The School of Greatness - 574 Earn Your Confidence with Jason Khalipa

Episode Date: December 11, 2017

"You’ve gotta have something really deep inside your heart to compete in whatever you’re doing.” Many people dream of being a champion. Whether it’s in a sport or business, it takes dedication and time. My guest today, Jason Khalipa, is a man who has mastered both. He’s a CrossFit champion many times over, and opened his own successful chain of gym. He’s taken the time to push his element in all areas of life, and really take the time to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. This skill had become so much more valuable when his daughter was diagnosed with one of the scariest diseases I can think of - Leukemia. Jason paused his life has a champion to step into his most important role - being a father. With his high school sweetheart by his side he’s been helping his daughter fight the illness with health, diet, and the most important ingredient of love. Through all of this Jason has still managed to continue to grow his amazing gym business, making sure every person who walks through the doors of one of his gyms is treated with loyalty and appreciation. If you want to learn what it takes to be a champion, successful in business, and a role model family man you need to listen to Episode 574. Some Questions I ask: You married your high school sweetheart, is that right? (6:38) Does your wife help you in your business now? (10:19) Is it harder to run a successful family life or making it to the podium at the CrossFit Games? (11:14) What’s the best thing that’s happened (from the situation)? (17:27) How do you think being a top competitor has helped and hurt you in business? (22:17) What’s surprised you about what the human body is capable of doing? (26:00) What are your thoughts on athletes who dedicate their life to something and then an injury or retirement happens? (33:40) What do you do on a daily basis to try and retain members? (39:47) How are you teaching your children about keeping a healthy mindset? (40:53) What’s something most people don’t know about you that might shock them? (47:38) Things you will learn: What it’s like to go from nothing to champion with your partner (8:29) The mindset of being a top competitor and champion (18:43) The biggest lesson Jason learned about himself after his daughter was diagnosed with Leukemia (14:56) Jason’s deeper reasoning for doing this (19:26) The best thing someone can do to support someone that is going through a hard time (23:32) The keys to building a successful gym (37:26) The AMRAP mentality (43:00) Plus much more...

This is episode number 574 with CrossFit Games World Champion, Jason Kalipa. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Alexander Graham Bell said to concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus.

Welcome to today's episode. We've got the legendary Jason Kalipa in the house, who is the owner of NC Fit, a fitness company specializing in community based functional fitness. And NC Fit has six commercial locations and 14 additional corporate sites worldwide. Jason also competed professionally in the sport of CrossFit for eight years, winning the world championships in 2008, naming him the fittest man alive, and named to Team USA three times, and also placing in the top five, five more times at the CrossFit Games. No small feat to accomplish. He also married his high school sweetheart, Ashley, and the couple has two children, Ava and Caden.

And in January 2016, Jason retired from competing in CrossFit when his daughter Ava was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of four. And in this interview, we talk about a number of different things from his athletic career to what it was like when his daughter was diagnosed with leukemia to how he builds his fitness empire. And we really talk about how to build a life and business with your partner starting from nothing. When they both had nothing, how do you build the relationship and also how do you build a business in that relationship? Also, why it's important to check in daily

on how you performed in all areas of your life. Why it's important to get comfortable being uncomfortable. I know when I did CrossFit, it was pretty much every single day. It was miserable on how uncomfortable it was competing, working out, and training. Also, how to best support someone going through a tough challenge. So when someone in your life is going through some type of extreme adversity, how do you

connect to them? How do you relate to them? How do you show up for them? We talk about that. And the difference between earned and perceived confidence. Some people tell you, fake it till you make it, but that's not really earned, is it? So we talk about the difference and how to get that earned confidence. Super excited about this one. Before we dive in, shout out to our fan of the week from Nicole Ruth, who said, where do I even begin? This podcast,

Lewis's message, and the lessons shared by all the amazing people interviewed will change your life if you put it into action. On the days I'm lacking motivation, this podcast keeps me going. You cannot listen to this and not learn something and hopefully become a better version of yourself. I know I certainly have. If you want advice on how to become a better business person,

improve your relationships, grow spiritually, become physically healthier, prosper financially, and so much more, then listen to The School of Greatness. So Nicole Ruth, thank you so much for your review over on iTunes. You are the fan of the week. We appreciate you, and it means the world to us for listening and supporting the podcast. And if you want a chance to be shouted out on the podcast as a fan of the week, then make sure to go to your podcast app right now and leave a review or just go to iTunes and leave a review on the School of Greatness podcast. All right, without further ado, let's bring him on, the one, the only, Jason Kalipa. Welcome everyone to the School of Greatness. We have the legendary CrossFit champion,

Jason Kalipa in the house, my man. How are you doing? Good, good, good. It's good to see you. Thank you very much for having me on. Yeah, we just met 30 minutes ago for the first time, but I've known who you are for a decade now. Eight years since the CrossFit Games when I first got into it. I heard about it through Graham Holmberg, a mutual friend of ours who you've competed with many times. I'm not sure how well you know him,

but you guys have competed a lot against each other. So I've always seen you on TV with the games or at the games and you've been in the top five. What, how many times in the top five of the games? I want to say six, six. You lose count after it's, you know, two times, right? Yeah. You won it in 2008. You also have a number of gyms, CrossFit gyms worldwide. You have thousands of members and you also have, you married your high school sweetheart. Is that right? That's right. Yeah. We met when we were a freshman in high school. Wow. Funny story about that. So I get to high school and I meet this girl, her name, well, my wife, her name's Ashley. To me, we hit it off. Right. And so I'm like, oh man,

her dad's from Iran. My dad's from Iran. So she's half Persian. I'm half Persian. I'm like, oh, man, this is perfect. So I go home. I'm like, hey, I met the woman of my dreams. I'm a barrier. That's a freshman. That's a freshman. And so long story short, we get together.

We start dating, right? Life's good. And then two weeks later, she dumps me. And I thought, like, the world was going to end. And she told me the reason why she dumped me was because I was too nice. So we became friends for the next year. We got together beginning of sophomore year, and then we've been together ever since. So I have officially been with her longer than I've not been with her because I'm 32 and I got with her at 15. Isn't this interesting though, that a woman tells you you're too nice and want going to break up with you yeah and and some guys

might say to themselves okay in order to be in a relationship with the girl of my dreams i need to be a mean or i need to like treat her poorly or i need to like be this other person yeah i think what it was for her and again you're freshmen you're just learning yeah of course i think i was putting on a front right like i was like overly like overly nice. Like, oh, you know, let me carry, you know, not just chivalrous, but like over the top nice. And I think for her, she wanted to be a little bit more of like. Relaxed.

Or like play a little bit of hard to get. Don't make it so easy all the time. Sure, sure. But again, we were. You're 14. You have no clue what you're doing. We had no idea. Yeah, of course.

Nowadays, life's a lot different. But you know, nowadays she's awesome. So what's that like?, marrying your high school sweetheart and then going into being a CrossFit athlete to building business? All these things you guys have been doing together from nothing, it sounds like, to building everything you've built.

It's been an awesome ride with a great partner. She's never been one to hold me back from what we want to try and accomplish. And she's always tried to keep me grounded on all the different things in life. You know, we have two children together. One of them was diagnosed with leukemia not too long ago. And so she's been my partner through everything. And so early on, actually, I'll give you a story about her.

So that summarizes her really well. So we met in high school. We ended up going to college. She went to San Clea University. I went to a junior college for two years. We met back up at San Cleans University. We graduated together. But during that time, we were still together.

It was all good. And we actually were living together. And we lived at this place called Santan Row in San Jose. I knew she was the one for me when during the summer, I did this thing called a Wii hustle. And so what I found was, or not during the summer, before Christmas time. So I was trying to buy a Wii just to buy a Wii, a Nintendo Wii, right? And I looked online or I looked at the stores and they were always sold out, sold out, sold out. I'm like, what the hell is going on? And so come to find out, I go on Craigslist and they're selling

for a premium of like 50%, 100%, whatever. I'm like, wow, these things are really going big. So what I would do is I would call Best Buy. I'd find out when they're getting a shipment. I'd go sit in line like at 4 or 5 a.m. And I'd go buy one or two. And then I'd go sell it on Craigslist and make a profit, right? Well, then she started partnering with me. So her and I, we lived at Santana Brothers, a Best Buy in the same shopping center.

We would just wake up early, go there, stand in line. We each were able to buy one. And then after that, we started then hiring people to wait in line with us because you were only allowed to buy one at a time right and i knew when she was like dedicated to that grind like she would wake up four or five in the morning instead of going out partying in college i was like man this girl's got some aspirations and she took that money she's like jason i want you to tell me what i'm gonna do with this money this is my money and she went downstairs and bought some shoes from wherever she bought them from. And that's her decision. Amazing. Now, does she help you with your

business as well now? Or is she supportive in the whole CrossFit gyms and everything else? Or is she doing something else? Yeah. So when we got married in 2009 and she worked with me at the business, I opened the gym in 2008. She worked with me in the business from 2008, 2009, helped out a lot of different things. In 2011, we had our daughter. And so when she got pregnant, she kind of stopped helping the business side. And so she's just, for the while, she's been a mom. With Ava getting sick now, she's been extremely dedicated to philanthropic work, which we were talking about earlier. And so she hosts this annual event called Ava's Kitchen. And so that's like her calling now. So she hasn't had to work for a lot of years because she's been working in the home,

which is a very challenging job to all the ladies out there. It's nonstop. And so for Ava's Kitchen, that's what she's really dedicated to from a business side. I'm curious, what do you think it's harder to run? A successful marriage, family life that's like fulfilled and happy and, you know, obviously with everything that happens or making it to the podium of the CrossFit Games? What's harder? Well, I'll tell you, in both situations, there's a lot of things you can't control. And so understanding what you can't control, what you can't control is really important. Like on the podium, I can't control what my competitors are going to do, but I can just

control how much work I put in. It puts me in the best position to be on the podium, right? I don't know what the events are going to be and that's, it is what it is. In relationships, it is kind of the same thing. You don't necessarily know the unforeseen circumstances that may come up where your daughter may get leukemia or certain things come up in life, right? But I think what you can do is you could, as a couple or as a family, have good communication to put you in the best position to take on those challenges. So my wife and I have very open and honest conversations, especially after Ava got sick. It became even deeper that we would have these date nights all the time. We were super blessed to have family around, so they watch our children. But I think by us taking an active approach

to trying to talk through problems before they become bigger issues, just being aware that our relationship is number one, because if our relationship isn't, it'll ruin the kid's relationship too. So we really try to make our relationship first. And so understanding what's in our control is just having good talks, having date nights. Like in the hospital, for example, we were there for about two months, maybe longer. And once things kind of calmed down a little bit, we would take an active approach to at night, each night, go out, grab a drink, wine, margarita,

depending on how the day went, and then come back to the hospital room. And that was our way to kind of go out, have adult conversations so we could not let anything fester. Right, right, wow, interesting. What is more challenging for you than successful relationship, family life, or building a successful business? You know, I've been fortunate that I found a really good wife and our kids are awesome. So

I've been really blessed that I found the right woman. I know that for a number of reasons, but primarily because after our daughter got sick, the way she responded to it was just inspiring, right? You never know how someone's going to react to a negative situation when you meet them when you're 14. Right, exactly. And so the way she responded to it was incredible. And so I'm very lucky. Now on the business side, I've been lucky too. We've been able to hire some really great people who have been able to do some amazing things that allow me to go off and go do other things. And so I think in both situations, it's just having an honest conversation with yourself on what are you good at? What are you not good at? And identifying people to come in and help support other areas, just like you and

your team. You have skills in specific areas, networking, different things, whereas other guys, like for example, I'm not very good at finance. couple years ago i was tripping the only way i knew our business was making money was if our bank account was increasing dollars on a monthly reoccurring basis right and i mean it wasn't a small business and we're talking a lot of revenue yeah and i just realized one night i'm like this is not a good way to run a business and so hired a cfo and a good friend of mine and did our thing there you go different stress different stress so i mean what's harder business competing or family they're all the same in the sense that and a good friend of mine and did our thing. There you go. Different stress. Different stress. So, I mean, what's harder, business, competing, or family?

They're all the same in the sense that all of their challenges and their benefits is just, I think, taking a step back sometimes and reflecting on how well you're doing at each fast. It's really important. At night, what I try and do is I try and reflect, like, hey, how did I do today on being a husband, maintaining my fitness or competing per you know, per se. And then, you know, growing the business.

And if at night I'm like, hey, here I am in L.A., you know, me and Louis, and I didn't spend as much time with my children. Tomorrow, let's try and spend a little bit more time with the kids because today I was in L.A. Yeah, of course. Right? And just balancing it out. Yeah. What would you say is the biggest lesson you've learned about yourself since your daughter going through this challenge she's facing? That's a really good question.

I would say that I learned a lot about myself in terms of where my commitments lie, right? That I gave up competing. I focused on the family. So once that happened, you heard the news about your daughter. You gave up. You stopped competing then, right? Yeah. So I competed as an individual for seven years. So once that happened, you heard the news about your daughter. You gave up. You stopped competing then, right? Yeah.

So I competed as an individual for seven years. And then as the business grew and the family grew, because we have two children, I made the decision to go team. Then we went team. And then that was in 2015. In 2016, she was diagnosed. And it was an easy decision. Easiest decision I've ever made in my entire life. It was just like, shoot, I'm not going to go spend four hours a day trading.

I need to go. I need to do this. And so I think I learned about myself is that it taught me that I was able to man up, be about my family, be about something more important than myself. And that makes me feel like I did the right thing, which I would never have done anything different. But it feels good to know that I did it. Would you have made that decision it was 2009, 2010, when you were just getting started and same thing happened? You have eight years of like, okay, I've done it all. Yeah. That's a tough one to say, but I would say, yeah, probably. Could you have done both? I don't know if you could have done both. When you're competing, your head has to be in it. And if your head's not in it, you're not going to perform well.

And you got to have a strong internal why of why you're doing it. And for me, for years, I had a strong reason to do it. I was motivated. But once your daughter gets so sick that it's a life and death situation, there's nothing more important. Like at that moment in time, everything else just goes into this. You get this moment of clarity where it's just like, you know, I became a subject expert in leukemia, specifically ALL, because that's all I cared about. And if I was out, you know, thinking about walking on my hands at the CrossFit Games, instead of thinking about what is the best treatment plan for my daughter, then shame on me. And so that taught me a lot about that. But, you know, her

treatment plan has really taught me a lot about family, taught me a lot about commitment and this whole idea that, you know, growing up, my mom and dad, if they're still together, it's great. And my mother-in-law and my father-in-law, they're separated, but they have a great relationship together. And just watching the family support every day at the hospital just raised the bar for what I want to do in the future with our family, right? It's made me more connected to our family. It's made us want to get together more often. And those are blessings that I would never, I mean,

I would want to give up this experience, but the fact that this experience has occurred, there's a lot of good things happened. Yeah, of course. What's the best thing that's happened? I mean, I would say just learning more about my wife, learning how much of a badass she is, which I already knew, finding out who your true friends, your family are. And I'd say the most important thing that I found is just kind of this concept of just being easy about stuff and just realizing that at the end of the day, it's not that big of a deal, that whatever you have going on, it's not that big of a deal because we've seen so much worse. I've seen so much worse. Not life or death. No. I mean, when you spend as much time in the hospital as I have, when you've seen kids just,

it's so sad. It's so sad that, let's just say I have an issue that comes up. I need to take a step back and reflect. Every time an issue comes up, I'm just like, hey, look, we're not in the hospital. Life's good. This is, on the scale of one to 10, is not a 10. And so that's what it's taught me is that there's always someone out there who's going through a major struggle. And it also teaches me too, to be more compassionate towards other people. You never know what they have going on. You see someone freaking out, but you don't know the background. You don't know what's going on in their life, right? They might've just left whoever knows. So I became a different person, became more compassionate, became more, I get teary eyed every blue moon now before i was just stone cold yeah yeah you

know but uh so those are those are the kind of things i've had of course tell me about the mindset of being a top competitor and a champion what does it take to reach the top whether it's a crossfit games for you or anything but to get there and then maintain being in the top five for many years because just staying on the podium is really challenging in itself consistently right let alone what froning did you know he's a machine but yeah just getting there and staying there what is that what do you think about every single day when you're in that mentality well i think for me it's and and everybody should relate to this is that you gotta have a strong internal reason why you're doing whatever you're doing. And I think sometimes people have this concept of like, hey, I want to go to the cross games as an example

or whatever your goal may be, but they don't have something deeper to fall back on. What was your reasoning? For me, it was that I loved to train. And I still today, like this morning before I got on a plane to come here early, I train in my garage. And then I just got done training before I came here, not because I have to, but because I feel better. I feel good. I train in my garage and then I just got done training before I came here. Not

because I have to, but because I feel better. I feel good. I get energized. And so I have quote unquote an addiction to training, right? Which, hey, you know what? There's probably worse things, right? What it was was it wasn't so much I was training to compete. I was training because I loved it and competition was just a way for me to express that and just see how I stacked up against other people. It was also an opportunity for me to kind of like give myself a little check and see like, hey, you're going to step up to the plate. You're going to get uncomfortable.

You're going to push yourself to get against your, you know, go against comfort. And that's one of the reasons why. So I competed in a jujitsu competition like maybe a year ago. And that was one of the reasons why I did it. I just told myself, I never want to get in this setup

where I'm comfortable in everything I'm doing, whether that be business, family, or competing. And so the CrossFit Games were a really cool way for me to just really get comfortable with uncomfortable. And little did I know that how much that would play a factor towards like Ava's diagnosis and how all these challenging

times in my life where I've passed out on a run before I've, I've had all these passed out on a run. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So, you know, in 2009, I just, just passed out. I mean, just literally just passed out. It was just on the hill. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. That was a nasty hill. In the middle of the run, you just passed out. You took last place. Yeah. I got back up and I finished the event, but that was also some of the rewarding times, right? It's only through these moments of discomfort. It's only through these moments of just like really tough that it's your time to kind of like check in and be like, Hey, am I going to make it through this? Or am I going to just go ahead and give up? Right? Like with you in football, I'm sure there's been times where it's been a challenging situation. You push through and then later on you reflect like, man,

you know, my back was up against the wall. I went out there and we won the game or whatever happens. Same thing happened in the CrossFit games, right? I've had a lot of challenging situations, had a lot of great situations. But when you look back on them and you reflect like, man, like that was cool to kind of like see that I was able to establish a deeper internal reason to do this and push through. And all the social media followers and money in the world won't get you to that point, right? You got to have something really deep inside your heart to compete in whatever you're doing. And I really believe that. I mean, I get emails every day from people who want to compete in something or do something. The first thing I'd ask them is like, you know, is this a good time in your life to do this? Are you qualified to do it? Are you et cetera,

et cetera, et cetera. But also also, do you have a strong reason? Because when you're 10 reps away from finishing the event and someone over there has a similar fitness as you but has a strong, deep why, whether it's they believe that God has given them a talent, for example, or like froning as an example, or another reason, they're going to be able to push harder if you don't have something.

Right. You've got to have some type of internal belief. Right. Reasoning. Why? Yeah, exactly. How do you think being a top competitor has supported you in business or hurt you in business? And is the things you learn from sports or CrossFit helped you build your business the way you have?

Yeah. I mean, if you look at, like, we were talking about Mark Cuban's sport of business and I look at business as a sport as well. And once I stopped competing in CrossFit, I really, and I've always looked at kind of the business side as a, as a sport, right? Where you never know who your competitors are going to be, but they're always coming at you. Someone's trying to take you down. Cause if you're industry leading, there's someone coming after you. And so it's kind of cool because you always have to be on your toes, right? It's kind of like this competition of business. And so I think the competition of CrossFit really helped the business with notoriety and things of that

nature, added credibility. But what it really did was I'm a firm believer that if you're able to wake up early in the morning, go in the gym, push yourself, you're probably going to do really great things throughout the duration of your day. I think fitness is a great great correlate for that and i think anybody who isn't doing at least something whether it be a 10 minute walk or whatever is missing out on something because of how good you feel and how it just creates this mindset for the rest of the day just go crush it and so that's what really helped me do sure what would you say is the best thing that people can do to support someone when they're going through a hard time? When someone's daughter has leukemia, when they're going through some sickness or some challenge or

a business is failing and it's going bankrupt, what do you think has worked for you when people have come to you and supported you? Was there something they said? Was there something they did? Was there something they didn't say that really allowed you to rise up in that time of challenge? What someone could do? I mean, it's a really good question. Just seeing someone's support is, I think, all that really matters. And genuine support, not for any desire of any other outcome, right? Like, I have mentors who support me because they see what I think they see is they see a passion and a hustle in me that inspires them.

And they want to just help out to be on that train with me. And that's what gets me excited is that these guys aren't looking for anything to get out of it. They're just literally inspired by my inspiration. And same thing like in the hospital. It's a little bit different, obviously. But that's more of like family, friends just being there and present i said this before when i was talking to rich froney is that one of the things that i'll remember for the rest of my life is that after my daughter got sick we were in the hospital for a while we went home for a couple days we went

back for a while and we were in the icu for a while and it wasn't good but every single day my father-in-law was there every day. Your father-in-law was there? Oh yeah. But he wouldn't even say he's there, right? And this is kind of cool when you talk about these moments or these mentors or whoever, where he didn't say anything. He just acted. And a lot of people want to talk and they don't really do anything. In his case, there was no talk. He showed up and didn't have to say anything. He just showed up at 6 a.m. every day would just walk out not shaving just feeling like crap you know because you're sleeping on like these whatever they are in the hustled room and i would just walk out and be like

well good morning jeff you'd be like what do you need from me and i'd just be like a coffee would be great you know and for him he's the kind of guy where he he felt like the way he contributed was from a monetary like like food, stuff like that. That was his- Acts of service or action. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of like in the Persian culture too. It's a lot of give, give foods. So yeah, so he would do that. And those are, I think, the memorable people for me, whether it's in business, family, fitness, it's when someone's contributing to you without any desire of anything back, but doing it because they truly care about you and what you have going on and for any reason.

Yeah, that's cool, man. That's very cool. What surprised you about what the human body is capable of doing? You've seen some extreme things in the CrossFit, just watching it on TV or being at the games. I'm just like, I don't know how you guys do this sometimes and how people are able to push themselves so far. I look at like CrossFit Games as an extreme physical challenge maybe compared to like running 150 miles in like the desert. It's like another type of challenge, completely different way of breaking the body down. But what does surprise you about what is possible for our bodies?

Yeah, I mean, for sure. The CrossFit Games, just as you noted, is one expression of this CrossFit thing. And I think what happens sometimes is there's a misunderstanding between the games and the everyday person. My mom comes into our gyms and we have gyms globally where we have people coming in at all ages,

all skill levels, and they could all participate in this group style class. Now, the CrossFit Games as an expression is crazy. I remember when I first got into it, I won the CrossFit Games doing like this 155 squat clean thruster workout. And basically what that is is you take the bar from the floor, you pull it to your shoulders, you then do like a squat down, you stand up and you press over your head. 155 pounds? Yeah. Wow. And at the time- How many reps? 30 for time.

And at the time, this blew people's minds. So meaning they turned into what's called- This guy's a freak. Right. They called it what's called a squat clean and jerk. So they would squat clean it, go down to a squat, stand up, reset- And then jerk it up. And then jerk it up.

And at the time, 155 was like unheard of for 30 reps. Now that workout, I did it recently at 225 pounds in roughly the same time, right? And it just shows how the bodies progress. And that's like a warmup for a lot of people now. It's crazy, right? And so what's really cool to see is how people thought that you can't be good at running and lifting. And they're kind of breaking down some of these historical, some of these myths that you can't have someone who could run a mid five minute mile and also back squat close to 500 pounds. When I kind of finished competing, I ran 540 mile and my back squat was 470. And so it's kind of cool to look at how you could be kind of fast in a mile,

and that's not world-class by any means. But that's a 1600, not 1500. Yeah. That's fast. And so what CrossFit's shown is that it's not trying to be really great at anything. It's trying to be good at everything. And what you're finding is that these guys

are just doing incredible feats of strength and conditioning, which is really cool to watch the human body. It's like the decathlon of fitness. Yeah. I was a decathlete in college, so it's like I was never the best at one thing. There's a couple of events I was really good at, and then the other events I was solid at.

Right. But I put together a performance over all 10 events that were solid. That's right. Same thing at the CrossFit Games, right? You can't have any zeros. You don't need that many wins. You just kind of got to stay consistent across all of them.

You can do well. And the athletes that we're seeing today are just… Freaks. Yeah, and I mean, and what they are, they're full-time. Who's the guy who won? Matt Frazier. Matt Frazier. He's like a mutant.

Oh, dude. He's a super cool guy. I actually was just with him in Cookville, Tennessee. He seems cool. I saw the documentary of the CrossFit stuff. He just seemed like a chill. Yeah's super chill hard you know he's been olympic weightlifting in his basement since he was 10 years old so his technique is probably just legit yeah and so people don't get it that's why like i get these calls it's like hey i want to go to the crossfit

game it's like oh okay how long you been training for a month when you want to go oh this year and it's like well guys like hang on let's take a step back for a second it takes a long time to develop these skills and i think whether it's in business or in fitness or whatever you want to get into you know there's something between the difference between earned confidence and just perceived confidence your handball like i was i was looking into it i was like i've never really heard of this form of handball right and i And I was like, I could have this perceived confidence. All I want to like go out there and play with you, but I haven't earned anything. So when I get out there, you know, it's all fake. Right. And so the same thing goes into building a business or fitness is you got to kind of have this earned confidence from years of dedication and training versus like this idea that you can

slap yourself in the face a few times, get pumped up and think you're going to go do something. How good is Matt compared to you now? Like, could you compete with him or is it like a whole different levels? Yeah. So I was just, I was just with him and froning two weeks ago. You guys were training together. Yeah. And how was that like? Well, I mean, it's cool. We're all in different stages, right? Like I'm kind of like the old retired guy. Yeah. Let's put it this way. I can still hold my own and keep moving, but I'm surely not going to be dominating situations. Do you think you can make the game still? Is it in a,

is you, if you trained like nine months this year? Oh, if I train, I don't know. I mean, that's hard to say. I'm apprehensive.

I'm never saying that kind of thing because unless you do it, you can't really say it. I would always hear people say like, oh yeah, I could have gotten a better time if I had been in this region. Well, it's like, well, if you weren't at that region and you didn't get a better time. So, you know, I think for me, the reality is if I really dedicated myself, I think I could perform well, but that's not something that I'm really desiring to do. You know, I want to, I want to go out there

and perhaps do the open and compete and have fun. But even past that, I just, it's not on my list of priorities right now because there's other things that I'm passionate about. I'm just saying hypothetically. Hypothetically, if I was really- If you said, I'm all in, like- If I'm all in- I'm good, everything's good here.

I decided to take one more year. Do you think you could? I think if I really dedicate myself, I could qualify. Right, right. Now, how well would I perform at the games? I'm not quite sure. Right, right. My body's been through a lot of beat-ups. Now, the regionals are perform at the games? I'm not quite sure.

My body's been through a lot of beat-ups. Now, the regionals are different than the games because it's not as much volume, but I think I could. Yeah, but who knows? But who knows? You could sprain an ankle or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you never know. Yeah, interesting.

But so this Matt Frazier guy, is he just like a whole nother level then? Or could you compete with him if you were like, we're at the top of your game right now? He's pretty dominant. He is, huh? Yeah. He's like, no one even comes close, right? Not right now. I mean, the thing about it is, and I have a lot of friends in the space, so I'm careful with the way I talk. But at the end of the day, so in 13 and 14, so I took second

in 13, Froning took first. I took third in 14. Frazier took second. Froning took first. How far apart were you from Froning on both those years? Really close on 13, not as close on 14. But after that, Froning retired and went team. And so Froning had some dominating performances, but he would always kind of come up on the final day. And he was just known as like,

he would do well, do well, do well. And then at the final day, just kind of like really solidify it, right? It was never so far out front that it was like unreachable, but towards the end of the, until the last day. You were like, oh, okay. Now Frazier, on the other hand,

he, for the last two years, has really established a win before even the final day of competition. The first day, he's like leading so far that you're like, oh man, it gets in people's minds where you're just like, I have to perform so much better tomorrow to try to just stay in the same pace. And then I've, so it's like almost mentally knocked people

out by dominating the first day. That's right. And he's really good, but he dedicates himself, right? I mean, he's a full time committed full time. That's it. And you know, him and I was just talking another day and back to the whole priorities and shifts. He's like, look, I'm not interested in having children or having anything else in my life until I'm finished competing because this is my sole focus. I eat, sleep, breathe, train. That's it. Cool. I got to give you credit for having that kind of mental clarity that that's the type of focus you want to have on it. And he's doing really well.

What's your thoughts on athletes in general who dedicate their life to something, their sport, and then injury, retirement, and transition happens? What is the biggest challenge for those athletes? And did you find a challenge in kind of retiring as an individual, then team, and then now that not being your identity? Really good question. And I think right now it's a really critical time in our sport, in the CrossFit sport. So you take football, right? Or you take these other avenues or even, I guess, any professional sport for that matter. These athletes, they get their paycheck, they get their paycheck, get their paycheck, and they're developing these skills of competing.

But I think it's important, especially in the CrossFit space, to show the rest of the world other skills that you have besides just fitness. And what I mean by that is that putting on seminars, educating, this way when the competition ends, you still have something you can go pursue.

And the competition simply allows you credibility. But now with that credibility from the competition, you're proving yourself as a subject material expert, which I think is really important. You know, like for you, people come and listen years ago because you proved yourself as an expert in networking these things. So, hey, I want to come learn from Lewis on how to do this. Well, in CrossFit, if you're using your social platforms and different things to promote how fast you're doing a workout, that's cool, and it might get attraction. But if you're promoting instead how you can elevate someone's mindset

or elevate someone's physical ability by teaching them something, I think after they're done competing, they'll have a much longer road. So when I finished competing, it was very easy for me. It was a very easy transition. Well, it wasn't easy because there was part of my identity that was still in CrossFit, just like with you in football. But it was easy because I had so many other things going on. My daughter was ill, still is. She gets done with treatment in four months, which is great. But the business was growing, and so I was able to focus on that. Sure. You got something else.

That's right. Yeah, you got something else. You've been building it. What do most fitness entrepreneurs miss out on in terms of building their business? You know, there's a lot of athletes who want to become fitness entrepreneurs. There's a lot of just fitness personalities out there on Instagram or just people who are trainers or coaches, things like that. What do you think they miss out on? What's missing for them to getting to the next level? Well, I mean, it just depends what avenue they're trying to pursue. If you're a personal trainer, how do you scale? If

you're a personal trainer and getting paid two, three, $500 an hour, that's great. But if you ever want to take a vacation, what's going to happen? When I was growing up throughout high school, I worked the front desk at a gym. Throughout college, I worked sales and it was great. I was my own boss in a sense. I was in charge of my own commission check. I would hustle, hustle, hustle, cold call, whatever, whatever, right? And I would try and make my paycheck. Now, if I wasn't at work though, I didn't get a paycheck. And so that was a blessing and a curse for me, but I learned at an early age that if you put in the hard work, you get paid. But I also knew that eventually I wanted to have a team

so I could be with my wife somewhere and not feel like I'm not losing any money. And so I think if you're a personal trainer, you gotta ask yourself the question, how do you scale your operation so you could have other people doing certain things so you could then go off and go do other things? And I think as a gym owner, it's that same conversation

where now you have your trainers that are there on the floor, you're doing your thing. But what's important is, again, to trust people to coach your classes so you could go out and build your business. Because if you're coaching every class all day, every day, who's out there trying to build it for you? And I think that's the biggest mistake that a lot of these professionals make is they're missing out on where's the growth trajectory and who's going to do it. And if you're not the guy to go out there and build a business, that's fine. If you want to be the face inside, then go find someone else who can go do it for

you. What would you say are a couple keys to building a gym membership? If someone's listening or watching right now and they have a gym or they want to launch a gym, what would you say are the three things that they should be focusing on knowing that they want to continue to grow and maintain that growth or yeah i mean i think they gotta decide what type of gym they want to open is a conventional gym model where people pay x my dollars per month and they don't necessarily have service but they have nice equipment right that's a model high barrier to entry very expensive equipment the other model is a group style, functional training style. Boot camp style.

Whatever, right? Crossfit style where it's low barrier to entry, low cost of equipment. But again, it has a large learning curve on this side because you need to learn how to interact with the clients, learn how to coach. Whereas on this side, you might be able to get away with just putting nice equipment and letting it kind of do its thing. Common workout whenever you want. Right. Over here, it's very service-based. So if you're not a subject material expert in service, you need to find one or you need to do it yourself.

And so my recommendation would be, A, make sure that the service you're providing is top-notch, of course, whether that be conventional gym equipment or group-style training. B is have some type of marketing strategy in terms of how you're going to go out and attract new people. What is the brand vision? What are you trying to be about? What type of a gym are you? And then finally the retention tools, right? How are you following up with people? How are you keeping them in the doors? How are you earning a new member every day, right? How are you renewing a member every single day? You know, the way I like to think about it, and this is what we're, at least we work as hard as we can at our gym, they're called NC Fit. And every day it's NorCal and then Fit. We work

really hard that every time a member comes in, we assume they're not going to come back in. And if we work off that premise, it's great because then we have to earn their ability to come back in the next day, right? You're not guaranteed their renewal. Some people think you renew your members each month, but you actually renew your members every single day, right? You could lose someone every day or gain them every day, right? Right, because if they have a crappy experience, it only takes one crappy experience for them to say no. Like, you know, I'm sure you've had this happen to you. You go to a restaurant, you've been thinking about it, thinking about it, you're like, you know what, I'm finally going to go, right? Something gets you to

go. You go, you have one bad experience. You never go back again. And it takes you a long time to even try it again. And so for us, we'd rather just try and have better service, better branding, better everything. What do you guys do on a daily basis to try to like retain someone then? What's your like top key for that? Well, I mean, I think it starts with our session plans, our programming, making sure that across the globe. So we have 21 locations globally with quite a few trainers. And the goal is to try and have the most standardized approach, right?

I mean, I'm always fascinated by Starbucks. I was just in Malaysia a couple weeks ago. We have a location there. And I go, and you know, it's just Malaysia, it's just something else. But I go to this one location, I see a Starbucks, and it's just boom. It's like that movie, White Castle. Remember that movie that came out? It's just Malaysia. It was just something else. But I go to this one location. I see a Starbucks. And it's just boom. It's like that movie White Castle.

Remember that movie that came out? It's just like, oh. And I think with Starbucks, there's consistency is incredible. And so the first step is how do you get consistency across scale? And so our session plans, our warm-ups, our briefs, those are all designed by corporate and then sent out. I think that's a great way to do. And then from there, it's just coaching development.

The facility being nice is cool. Of course, it's important. But I think it's all about the people we put in place and how much time we spend developing them. Yeah, of course. And just making sure you really care about people and be friendly. Yeah, and people can pick up on it, right?

And we're fortunate in our industry, a lot of people don't get into it for money or fame. They get into it because they're passionate about helping people. And so it's nice for that matter. I like it, man. Talk to me about how you are teaching your kids about living a healthy mindset

or living a healthy lifestyle and the mindset of living healthy. Yeah, I mean, I think it's less about telling and more about showing, right? If you want to talk about from a nutrition perspective, so my wife has this Ava's kitchen. She puts up recipes online. It's really cool, but she cooks at home, right? She cooks meals in dinner, right? And so she's teaching about healthy eating, things of that nature,

just balancing different types of macronutrients, right? But not being crazy about just showing the kids, Hey, this is what it is. But I also think what we're doing, you know, is we don't have soda. That's the kind of, you know, sugar is kind of a problem. But I also think what we're doing is we don't have soda. That's the kind of, sugar is kind of a problem. But I think the biggest thing we're doing is my wife and I, we work out in a garage every day. Together? Not together. So what happens is I get in there early, early morning and I go off to the different gyms and I'll do more stuff there.

But in the morning, I'll do cardio every morning in the garage, 6 a.m., just boom, just hitting it. Wow. And then I'll come back in, I'll see the kids before they go to school, I'll go off and go do my thing. And then my wife takes the kids to school and then she'll go in the garage. But on the weekends and on other days where they might have in-service days, whatever, the kids will be in the garage with her working out or with me. So on the weekends, they'll work out with me. So now our kids are old enough, they're six and three, where it's super cool. Like my son, he runs on the, we have like a true form treadmill while I'm doing other stuff.

And it's like, yeah, it's really cool. That's cool. And so I think we're just showing them that, hey, humans are supposed to move. And we're just moving. You can do whatever you want in this garage. Just move around, right? Have fun with it. Play.

Don't make this into something bigger than it needs to be. Don't look at exercise as a job. Look at it like you can have fun moving and how good you feel after. And that's what we're trying to show them. We're trying to be low key about it, especially with Ava. Physically, she's had a lot of chemotherapy,

a lot of steroids. And so we just really try and be supportive of her because even walking for long distances is very challenging for her. And so we're very, very careful on the way we approach her. Whereas my son is a little bit different. I'll kind of beat him up a little bit.

Sure, sure, sure. It's just a little bit different. Yeah. You know, mainly from health perspective. Of course, yeah. Talk to me about the AMRAP mentality. What is the AMRAP mentality? And what have you learned about this mentality about yourself and living life?

It was one day, I don't know, it was probably 2012. My daughter was like a year old. And I was pushing her in a stroller and we're going down this, my street, super nice, like all these trees, we're just walking. And my wife asked me some question and I wasn't paying attention at all. Right. And I was like, and I just looked at her, I was like, babe, I have no idea what you just asked me. And I really apologize. And she's just like, dude, enough is enough. Like what's going on? And I was like,

cause the CrossFit games are like a couple of months from now or like whatever. I was like, honestly, Ashley, I was thinking about walking on my hands and that my fingers can't touch the white line. And I was like, I'm really sorry. And I need to be better to you. At that moment, I felt really bad, right?

Cause I'm like walking with my daughter. I got my wife here. I'm just like, honestly, babe, I have no idea what you've been saying for the last five minutes. Oh, man. Because at regionals one year, if any part of your finger touched the line, you were disqualified. And that's a problem because there's only X amount of events.

So if you got disqualified from that, you're basically, no matter how good you did on the other ones, you didn't qualify. Zero. Right. And it was at that moment that I reflected on it later on. I was like, for me to be a better husband, a better father, a better businessman, a better competitor, I need to start compartmentalizing my day better.

And that's where this AMRAP mentality was developed. And it's been even heightened even more through Ava getting sick. I've started to realize that all the nice watches and cars, those are cool motivators, but the best motivator is the ability to be able, that if something ever happens in your life To help your family out and not to worry about money because we have to worry about that and other stuff. It just compounds So the amrap mentality, it's very simple. It's like riding a bike

We say hey, you gotta have a strong why right we've which we've talked about today Then you have to focus right identify your focus just like on a bike If you're not focused you're going to tip over I used to race on a bike. If you're not focused, you're going to tip over. I used to race BMX bikes. And if you weren't focused, you're going to tip over, right? You need to work hard. So you need to pedal. And so the AMRAP mentality is identify a focus. So it's maybe you and I right now on the podcast.

I'm focused on you, right? I'm focused on you. And I'm not focused on anything else. You don't see me thinking about outside. I'm not looking at my phone. I'm just with you my phone. I'm just with you. And then I work hard at it. So you and I, I mean, this may be a random analogy, but you know, you work hard at it. So if you're deciding to go find new leads for your business,

you go out there and you actually do it, right? If you want to write an email, go do it, work hard at it and then switch gears. So then after I'm done with this podcast with you, my wife and I are going to go to a dinner and a grand opening, and I'm going to focus on that. I'm not going to be thinking about you necessarily anymore, and I'm going to be thinking about the next thing. And then every now and then, right, you need to reevaluate your focuses. So in my opinion, you should have

three to four pillar focuses in your life. For me, it's my family, the business, and then my fitness. Those are my three. But for other people, it might be family, business, and golf or whatever. And then every now and then though, you need to reevaluate. So a good example of this is for years, I competed at the highest level in CrossFit. I was building the business. I had two children. In 2015, I reevaluated and said, hey, look, something's got to give here. I don't have the time to do what I want in these different facets. And I couldn't give up the family. I couldn't give up the business. So the only one left was competing. And so I just kind of toned it down. And then obviously when

Ava got sick, that was another reevaluation phase. And so basically the MRAP mentality is know your focus, know your why, work hard at it, switch gears, start your day. And then when something drastic happens, reevaluate. Maybe you get married. We got to reevaluate. You can't be going out and clubbing with your friends till two in the morning every night. So that's the AMRAP mentality. Now tell people that don't know what an AMRAP is. Oh yeah. CrossFit. Probably should have said that. It's all good. So an AMRAP is really a foundational workout type for like HIIT style training, which is as many rounds or reps as possible. And the reason why the AMRAP mentality was the name of it is that I started to think, well, hey, if I'm walking with my daughter and I thought about this as an AMRAP, I wouldn't be

thinking about anything else but walking with my daughter because in an AMRAP, like if I asked you to do as many pushups as you can in two minutes, you're just going for it, right? You're not thinking about anything else. And so in these workouts, it's a great way to use the analogy to stay present and focused in whatever you're doing at that time in AMRAP, as many rounds or reps, right? So right now, you and I are AMRAPing the hell out of this podcast. And then later on, I'll go AMRAP some emails or whatever. Exactly, exactly. Cool. I like it, man. Final couple of questions for you. What's something that most people don't know about you that might shock them if they knew? Might shock me at this point. I mean, I'm a pretty, uh,

pretty open book. You know, I'm pretty simple. I've had one job and one girlfriend. That's it. And been loyal ever since something, you know, I used to race BMX bikes. That's kind of different. Not many people kind of have that background. I broke my face one time and had to have magnets put in my nose. It's kind of weird. Yeah. So I, I used to race BMX bikes. And as part of that, I used to do dirt jumping. I was hitting what's called a rhythm section for those of you BMX race back in the day. And I was hitting this rhythm section and I packed one or kind of hit my back tire. It slowed me down, but I was in the rhythm section. So you can't really get out. So I hit the next jump, hit the front wheel on the landing, flipped over. Luckily I was wearing a helmet, which is good, but I got knocked out.

And so it broke in my face. And so I had to, they had to reconstruct my nose a little bit. That's maybe why it looks so weird. But the way that they did it is they put magnets in here to hold it straight. And so at school, it was like a party trick. I was able to take a magnet and put it there. No. Yeah. And this is for a little bit.

Anyways, yeah, I got that taken care of. You got the magnets out? Yeah, magnets are gone. Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. And a big magnet to pull your face over? It was like two of them just to hold it straight. I have no idea. That's funny.

So that's kind of a random thing about me. Interesting. Okay. Fun facts of Jason Kalipa. I like it. Yeah, random. Let's wrap things up here in a few minutes. I want to make sure everyone goes and checks out.

Where can they learn more about you and Jason Kalipa on Instagram and Facebook? I think Instagram is probably the best. That's where I'm probably most active on. I have a website, Jason Kalipa, and those are probably the two best things to do. If you want to check out, Jason Kalipa, you can see some of the philanthropic stuff we're doing. And next Ava's Kitchen event is February 24th,

which is coming up here pretty soon. A bunch of other cool stuff coming out. Amazing. Very cool. Potential book coming out soon, so make sure to get on your newsletter and be ready for that when it comes out. Oh, yeah, yeah.

This is called The Three Truths, this question. Oh, boy. So imagine this is your last day many, many years from now. You're 100 and something years old. You ended your life on your time, and you've done everything you've wanted to create in your life. You've tried everything. You've had the life of your dreams. But for whatever reason, everything has been erased of the information

you put out in the world. Okay. So people have no information that you've put out there of what you've said or videos of you. It's gone. And you have a piece of paper

and a pen to write down three lessons from your entire life that you would share with the world or three truths, the things you know to be true about all your experiences that you want people to know

about you. And this is all they would have to remember you by are these three things. What would you say are your three truths? Wow. Wow. No pressure. No pressure.

Just what's coming off the top of your mind, at least right in the moment. I mean, the first one would just be there's no better characteristic than loyalty and commitment. I really think about that, especially with everything going on with all the scandals and stuff. And it you know, it's just, if you're going to get married, just be married, right? If you're going to just, if you don't want to be

married, don't be married, right? But if you're going to be married, be loyal, be committed. I think good things happen with whatever you're doing, right? But I think it's really important that when you make a commitment to something, you finish it and you stay loyal to whatever that commitment is. And if you decide at one point you no longer want that commitment, that's fine, but you need to have that conversation. Of course. I mean, I think that's the first truth that I know to be true. I like it. Okay. The second truth is that I really don't think there's any hack to life. I think it's just you wake up every day, you're inspired, you're motivated, you work hard. Whatever you're doing, you could be a Starbucks barista,

you could be a billion dollar investor. I think the idea is that every day you're working to be the best that you can on whatever you're doing at your craft, right? You're trying to be the best at your craft. And to do that, you need to work hard. So I would say that the second one is, there's no like easy, wake up every day

and aspire to work hard at whatever the heck you're doing. It doesn't matter what you do, just work hard at it. And if I had to say a third one, man, this one's going to be a good one or like a tough one. I would just say, regardless of what you're going through, it doesn't mean that other people aren't going through something as well. You might think that your life is so challenging or whatever, but other people all have their struggles and all have their different things going on. And just because one person might be going through, you know, losing their job and I

might be going through something else, it doesn't mean one's worse or better than the other. Everybody to them, that's the hardest thing they're going through. And we should all come together as a, as a group and support each other. So I guess what I would, how to summarize that would be that, you know, everybody has their, their challenges and you should support everybody in your community, in your circle, and not judge based on what the challenge is. Because to that person, that might be the most challenging challenge

they've ever faced. And as a group, you should rise up and try and help that person through it. Yeah, of course. Of course, I love it, man. Yeah. It's a good truth. Before I ask the final question,

I want to acknowledge you, Jason, for a moment with your loyalty, your commitment to your family, to your daughter, to figuring out what priorities mean the most to you in your life and giving up something that you love for something even greater. And doing it with grace, doing it with a humble giving heart. So I think it's really admirable everything you've done from chasing your dreams to building a successful business to being there for your wife and your kids and just doing it with grace. So I want to acknowledge you for all that, man. Well, thank you.

I appreciate that. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Of course. My final question is, what's your definition of greatness? What's my definition of greatness? Getting to a point in your life

where you can look back and truly know that you reached your full where you can look back and truly know that you reached your full potential. I look back on my CrossFit career and I ask myself, did I really reach my full potential? Did I honor my God-given talent with enough hard work to reach my potential, right? You can ask yourself that same thing about football. And I think in life, at some point, the definition of greatness is being able to look back on your life and to truly say that I reached my full capability by working hard and doing everything. I could rest my hands and say, I've really paid homage to what I was given,

and I reached my full potential. Yeah. My man, Jason, thank you so much for coming on. Yeah, man. Thank you very much. Appreciate you. There you have it, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this interview. If you did, make sure to share it out with your friends over on Instagram. Tag me, at Lewis Howes and Jason Kalipa. The show notes where you can get the full video interview, all the other stuff we talked about is at lewishowes.com slash 574. Again, lewishowes.com slash 574. You'll get some other great quotes on there, the video resources.

Share it all out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, tag me, let me know you're listening or you're watching so that I can connect with you on social media as well. Very excited about this one. We've got some big episodes coming up. So make sure if this is your first time to subscribe to the podcast over on iTunes. We are also over on Spotify. You can subscribe there if you like Spotify, Stitcher, and all those other places. And YouTube. We have over 200,000 people who subscribe on YouTube. So make sure to check us out, youtube.com slash Lewis Howes.

And click the subscribe button so you can get all those inspirational videos sent to you when they come out. Again, Alexander Graham Bell said, Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus. Now is the time to focus your attention. Whether this is the end of the year, the beginning of the year for you, now is the time to focus on the vision for your life, what you really want, who you want to become, what you want to be known for, the actions you want to take, the people you want to surround yourself in, the decisions you want to make, who do you want to become? Think about it. Embody it. Take those daily actions

that are uncomfortable but will bring you great benefit and fruit in the future because you are committed to them. Use the lessons learned from Jason's story and be committed to growing and improving yourself. I love you very much. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Outro Music