The Tim Ferriss Show - #246: Building Strength, Improving Mindset, and Becoming the World's Fittest Man - Jason Khalipa

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Starting point is 00:03:09 Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types, from the worlds of business, military, entertainment, athletics, and sometimes combinations of different fields. And that is the case with this interview. Of course, the objective is to tease out tactics, routines, habits, specifics that you can use. And my guest this time around is, by popular request, Jason Kalipa. That's K-H-A-L-I-P-A. You can say hello at Jason Kalipa on Instagram, Twitter, etc. He is one of the fittest men in the world, a title that was officially his when he earned it at the CrossFit Games and won the CrossFit Games in 2008. He is an eight-time CrossFit Games competitor, a three-time Team USA CrossFit member,

Starting point is 00:03:59 and among other athletic feats, he has deadlifted 550 pounds, squatted 450 pounds, and performed 64 pull-ups at a body weight of 210 pounds. This podcast, very important note, of course, you are most likely listening to this as audio only. We have a bunch of video bonuses and tutorials from Jason recorded in my home gym and elsewhere, which you can find at youtube.com forward slash Tim Ferriss, two R's and two S's. Keeping in mind that beyond sports, Jason is also a very successful entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of NC Fit, which has more than 20 locations in eight different cities. And he is the co-founder of Box to Business, which is a nonprofit that helps gyms become profitable businesses. Jason uses the proceeds of Box to Business, which is a nonprofit that helps gyms become profitable businesses. Jason uses the proceeds from Box to Business to help fight pediatric

Starting point is 00:04:50 cancer. We cover a ton of stuff in this episode, a lot of specifics, a lot of stories, including his training and diet, the hardest workouts he's ever performed, the mentor who taught him how to sell anything, which is hilarious, how he and his family have coped with his daughter's battle with cancer, how he has navigated going from competitive athlete to very, very successful business owner, and much, much more. So I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. Jason is a great guy, and he is very, very generous with sharing his knowledge. And don't forget to check out the tutorial videos, his favorite warmups, etc. at youtube.com forward slash Tim Ferriss. Jason, we'll do a quick sound check.

Starting point is 00:05:38 Could you please tell me what you had for breakfast? I had kale smoothie and an egg with bacon on top. One egg with bacon on top. One egg whole egg. Nope. Cause I was on the road at 4am. I went to Starbucks and I took the sandwich. I took it apart and I just had the egg with the bacon on top. Nice. And then the kale smoothie was before you left the house. A kale smoothie was, uh, at the gym before I, yeah, shortly after what is in the kale smoothie besides kale? Kale, peanut butter, some of this protein powder I like, and almond milk. Fantastic. Well, I think we're just going to keep rolling since that soundcheck was so successful.

Starting point is 00:06:22 And while my pooch Molly is going to make a racket throwing around an elk antler, we're just going to get to it. So welcome to the show and welcome to my living room. Thanks for coming. Yeah, it's great to be here. And we just had some fun demoing things and certainly learning things. I wasn't demoing anything. I was observing in the gym, in the garage. So for people who are listening and want some additional video, which I highly, highly encourage, just go to tim.blog forward slash podcast and click on this episode. Or you can go to YouTube, Tim Ferriss, two R's, two S's, and you can find a bunch of video. Now you are considered, and I know you're not going to say this, but a demigod within

Starting point is 00:06:55 the world of CrossFit by a lot of people. People look up to you for good reason. And I'm curious to know if you were to look back at your peak competitive success, what do you think the advantages were that you had or developed? Like why were you as successful as you were? And of course you have incredible work ethic and so on. But if you had to sort of dig into that, what do you think the elements were that made you as successful as you were? I think primarily it was that I really enjoyed training. I didn't do it, you know, a lot of people, they like to compete. I didn't necessarily like to compete or did like to compete.

Starting point is 00:07:35 I enjoyed competing, but I enjoyed training more. I liked being in an environment that just pushed me. I liked getting comfortable with uncomfortable. I liked leaving the gym and feeling like I just got my butt kicked. It made liked, um, getting comfortable with uncomfortable. I liked leaving the gym and feeling like I just got my butt kicks. It made me feel really good about what I accomplished. And then I went on and tried to accomplish that same concept in the rest of my life. Right. And I think that was something I really picked up on early on when I first found CrossFit back in 2006. And then I won the CrossFit games in a way, and I was able to compete eight

Starting point is 00:08:04 more times, mainly because I just able to compete eight more times, mainly because I just love to train, you know, and the by-product or the expression of that was my ability to go out there and compete. Are there any particular workouts that come to mind or exercises, anything that you find particularly enjoyable, even though they might be very painful? I mean, I like the ones that give you the biggest return, right? I mean, I think if you're doing thrusters, yes, they're very challenging, but they give you a huge return in terms of benefit, in terms of the way you look, in terms of where you feel, the bifurcative strength. So I think thrusters, burpees, those type of things, if I had to pick several items I would only do or several movements I'd

Starting point is 00:08:41 only do for the rest of my life, it'd be things like that. If we were to say, look, well, we're going to look forward in a second. I want to keep focusing on that for a moment. Any particular, uh, if you wanted to gauge, say the, the fitness, right? The cross fitness of anyone for that matter, are there any particular tests that you would put them through to evaluate that? Whether it's like a certain variation of Fran or anything like that? I would just look at like different metrics. I look at, you know, what is your mile time? Uh, how many pull-ups can you complete? Uh, what is your max deadlift back squat press? Um, and then start looking at a few, like the movements that combine both. Right. And so I think sometimes there's people that are really good at running and there's some people that are really good at, um, lifting, but I think the beauty is when he can combine those two. And so, you know, a lot of like the

Starting point is 00:09:27 friends and the different types of workout, like a fight gone bad score. Those are good ways. What is a fight gone bad? So fight gone bad was originally created with BJ Penn and Greg Glassman long time ago. And basically it was, it was back when BJ was probably training at the Half Gracie Academy of Mountain View. Old school, old school right long time ago and essentially what it is is one minute one minute one minute five five movements and then you one minute rest and you do that for three rounds what are the five movements so it's a sumo high pull there's a push press there's a rower a wall ball and a box jump and all the movements are light enough that you can keep moving on them and so you know when bj finished as the story goes when bj finished it was like oh man i feel like a fight gone bad and so

Starting point is 00:10:10 that's kind of how the story goes just as a random side note i used to go to these chiropractors the jansons who worked on a lot of fighters and i remember they described bj penn's hip flexors as the hip flexors of a camel they said they were just like a quadricep on normal humans. Just rocks. If you were to say, want to get someone hooked on exercising because you enjoyed the training. Not everyone enjoys training. So let's say you're taking someone, you want to get them hooked on that drug of training. Is there any particular approach that you would take? I mean, you've coached a lot of people. You've, I'm sure, encountered every

Starting point is 00:10:48 different type of person from NFL player to, say, engineer who's never played sports and everybody in between. What do you do to get someone hooked so that they continue to come to the gym? Yes. I mean, I've been really fortunate. You know, over the years, I started a company, NC Fit, and we have a ton ton of members and I've been able to look at it and say, Hey, what, what is generally gets them to kind of stay with us. And more times than not, it's starting off slow and then working their way up. I think a lot of people get gung ho, right? They come in, Oh, you know, I want to lose weight. I want to do this one of that. I'll, I'll eat whatever you tell me. I'll do whatever you tell me. And then all of a sudden,

Starting point is 00:11:22 a month later, they're gone. Right. So I think the secret to success is, hey, just take your time, right? This is not a, this is a lifelong journey, right? It's not like a one month, you know, fad. It's, you know, I want to be fit and I want to be fit for the rest of my life. And so I think it's important to recognize that and to make small steps towards the right direction. You know, take out sugar, do this, do that. Small little steps.

Starting point is 00:11:43 Then go into the gym and start doing certain stuff. But I think finding a camaraderie, finding a coach and finding a community to support you are rule number one. I think that doing it on your own is very challenging. You know, you and I were talking about cooking earlier and it's like, if I want to learn how to cook, really, really learn how to cook. I could learn from a book. I could learn from maybe watching a show, but to really kind of dive into the nuances, I would need to have someone to kind of show me in the kitchen what I would do next, at least for me, right? I don't have enough experience with it. And so when people go to the gym, sure, they could read books, they could do stuff. But I think having someone there like a coach advise them on different things is going

Starting point is 00:12:17 to be an easy way for them to get more success from it. Yeah. I think the, just to reiterate that, I think the social accountability piece is huge. So having some type of social cohesion is just gigantic. And for people who are listening who might be in the sticks, don't think you have access to that. You can certainly find communities online like coach.me and other sites or services along those lines. The point you made also that I think is really important to underscore is in the beginning, focusing on the good program that you will follow versus the perfect program that you'll quit. Because a lot of people come in, like you said, and they're like, okay, I haven't done anything since college. Now I'm going to do a two-hour workout five times a week as my New Year's resolution. And they just flame out or they get injured or fill in the blank. And like you said, they're gone a few weeks later, as opposed to saying, look,

Starting point is 00:13:09 since you're starting from zero, let's just do whatever it might be. Half hour workout twice a week so that you develop the habit. And then you can always make it harder, more complex later. But if you make it too hard, too complex in the beginning, you're going to be gone. Yeah. Like we have a program that we've incorporated calls the rise program and what it incorporates the nutritionist, a mindset coach and a, and a fitness coach. And for a lot of people, it's all a mindset, right? It's all for decades. They haven't exercised. They've used food as an outlet or whatever it may be. Right. And that's okay. But they need to get over that in their head to truly make an impact on and change for for a

Starting point is 00:13:47 long time right instead of making it like this short-term thing they really get down to the root of the problem and make it as more of a part of their daily routine instead of just something they do right and and that starts but to start it slowly and then work it up is is much easier than just to kind of go crazy and then it just i haven't seen it work as well and then work it up is much easier than just to kind of go crazy. And then it just, I haven't seen it work as well. And then, yeah, right. Have a nuclear meltdown and have to restart again for your next new year's resolution. That's right. Uh, I'm going to take a couple of questions here that have been, uh, volleyed over via the internet because there's some really good ones and they range from training to family to business. Uh, so we're going to get

Starting point is 00:14:25 to that in a second, but I wanted to ask you, uh, you mentioned NC fit. How many locations do you currently have? 24, 24 locations. So you've been very successful as an athlete and many people who put in the effort and focus that you did in athletics are so singularly focused that they have trouble. And I've observed this in friends transferring them to a career outside of competitor, right? Sponsored athlete. If you were sitting down with an accomplished athlete or not who wanted to, say, get into business. And let's just for the sake of simplicity, say it's a similar business. They're somewhere in the Midwest and they want to get into, uh, fitness and gyms and so on. What advice would you give them or

Starting point is 00:15:15 resources would you point them to, uh, to increase the likelihood of success? Yeah. I mean, one of the things I'd ask them and I get asked this often is, you know, Hey, I want to open up a gym. What do you think? I'm like, okay, well let's start with these three simple questions, right? Number one, um, are you qualified to do so, right? What makes you qualified to open up this business? Do you have, um, an expertise in it? Do you, how, how are you going to basically give yourself this competitive advantage that you know, that when you go to open it up, you're going to win, right? What is your competitive? What's the credibility, right? Just because you like to

Starting point is 00:15:49 work out doesn't mean you should necessarily go open up a gym. I love to eat. I love food, but I sure as hell, I'm not going to open up a restaurant because I'm not qualified to do so. I don't have the training, the expertise, right? And it's okay if you don't in certain areas, just go find an expert in those other areas right um the other thing i'd ask of you is you know are you doing it with a strong intention a strong why right like what is your why why do you want to open up this business is it to make money because if it's just to make money just like competing at the crossfit games you need to have a strong internal why because when your back's up against the wall and it's very challenging, you need to revert back to that why to push through.

Starting point is 00:16:26 And in business, it's not always rainbows and unicorns, right? There's challenging times. And so you need to be able to revert back to your internal why of why you started to be able to do well. So I would say, A, how are you going to win, right? Tell me how you're going to win. Why are you better than the other guy down the street? Two, do you have a strong reason why you want to open it?

Starting point is 00:16:44 And then three, is it a good time in your life to do it, right? Is it a good time for you to open it? Do you just have a baby? Do you have tons of mortgages and different types of stuff, right? Or is it a good time in your life to go ahead and, you know, go open up this business is really what I like to ask people. What are the most common mistakes that you see or that you think you avoided? Like if you look back at your

Starting point is 00:17:05 business, another way to phrase it so you can tackle it however you want is what were some of the most important decisions that you made looking back? I think looking back, it was understanding that back in the day, you weren't going to make money off your competitive fitness career. And so I had to open up a business and I had to open it. And I think one of the best things I ever did was I recognized to try and rob and steal as much as I can knowledge from people around me. So when I was in high school, I worked at the front desk at a conventional gym. Then when I graduated from high school and I went to college, I started working as a sales associate there and I started making good money. So as I'm going to a junior

Starting point is 00:17:43 college, I went to Vest Valley actually. I was there and I just got woken up. No one cares about me. I was like the jock and I was kind of like the class clown in high school. Then all of a sudden you get to college, it's like, they don't care about you, right? So I really turned a corner. I said, hey, look, I need to take responsibility for what I need to get done. I want to be successful. And so I started going to school full time, working full time. But what I also did was I learned how to talk to people. I learned how to sell, which was really important because in my line of work in the fitness industry, you're a coach and you're, you're talking to people, you're coaching them. But if you're a business owner, you also need to learn how to sell. But one of the things I would also do is

Starting point is 00:18:20 on the, you know, about twice a week, I would go and ride the elliptical with the owner of the business. And I would just pick his brain, understand what's going on. I think one of those things early on was recognizing I wanted to learn everything I could from his mistakes that I didn't make as many. And one of the things that we've done a lot is delegate out things, right? Not, you know, have enough of a humbleness to be like, Hey, look, I can't do everything best, the best. I need to hire outside people. And I think I learned that early on from him, learning from him, some of his mistakes. How did you convince him to do the elliptical with you? What was the pitch, right? You were in sales. So how did you get the owner to hang out with the former class clown on the elliptical?

Starting point is 00:19:02 So funny enough, he really took me on as like a mentor. He really did. Like he really mentored me really well. And he would ride the elliptical as part of his fitness routine. And I would just go over there and just go meet with him. And I don't think he disliked it because we would just, you know, bullshit, have a good conversation.

Starting point is 00:19:16 I think it kind of made the time go by a little bit quicker. Got it. So you would just roll up when he was working out? I would just roll up. And when your back is against the wall you mentioned the why so when you were competing and say this is actually a question that came up at least once from uh people who are listening to the podcast one wanted me to ask you what why did you go back to when you were competing in the games i mean at the time right or or sorry to keep rephrasing my questions but I've had too much

Starting point is 00:19:45 caffeine and that is uh when you were say behind or you saw someone gaining on you uh the why or like what is the self-talk to make sure that you don't fall out of like that you don't drop the ball or otherwise just get get psyched out well I think positive self-talk is a really hard thing to learn, but it's an important trait to develop. And I've learned that over the years with the mindset coach that I work with, where you try and find ways to reframe things in your head. If something's going wrong, instead of saying, oh, my legs hurt, you say, hey, focus on midfoot strike if you're running or whatever, right?

Starting point is 00:20:21 You try and rephrase it into a positive. And reverting back to your why, I think it's really important that going into these games, what I would do is I would tell myself that I've made a commitment to myself, my family to go out there and do this. And I wanted to do it because I wanted to get comfortable with uncomfortable. I wanted to see where I stack up against my competitors and I wanted to do it for me, right? And at the time I didn't have as many other obligations. Now as life changes, right, things change. But at the time my why was, Hey, I made a commitment. I'm going to do this. And I remember one year we did this camp Pendleton race and I was, it's a 10 mile, just crazy hill

Starting point is 00:20:55 run. And I was like halfway done. I just, you know, I'm like going through like this desert and I look around, there's no one around. I'm just like, Oh gosh. And I see a tarantula. This is a true story. Just walking across. I'm just like, oh gosh. And I see a tarantula. This is a true story. Just walking across, I'm just looking at him like, what the hell? Or a big ass spider. Maybe it wasn't a tarantula. It was a big ass spider.

Starting point is 00:21:10 And I was like, what am I doing out here, right? And I had to instantly revert back on my head. You know what? I made a commitment. That commitment was I was gonna finish out these games. So I better slap myself in the face, stop being a wimp and finish it. Because if I allowed myself to give in then,

Starting point is 00:21:24 what other things would I allow myself to give into, right? I made a commitment to myself and I want to live up to that. Now over the years, because of other things happening in my life, I haven't been able to make that strong of commitment. So therefore I choose not even to go out there and attempt. And the, I'm very fascinated by these little moments or days or weeks that can really affect the complete trajectory of people's lives. And you mentioned a couple of minutes ago, you get to college age, you realize, all right, I'm no longer the class clown in high school. And you did a course correct, right? You started going to school full time. So what triggered that?

Starting point is 00:22:01 Was it a particular conversation? Was it a particular afternoon? Yeah. What was it? what triggered that? Was it a particular conversation? Was it a particular afternoon? Yeah. What was it? So, you know, so going out of high school, I thought I was gonna play football. It ended up not working out. So I ended up going to West Valley and, you know, first day, it wasn't that big of a deal, right? I get to, I get to the first day. I'm like, ah, I'm at West Valley. No big deal. I'll transfer another school in a couple of years. But all my friends had gone to a four year Santa Clara university, which where I ended up graduating from. Right. But I just remember first day of school, we're going around and we're all saying our names, right? And it's like, Hey,

Starting point is 00:22:31 I'm John. This is my first, second year. Hey, I'm Mary. This is my, you know, whatever, second semester, whatever it is. And then all of a sudden you have this woman next to me. And I kid you not, right? My first class of my first day at West Valley. And the lady goes, hi, my name is Suzanne. I can't remember the name exactly. She goes, but for a fact, this is my seventh year at West Valley. And I just remember looking at her and looking at this teacher and just being like, dude, I got to get my ass in check and I need to get my shit together. Right. And that's what I told myself. Right. And so that moment I left there, I went to the counselor's office and said, Hey, look, I need to figure out the fastest way to get the heck out of this school. And so I ended up, um, taking full class loads, doing whatever I had to do. I ended up applying to Santa Clara two times after that and not being

Starting point is 00:23:18 accepted because I tried after one year, I didn't get accepted. I tried for like a year and a half. I didn't get accepted. Then after two years, I was accepted, which got me on track to graduate in four. So I graduated with all my peers, which was great. I graduated with my wife actually, which was really cool. But that was the moment that really like kind of sparked it. Like, dude, like playtime's over. High school's done. It's you're in the real world and no one really cares about you. You better get your ass in check. And when you applied, make me think of Rudy a little bit. So you get, he applied, didn't get in, applied, didn't get in, then applied and got in. What did you change in between the not getting accepted and getting accepted? Well, I mean, I had more courses underneath my belt. So what happened is they didn't have to

Starting point is 00:23:57 use my high school GPA anymore because they were able to only use my college. They could use your credits that would transfer. That's right. Got it. All right. So, so many questions, but I'm going to pull some in from the audience. This is from Fern Hernandez. What are your thoughts on the frequency of doing CrossFit? Ask another way, what benefits do you lose or gain from doing say twice a week versus four to five times a week? I mean, I think by design, when you look at like a program and if it's constantly varied by design, you should be able to do it, you know, five days a week and you should be okay. If the program is inappropriate and the volume is good and you're listening to your body, you should be able to perform that program, you know, five days a week because of the variance, right? You should be able to go long one day, heavy one day, you know, below parallel one day. And that just depends on how much effort people put into the program itself. So two days is better than no days, but two days is also challenging because you go in, you get really sore and then you're, you recover and then you're really sore again and your body never gets in this rhythm. So assuming you go to a gym that has good programming,

Starting point is 00:24:58 I think you can go, you know, five days a week. And you and I were also though, just to touch on good programming in the gym when we're messing around, well, messing around, you were demonstrating back squat. We're talking about five by five and so on these five, five sets of five reps and so on. If the variance doesn't exist and someone's trying to do a five by five, seven times a week with squat. Yeah. I mean, you gotta, you gotta have a program that has variants, right? So the way we do it at our gym is we have one person creates this template, the skeleton, then he creates the workouts and we have a peer reviewed by six other of our coaches

Starting point is 00:25:33 and then it gets back to him. So we try and have a lot of checks and balance in our program because regardless of who's programming the program, there's always going to be some type of bias towards what you like. Sure. Always. And so you need to have other people have checks and balances on that. How might someone create a skeleton of a program? And I'm not saying just Joe Blow in the street. I'm saying one of your coaches, right? What does that process look like? What are they thinking about or considering as they do it? Well, I think they're looking at time domains, right? So you're looking at, you know, are we talking five minutes? We talk in 12 minutes, we talk in 20 minutes, we're talking 30 or 40 minute long workouts, right? The total duration of the actual, you know, AMRAP email, whatever they're doing, right? AMRAP is as many rounds or reps as possible.

Starting point is 00:26:15 And then, you know, you start talking about in the skill work, right? What is a theme for the month? Are we trying to develop someone's handstand? Are we trying to, there's a lot of things in play. It's, it's, it in play. It's a challenging topic to discuss briefly, but in theory, it's, hey, let's have a, let's have some big macro goal, right? Maybe it's to get everybody ready for a five kids coming up. Maybe it's to get the skill of,

Starting point is 00:26:37 maybe we start noticing that our gym members need benefit in X. Let's create that macro goal. And then during our warmups, make sure we touch base on it several times a week. Then let's have these other goals where it's like, we go heavy two, three times a week, right? Then we go longer Metcons or metabolic conditioning workouts a couple of times a week. And we add any short burst, high intensity ones a couple of times a week. So in, in skeleton, you want to think about, you want to push, you want to pull, you want to squat once a week,

Starting point is 00:27:01 right? Um, you want to incorporate the Olympic lifts as you know, when you can, and that's kind of like the big picture stuff. But you also, when you program, you want to squat once a week, right? You want to incorporate the Olympic lifts as, you know, when you can, and that's kind of like the big picture stuff. But you also, when you program, you want to think about kind of this idea of, you know, if I'm programming a workout, I want to think about what's going to keep people moving. So you wouldn't want to do, for example, squats, lunges, jumping air squats, jumping lunges, and whatever, like a bunch of whatever. So what will end up happening is people will just burn out their legs and they'll just sit there and stand there until they can recover. But now if you did, you know, jumping lunges followed by pushups, they're not the same muscle groups, right? They're different functions. And so you can keep your body moving. And as you mentioned, when we were chatting before recording just the audio,

Starting point is 00:27:42 the Olympic lifts generally would come after, say, a familiarity, at least a familiarity, maybe a mastery of the mechanics of, say, powerlifting movements and some gymnastic components. Well, I think we incorporate the Olympic lifts early on. We do. How do you do that safely? I think it ultimately just comes down to the coaches that are doing it, right? You start off, you make sure that people can do it right with just a PVC pipe or a light bar, and then you can work your way up.

Starting point is 00:28:06 But I think the difference is that whereas with the power lifts, it doesn't take as long to develop all the techniques incorporated with it, with the Olympic lifts it does. And so you need to be okay with doing the Olympic lifts early on, right? Almost from the beginning, it's okay. But you need to do them at a moderate controlled level versus the backs squat, you can kind of push a little bit more. I mean, you could push them all, but you don't want to push the Olympic lifts so much so they start developing bad habits. And the same thing applies to the back squat,

Starting point is 00:28:32 it's just a little bit less technical. So the Olympic lifts are a little bit easier to, you know, they're highly technical. Sure. Let's just say you have average person off the street or power lifter comes in, I want to learn Olympic weightlifting. If they have really bad thoracic mobility and shoulder extension, right? So they're

Starting point is 00:28:51 here, right? They can barely get their biceps past their ears. Do you have any favorite approaches to helping address that or any suggestions? You know, our friend Kelly has some good tools, mobility wad, right? Kelly Starrett, yeah. Yeah, Kelly Starrett. I mean, I think that there's multiple different things you could do, but ultimately you need to commit to it, right? I mean, if you have poor, you know, shoulder range of motion, it's going to take you a while to develop that. And, you know, that doesn't mean you have to avoid all lifts altogether. Still do them.

Starting point is 00:29:19 Just recognize you need to put in the time, you know, a couple, you know, 10, 20 minutes a day to develop the range of motion and mobility. And the best way to do that is by incorporating the movements, slow and control with light to little, no, no weight, right? If you want to really develop a good squat, try and work on the squat up against the wall with no weight and work through the full range of motion of it. Up against the wall, you mean facing the wall? Yeah. Question from Luke Campbell. Ask about his training with former endurance athlete and now coach Chris Henshaw.

Starting point is 00:29:48 It was interesting to hear how a giant like Jason could build his aerobic capacity without sacrificing size or strength. How does he do it specifically? That's a great question. You know, Henshaw is great. You know, years ago, I started looking at some of the results

Starting point is 00:30:01 from across the games and it would be like, you know, top 10, top 10, top 10, top 10, 50th, you know, top 10, top 10. I'd be like, Oh boy, I got a glaring weakness there. And so I found Chris and he really helped me out and he made running fun for me. He made running. Who is, who is Chris just for those who don't know? He's a local guy, right? He's here out of Palo Alto. In the Bay area. Yeah. And he's a former, you know, Ironman triathlete, really successful, but he, but he has a unique way of making running quantifiable and fun. And what I mean by that is, you know, I'll go to the track and before it just be like, Oh, run 400 meters. I would just like run it aimlessly, but it felt good for him to give me, you know, a hundred meter pace goals, 200 meter pace goals, et cetera.

Starting point is 00:30:38 And then those goals then turn into something that I could really try and shoot for. And I think going back to the whole thing about someone going to the gym is for those people who are interested in doing running or doing types of stuff, having a program that kind of gives you quantifiable numbers to shoot for, I believe is a great way to not only get better results, but also to keep it more fun. You don't need to just go out for a 5k on your own. That's cool. I get it. But you should start quantifying what your target numbers are and your target paces. And that's what I did with him. And that's why I was able to maintain those numbers. When you were at your peak of training, what did your nutrition look like? And were there any go-to supplements on top of that? It's a tricky sort of murky waters that we get into sometimes.

Starting point is 00:31:19 And it's fine if any of them were sponsors, but if you could just indicate which were, if that's the case. But diet, so what did your nutrition look like at the height of training? And then any particular supplements that were kind of your go-to? So I never have, and until this day, eat as much as what most people probably think I eat.

Starting point is 00:31:39 But with the amount I was training, sometimes just broccoli and cauliflower weren't cutting it for the carbohydrates I needed to retain. So sweet potatoes had to be thrown in and things like that. I try to eat real food, right? I still do. I try and eat real food and I try and avoid excess amounts of sugar and different types of things.

Starting point is 00:31:55 But that doesn't mean that if my daughter wants to go out and, you know, if it's her birthday, I'm not going to eat her birthday cake. And it never has meant that, right? I'm okay with that. I train because at times I want to be able to go in and enjoy a, you know, a margarita with my that, right? I'm okay with that. I train because at times I want to be able to go in and enjoy a, you know, a margarita with my wife, right? And that's okay. And it always has been that same way, whether I've been training at the highest level or where I'm at today. And, you know, as far as recovery, you know, I partner with a company called Progenix.

Starting point is 00:32:19 I think they make a good recovery tool for me. That's something I use. Outside of that, maybe some fish oil and, and, and that's pretty much the extent of it, right? It's just real food. I think people, um, don't realize the value you can get from just consuming real regular food. And did you track macros and all that type of stuff? Just know a lot of the guys at the top don't really track all the macros. Some of them do, but not, not, not a lot of the guys, you know, a lot of them just work hard, train hard and just eat appropriately. All right. This is, this is a question I would love to hear your thoughts on. This is from

Starting point is 00:32:54 Lee Jackson. What do you picture your workout to be when you hit 60 years of age? That is, I mean, I think my workout's going to be roughly the way it is right now. Just, just basically scaled down. Meaning, you know, the, the demands that I have at, you know, my age with, you know, my strength, like we all need to squat. We all need to press. We all need to lift. So whether I'm 60, 30, 50, I still want to be doing those same movements. I just might do a little bit of a less intensity. Right. And even now being 31, the intensity that I can bring to workouts is a little bit different than when I was 25. My body's been beat up a lot by doing that. And so I just need to recognize it,

Starting point is 00:33:31 listen to my body and recover as well as I can. But the amount of volume I'm putting in isn't as much as it used to be. And I assume by the time I'm 60, the amount of volume I'm putting in wouldn't be as much, but the movements would be similar. Is there any particular type of movement, conditioning, conditioning,

Starting point is 00:33:52 strength, fill in the blank that you'd really like to work on and develop more now? In other words, you talked about like top 10, top 10, top 10, 50th place, top 10, top 10. Are there any particular weaknesses that you're trying to work on now? It doesn't have to be limited to the gym either. Is there anything that you're working on currently? I mean, obviously, I like rolling jujitsu. There's a ton of things get better at there, but for me, it's really on the business side, on the family side, right? I'm trying to be the best dad. I could be the best husband I could be. And I'm trying to support our business and, and, and, and run it the best way possible and treat people that way. And that's what I'm really focused on, you know, stealing a line from Mark Cuban. It's just a sport of business. And I'm trying to win at that right now for myself in particular.

Starting point is 00:34:28 So that's what I'm focused on. My fitness side, I'm still hitting it all the time, right? I still work out really hard, but I don't have any specific goals other than just to maintain my fitness. So this is, this is actually a segue that we're talking about family a little bit. And these were very highly upvoted. So this is a question from Sherry Gall. I've so admired him as an athlete and businessman.

Starting point is 00:34:51 His work ethic and determination to continue to improve as well as his humility have pushed him to great levels of success. I've also watched his journey through Ava's illness and seen him give back in the midst of it, blood drives, etc. I know behind all this is a good marriage. I'd like him to talk about marriage and how Ava is doing. I would also be fun to hear his perspective on the evolution of the sport, but let's, let's keep that separate. Could you talk a little bit just about the components of a good marriage and also just tell us a little bit about your, about your family and, and Ava, since a lot of people listening aren't going to be familiar. Sure. Yeah. So my wife and I, Ashley, we started dating freshman year of high school. So 14, 15 years old. And we've been together

Starting point is 00:35:30 almost ever since what happened is we started dating for a week, two weeks, actually. I thought we were in love, right? I went home. I told my mom, I'm like, mom, I found the woman I'm going to marry. Right. And I was all fired up. And then of course, two weeks later, she dumps me because she said I was too nice. Well, you know, a year later, right. She knew, she knew, you know, we were meant to be together. So we ended up getting back together again a year later. We haven't been separated since. Right. So that was, you know, 15, 16 years old. And, um, so, you know, we went to college, graduate college together, did our thing, got married in 2009, uh, had our first child in 2011, Ava. And then we had our second child in 2014, Caden. Uh, Ava was diagnosed with leukemia January 21st, uh, 2016.

Starting point is 00:36:19 So about a little over a year ago. And, uh, you know, I, I think when you talk about what makes a marriage successful, I think it, it's an obviously a number of things. You have to respect each other. You have to become best friends. You need to be able to be okay with, you know, supporting each other on their journeys, but you also need to, um, align well on difficult times. And I didn't know that until Ava got sick. You know, when you're in high school, you don't know how your wife is going to react or girlfriend is going to react to a negative situation in life.

Starting point is 00:36:48 And I think what's really intriguing about what happened to us is my wife and I and my family in general has gotten a lot closer through Ava's diagnosis, primarily because she was so strong and she still is. And that's something that's really exciting for me because I take on like, hey, you know, we're going to get after this. We're going to be successful. And she was the one who really started that from the beginning. You know, when we, when we first signed out, Ava had a leukemia. We, uh, we were called to the ER at Stanford ER

Starting point is 00:37:13 before that she was having a lot of leg pain and different types of things. It was, it was. When did that start? How old was she? So she, so right now she's five, she'll be six in a month. You know, looking back on it now, we probably could have identified that she had leukemia earlier, but everything like had a reason. Like she had an ear infection, then she had another one, then she had another one.

Starting point is 00:37:36 And then the doctors are like, this is the worst ear infection I've ever seen. And we're like, wow, well, her immune system seems kind of suppressed. Like we didn't really think about it. We're just like, oh, we'll just keep getting her medicine because she has an ear infection. Then it's like, oh, my legs really hurt.

Starting point is 00:37:47 I can't walk more than 100 feet without stopping. Oh man, it must be growing pains. Let's get you a trampoline. Let's get you in a PT, all these different things. Then she started having bruising and that's where we knew something was up. And so we went in for blood work. We called in the ER.

Starting point is 00:38:00 And when they told us that night that she had leukemia, it was at like 2 a.m. in the morning. And I just remember, you know that she had leukemia, he was at like 2 AM in the morning. And I just remember, you know, it was a, it was a very challenging time for us. And now I've had a lot of time to reflect on it. So I'm a little less, you know, uh, you know, I used to talk about it was a lot harder now that I've reflected on a lot. It's a little bit easier to talk about, but I just remember when I told my wife, you know, she just, we went out, you know, we're, you know, I was crying and she just looks at me. She's like, Hey, look, you tell our family, uh, you know, tell our family, let them know she has leukemia, but just tell them that they want to cry. They can cry out outside. But as soon as

Starting point is 00:38:34 they walk in the doors, they better be happy and they better have a smile on their face or else they can't be let in. Right. And it was kind of that mentality that was just like, you know, kind of like, you know, she's just like, yeah, hell yeah, we're going to crush this shit. And then it made me realize like, oh yeah, we're going to crush it. Like it was this very much so like football, like, you know, you're in the huddle and like you're in the fight of your life and it's like, no, no, we're going to crush this thing. Right. And we've had that mentality ever since.

Starting point is 00:38:59 And you know, her strength has been, has been awesome to see from a marriage perspective. Right. So that's, that's a kind of a cool, cool thing to find out about your spouse. For sure. What types of practices or routines, anything really, uh, do you have that helps the family to be as cohesive as possible? Well, I think we have a lot of really good family support. So we've been super blessed. You know, the night that my daughter was diagnosed, my mom and dad took my son and took him for a month. We were in the hospital for five weeks, right? Lucille Packard, they've done some really great things for us. But you know, like when you see that family around and then all of a sudden my

Starting point is 00:39:38 father-in-law would be there every day, my father-in-law would just be sitting in the waiting room, right? We didn't, we wouldn't call him. We wouldn't do anything. He would just be sitting there. And that family dynamic has been something that's been really special to see. And, uh, it's something that we'll never, I'll never forget. And even now here we are over a year later, and we still have a lot of challenging times and it's a family that helps us get through all of it, right? Because my, for example, on Saturday, we were in Vegas, my mom and dad helped watch our children. So my wife and I could go have a night out to ourselves. And those are really important things in life that my wife and I since the beginning have always said

Starting point is 00:40:09 hey look it's we love our children but it's me and you first for our relationships if our relationship isn't good then we're not gonna be able to have a solid home for our children and so we've really tried to set aside time to do date nights and do this and do that which has really been helpful especially during this time because sometimes we have to have adult conversations. Like right after this, I'm going to go see a counselor because, you know, we need to get some support to help us with this situation. And my wife and I had to have an adult conversation about that to go see a counselor. Yeah. If you were giving advice to someone who, for instance, just found out their child was diagnosed with X, some type of very intimidating disease. And they wanted any

Starting point is 00:40:46 thoughts or advice from you whatsoever. Like for instance, what your wife said, which was you can cry, but it has to be outside. Once you come in, yeah, you have to have a smile on your face. Is there, is there anything else that you would, that you would share with them? I think it's really important to educate yourself, right? Educate yourself on disease. So my daughter is ALL. It's a specific type of leukemia. She's very treatable, which is awesome, right? There's a lot of them that aren't as treatable. And my heart goes out to those families. I mean, you come sit in the oncology department for a day with me and you'll just be humbled. So what I would say to them is educate yourself. We've had phenomenal healthcare, phenomenal.

Starting point is 00:41:25 But there's been one or two times where we've had to catch the doctors because sometimes they have other things going on. But for me, there's nothing else going on. It's just this. But I need to be able to educate myself on it with all the different medications. What's going on here?

Starting point is 00:41:37 What is this? What are the side effects? What should we be looking for? Because those things are critical, especially for us. I mean, we end up in the ER probably once every two weeks because of temperatures, but we have to be actively engaged to take the temperature. We have to be actively engaged on what the side effects are of certain medicines. I think that's the most critical piece is educate yourself on what's going on

Starting point is 00:41:56 because no one's going to care more than you're going to care. This is going to seem maybe like a gear shift, but I think it could be related. When we were talking about transfer, when we were in the gym earlier, looking at say, modeling your pushup position so that it transfers to other movements, your elbows aren't flaring out. Looking at deadlifting, say, first and foremost, in a conventional stance that it transfers more to cleans and everything else. You mentioned AMRAP earlier, as many reps or as many rounds as possible. And you mentioned AMRAP philosophy before I hit record. I was many rounds as possible. And you mentioned AMRAP philosophy before I hit record. And I was like, okay, I want to come back to that. So what does that,

Starting point is 00:42:29 what does that mean? Does it apply to areas outside of, outside of the gym? So it's actually something I've been working on for a while and I've given talks about, it's called the AMRAP mentality. And to me, it's the way that, you know, I kind of live my life and I'm trying to live my life. And what the AMRAP mentality really means is, think about if someone said to you, hey, I want you to do as many pushups as you can in a minute. While you're doing them, you're just focused on that, right? You're not focused on anything else,

Starting point is 00:42:51 you're just focused on the pushups. And then when you're done with that, you move on. Right now, I'm podcasting with you. This is what I'm focused on. I'm AMRAPing with you right now. We're trying to do the best we can together. But what I'm not doing is on my phone, right? And talking to you and trying to work out at the same time, right? I'm not doing that because, you know, I think

Starting point is 00:43:10 nowadays I would make the argument, I don't know if we're less productive or more productive than we were 20 years ago. Cause 20 years ago, when you're at work, you're working. When you're at home, you're at home. Now it's this huge carryover. So what I found myself doing for many years, and I had to really nip myself in the butt and i still i'm trying to get a lot better is i wouldn't be focused on my family or what focused on what i was doing i'd be focused on other things there's times where i'll go to dinner and i would be having dinner with my wife and i wouldn't remember anything we talked about because i would be thinking about the crossfit competition i had coming up right and

Starting point is 00:43:41 that was an example of me not am wrapping not being present and focused on what I was doing. So the theory is you identify your focus, right? Whatever it may be. And you know, for me, it's family fitness business. Then you work hard at it, right? You, whatever it may be, then you switch gears and you do this throughout your day. And then every now and then you need to reevaluate. So I'll give you an example. For a while I was going competing at the highest level in CrossFit, owning the business, and I had the family. Then I had more children, the business grew, and the competition got harder. So I decided to switch gears and go team because I didn't have as much time to allocate to these other things. So I had to switch gears, evaluate what was really

Starting point is 00:44:18 important to me, and then do that. But then when my daughter got sick, it was another time for me to reevaluate. What am I trying to really focus on and how many things can I actually AMRAP? So now I chose not to compete because I want to do the best I can in business. Then I want to switch gears and go best I can with family. And then I still want to work out, but I can't spend as much time on it. And that's kind of the AMRAP mentality is identify your focus, work hard at it and switch gears. And then every now and then re-evaluate and get rid of some of the stuff on your plate. And when you're, when you're re-evaluating, do you sit down with a pad and a pen and write it out? Do you, do you have a set time when you

Starting point is 00:44:57 might do that in the morning or at night? Like if you could just describe perhaps some of the details of what that looks like. I mean, reevaluating happens with big moments in your life, such as your daughter getting sick, or you're getting married, or you have children, you have reevaluate with the things you're going on. You used to love maybe playing video games for three hours a day. Once you have a kid, you need to reevaluate. You can't do that anymore, right? You just can't. You need to reevaluate those times. And so reevaluation happens kind of internally for me, whether I'm, you know, on the bike, just kind of like, you know, thinking in my thoughts or whatever it may be. But I identify every so often when I reevaluate. But on a consistent daily basis,

Starting point is 00:45:38 I try and check in on myself and try to ask myself, hey, did I do the best job today as I could to be a father, to be a husband, to be a business owner? And did I maintain my fitness? Did I do that today? And if the answer is yes, fuck, hell yeah. But if the answer is no, then there's always tomorrow, right? And I think if you do those micro goals on a daily basis, it doesn't lead to these oh shit moments where you wake up and you've been doing the same thing for five years and you're unhappy. Right? You need to start taking that into your own hands on a daily basis and evaluating.

Starting point is 00:46:09 What are some of your goals right now from a business standpoint? I mean, I just think that service-based fitness is the way to go. I really do. I feel very passionate about it. I think that you look at... What does that mean? Just service. Like you walk into a gym, I want to be service.

Starting point is 00:46:22 I want someone to help me. I want their guidance and direction. You know, think about hotels. You go into a hotel gym, the four seasons, everywhere else is like, hello, sir. How can I help you? This, that you go to the gym, there's no one there. You just get on the elliptical and you have an aimless workout, no direction, no guidance. So from a business perspective, I want to bring service to the hotels. I want to bring service to corporate wellness where instead of people just going to the gym and you know, wearing their headphones, now all of a sudden they're creating connections.

Starting point is 00:46:47 And that helps with productivity in the workplace. It creates with fostering a sense of more culture in the workplace. And then also I want to do that on the commercial side, open to the public. I want to be experts and the best at service-based fitness, right? Bringing the highest level of quality coaching combined with quality programming in a fun atmosphere. That's what we're really focused on right now. This, then if we could rewind the clock,

Starting point is 00:47:14 this is from Tyler Eggman, I think it is. If you, that means Jason, could go back to 2008 after winning the CrossFit Games, what advice would you give yourself in regards for training for the games and or business? What advice would you give yourself at that time? It doesn't have to be actually related to games or business. I'd say, what advice, period. The advice I would say is earlier on, identify this whole concept of Amarant mentality and evaluate more regularly because

Starting point is 00:47:40 there's times in my life that I regret not spending quality time with, you know. But I mean, I don't necessarily regret because God is where we're at today. But there's been times where I haven't been the most present father. I've been doing a lot of different things. And I wish I had learned that earlier on. At least now when I travel or like this morning, I left the house at four and I'm not going to be home until later. At least now, every time I do that, I recognize that it's a sacrifice I'm making, but that I have to accept it and then, you know, try and make it right in the future. Right. But

Starting point is 00:48:13 at least being aware that there's sacrifice. I think before it was just kind of like, I was trying to just do so much. Now I need to identify and say no to more things. So I can really start pinpointing my focus. The question I had earlier about how you go about doing that is still one I'd like to dig into a little bit because I think it's so important. For instance, I was chatting a few months ago with this older gent. He's in his 60s. He has a bunch of kids. And every quarter, he gets a report card from his wife. the report card is uh zero to ten in four categories he's got provider husband father lover those are the four wow and he for he owns his own company at least one company and travels a lot so let's say he's traveling but it's for business

Starting point is 00:49:01 purposes and he's opening up new manufacturing plants or whatever it might be in China, who knows? So he's gone. So he'll get, he might get a 10 out of 10 in provider, but he's going to probably be very low on the lover score and so on and so forth, you know, maybe five out of six on the others, who knows? And it's allowable as long as he has a good average. So it's like one can drop as long as the others are higher and so on. How do you keep track of reprioritizing or think about that? Is it, is it all in the head or do you put it down anywhere or is it something that you try to do at the end of each workday? I know we talked about a little bit. Yeah, I think it's just in my head. I think it's just constant evaluation, whether I'm, um, you know, I like to, let's just say, you know, be alone with my

Starting point is 00:49:49 thoughts in like in the garage working out. And I just think about, you know, Hey, what am I doing right now? What am I doing? Well, what can we do better at? How can I be better at this? This is this. And it's just that constant pursuit of being better at whatever I'm doing. And I think it's an internal conversation with myself. And I think that if I ever get complacent or comfortable, that's where I start getting nervous. And I think I want to get uncomfortable in business. I want to get uncomfortable and get out there and start sharing my message of what I'm trying to do and what we're trying to accomplish and provide for more people to do what they love for a living. And these are the conversations I have in my head, right? Is, Hey, Ava's getting better. Now I can start focusing a little bit

Starting point is 00:50:24 more on this, but don't forget about this, you know, and things like that. Do you have any favorite books or books that you've gifted to other people either or both? The one that stands out to me the most, I read a lot. I think there's some really poor books at the airport. I really do. Sure. Anyways, for me, I like more of a practical application book. I like a book like Mark Cuban's Sport of Business. I like it because it gets me fired up. I like it because it's a real story from a real guy just saying like it is, and it's easy reading. It's not so analytical and things like that. And so that's the book I like. Got it. Let's talk about morning

Starting point is 00:51:00 rituals, if you have any. So this is from daSG, no, or SJ, excuse me. What are some morning rituals, if you have any. So this is from da SG, no, or SJ, excuse me. What are some morning rituals or reflections that he does to keep passions alive while juggling children and life's twists and turns? So I would say let's focus on the, on the routines or rituals. Like, do you have to give any, if we look at the first 90 minutes of your day and I'm sure it varies, but generally speaking, are there certain routines, habits, elements that you have? I'd say in general, it's probably some type of exercise in general. There's exceptions to that, right? But in general, it's exercise, whether it be jujitsu or, you know, hitting it in my garage, whatever it is, I like to get the body moving and I like to get flowing early in

Starting point is 00:51:40 the morning. Do you do that before breakfast, after breakfast, before, before breakfast? Yeah. So that's before the kids get up. That's before my wife is up. That's before everything. That, what time is that typically would you say? I mean, it varies, you know, it used to be a lot earlier and now it's like, I mean, well, this morning I left early and yesterday I left early, but on average it's probably six. Six. Yeah. Cause some days it's a lot earlier. Some days it's seven. And you're exercising on an empty stomach yeah do you drink coffee i do i love coffee do you drink coffee before your workout you save that for later how many cups of coffee do you have a day um i probably have one and a half okay two maybe two maybe i love coffee um what i would do is normally exercise come in see the

Starting point is 00:52:22 kids i'll make my coffee like doing pour overs. I want to get a really cool espresso machine. That's what I'm working on next. And, you know, hang out with the kids. They get breakfast, boom, they go off to school and I go off to work and we do our thing. And then I'll be there and I'll, you know, I'll go to meetings, I'll go to different gyms. I'll try and just see what's going on. Then sometimes I'll do, you know, a workout.

Starting point is 00:52:42 I'll take one of our classes throughout the Bay Area. And then I'm always home for dinner at 5.30 with the family. And then I get back on emails and different stuff around 7.30 till about 10 because the kids go to sleep. So basically I just regiment my days. It's exercise, get the body moving. It's time with the family briefly in the morning. They go to school, I go to work. Then when I get home at 5.30, we have dinner, we hang out. Then for the rest of the night, I'm doing work and I go to bed. I try and go to bed by 10.30, 10, 10.30, and then do it all over again. Do you have any particular, and maybe this doesn't happen to you, but when you, you have so many different hats, right? I mean, you have your business owner, father, husband, certainly

Starting point is 00:53:25 competitor, perhaps not going to the games necessarily, but still you have extreme athletic drive. Do you have insomnia or do you find it easy to sleep? Do you ever have insomnia? No, I find it pretty easy to sleep. You know, you think with the different stresses I have, no, I think it's because i exhaust myself throughout the day i i generally run at a high like some people say it's like the the um full throttle or like you know like i generally run on a high level throughout the duration of the day i'm kind of like a kid you know it's like and then all of a sudden they get to you like like uh bedtime it's like boom yeah that's kind of what happens to me you definitely have a sort of high standard

Starting point is 00:54:05 rpm which is good do you have any wind down routines or anything you like to do before bed i mean generally it's it's answering a lot of emails because during the day i'm doing a lot of other stuff it's answering a lot of emails getting back to people and then sometimes my wife and i will watch a show together but that's pretty much it that's it and then face plant and then face plant and on the weekends i you know, we like to travel. We like to go do things like last weekend or this weekend coming up, we're going to Disneyland with my daughter. And, uh, the weekend after we're going to Mexico to see one of our locations, but also have a good time. So we try and travel as a family and have those times.

Starting point is 00:54:39 Who do you go to for business advice? I mean, I got a few, I mean, you know, we have a few mentors that have really helped out. Some of our, our corporate partners, Western Digital is one of them. Some of the executives in there have really been amazingly helpful just in asking about things because for me and my industry, sometimes I get overwhelmed. So I need to get outside my industry to start asking what's going on. And, you know, I have also friends through different sponsorships that I have that they've really helped me out from, you know, Paul and I have a lot of people. And then in the beginning, like Paul Gomez, this guy, Mike Cordano, Jerry, and then Joe Gigantino back in the day, right? He was like the original guy that really kind of took men in his wings from a business perspective. And then this guy, Min, taught me everything to do with sales. Okay, so wait, so was Joe the fellow on the elliptical?

Starting point is 00:55:25 Yep. Joe's the elliptical and Min was the guy who came over on a ship from Vietnam, got in a concentration camp in, I wanna say like Korea or something. And then ended up getting here, selling perfume door to door. And now he's doing really well for himself.

Starting point is 00:55:39 So straight up hustler. How did you meet Min? He was a gym sales guy and I wanted to be like him because he was making big checks. So you met him at the same time that you were also later doing the elliptical mentoring sessions. Yes. I was working the front desk and so Min would put in his sales slips and I looked at his commission slips and I was like, dude, what's going on? Teach me how to sell.

Starting point is 00:56:01 And he did. And that was really a cool experience because I learned how to talk to different people, identify what their wants and needs were and, you know, see what's going on. But it was also a time in my life where I started to recognize that you need to run an ethical business just because you make money. Making money is not everything in life. Running a very ethical, successful business is critical for me. And what would happen is I would sell them the dream, like, Hey, join our gym for 99.99 a month, and you're gonna get in the best shape of your life, but they wouldn't,

Starting point is 00:56:27 and I knew I was selling them a false hope, and so that's when I got into the group coaching style, which just changed the game for me. I wanna talk about two pieces of that. What made Ben so good at selling? I mean, the best way to describe him is straight up hustler. I mean, just hustler. Like, right. But for some people that's going to conjure the image of like some guy with a fold out table and three card money, he was like, picks up and runs away from

Starting point is 00:56:53 the cops when the sirens start. He lived by the code, you know, ABCs always be closing. He would just identify what someone needed to hear and he would work really hard at doing it. And there was no sugarcoating. He would follow up with people. He would tour people well. He showed me from an early age that there's no easy answer in life. You got to put in the work and you got to get on the phones and hustle it. And you want to get leads? Go to the collections who, like all the members who are past due, call them all and try and collect it.

Starting point is 00:57:19 Go back to people who visited the gym from five years ago and call them. And I would just end up with stacks beyond the phone. Maybe you get one. So what would be an example of, say, a potentially successful script or question when you're calling up the Glenn Gary leads that you have from five years ago? Yeah. What does a good call look like? If someone in your company had that job today and you're like, you have from five years ago. What, what, what does a good call look like? If you were, if you,

Starting point is 00:57:49 if you, if someone in your company had that job today and you're like, there's a stack, better start smiling and dialing. What would you tell them? I mean, I think you start off just saying, Hey, I'm, you know, I'm Jason Clipa with NC fit. Uh, just want to follow up with your, you know, whatever. Um, I think really what you would try and do is just identify, Hey, so, you know, you know, how was your experience? We're just checking up. Did you enjoy your experience? What were you looking for out of your experience? And you identify what they're looking for, right? And they say, Oh, well, did you hear that? We actually just added this program that, you know, kind of tailors to what they were looking for. And I think finding out what people are looking for, I think it's really important instead of trying to force feed what you think they want, find out what they do want.

Starting point is 00:58:23 Right. Asking good questions. Yeah. What's, what's, what are the magic ingredients to a good tour? He said men toured well. Oh man, he toured the best, you know, you know, to some people it would just be treadmills and ellipticals, but to him it was, it was money making pieces of machinery that you could sell. Hey, this is the, you know, lifestyle 10 32 top of its class it comes the fan it sings music to you right and you just it's like selling a mercedes you know it's like and

Starting point is 00:58:55 then you talk about the treadmill you talk about this that oh by the way let me show you downstairs did we you know and then finally get down and it's like oh did we tell you though that you could, for an additional $8 a month, you can get towel service. And let me show you where those towels go. Let me show you what they look like. Let me show you the quality of them. Right. And those are the type of things you learn, right? It's just, did he have a, did he have a strong accent or no?

Starting point is 00:59:17 Oh yeah. No, that's great though. Because it just shows you like, it does not matter. You know, very strong. No, no, but he powered through it. I mean, I used to live in San Jose and, and jose and uh you know i used to go to a vietnamese barbershop and i and it's it's one of my best friends growing up was vietnamese on long island and like when when anyone has a strong accent it's a hard it's a strong accent but he was able despite that to

Starting point is 00:59:40 just power through and become one of the top if not not the top. Oh, he was the dude. Yeah. Oh yeah. He was a baller. Learned a lot from him. All right. I'm going to ask just a few more questions and then maybe we can do a round two sometimes since we're basically in the same, same neighborhood. One would be if you could put any message on a billboard, and this is a metaphor really, but just to get a message out to millions of people, let's assume it's non-commercial, right? So it can't be an advertisement,

Starting point is 01:00:08 but what might you put on a billboard? I mean, I would, I would love to get this out to as many people as you could possibly push this to. It would just say like, just be easy. It's like life is good. And I mean that because I really believe that meaning when you've seen children, you know, when you've seen children oncology, it changes your whole perspective. Yesterday I was on the road and this woman is just tailing me so hard coming around, getting all crazy. I just look over at her. I'm just like, easy, like easy. Like life is good. You have a beautiful car. You look healthy and young and pretty, whatever, like show the hell out, you know? And I think people, they get so caught up

Starting point is 01:00:51 in these little problems and they let it manifest into something so great that they stopped to, they never stopped to reflect that, Hey, look, life is okay. But I, I choose to look at the world. Me personally, I choose to look at the world in a pair of glasses, not sunglasses. I choose to look at things in a brighter light because especially after, you know, I spent three nights in the ICU and my daughter was on the brink of not good. You know, you don't go to the ICU as a cancer patient. I mean, it was really, really not good, right? It was the only time that we really felt like it was a life and death situation. I'm sitting there and there's this baby to my left and he's seven months old and his dad comes in. The baby had never left the ICU

Starting point is 01:01:32 before. And all night they were, they were sucking fluid out of this kid's lung because he had pneumonia or whatever it was. And I'm sitting there for two days straight, right? Up all night eating muffins, looking at my daughter over here, like really not in good shape. And this guy, this baby over here in the den, I'm just sitting there like, and people are complaining that there's traffic and it's just, no, I'm not expecting people.

Starting point is 01:01:57 I never want anybody to be in our position. I don't. But what I want them to do is to really reflect on their life and realize that everybody has something to be grateful for if you think about it, right? You're alive, you're well, you have the ability to get up and go do some amazing things, you know? And I think that sometimes people get caught up and they forget that. I think they could use a reminder of that. Yes. I think that is where we should wrap up. That is, I think that is,

Starting point is 01:02:22 if among many other things, what I want people to remember. So that's a fantastic point. And just in closing, where can people find you online, learn more about you, learn more about your business and anything else you'd like them to take a look at? Yeah, I mean, nc.fit would be great. I'm very active on Instagram, Jason Kalipa. I don't use Facebook as much. I probably should. I use that more. Kalipa KH, right? NC.fit would be great. I'm very active on Instagram, Jason Kalipa. I don't use Facebook as much. I probably should.

Starting point is 01:02:47 And Twitter, I probably use that more. Kalipa, K-H, right? K-H-A-L-I-P-A. And I do these things called Box of Business. There's seminars we do for affiliate owners or gym owners. My partner and I, JP, we do them all for charity and pediatric cancer. And so back to one of the questions, we have a blood drive coming up in September. We do that on a nationwide scale at different CrossFit gyms around the world.

Starting point is 01:03:08 Just to place it since people might be listening five years from now since 2017. Yeah. Okay. We're going to do it on a yearly basis. Oh, you are. Okay. Oh yeah. All right.

Starting point is 01:03:15 But at the end of the day, um, yeah, you could just find me nc.fit, jasonclepa.com or jasonclepa on Instagram. You can find a lot of stuff about, about me on that. Awesome. Well guys say hello to Jason and, uh, it's, it's great to meet you, man. It's been a long time coming. I mean, I've, uh, I followed your career for a while now, so it's, it's really nice to meet in person. And thanks Mark Bell, Mr. Smelly himself, Mr. Thousand Pound Back Squat, uh, for making the introduction. And, uh, so first and foremost, uh, I should say,

Starting point is 01:03:44 thank you for taking the time i appreciate you making making the time today oh thank you thanks for having me yeah man uh really fun and there's so much more to dig into so uh hopefully folks will be able to do a round two and get more questions answered and if you want to see some additional video make sure you go to tim.blog forward slash podcast where you can find show notes for this episode, links to everything, books and so on mentioned, links to Jason, his sites and so on, as well as some demos and work in the gym that we recorded earlier. So you can find that Tim.blog forward slash podcast. And as always, and until next time, thank you for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just a few more things before you take off. Number one,

Starting point is 01:04:25 this is five bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? And would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And five bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness

Starting point is 01:05:06 before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by LegalZoom.

Starting point is 01:05:23 I have used LegalZoom myself for many of my businesses. And many of the icons on this podcast have actually used LegalZoom. For instance, Matt Mullenweg of WordPress fame, CEO of Automatic, which is now worth more than a billion dollars, first incorporated his company on LegalZoom. LegalZoom is a reliable resource that more than a million people have already trusted to help with their businesses. Whether that's setting up a will, doing a proper trademark search, forming an LLC, setting up a nonprofit, or finding simple cease and desist letter templates. Man, do I use a lot of those. Legal Zoom is not a law firm, but they do have a network of independent attorneys available in most states. They can give you advice on the best way to get started, provide contract reviews, and otherwise help you run your business. And important,

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #246: Building Strength, Improving Mindset, and Becoming the World's Fittest Man - Jason Khalipa

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