it's like that with everybody. while you're in while you're into the spell i get it i was the same way but i would also say that i would have never done this never i would have never got on social media it was the evolution of the transition it's how you help people it's how you do it's like yeah man i got to unblurbed my face got to tell my story but i think i try to do it in a professional way where it's never chest beating it's always elevating up everybody else i served with

I was talking to one of the guys not too long ago. I said a quote on Sean Ryan. I said, watching those guys do CQB was watching Gretzky take the ice. Like, I'm a purist. I love CQB. It's my thing. I could watch it and train it and do it all day,

every day for the rest of my life, never had a board session. And at a certain point, you think you know CQB well enough until you see a professional team that that's all they do, Bro, it's hard to put into words. It'll make you emotional.

Like, when you're a purist, when that becomes the only thing you do, it's like, it's like if you're a golfer and you watch Roy McElroyer, Tiger Woods really go on a burner, and you're like, oh my God, I can't believe it. Now, imagine 12 guys doing it in unison. Like, oh my God. It doesn't matter the opposition, does it matter of the pressure, the time constraint, the lighty conditions. It's amazing to watch.

It is. oh my god it's amazing it's like always trying to elevate them like i want little kids to grow up to want to join the military that's why i talk so high about rangers and marsock and pjs and cc t's like because i've got to see the extreme end of the spectrum i've got to see them right when they come in and then i've got to watch all of those same units go up you know where they've been doing it for decades plus it's amazing it'll blow your mind how far people are willing to take the craft and it never gets the attention it deserves there's no difference in the amount of time the disc is plan of work ethic it takes to make a really good green beret that it is a guy in the NFL.

It's the same thing. If you look at numbers, it's pretty damn close anyway. There's not too many people to do that job. Nobody ever put the spotlight on that. Like, oh, yeah, they wear a green beret, yeah, they're in Afghanistan. They don't know anything of what they do. You know how hard it is to make that guy? Do you know how hard it is to make a arranger at 75th?

Not easy, dude. There's not millions of them running around. Super high attrition rates. It's hard to make. trying to elevate those guys. Like, we got away from it years ago. Defunded police didn't help. It's like, you remember back in the day?

You show up for career day. It could be three people. There'd be some Jack Cop with a perfect mustache. To be that Handelbar mustache with a fireman, you'd typically be a black guy, Marine, on a pull-up bar. Super yoked, knocking out sets of 25 all day long. Anycomer, here we go, pull-ups head-to-head. Those are your three options as a boy in the 80s.

What do you want to do? Cop, fireman, military. that's it we got away from that nobody wants to do those jobs anymore why we don't highlight them enough everything's just a negative spotlight negative spotlight i don't know man to me every little kid should want to grow up and be a marine you should want to draw them be of service i got an eight-year-olds now they're like i want to be a tic-tock influencer like oh my god dude it's not even a thing what you're talking about like be a fighter pilot oh yeah maybe it's better than a tic-tok star And be of service, man.

Right? Do you watch that Blue Angels documentary? No, I didn't. Spend some time to watch that. Watch their dirt dive. It'll change your whole perspective on anything. It's amazing, dude. The level of detail they pour into that craft, that's how they can do it.

It's not wizardry. It's not AI generated planes. Those are humans flying those things. It's so impressive. That's what it's like. They just take it to a level where you're like. The level of detail. My God, okay.

Now I get to see it. It's so important. impressive. Now when you get to see all these people now, I get to do these speaking engagements now and me, all these different teams, and you get to see like the savants of their craft. That's all it is. They live a routine every single day. They wake up. They've got a minimum standard they're going to meet that super exceeds everybody else's standard, and they just live it unbroken. Like Tiger Woods makes a thousand contacts with a golf all a day. When he says that, he doesn't mean, I don't know, two, three days a week. He does mean seven days a week. When Steph Curry says,

whatever his shot routine is that he shoots every single day, he doesn't mean roughly. Like, he's doing that. If it's 500 made threes a day, he's making 500 threes every single day. He's living a routine. Kobe Bryant's the same way. It's like, look at that inspiration, the level of detail, the ownership, the accountability, the obsession, now apply it to everything else in life. That's it.

Everybody in super high success, that's what they've been doing. Yeah, I haven't thought much about how the aspirations of the younger, children, especially young boys, has evolved over the years, going from service-focused industries and positions to selfish, self-imposed, hero mindset, jobs, social media, influencing careers, if you will. Where do you think that's leading us to? or we're it leading the world to and more importantly

where's it leading men too it's making us weak it's exactly what it's done it's making everybody weak it's making everybody soft and the fact that we can't say three quarters of the things we used to say in the 80s and 90s

now because it hurts people's feelings is absolutely absurd the fact we're having argues about gender and everything like it's absolutely insane all of it is and it's just by weak men it is

like you feel guilty about being a man why why I don't get it You don't have a choice in a matter. You're born, do the most you can. But I don't know, man, being of service has always just been the highlight of my life. It's all I've ever wanted.

Everybody in my family has been of service. Everybody. Grandfather was a fighter pilot, had another one laying on Omaha Beach, stacked Nazis 10 foot tall. Uncle's an Army Ranger jumped in a Panama. 25 years on a counter sniper team at Secret Service. Got another uncle's Marine. Dad was a seal.

Father-in-law's a seal. My wife was in a Navy. Mother was in a Navy. I mean, the whole family's of service. everybody gets it. But I think it makes you almost sacrificial to a group. You have to do whatever that group needs. Okay, when you transition out, now you're working for somebody.

You have extreme buy-in on whatever that is because you're trying to replace the void, the Navy, the Army, Marine Corps, Coast, or whatever left you. Same thing. I see it the most like out of Joey. Andy, guys who are in teams, Cole, they're so committed because they're trying to place the void the team left. Like, G. Barris becomes the team. I'm showing up every day just trying to be better and I was yesterday. I'm trying to be good at these.

For the team. Yeah. Like, not because of me. And that's what we talk about a lot. Like, don't put your individual needs, but the needs of the group. Every time I've ever really messed up my life, that's what it's been. I haven't asked myself, does this make the team better? Is this just some selfish shit I'm doing?

Is this good for the team or is it good for me? Team first. Always team first. Well, that solves it. Continue. If it's not, don't do it. don't do it what happens

the guys who show up to the team he don't have that mindset who are selfish well they go away pretty quick yeah they go way quick you just get voted out usually they get them in training

especially the tier one level they'll catch them in training we'll get peer uh period out top five bottom five they'll take a bottom five guys and just drop them what is it

culture culture culture gone it's like it's a performance thing it's like well he's got a great culture You know, performance and trust. We want the high performer of high trust, but really we'll take a media performer of high trust well before we'll take a high performer of low trust. Like all this dude is awesome, but he's an individual, bro.

I don't care at all about his performance. I can teach a monkey to do this job. I just need to lock him in a room with 12 of the monkeys that are way better in him and he'll naturally progress. That's what I need. Is he super disciplined? Oh, he's hungry too. How is he? Super humble.

Love it. Bring him. We'll take that guy all day long. High performer of high trust. You don't have that. I don't want you at all. You can be amazing. We see dudes that are so fonds, dude. Oh my God.

You see him on a flat range. You see him in a kill house. You're like, okay. Could you make 25 of him? I'll take him. And then you watch one cultural component break down. He's like,

why is he eating alone? Like there's 65 dudes in his class right now. Why is he eating alone? Why is he walking back alone? Why is he the last guy in here? Okay, why is he never taken out the trash? What's everybody else saying about him? And you watch the peer reviews come out and you're like, oh, okay, that's what that is.

Shows up late, first got to leave, never takes out trash, never volunteers for anything, doesn't care about anybody else. He's a singleton. He's in isolation. Never making jokes. Never officers a drive. Blah, blah, blah. The small things add up.

Do you want 25 of those? No, I don't. Beat it. Solves it pretty quick. That's the hardest part about building it. organization, especially outside of the military, is, you know, we were talking about this last night, even hiring C-level executive roles or higher positions, you're looking for experience, you're looking for competency, you're looking for talent, skill. And sometimes you have to

sacrifice a little bit of that experience, a little bit of that competence for higher trust. It's very rare to find someone I found that has lots of experience. right experience, high competency, and also high trust. They're more of a unicorn than I would like to believe. They are. And I don't know why that is. I'm still racking my head around why. Or like, I've only been here for an hour. I can feel the cold from this place and I dig it. When people don't come in and they immediately feel it and they're like, ooh, I'll put this on. Okay. They want to come in and try to change it to something they know. It's super rigid, overly structured like nope got to put him in uniforms of the day got to have clock in times nope got to do

this you kind of have a geo fence you're like what are we going like we shouldn't have to do that we shouldn't we should be hiring off culture so i have them thing i always sell the guys like i'm trying the draft not trade yeah like i'd rather bring you in here teach you the skill set make you a product of the culture and then watch you naturally blossom we got a dude out there jared jirid tapper his dad was in teams unfortunately passed away overseas in combat but I've known him since he was knee-high to a duck. He came in here ripping up carpet in the building. He was like a multi-tool of a human.

He ran tribe skates. He ran filming. He ran customer service. He came over to training. Now he went to media. Now he's a creative director. Could I mass produce him? No, but I wish I could.

If I could have 25 Jared Tappers, I'd be in a much better position. I wouldn't. He's got an amazing work ethic. And he's just a great human. Everybody loves him. That's what you need. Why can I find a CFO like that? Why can I find anybody who has a person?

as corporate experience who isn't corporate, that's the hardest thing. You want to try to come in here and reinvent the wheel. We don't want to reinvent the wheel. I just need to add some C-level people in here. That's a hard thing, man. Brad Gary always say, culture-eat strategy for breakfast. You don't have an amazing strategy.

Best battle plan you've ever written up in your whole life. It goes against cultures and groups will never adopt it. If you don't adopt a plan as your own, you'll never commit to it. Great plan, sir. Nobody's going to do that. Yeah. No. what do you do?

Gotta go culture first. You got to hammer them with it. No, we're not doing that. Nope. Not willing to compromise on these things. This does matter. Fitness. Like, you brought in the CEO of McDonald's.

He walked in here right now and he's like, tear down that gym. We're not catering meals. We're not doing that. We're putting me in uniforms of the day. We're doing these KPIs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's like, guarantee you a double revenue. I don't give a shit about that. I don't care at all.

That doesn't matter to me at a bit, dude. I'm not chasing a dollar sign. I'm chasing a feeling. I want to wake up every day with the same feeling I had inside that compound. I go, I'm making a difference. Everybody in this room is rowing in the exact same direction. I might not know the final destination because there isn't one. We're just going to keep going in a positive direction.

Everybody row. Same stroke. Same cadence. Let's go. And they are. It's amazing, dude. I'm truly blessed. We have an amazing team.

But it's so hard to have that team grow, man. especially when they come in with outside experience. We see the same thing in special operations. You get guys that come from the Fleet Navy, say they do four, six, even eight years. Then they come in to NSW. They have a very hard transition. They're not used to an unconventional mindset.

We don't salute. We don't call each other sir. We don't call each other by a rank. Everything's on a first name basis. When it's time to snap it in gear, you snap it in gear. It's very unconventional. It feels like a professional sports team way before. It feels like anything in a military.

They're not used to that. they have a very hard transition. I think the corporate mindset the same way. They're not used to that. Or they've only been indoctrinated into high-level businesses, and they've never actually built one from the ground up, and they don't know the social media component either. So they come in here like, it's got to be this, this, and this.

The only reason we have those customers is YouTube, right? Nobody understands that business model. So it's hard, man. It'd be a lot easier just to get them and build them. Like, I don't want to trade. I don't want to lose Jared Tapper. I'm bringing a career. creative director from Nike. I don't keep shit when Nike's done. It doesn't matter me a bit.

I'm not trying to be Nike. I think you just hold true to the culture, hold true to the values. You'll eventually build a team. It's equal parts, art and science. I heard this quote a long time ago. I still think about it all the time in regards to people. If you can understand someone's incentives, you can predict their behaviors. If you bring someone in who's incentivized to build their LinkedIn profile and their resume. I mean, people... I love you said that. This is like a hard fact that there are people who live their life to build their

LinkedIn resume. It's like... We have to be really careful. And I'm sure you do too. Even when you put on jobs like Indeed, you can't really tell them where the job is. Because if you tell them, all the guys on social stock, you'll spam, you do the whole thing. It's like, no, man, I'd like, I need really committed people. Not because of COVID, everybody's working remote.

Oh, can I do this job from Albuquerque? No, I need you here. Ah, okay. What do you want to do? I COVID jammed a lot of stuff up too, but, you know, getting through it. Me and Trey were talking about this last night. Because we drove to dinner, and then we drove back to HQ from dinner. And just, you know, watching your team.

communicate and you can just feel the energy of your team. And I think we were talking about, you know, how the workforce has changed over the years is it used to be, and probably similar the way that the military so operates. It's the mission first. It's the organization. You are there to support the organization and the mission. But a lot of people now believe that the organization and mission is there to support them as the employee.

So it's what is this, what is this company? What is this mission going to do for me? As opposed to what am I going to do to build this company up? It's completely flip-flopped. Yeah. And messed up and selfish as opposed to selfless. It is not surveys and oriented.

It is me oriented. Yeah. It's painful. It is. We got super lucky, though. I mean, you just been around a lot longer in us. But right when we started to get momentum, We brought in basically a core group.

Davis is one of them. Jared's one of them, a bunch of the creatives. They were the first ones in there, like before it was even a thing, before we even opened up social media. So they've been there for the entirety. So they got a lot of buy-in,

a lot of brand loyalty to it, and they know it better than anybody else because they've lived it day by day. Like they've seen, there's no business model. Like, we're not held by any standard. We're setting our own standard every single day. So they show up,

if you turn to security cameras, nine o'clock, night on Tuesday, three quarters of creative team still in there. It's one of those jobs like, you couldn't pay them for the time they put in or the passion they put in for it because we couldn't afford it, right? You pay them well,

but the understanding is like that we're building this place. As many hours as I've logged, they've equally logged to say. It's nice having a team full-bying, dude. Oh, those are the people you never want to lose. Exactly. Right.

And I heard one, I don't know if it was Gary V. One of the dudes online. and he goes, we're going to go through, and he goes, I'm going to line out every single person in the company.

And if they turn in there two weeks now, if I wouldn't beg them to stay, I'm going to fire him. And you look down to the list of everybody would have in a company right now. Like, who if they turn in their two weeks?

But I go, no, dude, come on. Okay. Let's have an honest conversation here. Everybody on the team right now would have a hard conversation. Like, don't do this right now. Don't.

I don't want to lose you. There's nobody on the team where it's like, oh, God, it'd be so much easier if you just left. We're good. we're in a great spot. And I think that, that's part of the success.

Started small, scaled it as we could. But now we've got a team that's like, we're all buddies. And I know that's got flaws in it too, but not culturally speaking. It was the same way in the team. Everybody loves each other. Get the highest performers out because now it's a group buying. Like, I really care about my performance because I really want you to be able to go home at the end of the day. And if I mess this up, chances are I'm going to die or you're going to die.

I don't want that to happen. same thing in work. Everything they do truly matters. Now they get it. From order of fulfillment, customer service, ops, everything.

They got true buying. I'm curious on your thoughts on this. And maybe it's just a matter of different ways to describe the same thing or different titles that really don't matter. But I think it kind of sets up the way you run an organization. You can either call your organization a family,

or a team. And we've gone back and forth of the years. And again, does it really matter? Maybe, but I think it sets realistic expectations of what is your role here and how are we going to operate together.

Where when you're a family, it's like you put up with a lot of stuff, you got to live with them, you got to stay with them. It's like, we're in this together, we're blood, you can be a turd and you're still my brother. Or you can be a team,

professional sports team, for example, or is like, hey, we got a mission. We're here to win championships. And if you're not holding the standard, you're off the team. Do you view your organization as a family or team or a combination of both? A combination of both.

It definitely started as a family. And now we, you know, you have to redefine the standards. Like GBRS sets at True North, like I check in with it every single day. On days I don't want to get up, I don't want to go to the gym, I don't want to do this.

I don't want to do that. I do it because the brand deserves it. Everybody else does the exact same thing. We hold each other accountable. I mean, there's people in there personality-wise that they got their quirks. You navigate around, but you love them at the end of the day. You'd beg them to stay. But it's easy to get them for full buying.

Like right now, do you think you're upholding the standard that that sets? No. Fix it. Okay. If you can't fix it, you got to go. The brand deserves more. Same thing for me. If I'm not cutting it, I'll leave.

I've said it from day one. The moment I can't hold the standard, I'm gone. Everybody else has the exact same mindset. If you put that at True North, it'll keep going the right direction. The family stuff, you're right. You'll put up with a lot of stuff, a lot of piss poor performance, a lot of bad attitudes, bad cultural stuff. If you don't have to put up with the cultural stuff, it is a family. You can have those hard conversations, the rough ones you don't want to have.

But at the end of the day, we are a performing team. We do have to perform. So it is a team. If you can't meet the minimum standard, if you can't. seed or a standard right now if you're not putting in a work ethic, you can't be part of the team. When you were in the teams, in the Navy, did you have to have many hard conversations or did everyone show up with the understanding of this is the standard? When I was first and you'd have to have a couple of them with the new guys when they checked in.

Yeah. And usually that was they just got out of buds. You know, you're broken down. You're kind of weak. It's like, here's a lifting protocol. You need to put on 25 pounds right now. We've got new guy Olympics coming up There's body weight weighted pull-ups

Like you better crush that test Okay Forcing that kind of stuff If guys aren't Well round on a flat range You need to shoot more Like you're gonna get attached to this guy You guys can hit the range two three days a week

But at a certain level you never have to The only time you'd have to have hard conversations Or Liberty incidents Guys drank it out in town Guys getting in trouble It's like you gotta tighten this up Outside of work Yeah

That's not good for the team not good for the organization because all they see is Navy SEAL gets DUI, Navy SEAL gets in bar fights. Oh my God. Haircuts and shaves. Like we'd have to wind in guys for that on the same way. You know, I had it since when I was younger too. Yeah. Not too much.

Can you talk about Dev Gru? And even for me, over the years I've heard Dev Gru getting thrown out a lot. And to be honest, I thought being a Navy SEAL was Tier 1. I didn't understand that being Navy SEAL was tier two. I don't know. But I was researching it. It said like DevGrew, for example, is Tier 1. What is DevGrew?

And what does that selection process look like to get there? It's the maritime counterterrorism unit. Army's got one too. You got legacy tasks and all that, but we basically divide the world up 50-50. You got revolving schedules for blowouts, but high-value target, tosses to rescue,

direct action, counterterrorism. If any of that pops up, we're going. So we've got supporting assets. We've got army helicopter assets. It's all under a joint special operations command, but it's very hush, hush.

Don't talk about it much, but they're prepped ready to go on whatever happens. Any scenario in the world that could throw out, they're trained for it. They're the response to element for it. And you are always on call. Even when you're not on call, you're on call.

Because if something happens, and you've got to go, you have to be able to spend it and go. Essentially, you know, blocks throughout the year, you're on a 30-minute recall. If you get that text, you get that page, you're inside on a bus heading to the airfield in 30 minutes. Wow. You got to be ready to go. Can't be drunk. Can't drive over a bridge.

Like, there's a whole bunch of stuff. You have to be with inside of this geo fence. If you leave it, you can't make the recall time. You're off the manifest and their heads are going to roll. So you got to be locked in. How long were you a seal before going through that suction process? I did three deployments, sorry, racks, six years. I screened after my second deployment, so was like 21,

22 years old when I screened. And then I did one more rotation on Iraq, and then I went in 2010. So I was 23, 23, 22 when I screened it got picked up, 24 when I went and I turned 25 at the end of selection. So I'm like that. And do you choose to go through selection, or do you get selected? You have to screen. You have to put in a package.

Your command has to sign a bunch of paperwork. You got to go there and do a week-long screening process. Psych, shooting, CQB, physical fitness, the whole thing, formal boards, everything in between. You get through all that, they'll give you a slot to attend selection training. And it is intense, dude. I'd go through Buds twice if I go through Green Team again. Really? Oh, yeah.

Can you talk about what that selection process looks like? It's everything you'd have to do when Bud's just... Because now you're broken down. So even the screen test to get in, the one to get in the buds is pretty easy. And the order you take it in, it sucks because you've got to do the swim first and a bunch of stuff like that. But the push-ups are double, the sit-ups are double, the pull-ups are doubled, the runs twice as long, the swims twice as long, it's open water, a bunch of those different things just to get in. Then you've got legacy test, bodyweight bench, broad jump, whole NFL combine. But it's nothing but assaulting.

You're just doing CQB and trained on that. Then all the infill methods, jumping, diving, walking, heloes, driving, every aspect of that. And then every type of problem set you used to see. Every type of building, everything, and all you do is CQB to everything. And how long is that selection? Nine months. It's nine months. I'm just getting...

But I mean, you get smashed, dude, but it's cool because you bring in the world's best at whatever that discipline is. So it's the same model, right? So you'll bring out the world's best shooting instructors for four weeks. And all you do is shoot eight hours a day. And then you'll go off and do CQB. Or you'll break it up four hours on a range, four hours in a house, four hours in a house, four hours in a range, back and forth. And you'll do that for four, eight weeks consecutive. And then you'll just shoot three to five days a week after that.

Then you'll do another shooting blocks. Your baseline keeps increasing. Do the same thing with jumping. You'll go out and do 100 jumps in a couple weeks. And then you'll jump once every month. but you'll do 25 jumps in those two or three days. So now you're just increasing currency. Do the exact same thing, exact same thing.

Then you put it all together and you do a month of just straight full mission profiles. Jumping in, heloes, driving in, every different type of scenario. It's sick, but man, it is intense, especially for me because I'm an idealist. Like I grew up in the community. I didn't know anything about the command. I knew nothing about that group, never heard about it growing up, really, didn't know what it was. didn't know the mission said until you got in and you would see the older guys in your deployments leave and then you'd see him at a bar six months later hair down to the shoulders beard down to

hear and you're like what happened to jt and he's like oh he went over to went over to dev group what is that and like ah it's another team oh okay don't know anything about it and then later on your career you get the mission brief and you hear about the whole organization screening process and drop the application and go how many guys are in dev grew at a time like going through like a selection course like actively in a team you can't talk about it but it I'll tell you the number off camera

shockingly low wow like you know everybody in the building you've heard every single person's name you've seen every single person it's very very small very small when you're going through that process and then on that team

were you mind blown at the level of professionalism that you were surrounded by or it was just that's what you grew up in very different very professional, very locked-in, very disciplined, extremely funny. Team guys are funny. Team guys are funny, dude. And some of the instructors you have, they can be stand-up comedians.

They are hysterical. But when it's time to switch it on, they'll go from that to be in a crankster back and forth, really, really quick. They'll be able to toggle in and out. There's my favorite type of people. They're amazing. But I'll tell you, you talk about performance anxiety, performance pressure. I was eating double Benadryl every day before CQB to try to drop my heart rate down, try to be kind of lethargic.

Because every dude you've ever looked up to, because all the guys you've worked with eventually elevate up and now they're there. So when you'll go in, they'll put you in a room as big as this. Four guys will take it down. There's not a target in it. And up in a rafters, there'll be 25 dudes that are demigods to you. It's like Tom Brady standing up there watching me about to catch passes. You're like, oh my God. Don't look up.

don't look up, heart rates at 190. You're like, oh, here we go. Everything you do, you're walking down. He's like, stop, freeze, back up, one inch. Half of that. Back up, scan over. Move back a half inch, four to half inch, back three quarters of an inch, right there. That's where you have to scream in it.

You're like, oh, my God, okay. When they mean right there, they do mean right there. They don't mean two inches further. They don't mean an inch past. They mean right there. It's a very displean. That's incredible. It's a remarkable craft to hone in and just become an expert.

It is, man, but a lot of its big boy rules apply. Like, once you get in, there's no command PT. Like, no one's forcing you to do anything. You just better hold up the standard. Like, if a human being can do it in this job, everybody's expect to be able to do it. Can one guy climb up and down that mountain? Yep, everybody's going. Let's go.

You should be able to do it. So a lot of guys, he adopts weird routines. But I mean, everybody's old, everybody's broken, but somehow they're still maintaining a super high standard. It's super impressive to watch. I've heard you talk about this in other interviews and podcasts, but just the amount of injuries you have sustained over the years. No, I have nothing to, compared to some of the guys in there. We got dudes double peck tear, double bicep tear, torn hamstring, torn quad, been shot twice, blown up, countless TBIs. I mean, as soon as you start getting the replacements, that's where it gets dicey.

but there's multiple dudes with no ACL. They took a cadaver, ACL, it didn't, down. They don't have anything. They just operating on braces. They don't care. You'll never be able to tell. But as soon as you have to get a hip replacement, that's where it gets dicey. You get a shoulder replacement, you got to go.

But outside of that, I mean, everybody. And most of the guys, and it's not a good thing. I'm not super proud of it, but the injuries you hide, they become your limiting factor. Like, now I'm at a point where I can't hide it. Like, I can't throw a grenade. It's 50-50, my shoulder comes out of socket. Like, now we've got a serious issue.

Okay, well, how long can I KTT that's sitting in place, taking, you know, 1,600 milligrams of Motrin and PRP shots and all this other stuff? How long can I push this off? Can I get through deployment? And as soon as you get back, you've got a surgery scheduled. You walk in, and now you've got four guys working on you for the next 12 weeks, trying to get your shoulder back up so you don't miss the next deployment. So you time everything.

But you get really used to just dealing with injuries, bad ones. Like ones that would just, I mean, we've got to do. that had been shot before, have made it through training, checked in, and had to have two or three more surgeries because the wound won't heal. We've just been training on it anyway. Waterproof bandages and just legs pushing out,

draining their boot, and you're like, oh, my God. You're not going to be able to pull him out. Like, he's never going to tap out. He's just going to suck that up forever. Eventually, you've got to pull him out. Like, you have to get a surgery on that. You have to fix that. We need you at 100%.

Not 100% mindset. We need the total package right now. And that's what happened to everybody. Everybody's hurt, man. And these are injuries from training and from combat? From everything, yeah. Everything. But, I mean, training's super dangerous, dude.

Dangerous. Doing hundreds of skydives a year. All the CQB, all the breaching, all the combatives, everything. I mean, dudes of shoulders get blown out, hip, I mean, I broke my femoral neck off in Green Team. I just kept jumping on it. Made it all the way through. Finished selection, walked in, had emergency surgery, pumped in 15 inches titanium. I was on a plane to Afghanistan in a couple weeks.

We'll just hide it. And the opt tempo and frequency is so high, you don't have time to recover. No. No. When we get done, I'll show you a picture of the day I checked in, it's still on my ID,

and then you'll see what I look like now. It ages you quick, man. It looks like the presidency. Like four years in air. I mean, it puts on 15 years on you quick. Not sleeping. It's just everything. Transitioning out of the military then.

that's when you got all of the, or most of the surgeries in rehab and started taking care of yourself again? No. I did my hip, I did my stomach three times, a bunch of stitches, stuff like that, fractures while I was in, nothing crazy. What happened to your stomach? I, uh, not a cool story. I had an inguinal hernia surgery when I was a kid, so balls were like this big. We were overseas, we were in Afghanistan doing something. We were doing Fight Club. One of the guys gave me a push kick, my lower abdomen.

And as soon as he did, I felt something. I was like, what hell is that? And I looked down. It looked like a half an egg was under my skin. So I went over the surgeon's command. I was like, yo, check this out. The ultrasound, he's like, it looks like a big cyst. Dude, let's just cut it.

Stuck a knife of it and cut that thing. A little bit of fluid came out, but nothing. He's like, I don't really see anything. Close it up. Two days later, this little green thing came to the surface. I picked that and I pulled it and a strand of like eight sutures came out from 1985. Oh my gosh.

So pulled it. I was like, what the hell? Went back in there. There was official track. They went from my testicles, up my leg, connected to my hip surgery, and then ran into my stomach. It was like that long. You could scope the whole thing. Yeah. Oh, it was dicey, dude. I had to pack that whole thing for months, dude. It was a, yeah, it was a nightmare. So you were getting surgeries while you were still in. Yeah, but, I mean, you have to do that one because now I have an open wound. I mean, I can put four fingers inside like this marsupial pouch and palpated. I couldn't feel anything. The skin just wasn't connected. It was just a huge void. Just still with pus and fluid. It's disgusting.

Yeah. I did three rounds of plastic surgery on that. It wouldn't, it wouldn't heal. And yeah, when I got out, I had that gnarly shoulder dislocations that really did me. And nothing medically retired me. It shredded everything in my shoulder. They wouldn't diffuse my lower back, my neck, how did it get double shoulder surgery, double hip surgery. What are we doing? I'm not going to sit here and get five years worth of surgery and never deploy. I'm not doing that. So, got a medical retirement, started knocking them out. I've heard the story of your transition now between surgeries and then being on a bunch of medication that doctors had you on.

And then you got electrocuted while doing up skateboards. Like, did you, you've got to just beat to crap on... Been through the ringer, man. on the journey. Yeah. Yeah. Some people have a lot worse than me.

I mean, so got 10 fingers, 10 toes, but a lot of, a lot of emotional distress. Because when you're there, you've got such a purpose, you feel like you're well-rounded.

You feel like you, there's a reason I'm waking up every single day when you don't have that anymore and then you get hurt. Now I don't have the physical connection. My mental health is right behind it. Then I start to spiral. Now there's no purpose.

There's no reason for me to go to bed. Now, no one needs me. What am I doing now? And now when you're, get so hurt that I can't get out of bed. I can't feed myself, can't shower. It's like, oh my God. How did I get here?

Like, I don't want to live like this. I don't. How'd you dig out of that? My wife and Vernon. Yeah, man, I came out of the hospital. Had two plates, 20-something screws. It tore all the anchors out. We'd previously put in the shoulder.

I had the Mumford, the bicep tendonesis, five or seven anchors in my shoulder. And from the contraction, it ripped all those anchors out. out and it shattered my collarbone, shattered my opposite scapula. This is from getting articulated. Yeah. Blew out of my thumb, welded that tendon to the nerve bundles. My thumb was like this.

So we had to do a Z, lengthening, break up all that scar tissue, relocate my tendon. Blew out of the top of my hand out of my thighs. One spot right next to my ass. Probably about that deep. Blew out of the top of my head, like small ones, almost like ingrown hairs. It just electricity was coming out of them. So shorts catching on fire, the whole thing. And I mean, you're familiar because you're,

endurance rhabdo. Yeah. When you get electrocuted, your body goes through a process very similar to rabdell. It releases some kind of enzyme. It gets all your muscles and basically liquefize them. They turn septic and you die. So I'm laying in a hospital bed and this doctor comes in. And he's like, hey man, I got to come back here every hour.

I got to trek your blood markers. When this enzyme hits this number, I got to start chopping you up. I was, I just came out of that shoulder surgery. I've been with Vernon for like a year, some change straight. I was probably 230 pounds, 6% body fat. built like a brick shit, best physical condition I've been in. And it made me really second guess getting out. It's like, dude, if I could build back to this,

we'd just die and lifting twice a day, like, I could still do this job. Like, I'm good. Then I got electrocuted. So I had this huge fall from grace. Now I'm back on a high. I'm like, okay. Like, I'll be able to transition out, have a nice, easy roll. Boom, get electrocuted.

And now I can't do anything. I'm in double slings for months. I can't wash my hair. Can't wipe my ass. I can't do anything, dude. I mean nothing. I couldn't do anything. And he shows at my house,

brings over a two-pound dumbbell. It went through range of motion. He said, what can you do? Nothing. Well, you can do wrist curls. You can do wrist curls in 20-minute walks, man. That's what we did.

Got into there until I could actually pressurize my upper body. If you were broken in a collarbone, it's miserable. Your scapule is even worse. You can believe that. But we had a belt squad in the gym he was working in.

And we did that probably for a month straight. That, anything lower body we could do. I couldn't do anything upper body. And as soon as I get moving back around, we hit it again, two of days every day and rebuilt back. So without him, yeah, I probably wouldn't be here. I didn't want to play the game anymore. I hate saying that, but, man, I was in a depth of it, dude. No purpose, no connection with my wife.

I hadn't been down to Mexico yet. Like, I just, I was circling a drain, dude. And if I would have had the strength to end it, I would have. If he wouldn't have came over, then, there's no telling. I was in total isolation. I didn't want to see him. I don't want to see anybody else. I was embarrassed.

I was hurt. Everything just sucked. And he showed up. He's like, no, no, we're living the same routine. We're going to wake up 6 a.m. We're going to do this every day. Okay. That 5, or that 2 pound dumbbell, went to a 5, went to a 10, went to a 15, went to a 30, went to a 40.

Now we're doing all these grip things to try to rebuild my hand strength. I got the surgery in my thumb. We had to rehab that. Surgery on my thumb. a bunch of different other stuff and just kept building. So now I just don't break the routine, no matter what. Every time I have, something bad has happened. So I just don't break it.

I force it. Even on days where logistically, I don't have time, I'll find time. I'll do something. Stick to the routine, man. That's a power of routine and people. Yep. Having the right people in your life. Dude, Vernon's been more of a life coach than a strength coach in a lot of different ways.

But that combination, man, he's just such a. you good a human, but he's so knowledgeable. And he can look at me. He can read my energy level from across the room. He can look. What's going with that foot? He's like, no, it's like, no, it ain't. Put your sock off. Let me sit. No, we're doing foot health this morning. He sees everything that's going on, all my limitations, and he helps me navigate him because I got a laundry list, dude. But all the things I want to be able to do in life, he just develops a program so I can still do those things. But live the routine, man. Surrounding yourself with people better than you and live the routine, you'll naturally progress.

I've been really motivated by your guys approach to training as I've dove more into it for a few different reasons. You know, for me, training for a long time has been either a bodybuilding, strength training approach or on the other spectrum, long distance running. And I found that, like, you guys have developed this protocol and program that incorporate both and connects the dots of observation of what are you trying to accomplish? Why? What are your limitations? And you can build out on a program to achieve very high levels of fitness that are very unique and personalized. But at the same time as I think about fitness as a whole,

a lot of people turn fitness, and I've done this too for many of my years of my life, fitness has been a selfish pursuit to make myself look impressive. I'm going to train for this race to get a PR, not necessarily for myself, but so that I can say, hey, look how fast I am, look how impressive I am. And what I'm now as getting older and my focus is my wife, my children, my team. Fitness is a responsibility I have to be an asset to the people in my life. So I would rather be able to train in the morning that builds all of this sustainable energy to show up for my family in the afternoon, as opposed to train in the morning that fatigues me. So I'm just hanging on by a thread until the evening and I'm a zombie for my children.

But viewing fitness as it's not for me necessarily. It's for the people in my life to show up as an asset to them and avoid being a liability. I mean, do you know the deal too because you train so much? When you're not able to train, the guilt you feel. Oh, definitely. You know, people tell me, it's like, you know, you do too much. If I was a bodybuilder, I know I do too much. I know I should probably train three days a week.

I need to optimize recovery. I do this more for my mental health and for just force myself to be well-rounded. Like you said, for the people around me, trying to redefine my own standard, especially on days I don't want to go. When I wake up and I'm super sore, I'm like, oh, God, I don't want to do this. Those are the days I love it the most. because everybody else would go I'll just take the day off

I know you would yeah so I'm not doing it I'm going in I mean we'll land on a red eye two o'clock in a morning my alarm clock goes off the five my wife looks and she goes you're insane

she's like nobody's expecting you to be in there honey the fact you think I'm going in there for them alarms me I'm going in for me I'm going for my mental health this is my little spiritual conquest like I need this time for me

self-connect every single day but no I mean it's make yourself well around make yourself an asset. Like I don't need to be a marathon runner. I need to be eight weeks away from doing whatever I want to be able to do. Maintain a high average. But something that's repeatable. Like I see guys to do these crazy diets and these crazy fads. And you know, I call it David Goggins all the time because people look at him and it's so impressive. One of these 50, able to do all that. And they're like, man, I can't run 100 miles.

Brother, you don't have to. That's his thing. That's what he does. You don't have to do that thing. the discipline and the workout that he puts in, just apply that to your life. That could be a 20-minute walk fasted every single morning, 365 days a year. Don't ever mess it. Add the exact same thing at night. You want to see a cheat code to a diet,

walk after every meal. I'll change your whole life. I pulled hundreds of pounds off people with that. Walk 20 minutes after everything, single thing you consume. Just do that. You just lose weight. Oh my God.

It's easy, dude. Just be disciplined. You don't have to run 50 miles. You don't have to. You need to get on the program. you need to make yourself well-rounded. Where's your view on long-distance running? I'm curious, you and Vernon and the program.

I mean, I've had to do long-distance run. When I call it long-distance, anything over 12 miles is long-distance to me. Actually, anything over 8 miles is long-distance to me. But we've had to do crazy long runs, man. And I get it. The more I got into running, the more I was forced into running,

the worst I got at everything else. Right? Like when you actually get in the gym, everything else, but I'd like it to the mental preparation. Like we weren't listening to music. Like I told you, like, on our run, we don't wear watch. There's no music.

It's just you. That's very different. Like, if you ran a 100-mile race with no stimulus, just you, that's very, very different. Like, you've got to go in the spirit world to get that thing done. Yeah. Right. I've never seen anybody well-rounded enough.

And I know they exist because, I mean, you're one of those guys. A lot of these guys, Cam Haynes is one of those guys. I consider you guys all really well-rounded, but I think the majority of the people, they realize that they don't want to put the time in the gym and they're running as the lowest-hanging fruit they can do with no logistics. I can just buy these $150 shoes and turn on my driveway, take a left, and just run. Like, I don't have to go to a gym. I don't have to be strong. But this is impressive enough. Yeah, until you've got to do something super dynamic.

Until you've got to do something where you have to jump, grab this dude, move him through time and space against his will. Then you realize, like, yeah, baby, maybe being a bit. marathon runner isn't the best thing for me. Maybe running really fast half marathons might be my jam. Maybe getting the gym a little bit more. But for me, I don't care what they do. I just want people to be active.

I want little people to look at you and go, my dad's an ultra marathon runner. Like, sick, what do you think that kid's going to do? Be an ultra marathon runner. He is. He's going to run in college. He's going to run professionally. Not enough people have physical presence themselves anymore.

Like, you don't have to look like C-Bomb, Mr. Olympia. You don't have to do any of that. I'm not hugging them aesthetically. can you perform? Like if somebody grabs your daughter in a Walmart parking lot right now, what are you going to do about it? You don't have any tools on you. You ain't calling 911.

What are you going to do about it? You're not going to run them to death. What are you going to do? You need to be well-rounded. You don't have to be a fourth-degree black belt in this, but you need to put in some significant effort early in the phase to lay down a foundation to where you're capable. We talk to cops all the time.

Like if I was a cop right now, and I had to make a mandatory rule. I'd make every cop do 100 classes of BJJ a year, twice a week. I'd make the department pay for it and make it mandatory. Make them well-rounded. Get them in the gym. Like, why we're not putting gyms in all these police departments baffles me. Like, guys having to put a kitty together, buy their own gym equipment.

It's like, what are we doing, man? Yeah. What do we do? Firemen, same things. Like, they're buying their own gym equipment. Like, you want them to be physically fit. It saves them. That becomes their first lifeline.

What's the best EDC? Me. I wish I had a bunch of tools, but if I don't, I'm stuck on an airplane. I'm not a victim. Not by a damn stretch. That's what we're trying to push. You can get a lot of it done, the work ethic, the discipline, the routine, just by sticking to the gym.

Now you add in one more factor. Cool. Now we're going to do this. We're going to go boxing one day a week. I'm going to run that for six months. I've got a pretty decent base. Let's add in BJJ. I'll be one day of boxing, one day at BJJ.

Do that for two years. it, you've got a really good foundation that's going to stick with you for a decade. Add in one more discipline. Now we add in shooting, we add in something else. Maybe you're not a runner. Maybe we add in running now. Maybe you're super strong, you're a hybrid athlete, but you don't run. You only sprint.

Let's push it out to four miles. Push out to eight miles. Let's see where you start to fall off. You learn more about yourself, become more well-rounded. How do you guys at GBRS establish goals within fitness programming? So instead of just showing up and going through the motion, I was talking of Vernon a little bit last night at dinner. He's talking about how you guys are in this focus right now of a training block.

How do you guys as a team identify what's the goal for this training block? And how is it established and met to keep training interesting, but also have these things that are driving the motivation of fitness. Well, I'm blessed because we got a bunch of strong dudes in a gym. So you're really always chasing. So we do them in blocks. That first week is kind of like a feel-out week. the movements might be slightly different

the order might be out of sequence from what we typically did before and you're like oh we're starting off the inclined dumbbell press like okay well it's three working sets okay what's the last time we did then okay well that was at the end of the workout and I only did 70 80 90 90 90 we'll make it up

okay well now since I'm fresh I'm gonna go 80 90 100 110s let's see how far we can push this let's see how far I can milk out these reps and really try to make it more challenging because now I'm listening with Vernon Davis Jared they're all super strong world basically chasing each other. Like Joey drops down and knocks out a set of 12 with the 1-10.

You're like, Jesus Christ, okay. Okay, here we go. It's like everybody's making you push a little bit further. The sprints are the same way. Everything we do, even though we don't have to say it, we're chasing. Like Vernon's in there, he's right over top of you. He's doing all the movements with you. He's strong as an ox anyway.

His movement's fantastic. Like he's setting the example. Now everybody else is setting their own individual example. How much intensity you can show up? Some days you're drained, dude. on those days where you land at 2 o'clock in morning and then there at 5, I'm not firing at 100%,

but I'm giving you 100% and whatever I have. I think that's the whole point is there's an internal mechanism you have to turn on to make yourself self-motivated. I can just go through the motions. I can do that exact same,

work out with 40-pound dumbbells and not feel a single thing from it. That's not the point. The point is I'm chasing what I did last week pushing myself just a little bit further. Like last week I did 80, 80, 90, and I did 888. Okay.

Let's go 80, 90, 100, 110, and I'm going to go 8, 8, I'm going to make a push for 10. Like really, really push it. Just a little bit more. And the confidence it goes called stacking micro wins. The same condition I do in my morning routine, I'm putting all the conditions in place to where I'm not late. My car's full of gas. Phones at 100% of taking all my pills, done all my things. I'm not stuck behind a school bus.

I'm not late by any means. I walk in, everything. All conditions are set. I'm not thinking about anything else except for the lift. How far am I willing to push? The whole way. We got to. Crank of the intensity, as soon as we're done, power down,

I'm not thinking about the gym anymore. I'm not thinking about my family. Now I'm only thinking about the meeting I have to walk into right now. How do I put myself mentally in the best condition to be the version of DJ I want to be before I clear that threshold? I have to have that morning routine.

If I don't have the gym, like you've got to speak in engagements kicking off at 9 a.m. They don't have a gym, and I'm down in the Marriott, dumbbells to 40. It's like, Is it even worth me going down there? Yep, I'm going to maximize everything I came with those 40-pound dumbbells. I'm going to try to give myself the same physical exertion I would at my home gym,

so I feel the exact same because I know how I normally would feel if I had a perfect morning routine. I'm not just going to look at the gym and go, I've got dumbbells for 40, I'll take the day off. I will feel so out of sync the whole rest of my day. I'll think about that one day for months. Nope. Not what Steph Curry would do. Nah, dude.

I'm going. Just wake up and push, man. You got to be able to control your own. intensity. My wife gives me craft all the time for it, where she sees me wake up and I'm trashed. I did a nine mile run the day before and lower body strength. And I'm waking up to go run eight miles. You know, I feel every part of that previous day in my legs.

She said, what are you doing? Just chill. And no, I need this. And I know some of my training, probably a lot of my training creates diminishing return. But mentally, I need. that to lay into the foundation of the day. Because for me, just like you, it is so much of my morning routine, whether I'm running or strengthening.

Have you ever tried working out in the afternoons? Only when I have a second workout. Everybody will argue with me like, ah, you know, I get better listening to evening. I bet you're not as consistent as I am. You won't. Your kid will miss a school bus. You'll have to go pick her up. You'll have to get Chick-fil-A.

You'll have to come home. You've got to do this. one daughter's got soccer practice, one's got ballet, your wife can't be in both places at once, you're going to miss the gym. Not if I wake up before they do. And that's the whole point. It's like that was the routine. I'm going to wake up before my family's going to ask me, hey, can you take out the trash?

Can you do this? Can you do that? Hey, can you make them breakfast real quick? Nope, we're not even having that conversation because I'm not going to be here. Going to power them down, only focus on my routine. And I know it sounds selfish than it is, but it's selfish now to be selfless later. So like you talked about, when I come home at five, six o'clock now, I'm not thinking about any of those other things,

and I'm just going to think about 6 o'clock to 9.30 when I put them down. I'm only going to get three hours, three and a half hours a night with them. Let's maximize those three and a half hours with the same intensity and focus that I had in the gym. It's very hard to do. If now I'm sitting here like, I should be in the gym right now, but I'm not, because you miss a school bus, because you want to talk to your friends after class, I live inside of a reality. I'm not going to be consistent if I don't get it in first thing in the morning.

Yeah, I'm the spillover. Like you talk, the dopamine hitting everything else at cascades. It's like I walk in 10 a.m. meeting like, I thought I had to drink four shots of espresso, man. I'm good to go. If I don't have it, I just feel lethargic, I feel broken. I feel like I'm on the wrong side of 40. Not if I get my lifting. Why would I ever break that? I'm not going to. As soon as I get home, that is no longer my time. That is my family's time. And even if I try to save a training session for the back out of the day, because our gym is here at HQ, It's very easy for people to access me when I'm in that gym.

Hey, I just got a quick question here. We just came out of a meeting. Can you answer this? When I'm in the training session, I'm focused. That's all I want to focus on. Do you do most of your training sessions with the team or do you do some alone? I do most of them with the team. And a lot of that's to, it sounds stupid.

A lot of us to show the example. Like, nobody in that team will ever ask me if I'm coming in in the morning to lift. Like, you should have stopped out. seven years ago. Like, I'm never going to miss it. And if nobody else can make it, I'm still in it. Like, I'm not doing it for you. I love having a group there, but if you ain't going, I'm still going.

It's just part of it. So, no, I mean, I'd love to have a group in your lift, but I'm fine in isolation. It doesn't matter to me a bit. I'm the same way. But I have found that when I train with a group of people who have the same intention behind training, the intensity is on a whole other level. You're pushing reps to places that you couldn't push on your own. You get a bunch of dudes together that are throwing down at a gym.

I mean, you walk out there a whole lot more fatigued and tired. And so what the next day. That's what I love, man. That's why, you know, I tell it, it's a universal formula. Surround yourself with people that are better than you. Magic will unlock. It's the same thing in the gym. If I was the strongest dude in my gym, I would need to move gyms.

I'm just, I'm blessed. got a bunch of people that have the same work ethic, same intensity, same focus. They're bigger, they're stronger, they're faster. It just helps me push. I love it, dude. That's why I like coming in here. Beautiful facility. Everybody lifts.

Everybody gets it. It's not like a bunch of novice in there. One of the things I, you watch pumping iron, right? Oh, yeah. Everybody's watched pumping iron. I fucking love pumping iron. That scene when Lou Farragno was in her training that old school gym and that dude with that soft bodies next in with those 15-pound dumbbells,

do what a oh so demotivating right then you watch the exact same session in gold's gym it's like very different very different just by scenario just by scene you got to find those places where every day you show up you're like man i don't have it today well that's unfortunate because vernon feels like a striped ass eight and he's about to push today and you're like okay okay here we go from the days you don't want to have it somebody will have another level they're going you're like oh thanks davis he just pulled 6.05 off the floor. You're like, oh, God, here we go. It's one of those, man. You got to surround yourself, man, that big fish, small pond thing just never works. You outgrow it really quick. There was this gym we went to in Pittsburgh in January.

We were there for, we're the on-course nutrition sponsor for the Pittsburgh Marathon. Oh, sick. In May. And there was a kickoff run in January. So we went to Pittsburgh with the team to create some content and film this kickoff run. when we found this gym called Exercise Warehouse in Pittsburgh. Backstreet probably built in the 60s, 70s.

To this day, it's the coolest gym I've ever been to my life. All the old body masters pre-core, cyberx machines. If I ever build a public gym, I'm getting old equipment. I'm getting nothing new. Old school modelists.

Dude, yeah, all that, like, it just hits perfect. Old York dumbbells. There were bodybuilding signs everywhere. It was one of those environments where you walk in and you feel like you have to perform because of what was created there, the legacy that was in that gym. And then there are 70-year-old dudes there training in a stringer and old wrestling shoes curl on 70-pound dumbbells. But that is the standard of that place. You don't walk in there and just go through the motions. I love places like that.

I love cultures and environments that set this level of excellence. It's one of the reasons I love going to dinner. I love going to a good restaurant that really cares about the experience, the environment, the ambiance, the music, the service, the food, the intention. I love that level of professionalism, no matter where it's at, because I respect it. You learn a lot from kitchens, man. in camp efficiency culture I think a lot of them are expecting

Gordon Ramsey slamming plates screaming I got the tour Nobu oh wow dude pretty pretty amazing you could have a conference call in the middle of it

you can't hear a thing everybody you look like to put together Rolexes it's mastery good you ever watch that show The Bear I love that show

dude I love that show you've seen the show the movie Burnt with Bradley Cooper oh yeah I've watched that movie probably 50 times, dude. I love that.

I think about that scene all the time where he intentionally messed up the dish when they were going, dude, I don't know why it pops in my head all the time. That's stuck with me. It's a level of professionalism with intensity

and just raw anger and emotionally driven. So I'll talk about GBRS and how that came to be. We started that thing with a couple buddies. Me and Cole had been best friends for 20-something years now. I went to bud together, team 10 together, three deployments together, screened together.

He went to a different squadron, but essentially the exact same career path. And we opened that thing up. In 2019, I was supposed to contract with the agency. We had other guys doing stuff, military contracts, Cole was doing real estate, everybody's doing fine. And a bunch of my buddies who were overseas kept getting shot, they were getting blown up, they were getting killed. And I had just gotten electrocuted. We were doing a skateboard thing, me and Cole. Davis just came on board.

And he looked at me one day and he's like, why don't we just do our own thing? I was doing contract and I was teaching the thing with the Air Force. And I loved doing it, but it wasn't consistent. But it wasn't giving me 180 days of work a year, which is what I needed to maintain functionality for the family plus retirement, all that stuff. It wasn't consistent.

So I was picking up jump contracts and still skydive and still teaching, still throwing tandem, doing the whole thing. He's like, why don't we just do our own thing? like what? So we'll just get a couple guys. We'll teach CQB, flat range, you can still jump. Like, we'll just do that. Okay.

Let's do that. And COVID slammed us. So we opened up a social media page, didn't know anything about it, never had an Instagram, didn't know how to do anything, opened that thing up, and, you know, started following a bunch of SWAT teams in the area. And right when we posted our first photos and videos, started growing, started getting momentum. A bunch of guys started hitting us up.

He can come down here, can we train? Can we do CQB and fly range? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Boom, COVID, nothing. Oh my God. Now what? We had a mentor we had met. We were in teams that he ran marketing for Nike.

Adidas basketball, football, Beijing Olympics, I mean, a brand builder. Came down and gave us a crash course on how to build it. Started to selling soft goods. And that was a big thing. He's like, you have to start selling t-shirts and hats. It's funny you say that. Everybody keeps asking us in a DMs. Do you have T.

t-shirts we can buy in hats. Why would you want a t-shirt and a hat? He said with your logo on it. No, man, it's just for us. He's like, we should sell them. Like, now, now we're good. Because it's a thing. You know, in the team, like, we don't sell the patch. I don't post a picture of what it looks like, like very keep behind, close hold. And that's how we thought the brand needed to be. Exclusive, right? Like, invite only type of stuff. Reserved. Very reserved. Like, you know, my face was blurred. We never really said we came from. The guys put two and two together, but you didn't want to come out and say it. I think a lot of that during backlash from the community, really. You can't come on back. Oh, we used to work as a unit. We did the, so try to stay away from that.

And dude, he came down. We did our first run of T-shirts and they flashed all within minutes, seconds. We thought the website crashed. Refreshed it, refreshed it, refreshed it. Big number. Inventories is zero. And you're like, oh, my God. Okay, let's take all that on us to buy more t-shirts. And we basically did that until COVID lifted and we could start training again. And in that time, we're making those soft goods. We just sat around a table like this, a bunch of coffee and just talk trash about all the gear that we hated. Like, how do we make this better? How do we make a better belt? Let's make a better belt. Let's make a better sling. I was teaching CQB as a time. And they were running their, they were running their carbines in a weird

configuration. Their laser slid all the way back, pressure pads in front, because I had done nothing with CQB at night for 20 years, essentially. I knew all the issues with that, but I knew what they were trying to solve for. So I went back, me and Cole and sketch out this thing. And I was like, this is what they're trying to do. I knew the objectives. I knew the in-state they were trying to perform at. And it was the first time I'd have heard anybody talk about,

we want to be able to perform regress a lighting condition. I want to be able to shoot just as fast in daytime as I can at night with a laser, pass through night vision, and with a gas mask. which has never been done before because you ever shooting a gas mask? No, it's a nightmare. You can't get a cheek weld, the optic's not high enough,

you can't see anything, and then trying to look through actual tubes when it's on the rail line, you can't get your head articulated over to shoot through it. So we just used nothing but lasers. So I knew what they wanted. Went back and sketch that out, and then as a brand started going,

got more popular on social media, the product line launched, those started the cell, dealer networks grew, media team grew, operations grew, fulfillment grill, all those things. And yeah, then I went on a Sean Ryan podcast, and the whole thing exploded. They went from a handful of employees to 30, 40 pretty quick.

And now we're just trying to grow all the verticals. So we had Vernon, he was my strength coach right when I was retiring. He'd been with him for seven years now, never missed a session. He came inside, so we opened up the GBROS performance program with him. It's essentially just my personal program. We just opened it up for everybody else. Got a fitness vertical. Soft goods, hard goods,

so belt, tactical nylon, gear, Patreon subscription does really well. I love that. That built its own little ecosystem, its own little community. So it's all the behind the scene stuff. We get on monthly Zoom calls and there's tier access into it.

We started hosting special events. So three-day shooting courses just for Patreon. And we did that because we were trying to buy down the risk. Like after the Chris Kyle stuff and a lot of this stuff, you start getting popular on social media. How do I get these guys to a background check? How do I know they're not psychopaths? How do I know they actually want to train?

They just don't want to come out and hurt somebody. Like, how do you do all that? Get them in a last room. Start talking to them. Start DMing back and forth. And you build some really intimate connections with a bunch of these people. And then you have a training course. So when they come down there, there's 25 of them.

I legit know all 25 of you. Now it's super cool. They've got personal report with us, with all the cadre, all the staff. So now it feels like a big family reunion. Now we just train for three days. Started swapping us out. We added in courses, you know, one day pistol, one day rifle.

Next day is live tissue medical training. We'll do high speed driving, marksmanship. We'll bring out SEAC tactical group, knife fighting, blade work, all the different stuff to try to force guys the opportunity to be well-rounded. We had in fitness every single morning with it,

then we shrunk them down. We got a mobile training team knocking out CQB and flat range for SWAT teams, seal teams, all the tactical teams in between. Knocking all of those dealers from here to Poland everywhere in between. And it's been great, man. But it's been a lot harder than I thought it would be. It sounds like a lot going on.

Oh, there's a ton going on. Yeah. And now we're finally at the point where you can see where we need to really invest the time and energy into. But there's so many things happening at the exact same time. I feel like I'm just sitting in front of a drum set. It's like fitness. soft goods

hard goods oh my god training oh my god oh my god podcast back and forth back and forth like how do I do all this stuff but we've been super fortunate man

davis run the brand team got his brother running all of operations now and soft goods so you sit in a room we drop out a piece of content we'll pull out a snippet hard to kill we'll do a whole soft goods collection

with that run off products off that it helps connect the audience to us I'm about the most normal dude you'll ever meet. When you build that rapport on social, we were talking about last night. Like, they know you. It's no secrets to me. I've fucked this whole thing up, dude.

But I just, I want you to be better than me. I want you to exceed your own standard because now that I've seen a performance plan, it's so easy to maintain. You just have to live it. I just want everybody to be better than you were yesterday. That's essentially the essence of GBRS, what it is now. got a bunch of different verticals trying to do them at high levels and trying to collaborate with people that are doing those things at a high level. But really try to prop people up on a pedestal wherever you can.

A lot of stuff the guys overseas, guys we've got to train with. There's no fanfare for those guys. You see a lot of these countries in Europe, kids don't grow up wanting to be of service because they've been so cloak and dagger for so long that they don't even know that's an option. It becomes an afterthought. Like they join the army out of necessity and then they find out of like, oh my God, there's a special. lies units that I could have been training for this whole time. And oh my God, my grandfather was in a unit. I had no idea.

So we try to give credit where credit is due. All the guys we work with put them on a pedestal. Like tell their people how amazing 2-2S-S are. They have no idea because nobody ever talks about it. They're exquisite, dude. Try to do that. I love that. It's super cool.

It's super humbling. But again, man, it is so much harder than being in the military. It just is. I had no idea. I thought it was going to be sunshine and rainbows. And we'll build another team room. We'll build a gym. We'll be trained.

Like, be easy. No, brother, hardest thing ever done. By far. What goes back to, you don't get to focus on us or the craft, you are now the logistics manager of, so everyone else can focus on their craft.

That's what makes it so challenging as you scale and grow. It's more logistics. It's more overhead. It's more verticals. It's more things. And saying no is. it's something we have to get better at doing. I'm the worst at it.

I'll stop whatever I'm doing. They'll run upstairs. Like, hey, there's some kid downstairs. He drove here from Minnesota. No phone call, and he just wants to know if he could meet you. Yep. I walk downstairs two and a half hours later, walking through this tour, getting to work, whatever.

Like, I have to stop doing that. I learned that the hard way. I didn't say no. I used to set zero boundaries. and then I found it, it started wearing on my family and my ability to show up for the deal of my life. So I've gotten really good, in my opinion, at setting hard boundaries, even when I don't want to.

Like, as much as I want to say yes to this, I've got to say no. And it's made a big difference. Even for us, like opportunities. Everything sounds great. And you're like, oh, that sounds great, let's do that. You don't really realize logistics to pull that thing off. man we dug herself in a hole with this one oh yeah and at what point you go up this isn't even worth it just shoot it and had to be done with it you have a hard time what's kind of

we were talking about last night i heard um there's this podcast have you heard of the founder's podcast david senra and i forget what founder he was he was talking about who said this I think it was the guy who created this popular vacuum brand. And the guy referred to himself, this founder as the anti-business billionaire. Because there's entrepreneurs, there's brand builders, and then there's business people.

I'm not a business person. I'm a brand builder. I love bringing people together to go chase down a mission. I don't like to look at the numbers or don't care about the numbers. It's a feel. It's exactly how you described about walking this building. Like, there's a feel.

It either has it or it doesn't. And that's what keeps me in this fight. I'm a brand builder. I'm not a business person. Same. I've been saying it forever. And I think, you know, we were talking about it last night. The issue trying to bring big corporate over is they don't understand it's a brand.

Like they look at it and it's like, well, you sell the most of this. So you're a product company. It's like, no, not a product company. It's a brand. It's a culture. It's a cult. It can be whatever you want to be, but it's not a product company.

You can't look at it like it's a product company because there's so many intangibles with it. It just is. I'm here to change people's lives. I don't care about top line, bottom line. I don't care. I'm never chasing a number. And I think that's one of the reasons we've been so successful

is we've been trying to be bought a bunch and not just actually bought like, hey, run this product exclusively. We'll pay you X amount of money. No. Why? Because I fucking hate that product. He's like, well, we'll pay you this.

much. I don't, I'm not chasing dollars, man. I'm not coin operated. And a lot of people in business hate that. Like, well, so-and-so does it. I don't care what so-and-so does. I'm not shooting it. I'm not wearing it. I'm not drinking it. I'm not smoking it. No. But we'll pay you money. I don't care about money. I care about a feeling. If I don't like it. And I mean, but it keeps you true. Keep you honest. And it helps you avoid a lot of stuff you normally wouldn't do. Me and Vernon were talking about it. Like, what saw a picture was like, uh, Sophia Everga holding a pair of sketchers. Gorgeous, right next to her face.

Like, do you think she wears sketches? No. How much money would it cost you to wear that? I'm not because I don't wear sketches. I'm not going to. I'll give you half million dollars to do that. No. Everybody's got a price at some point,

but I'm not going to tell you I wear that shoe and I don't. If you just want to take my photo holding it, yeah, maybe we'll talk about that. But I'll be completely honest. Some people can't understand that. Yeah. Like with this podcast, for example, we don't monetize this podcast.

And we'll talk to people at these podcast networks. They're like, how much you guys pulling in on this podcast? Like, oh, we don't monetize it. We don't run any ads. What do you mean? You don't run any ads.

Yeah, we don't run any ads. We don't monetize it. Well, then why do you do it? Well, we do it because it helps people and it provides value, which should be the reason of doing it. Once you start focusing on the money, like I've watched people who turn this passion of a show into a money grab and they monetize it.

and you can just watch the passion in their eyes turn off overnight. When you start chasing the dollar, it changes the whole mission of everything you're doing. And I've got to learn it the hard way at certain intersections and parts of my life. And when you focus on the mission, you focus on the people, you focus on providing value, it all ends up working out in your favor. Same. Man, when you're starting out there, it's hard. Oh, it's so hard.

Yeah, especially when you see. true money coming in. I mean, you talked about it. I'm going to scrape them by 20 grand a year for several years back to back. It's like, man, if I signed a $100,000 a year deal with this company, like you could change the face of the company,

nah, you become a slave to it. Like, I don't want to drink that. Like, oh, you owe me X amount of social posts and months. Like, well, brother, we're not doing that. No, I'm not going to change the face, the company's social media so I can drink Coca-Cola. Brother, I'm not doing that. Yeah.

No. But it keeps true to yourself. It does. And that is. that provides sustainability and longevity. I started creating the fitness content in 2014. The fitness industry was a whole lot different. And a lot of people that I started creating with back in 2014

aren't doing this stuff anymore. They sold out. They chased the dollar. Our growth was a whole lot slower. I watched people early on fly by me and explode. I was, man, what am I doing wrong? And now I'm like, oh, what do we do right?

Yeah. If it's playing the long game. Playing the long game. But as I heard you described in the way you guys built GBRS last night at dinner, I related to a lot of that. Because a lot of the investments you make, a lot of decisions, they don't make any financial sense. But like you just have this gut intuition and feel of this feels right.

We're just going to keep depositing to what feels right in hopes that it pays off in the end. In most cases it does. Sometimes you're going to miss, but you'll feel better about the way you build it. For sure. Yeah, I've been saying that forever, man. I'm not chasing a dollar amount.

Chasing a feeling. Like, I want to wake up in the morning and just be so content with the work we've done. The lives we change, the products we've made, the stories we've told, whatever. I want to wake up and go, this is now the true north. I wake up every day as a representative of this thing.

because I put it above myself. Makes you feel better, man. It's so hard when you're tied to it financially. Like, oh, I got these investors now. I got this. Like, I have to. Man, I can't do this. I mean, what's the ROI?

Well, we got a feeling like, rather, no, nope, we are in debt up to our eyeballs. Like, we have to have a true ROI established. You can't do one. How are you going to do it? The whole thing's based off a hunch, based off a gut feeling, off intuition, off experience and all the intangibles that you can't quantify.

So now you're not comfortable. Yeah, well, this is how it is. It's this tough balance of being financial responsible, but also not letting the data and the finances drive all the decisions. And it's his dance. It's art and science. It's like, I have to just say no to certain things because if I said yes, it'd be financially irresponsible.

But sometimes I say yes to things that make zero financial sense. But I know it's the right thing. do. But that's what makes visionaries and entrepreneurs and founders, visionaries, entrepreneurs and founders. It's that ability to take massive risk and being okay that none of it works out. It's hard to do when you're starting though. God, dude. Distress level. I made so many mistakes. I lost so much money, but I never sweat any of it. It's part of it. Yeah, man, as long as you get revenue coming in. You can lose it here. You can lose it there. You need diversify the portfolio. You're like, you're good. Like, I can lean all in on this one thing. Oh, I didn't hit all the way.

Okay. At least we tried it. Yeah. Do we really go all in? Yeah. Okay. Well, it's not working. Shooting ahead, be done with it. Close it out. We've done that with. We've done with performance brands and all this other stuff to them. Like, this just ain't working. Manufacturing's not there. The cut and still is not there. Let's just be done with this. Cool. Kill it. Done. Next. A lot of people just hold on to it. It's a lot of ego pushes. Like, no, like I'm going all in on this one thing. At a certain point, you have to realize it's not working.

Make a different plan, dude. Let's go around the backside. Yeah, kill what's not working. Yeah, this isn't working anymore. Let's kill this. Let's do this. Yeah, be quick to pivot. Be nimble, quick to pivot.

Well, I love what you guys are building. I love what you're doing it. It's got a unique look and feel, very well branded. And I wish you guys massive. of continued success. You too, man. This is one of those things coming out here and seeing it. You're always trying to chase someone.

I'm always looking for a mentor, a role model, somebody a little bit further down the path than you. You can just see them turning the corner like, okay, I'm still going to the right direction. Coming here, it looks like that. I was able to talk to the Jim Shark crew a little bit a few weeks ago because we hosted our race at the ranch, and their chief brand officer was there,

their creative director was there. I mean, they're on the way of doing $2 billion in revenue a year. But it was so refreshing to have a conversation with them of hearing the story of where they started and what they went through and even the problems they're experiencing today. And as a brand that is much smaller, seeing yourself in their previous shoes or even their current shoes, it's reaffirming of, okay, we're not that far off.

and everyone's got these problems. We have the opportunity to sit in the circle with some other founders of much larger brands than us. Huge. And I found that no matter what size you are, you go through the same problems. It's branding, it's people, it's marketing, it's new customer acquisition. Those are always going to be problems, but they're also just opportunities. And they never go away. And as soon as I was able to accept that, it made the job a whole lot less stressful.

There's just scales and levels to it. Levels to everything. Yeah, I got a really good mentor now. He said thousands of employees, all these businesses, taking companies public and all that. He's like, it's the same thing. He's like, just at a bigger scale. Like you think Elon Musk isn't doing with us? Of course he is.

I just did a way bigger scale. Everybody has the exact same issues, man. Yeah. But again, it's no different. building an assalter or building a Steph Curry, if you set the foundation, you stack with great people and a great culture. You can withstand all of that bullshit. Consistently. Consistently.

Because the right people in the building, man, magic unlocks. Okay. Google does it. Amazon does it. Tesla does it. All these are the massive brands. They do the exact same thing. They hold a super high standard.

They try to lock in all logistics, try to pack in the best performers, and make them all row in the same direction. It's the same thing. Man, I'll tell you, when you're building that ship on the high seas, brother, it feels. unsteady. Oh, completely. Like, I mean, completely. I didn't know, I don't know anything. Nothing. Like, none of, we were talking about

last night at dinner, none of this is part of the plan. None of this. This is one massive pivot. We were supposed to be no more than five people. Essentially, four guys teaching CQB, jumping and shooting, maybe one person in finance. We were never going to do soft goods, never going to make products, never.

No subscription. We were basically going to open up on Instagram. YouTube was an afterthought. like all that stuff. There's no business plan. We just keep pivoting. Commit to the pivot. Commit. It's not working.

Kill it. Go around. That's what makes entrepreneurs successful. The ability to pivot really hard, really fast, when it's needed, instead of staying stuck and getting shot down. Yeah.

I mean, we talked about it last night too. Like, so many people, they spend years crafting this amazing plan. I could have never done that. Never. I would have been so.

so committed to the plane that if it wouldn't work, I just would have ran into the ground. It's almost better that, you know, you stepped in a ring with Mike Tyson. You just getting smacked and you're like, okay, well, he's not killing me. I'm eventually just going to figure this thing out. It's like, I'm just trying to survive, trying to survive. And eventually it ends. You're like, I've got a ton of experience from that beating. I'll be better prepare for the next one.

Yeah. Better prepare for the next one. Right. Okay, we weather that storm. What's the next one? Oh, man. What about this one? You just keep coming, dude.

No, it's great, man. You've got an amazing facility. You've got a sick team stoked on your success. I appreciate you sharing it. Not a lot of people do. Like, they get in there, they build a massive brand, they do whatever, and they kind of just become a recluse. Like, they don't want to tell the story,

they don't want to talk about their failures, their successes, all that stuff. It's just super nice to see. I appreciate it. And in fact, you had a good transition on the military. Good for you. Oh, thank you. Mine was terrible.

I found that the failures are more fun to talk about than successes. Because they're more relatable. Yeah. You come in here and it's like everybody expects everybody to be like, Mr. Beast, like, brother, it's significantly harder than anything. Absolutely. Well, DJ, I appreciate you, man. Yeah, man. I appreciate you. Looking forward to standards today. All right, thanks, man.