WHOOP Podcast - Steve Weatherford, Super Bowl champion, entrepreneur, business coach and fitness expert shares how he became one of the NFL's strongest players as a punter, plus the philosophies that've helped him find success in life after football.

Episode Date: October 30, 2019

Super Bowl champion Steve Weatherford discusses how he transformed his body in high school from a 108-pound freshman to a 225-pound senior (6:23), why NFL kicker and punter jobs are going to international players (8:42), discover, develop, deploy (11:48), managing his ADHT (18:52), the 4 things men rank their lives by (22:23), operating based on feelings or commitments (33:07), saving time each day for personal development (39:45), participating in Masterminds (41:21), hard work vs. relationships (42:35), high intensity, high humility (44:24), Everesting 29029 (51:43), and life lessons he discovered atop a mountain (57:27).Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

We discovered that there were secrets that your body was trying to tell you that could really help you optimize performance, but no one could monitor those things. And that's when we set out to build the technology that we thought could really change the world. Welcome to the WOOP podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Woop, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. Our clients range from the best professional athletes in the world, to Navy SEALs, to fitness enthusiasts, to Fortune 500 CEOs and executives. The common thread among whoop members is a passion to improve.

What does it take to optimize performance for athletes, for humans, really anyone? And now that we've just launched all-new whoop strap 3.0 featuring Whoop Live, which takes real-time training and recovery analysis to the next level, you're going to hear how many of these users are optimizing their body with whoop and with other things in their life. On this podcast, we dig deeper. We interview experts. We interview industry leaders across sports, data, technology, physiology, athletic achievement, you name it. How can you use data to improve your body? What should you change about your life? My hope is that you'll leave these conversations with some new ideas and a greater passion for performance. With that in mind, I welcome you to the

Whoop Podcast. It doesn't matter if you're listening to this at 37, 47 or 17. Like, go out and discover, because the more you go out and be adventurous and get outside of your comfort zone and go try cycling, go try writing, go try painting, go try bowling, go try starting a business. Go try things. And if you fail, that's okay. But if it feels okay when you fail, it's probably something you can get good at.

What's up, folks? This is the Whoop podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed. We are recording this in San Diego right now. My guest is Steve Weatherford, Super Bowl champion, professional athlete, now things all fitness, business, lifestyle, biohacking, you name it. Steve has an amazing outlook on life. He's a huge personality. We get into things about gratitude, about his faith, about how how he trained for a massive rock climbing event, all sorts of different things that we touch upon in this podcast. Not to mention his whoop data, which he's been using for three years now. So I hope you enjoy. Without further ado, here's Steve. Steve, welcome to the Whoop podcast.

Man, it's good to be here, man. Just talking off air, just kind of about how big of a vision this has been for you for a really long time. I just want to start out by saying it's cool to be a part of building your vision because it serves me people I recommend it to it serves them as well and like you freaking love it man yeah you can tell when somebody really loves what they're doing versus like somebody's trying to build something because they want to sell it um it's just really cool to see somebody build something they they truly believe in so kudos to you man I wanted to honor

you before we got this thing going man it's big because you're 29 years old 29 yeah pretty rad man no it's about to be 37 you know what I mean it's just it's good to be around hungry visionary people man no i appreciate that look and the amazing thing for me is getting to meet people like yourself who the technology has impacted in one way or another and you know hear your story um i've i've been a big fan of yours for a while because you were one of the you know the high profile people wearing whoop years ago like before it was you know pretty well known in circles so how did you first hear about whoop um i mean i guess it really starts at like 14 years old man and having like you a vision of something that I wanted to accomplish. But there's so many things

that need to happen in between A and X for you to get to your dream. And so, you know, to answer your question, I have always since 14 years old been buying magazines because it was the internet. Before the internet, I was buying magazines and I was trying to, because you couldn't slide up in somebody's DM or send somebody an email and learn from them. You're trying to figure out what is optimal. And some of the best in the world didn't have books. or manuals on training or nutrition or supplementation or rest, recovery, hydration, any of those things. So I've always been very hungry for that.

And so to answer your question, I got into it because I'm always hungry and I'm always looking for because at this point of my life, I'm not going to be able to find things that are going to give me an 11% increase in my performance. It's just I've been doing this for a long enough that I've unlocked a lot of the big ones. The big ones. You know, the nutrition, the training, the supplementation, but there was always a component of my training that I knew, man, I can find more than just one or two percent, and me really dialing in and really being like scientific about my rest in 2019 has improved so much more

than just my performance. I mean, you just think about your mood at home. I have five kids, dude. That's a lot of kids, by the way. So, like, you come home and I have, you know, two businesses. I'm a visionary for other things in my life aside from football now. Totally, totally. I'm very similar to you, hungry and motivated and just, like, I want more.

And in order to get more, like, you can't have the same routine that you have right now. Even though if it's working for you, in order for you to do more, you have to become more. In order for you to become more, you kind of have to find where your gaps are at. And so I've always been trying to find my gaps. And that's how I found because I was really trying to get free. medically scientifically dialed in on like deep rim sleep and I tried a lot of this crap from you know not to not to down other people that are trying to accomplish the same thing but I tried the different products that you would get at Apple store and they're just they weren't functional

for me like I had to remember to do things before I went to bed and just like it was another thing and I wanted to unlock it but I wanted to unlock it the easiest way possible without adding another thing that I have to do to my checklist to optimize myself I wanted something that would run autopilot that I could check when it was convenient for me, and I know it's always tracking. In addition to starting high school at 108 pounds, I knew. Which is crazy, by the way, sitting across from you right now. Thanks, man. I'm glad we're videotaping this because, like, people need to appreciate how far you look from 100 million pounds. So I was 58 when I was went away. So it wasn't like I was like 53, just this little pee-wee dude. I was pretty tall for a freshman in high school.

But you had a slender build. Oh, man, like super, super skinny. And I was eating the same things other kids were eating and doing the same exact workouts, but more, and they were getting bigger and they were getting stronger, and I couldn't, and I just didn't understand it. It was frustrating, and I'm reading these magazines, I'm doing the workouts exactly how they say to do them, but it wasn't until later on in my life that I actually learned that, like, my body type needs carbohydrates, because you hear all this crap about carbs, this, carbs, you know what I mean? And I don't want to get into nutrition because I actually hate talking about nutrition, but it wasn't until I found out what worked for my body type.

and my intense activity regimen that I have because I played four sports in high school, two in college, 10 years in the pros. What sports did you play in high school? Football and soccer at the same time. I did soccer games on Tuesday and Saturday and football games on Friday. And I had, for football,

they only made me come to the first 15 minutes of practice because, like I told you, I was 108 pounds. So they were trying to get me onto the field, perform my skill and then get this, like, reject, you know, little kid off the field. Nobody thought it was cool, but I was on their team. Yeah, I was a kicker and a punter. Yeah.

But I had a freaking rope for a leg, you know what I mean? So I looked like a bobblehead because, you know, you have this tiny little body and they put these freaking huge pads on. Huge helmet. And that the helmet was, oh, my gosh, it was so big. But it wasn't too big for my head. My head was big and my body was small. Yeah, you do. So my head's like bobbleheading around.

And then I go out there and they see me kick for the first time. They're like, okay. We can hang out with this guy. This is a weird. I don't want to hang out with them, but it's okay for them to wear our uniform. But I thought it was the coolest thing ever that I got to wear, you know, like in high school, the football players would wear their jersey to school on Friday. And you got to do that.

And I thought that was the coolest thing ever because I was really good at soccer, but nobody cared about soccer. So that was the two sports that I played. And as soon as I was done with that 15 minutes of practice, I would go to soccer practice for like an hour and a half, and that was my day. Well, let's pause on that for a second. Because I've always wondered if you take some of the best soccer players, some of the best college soccer players and you gave them like six months of

training to try to be a punter or try to be a kicker. I mean, you see so many issues in the NFL of guys missing extra points and all this. Do you think that there should be more scouting in soccer to put the kicker position? There's a lot of scouting because I mean, dude, the cat's out of the

bag. Kickers and punters are making $4 million a year. Think about this for a minute. An NFL punter has on average 4.3 plays per game. So if you think about it the most i ever got got paid in a season was four million and i had four punts per game on average i'm making to think about this for a minute 16 weeks and we get paid once a week so divide four million by 16 can anybody do that math well you got you got you got four times 16 so

you're you're at 64 and then you got four million dollars you're making almost 80 grand a kick yeah 80 000 thank you for doing the math um i could kick the ball you could do the math But $80,000 a kick, the cat is out of the bag. So they're doing a ridiculous amount of scouting right now. And that's why you're seeing a lot of the punters are starting to become, all those jobs are beginning to be consumed by Australians because of their background in Australian rules football. And rugby, they're better punting the ball out of their hand than any of us are. But when you put the ball on the ground for Australians to kick the ball off the ground, they are terrible. Interesting.

So we're seeing a lot of, you know, like Central America, a lot of Mexicans are coming in and just crushing the game kicking. There's probably five or six. Are there Mexican kickers in the NFL right now? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Probably four or five. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. So I'm a little out of the touch. Yeah, yeah. So point being is kickers and punters jobs are becoming consumed by people that are not of this country because they're so good with their friends. It's like third nature to us, not even. Did you know that you were that good? Like, did you have a vision of playing in the NFL as a high school kicker? When I first did it, like, no.

I was just actually just trying to help the football coach because you have no idea. And you wanted to wear your jersey. Yeah, heck, yeah. You know what I mean? I wanted to be part of the cool guy club. Yeah. I learned pretty quickly that I had elite caliber because it's so, it's hard for you to compare you scoring 25 points in a basketball game in high school and saying, well, if I score 25 points a game, I can play in the NBA.

You can't compare those two, but a 55-yard field goal in high school is the same as it's still 55 yards. That's a great point. The ball's a little bit different, but 55 is 55, dude. Yeah, actually the NFL conditions are typically better than high school because I'm in Indiana, dude. I'm kicking the football off of like a cow pasture for a field. Right.

And there's wind and stuff. So to answer your question, people started to talk about it really quickly because my distances were NFL caliber distances. Now you had a million things that I'm. I needed to improve on consistency and blah, blah, but the initial gift was there. And I feel like in life, kind of like with you, our entire existence really, if we think about it, if we're going to do life right, because we only got one time to do it, life should be all about discovery of your gift. Yeah. And then developing your gift and then deploying it. So discover, develop,

deploy and that's what I did with soccer so I guess I guess if I want anybody to hear anything maybe from from this show is go out and try things and go out and try a lot of things it doesn't matter if you're listening to this at 37 47 or 17 like go out and discover because the more you go out and be adventurous and get outside of your comfort zone and go try cycling go try writing go try painting go try bowling go try starting a business right like name it go try things and if you fail, that's okay. But if it feels okay when you fail, it's probably something you can get good at because kicking to me came natural to me. But it wasn't like

when I discovered it was my gift. It was like every kick that I kicked was 60 yards and down the middle. It was something that came quicker to me than it would have come from other people. So it was a discovery for me. But during high school, during college, there was a lot of development. And then you get into the pros and there's still development the entire time. because you have to think about it. There's only 32 jobs in the world for the job that I had. We didn't have backups. So every single year, they're looking at our statistics,

and the coaches are saying, hmm, this guy's costing me $4 million this year. I can go out and get a rookie, and there's a hundred rookies that are really, really good. Maybe not as good as this dude, but really, really good, but they're only going to cost me $400,000. And that's the difference between NFL Pro Sports and Major League, NHL, or any of the other pro sports,

their contracts, if they sign a four-year deal, for 40 million, they're guaranteed to get 40 million dollars. And as you've seen in the media with Antonio Brown, totally not guaranteed. Even the guarantees in the NFL are not even guaranteed. So my point being is for gaining an edge to bring it back to kind of like what the performance and what whoop has done in my life. I know I've talked about kids and talked about business, talked about performance. But sleep was that one thing that I had never fully dialed in, even 10 years in the

pros. I had a routine that worked really well for me, but I didn't know exactly why it was working well for me, but I did, I was able to create a routine that would help me peak on Sundays. Yeah. But now that my life is a little bit different and I have different days of the week that I need to perform, Whope has been really helpful for that because you take this NFL routine that is just like sure fire and it works so good for you to be predictably perform at a high level. But what about when you go into life and now you've got businesses and you're speaking here and you're doing podcasts there and you've got five kids here and you've got two businesses.

Yeah, it's crazy. It's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot to be much. But I need somebody to kind of watch my back to let me know, hey, dude, you shouldn't be training really hard today. Well, I think what's refreshing that you're creating as a framework here is things like sleep and recovery are not just super important if you're a professional athlete. They're super important no matter what you're trying to accomplish in your daily life.

And so what's been cool for me and seeing really over the last 12 months, we've started to establish much more of a consumer footprint. And so we've heard these stories. You mentioned five kids, like hearing a story from a mother who's like, you know, for the first time I'm starting to feel rested around my family at the end of the day because she's working a job and then she has to go home and take care of the kids. And like, and figuring that out through whooped data is pretty powerful. And so it's interesting to me, though, of course, because like you were a world class athlete

and you actually didn't have a lot of this data. Like I think in 20 years we'll look back on the people. period of time where professional athletes didn't measure all this stuff as being like, you know, baseball players like smoking in the dugout. It'll just seem crazy. Like it'll just seem like you've left so much opportunity out there. Well, I mean, you have to think about even you talk about baseball players and smoking cigarettes like and and chewing tobacco and nicotine. That was helpful for them. Actually, if you look at. Well, the nicotine piece, yeah. For sure. And then amphetamines. It's not healthy for them, but it increases their performance. Dude, Adderall was like

the big, they called them greenies. Yeah, totally. I mean, the Red Sox were like, they were notorious for it. But that increased their performance and also allowed them, like, people to go out and have 15 or 20 beers like Wade Boggs on a plane ride and then wake up and play the next day because he would just pop amphetamines and get his performance. However, that does so much long-term damage to your body. Totally.

And now you go back and look at some of those guys from like, you hear the war stories and then you look at how their life is now. it's just not sustainable so my point being is like I want to live a sustainable life and a lot of people get into adrenal fatigue I've been there I can speak from experience and then they're taking these uppers these oh I'm so tired all the time they go and get these oh and I can't focus right I'm so tired I can't focus I've got ADD because I can't focus let me go and tell the doctor that I can't focus and he gives me Adderall and those prescriptions are pretty fast and loose oh my gosh dude and then and then that happens and then you in end up instead of getting sleep, you go and get drugs because that brings you up. It scientifically increases your focus. You can get more things done in a day. Getting more things done in a day feels good. So then when you take those drugs, you associate those with productivity and productivity.

Long term, you can't take stuff like that. So my point to saying all that stuff is that was me. I retired from the NFL and I'm like, oh, I need to focus more, right? I already have ADHD, if you haven't noticed, Will. And I wanted to get things done, but I had all these freaking emails, all these things that I never had to deal with before because I was a pro athlete and had people take care of it for me. No, I still had support, but I had to be dialed into, you know, emails and remembering when I had a Skype call and remembering when I had a podcast and remembering because I had my own ESPN radio show, I had my own Spike TV show. I was a lot of different things that I was doing. And so I went from trying to be the best in the world at one thing to, like, all this sudden, like, I went from being a sniper to like a freaking AK-47 with all these different things I'm trying to shoot.

So it was boom, boom, boom, boom. I didn't have enough ammo, dude. And I had never had to. So this is right after you leave the NFL. Right. So I had like two years of that. And you've got all these things going on. Yeah.

And I needed help. And you start taking Adderall and start to trying to do too much. You know the grind, dude. You started this company. This company is about to be gigantic, gigantic. Yeah, thank you. It's a great product. But now the, now the, now the business is out.

to be about to be gigantic. Dude, how many nights did you stay up all night? Oh, all the time. You know what I mean? All the time. So, I mean, dude, this thing is predicated on peak performance and even the guy that's found in it and trying to take it to the wall and get this thing to grow and become global, dude, you had to beat yourself up to do it.

And so my point being is like, knowing what you know now, you would have done it differently. Knowing what I know now, I never would have gotten that prescription. Even though I have ADHD, the greatest thing that I have ever discovered, to be able to manage that is routine and sleep. And not sleep, like not catching up on sleep, not like getting nine to night because I know the next night I'm going to get four,

that doesn't work for me. I've noticed that doesn't work for me because I'm tracking stuff now, you know what I mean? And so it's allowed me very similar to what I did with nutrition. Stop pounding my head against the wall and eating what everybody else is eating and sleeping how everybody else is sleeping

because they're not me. You know what I mean? They don't need 7,000 calories in a day just to maintain what they have. You know what I mean? Like I'm a different. person. Yeah, you got a different body too. Right. Different body, different mind, different everything. So why would my sleep be any different than like what I discovered through

nutrition? Because as soon as I added carbs into my diet, that's when I became like somebody that would be on muscle and fitness versus somebody that was like really lean. So you, so let's play that out. So high school college, you're still pretty lean. Oh yeah, like shredded lean like six percent year round. And your diet then didn't have a lot of carbs in it? I was, no like not on purpose because in my mind dude when we were kids what what did it all the big dudes talk about all the Rick flares and the Hulk Hogan's and the pro football players what were they showing us in magazines protein protein protein so in my mind that's all you know right yeah is I'm giving me protein yeah my body needed carbs too and so it wasn't that like I was on like a Atkins diet or something like that because I thought I was fat all of the muscle heads that I knew all the peak performers that I knew we're all about protein so it wasn't until i like freaking educated myself i'm like dude i'm having like 400 grams 500 grams of protein and like 500 grams of carbs i need like a thousand grams of carbs and 500 grams of protein and once i started doing that my body changed so the reason i kind of

like compared that to whoop is like once i started to dial in my sleep to get consistent with it and know exactly how many hours i need on certain nights because i've got a big day maybe i've got you know, two podcasts and I've got a, you know, 5 a.m. run and then I'm, you know, my son's got a game at 8 p.m. It might be a crazy day like that or something or maybe travel. Whatever it is, I know it's going to be a high demand on me. I need to be prepared for that because if I'm not prepared for that, then I'm going to show up. I'll go to my son's game. I'll freaking be dog tired and then that's going to maybe disappoint him. I mean, I create scenarios in my mind, but I can, I can connect the dots and see when I'm rested, how I treat people, when I'm

rested. I don't miss mistakes. When I'm rested, I remember more stuff. So, like, I don't need the adderall. It's not good for me. I mean, it's legit, like legal cocaine. So if I don't need it and I can do it with sleep and I actually perform at a better level and I'm not irritable because when I took the adorol, I'd get a ton of stuff done. But if you tried to ask me a question when I was in the middle of something, dude, I will rip your head off. You know, don't talk to me right I'm, you know what I mean? Like you're too locked in. Because you're not getting sleep.

And so you're already irritable, but you're irritably intentional. And that makes sense. Like legit. Yeah. You know what I mean? And with five kids, it just wasn't serving. It wasn't allowing me to keep the main thing, the main thing. And the main thing is my faith in my family.

They're so precious to me. But when you're so geared in on getting things done, you'll do whatever it takes. And then you introduce drugs into the whole mix. And it just changes who you all. are. Oh, so what was the tipping point for you where you were like, okay, less drugs, now I'm going to get sleep? My marriage wasn't great. You know, my business was good, but it was like, I look at the four things that are important in my life, man, my faith, my family, my fitness, my finances. Like this, I feel like all men rank themselves on like how good their life is on

those four things. Like, if you make a lot of money and you're in good shape, like you're doing okay. If you make a lot of money and you're in good shape and you have a great marriage, you're killing the game. If you make a lot of money and you're in good shape and you're doing great. If you make a lot of money you know you're in good shape you have a good marriage and you have you have faith and I'm not saying you have to believe what I believe but you believe in something right you know I mean you believe in serving something bigger than yourself you are winning because I don't know too many men that are winning the race in all four things and I'm not saying like I'm better than other men but for the first time of my life in 2019 like I'm winning on on all four fronts right now and granted some days

are worse than the others but dude I'm fully loaded I've never been more productive but I've also never been more fulfilled at the same time. I love that. So let's go back for a second. So you're playing in the NFL, right? What was it like being the punter on the team? Because you strike me, by the way.

Like being a skateboarder? Nobody wants to be around the punter. Yeah, but you strike me as like a super alpha guy. And the stereotype I have for the punter is like kind of like. It's not the man before you. body language. You're coming off as like the all-star tight end right now.

Yeah. Like I'm picturing you doing an end zone dance. It's never been my identity. So when I came into the NFL, granted, like, there's 52 guys on the team, and I have like the 51st or 52nd coolest job. When I go on to the field, like at least the kicker can be hoisted on people's shoulder and carried off of the field because he hit the game-winning field goal. Yeah.

Nobody's ever going to hoist up the puck. because he had like the game winning punt. Nobody ever wants to see you go on the field because if I go on the field, that means... Yeah, it's not a great vibe. Yeah, that means Drew Brees and the Saints were unsuccessful in the first three downs. Like, oh, here comes Weatherford.

You can hear a collective groan like, when I come out under the field, it's not me, but nobody wants to see what I'm about to do. I'm giving the ball back to the other team. It doesn't matter how good at giving the ball back to the other team I am. It's just not cool. So to your point, the most uncool position.

However, because I, always viewed myself as as possibility from a young age just because I was able to see if I worked really, really hard at something like lifting weights. I went from, I didn't mention this really. I went from 108 pounds to the start of high school. And then when I graduated, I walked across the graduation stage at 225. Wow. I'm 240 right now. So like I gained 117 pounds. I doubled my size. And I did that in four and a half years. Pretty amazing, man. Um, it was a, it's a lot of work, by the way, it was twice a day. And I freaking eating a lot of protein. You know what I mean? Um, but I was able to see from a young age when you obsess and work really, really hard at something, you're going to fail forward. But eventually, if you stay more persistent and consistent than anybody else, you will get that because my genetics, I was not predisposed like some of these guys I've played with in the NFL where they can like go eat a pound of bacon for breakfast, go in the weight room and just look at the weights. And, you know, and get huge.

Like, their dudes that I played with in the NFL, a fact, would eat one pound of greasy bacon before my eyes every single morning. And then when we would do body fat tests, and I know he didn't work out in the offseason for a fact, he would come in and measure it like 8.5% body fat at 285, 6'5, 6 foot 6. Just freaks, right? And here I am training twice a day, every day of the off season, to come in at like 7% body fat and 225. and I'm like so proud of myself

and then this dude just walks in is just like, just ripped everywhere. But on some level, you know, I think like... He won't be successful after he leaves the NFL. Yeah, that's my point. Like, you should feel grateful that you work through that. I feel amazing, dude. Right? Yeah.

I mean, looking back on it, like, yeah, it sucked. But looking back on what the process made me become because it wasn't about the identity or what I became as a football player. It's like what I learned about vision, what I learned about goal setting and what I learned about consistency and persistence. You know what I mean?

Like, have the vision. Have the big vision. When I was 14, dude, I wanted to be a pro athlete. And I had never even played football at that time. I just knew I wanted to be on TV and I wanted to be playing a sport. Well, that's amazing that you had that vision. Everybody had that vision. Do you tell me you didn't watch TV and say, man, I want to be a pro athlete.

Yeah, but it wasn't in like a literal way. Right. It was maybe in like. But you fantasized about it. Yeah, like watching Michael Jordan play basketball. Right. Made me think I should be a basketball. Every little boy, at least for a moment.

Yeah, maybe it was, but it sounds like you had a plan around it. That's the difference though. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, I never made a plan. I wanted it enough to like take the action. Which is great and amazing. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, pulled it off unlike everyone else.

I mean, why are you sitting here with me? Like, you had a vision for something, but you actually did something about it. Yeah. So like when we were talking about discovery, uh, development and deploying, you didn't just have an idea and be like, man, it would be sweet if like somebody made this. You freaking did it. You know what I mean? And I'm sure you hit a lot of times during that journey where you thought it was about to crumble on top of you. Oh, totally.

You know what I mean? Like probably more than you have fingers and toes. But at the end of the day, you kept going because there's a million things that could stop you from making this thing become what it deserves to be and what it can be. But that being said, like, what price are you willing to pay? Well, one of the things that I've come to appreciate, and I feel like you're totally there. in life is this idea of being grateful of things that you had to overcome because in the moment it feels like it's going to break you right in the moment it feels like it's it's something you haven't experienced before and it's pushing you to a place that you're not comfortable with

and inevitably what happens is you overcome it through hard work through persistence through perseverance through having great people around you and then you look back on that moment at least I do now and I'm so grateful for that challenge but the way that that helps shift me going forwards I think is that when the next challenge comes along I say to myself instead of that that feeling like you're going to get broken moment you feel you say to yourself thank you right let's do this perspective yeah you know what I mean it's just like uh the I have to go pick my son up after we finish this this podcast like I have to like it's all I believe you can hypnotize yourself with the language you choose to use.

For example, I have to go pick my son up after this. To me, when you use language like that, because we all do it if we're not conscious of it, that sounds like an obligation. Yeah, that's not great. You know what I mean? No, dude, I get to. Like, he's 11 years old.

His favorite thing is to be with me. Like, what a freaking blessing. I'm not saying that to, like, you know, brag if there's another dad listen to this that doesn't have a great relationship with their son because I always didn't. You know what I mean? And I'm not saying, like,

It's because of whoop, but what I am saying is like in 2019, I got really, really serious about bringing my best into every component of my life. Yeah. Because I was always so obsessed with one component that I was allowing, I was allowing robbery from the other components. Like, you know, I would rob of my faith to feed my performance. I would rob of my fine. You know what I mean? I would pay so much money. I mean, we're in here right now and we were giggling about in this same building.

The lady that owns this building has a hyper bearer. oxygen therapy in this building that we're recording this in right so I spent a lot of money you know infrared oxygen oxygen uh infrared sauna hyperbaric oxygen therapy EMF bed I spent a lot of money to optimize my performance but in 2019 I've made that commitment to not rob of any any race that I'm running in my faith in my family in my fitness or my finances I won't rob from any of those to to focus more on the other. I'm not living a balanced lifestyle, but I'm living a healthy lifestyle. So for example, if I know my family really, really needs me in a particular week, it doesn't mean I can't work out. It doesn't mean I can't get my sleep. And it doesn't mean I can't get

my work in. I just have to be a whole lot more efficient with the time that I have. But before, when I would, something like that would happen, I would rob of every other category to be able to make sure I'm there when I need to be, how I need to be. In 2019, I've challenged myself to be healthier in all of those. And I've never been happier. And I'm actually getting more progress than when I thought I was like grinding or hustling. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, listening to you, it sounds like you're at almost the utopia, right? Like you're exactly where you want to be. I'm in life flow right now. And it's the first time I've ever really been able to say that. And, you know, if anybody knew me previous to this show or had listened to my

They know about the addictions that I've been through. They know about the issues in my marriage that I've dealt with. And I've been very, very open about that and vulnerable about that because I don't do podcasts to, like, self-promote. Like, I do podcasts to, like, connect with people because it doesn't connect with people if I come in here and talk about playing in the NFL for 10 years and winning a Super Bowl and, you know, making a ridiculous amount of money. I've mentioned those things, but I only mention those things to really connect with people. on, I'm freaking just like you, man, I got five kids and I got major struggles. I got addiction problems just like other people do as well. But there's a way for you to create routine in your life. And by improving your sleep, it allows me to make better split second

decisions. Because when you have ADHD, dude, you are very impulsive. So if there's something that you want to do, you don't think about the pros and cons of making that decision, which is great as an athlete because you follow your instincts faster than anybody else. However, when it comes to do with business or comes to do with an argument with your wife, you don't want to say things that you don't really mean because you're caught in the moment. And a lot of times, especially for me, if I'm not rested, I am much a million times more likely to say things that I don't mean versus me being rested and staying committed to the man that I want to be versus operating on my feelings. And this is, I want to tie this all together with, this is pretty much a life motto.

for me, amateurs operate on their feelings, professionals operate on their commitments. And the way I want to draw that in is like, when you wake up, when your alarm clock goes off in the morning, the way to start living your life like a pro instead of like an amateur is to just make a commitment to certain things in the day and start keeping promises to yourself. Disappoint. So when you wake up, your alarm clock goes off in the morning, you are not feeling. like you want to get out of bed, nobody, nobody's feeling like, hey, I can't wait to get out of bed. And if you are, me and you can't be friends, because I hate getting up in the morning. I love being up in the morning, but I hate the act of getting up in the morning. And training yourself, is the first thing you think about in the morning when the alarm clock goes off is like,

am I going to operate on my feelings because I'm feeling sore, I'm feeling tired, I'm feeling insert here, or am I going to operate on what I'm committed to. I'm committed to getting up at, you know, 6 a.m. I'm committed to getting my workout done by 7.15. I'm committed to eating this. And then when you start operating and making decisions throughout your life based upon what you're committed to and not what you're feeling like, that's when you start to get the exponential growth

because that's how you become what we talked about earlier, consistent and persistent. How do you do that? It just starts with decisions. And if you filter your decisions through, is this feeling or is this commitment, that's when you start to really make progress in your life. No matter what avenue it is, finance, fitness, relationships, faith,

Whatever you want to do, if you operate on what you're committed to, what your vision is for that, you can't lose. I like the frameworks you're clearly consciously creating. I think a lot of people underestimate the words they say to themselves, you know? Big time. Because you're talking to yourself more than anyone else is in your life, right? And so knowing how you're speaking to yourself about all these different things, I think plays a huge influence in outcomes. And it plays a huge influence in how you carry yourself. Well, think about this.

Dude, you're the CEO, right? Yeah. How many employees he said you have? About 75 right now. 75 employees. So you would say leadership's important, right? Yes. How important is your sleep to your leadership?

Oh, it's fundamental, right? Because if I'm not rested, if I've got a red recovery, if I'm run down and I have to make important decisions about anything related to the business, yeah, it's almost selfish. for me to be someone who's run down. And have you found it difficult for you knowing things need to get done to stay disciplined and committed to that sleep versus like what needs to be done? Well, you grow with the responsibility. At least that's what I've tried to do, right? Like in the very early days that we were talking about, I was more of an individual contributor.

What does that mean? It means that the output that you're delivering yourself carries a lot of the low. right it's less about delegation it's more about doing it yourself it's even less about leadership it's more about operating as an individual do you have a do you have a coach so so in those early days right yeah I wouldn't sleep enough like I'd be up all night I would drink a ton of caffeine like it was go go go go right and and those other categories that you're talking about things like fitness and finances and faith and family like a lot of those fell off because of the focus on business. Now, as the business grows and as you feel the responsibility for other people

in your organization, that's for me where there was a big shift in literally my whoop data to be getting much more sleep, going to bed and waking up at regular times. You know, I've really dramatically cut down on alcohol, which when I was, you know, early 20s, like was, you know, a bigger part of my life going out and seeing friends and whatnot. So all of those things, I think you have to grow, you know, you have to grow into. And so today, you know, leadership for me today is about the actions that I'm taking to represent the company and represent a larger group of people. The greatest leaders to me, because I have a coach for almost every category of my life. Yeah.

I've always responded. I mean, I've had a coach from 34 up till right now, I'm 37. When I retired, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. So I went out and found somebody to coach me and be an entrepreneur. But having coaches, you know, having a faith coach, having a fitness coach, having all these different coaches to monitor your workload, not just create your programs for you, but for them to monitor your workload is obviously really, really important because you're going to make progress in that. Over training has been a thing. So for me, it's definitely something that we can talk about, but what I wanted to get to you about because I'm interested is self-leadership. You can have all these different coaches, but to me, the greatest.

leaders are the ones that can lead themselves. And it's like I said, great to have coaches to set you up for success. But self-leadership, and I'm curious, dude, you're only 29. I'm like, I'm almost a decade older than you are down this path of like personal development, down this path of self-service in addition to helping other people. And I'm curious, do you have a coach for any of your stuff? Because I know you have mentors probably, but do you have a coach? I don't. Yeah, dude, that's some. I want to talk to you about that, man. because there's so many things that I feel like you're capable of doing

that are even bigger than whoop. And at 29, dude, getting a coach to develop those are a big deal. Yeah, look, I mean, I'm excited. You're already doing self-leadership. I'm excited for life, right? I'm excited for life. I think, like, I'm trying right now

to appreciate every moment, you know, and I get to work with phenomenally brilliant people. It's a great mission, unlocking human performance. Like, that's an incredible mission to get behind. So I think as much as, you know your eyes in the sky and you're thinking about how big can a business be how big can can you the individual be you have to keep your feet on the ground and also enjoy the moment you're in and you know

one thing it's it's uh it's cool you say that because that set me up from my next point that i wanted to talk about because we've become so obsessed on these different projects you know these different businesses you know a supplement company for me or you know digital marketing company or you know these different things that i do and i become so obsessed with developing them there was a period of time where I didn't put any time into my personal development. And if I'm smart, I look back on my life and connect the dots. I was the person that achieved these different things. So if I'm smart and I'm playing the macro game instead of the micro game

and like being so focused on this business, I'm going to make sure that I'm disciplined to creating time every single day from my own personal development, whether that's recovery, whether that's, you know, reading a book or whatever it is, some type of personal development because I understand. connecting the dots, looking backwards, that if I improve myself, no matter what I touch or what I get involved in, if I become a better version of myself, it sounds so woo-woo to say a better version of myself. But if I can become more disciplined, if I can become more

patient, you know, the different things that I struggle with, if I can get better at them, whatever I touch is going to bring that with me. I'm going to bring more discipline. I'm going to bring more patience. I'm going to, you know what I mean? Yeah. To these different things. So I guess that that's probably another encouragement for people listening to this is like you're probably listened to this because you want to optimize your life. But make sure you're building time into every single day to develop in an area that you want to develop. And it could be honestly just reading 10 pages of a book that you want to finish in the next 100 days. It's a guaranteed way to get it done.

But a lot of people say, hey, I want to read this book. And they'll order it from Amazon and it sits on the table. But they don't put a plan. They don't put a plan behind accomplishing it. And I think when you put the dream to the deadline, even if it's a small, dream like finishing a book. If you know finishing that book is going to move you forward in your life or spending an extra 10 minutes like going down the rabbit hole of Facebook, come on man, how's Facebook serving us right now? You know what I mean? Like maybe take 10 minutes away from that

and invest it into something that's going to move you forward exponentially throughout your life. Yeah, no, I love all of that. And for you, like, what are some very specific things that you've done to hone in on personal development? Um, exactly what I just kind of recommend. The coaching. I mean, that sounds amazing. Yeah, for me, it's definitely coaching. And that's not just coaching, like having a phone call with somebody that's trying to coach you on your certain business.

I actually have really enjoyed being a part of masterminds. Oh, cool. You know, you might pay, I don't know, $1,000, $2,000. I'm actually in one right now with Badros Kulian, Fit Body Boot Camp. It's a $50,000 masterminds. A lot of money to pay when you get in there. But the proximity that you have to the,

other people that are in there are about the same pay grade as you mean, you guys are bringing in about the same amount of money. So it's not like you don't get into a dick measuring contest when you get into the room where they're like, uh, you know what I mean? Like we're legit. There's 12, 15 dudes in there like soldiers because if you pay that money to get in there, you're going to be committed. Um,

and we all help each other grow each other's businesses. So that's something I want to talk to you about is getting into one of those that makes sense in the space that you're in and kind of the value that you bring. Because I know you could help a ton of people and there's some of the masterminds that will really accelerate your vision and just, I mean, at the end of the day, I know what your answer is going to be, but I want to ask you, what has moved you forward, the grind or relationships? Well, I think both of those are, you know, pre-wrapped up in one another. I think, like, part of the reason I work so hard is that I also feel an enormous responsibility for the

connections I've made along the way and the people with me on this journey. You know, people that you've convinced to invest in your business and you're managing their capital people you've because they're gambling on you and yeah and the team and the product and the vision but yeah absolutely the people you've convinced to leave their other high paying jobs and join and join your company or me dude I'm getting paid zero dollars to be here right now like I legit love what you've built and that's that's relationships so I mean I don't want to answer the question for you but for me it's relationships because when I create relationships with people I try my best to provide more value than I'm ever going to ask of them, but I also have grown in my ability to receive when people want to help me because that was always kind of like a hang up thing for me is I didn't ever want to be viewed as a taker. And so I would always give, give, give. And then when people like, hey, what can I do for you? But oh, man, I'm good. You know what I mean? Because you want them to think highly of you. But since getting into this coaching, because to me, it feels really similar to like being in a locker room. You know what I mean? Like you get in a locker room of people that have the same.

mission in life and it's just it's a comfortable place to be able to grow your business because you can be full on like hey man I'm freaking really struggling with customer service right now have you guys ever struggle with this and then Bing Bing you got like five people giving you business solutions for the problem that you're having it's just really powerful to move your company forward your vision forward without requiring so much grind it's just why would you not learn from somebody that's gone before you well you know what I love so much about you is that you are high intensity

and high humility. And I've found that that combination is really rare and really powerful. You want to talk about relationships? Like, that's what we look for actually when we hire people at whoop. High intensity, high humility. I'm really expensive, though. Oh, well. Is this a job interview?

No, yeah. No, but I'm saying just generally speaking, right? Thank you, man. I received that. Yeah, because, and it's unusual. That's the interesting thing, too, about high intensity, high humility, is a lot of the time when someone's super high intensity, it carries a layer of arrogance. And a lot of time when you find someone who's low intensity, if you're lower intensity,

you tend to be higher humility. And if you're higher intensity, you tend to be lower humility. And so if you can have high levels of both, it makes you someone who's chasing answers, who's really diving deep on things. But then when a collision happens, right, when you run into someone who's got a different idea, who wants to do something differently, instead of just trying to come out of that with the idea or the answer that's best for you, like I came up with it, what happens is you ultimately come up with the idea that's intellectually the most honest because of the humility piece. And so that's where I think that combination can guide a lot of success in life. Yeah, thanks, man. I received that. Yeah. I've always kind of like positioned it

as like I just want to be coachable, but I guess it sounds a whole lot like more endearing the way you said it. So thanks, man. I appreciate that. No, no, but coachable. I mean, it doesn't, does take a level of humility to be coachable, right? Oh, for sure, because you have to know that you don't know. Yeah. You know what I mean? And you have to be willing to receive also. And look, I think, you know, sports analogies can often be overplayed.

But the one thing that athletes have a huge advantage of on other people is that you're often pushed to a point of failure as a point of self-discovery or investigation. Sure. You know, I played squash in college. I wanted to get better at my drop shot. you know, I would keep hitting the drop shot over and over again. The more times it hit the tin, the more times I would want to do it. You know, tin being bad.

So you constantly are looking yourself in the mirror at things that you fail at. And so I think that does often set up people who come from a sports background to skew a little bit more in the favor of being coachable or having higher humility. Also, they've experienced like mission over me, meaning like, I'm a really. really good, you know, whatever the goal score is in squash. Like, that's the position everybody wants to play, but maybe it better serves for you to be

on the back line. If you take the back line and it's mission over me and you're able to be a part of a championship, to you, that can be received as, man, dude, if I actually put the mission over, like, my own personal interests of, like, going home with the prom queen on prom night because I had the most

squash goals, you know what I mean? Right. You know what I mean? Yeah, but again, that goes back to, because it comes back to, like, am I going to get exalted because we all, at the end of the day, we want to be loved and supported and we want to, like, we want people to like us. And we have an idea of like what's best, but when you're a part of a team, the person that's coaching you, hopefully knows what's best and is putting everybody in the most advantageous position for the team to win.

Maybe not for you to, you know, go home and get lucky on prom night. But if you win a championship, everybody's getting laid. You know what I mean? I mean, for lack of a better word. So it's like that, like, what is your motivation? if you want to be a champion or you want to have the most goals on the team right you know what I mean totally and the corporate analogy to what we're talking about here is if you take I don't care five 10 really smart people in a room and they're all very driven and their high intensity and they're

prepared and then they start brainstorming an idea or they're trying to come up with the best outcome what you happen what you have is this natural collision of ideas and positivity too man yeah and there's a good energy right and it's a good energy right and it's a As long as everyone in that room's approaching it with some level of humility, what you end up having is an idea meritocracy where the best idea wins. It's not about who had the best idea. It's about getting to the best idea. And that is something I think about all the time, is how do you foster an environment that's

an idea meritocracy? Yeah. No, it's powerful, man. I think that's like the next cut for you and your development and your life. You need it. I'm not saying that. I think we all need it. You know what I mean?

I think that's why you're creating this podcast. Because, I mean, at the end of the day, it's about optimization. If conversations create optimization, whether that's, like, people, you know, maybe paying a little bit more attention to the sleep versus, like, whether or not their strain is what it is. Or just the language that they use. You know, like, you don't have to go work out, dude. You know, wake up in the morning, you have two legs. And some of the people listen to this might not even have two legs, but you have a leg.

You have two hands. If you open your eyes, you got eyes. Like, you get to go. workout how many people would love to be able to go push their body and strain their body but they're for whatever reason they can't do it like when you start shifting things and and the way you shift things is with your language because your mind takes a little while to reprogram it but your language you can hear your language you can't always you know what I mean control your thoughts your thoughts or what your thoughts are but you can control your language because that's an action that's a decision so when

you say things like man you know I have to go work out or I have to do this, just shift it, stop it right in that moment, be like I get to. And as soon as you start getting to do things, you no longer have to go to work. You get to go to work because you have a paycheck and you have this. You just, it is a small trigger to hypnotize yourself. It's so important. To start seeing gratitude. It's the whole life happens for you, not life happens to you.

Right. Right. It's just appreciating everything that happens. I appreciate being here, man. This has been fun. Yeah. So let's talk for a second about fitness. you're obviously a super fit guy what does a week of training look like for you um it's been

weird this year um because you remember when we DM'd uh when i was climbing that mountain oh yeah so talk about that it's been a weird it's been a weird year let's talk about that because that was actually when you and i actually started talking like because i've always been talking and the way i got kind of like um i got connected with will was i was really good friends with a guy that helps with your marketing in New York, a dear friend of mine, and he saw me wearing your whoop band on my podcast because I do video. I don't know if you know that. And he reached out to me. He's like, hey, is that a whoop? I'm like, yeah, dude, this thing is awesome. I was actually trying to like pitch him on it. He goes, dude, I'm working

with him, man. I want to see if they, blah, blah, blah. So anyway, that's how Will and I initially got connected with with whoop. And then when I was climbing a mountain, I went and did an endurance race, or not a race, an endurance event for Jesse Etzler. Jesse Edseler, like, owns the Atlanta Hawks, and he's just this rock star entrepreneur, but I've done some coaching with him. He's, you know, imparted some wisdom on me on a couple occasions. So I went to go support him and go do this endurance thing, and I'm not an endurance guy. And describe this to describe the event.

You climb up this mountain that's 2.3. It's in Snow Basin, Utah. You climb up this mountain that's 2.3 miles to get to the top of it, and you end up covering 2,200 feet elevation during. that lap and what you do is you hike up it takes about two hours and then you take a gondola down and if you do that 13 times inside of 36 hours oh man that is the equivalent so it's time so it's not like whether or not you can do it it's like whether or not you can do it in the allotted time um so anyway there's some strategy to that too so so wait and i had no strategy yeah right so you're

covering 26 miles uh almost 29 miles i might i might have screwed up what i said that the lap was 29 miles and 36 hours. The event is called 29029, which 29029 is the feet elevation that Mount Everest is. So the event's called Everestine, 29029. The whole event is like you're supposed to decide before the event, like what's the Everest in your life? You know, it was more or less a personal development physical challenge. And I'm all for that because I'm not a cardio guy. Yeah, I'm not a cardio guy.

So anyway. But that's kind of cardio. I mean oh it is but no it's 100% cardio like I did it knowing this is not my wheelhouse I knew it was going to break me down I knew it was going to hurt me but you know we were talking about earlier being coachable I wanted to know not what my physical limits were my Everest was being alone I hate being alone I've always had teammates there's probably a reason I went and had five kids I just don't like being alone I want to do life with other people in addition to like I just don't feel good when I'm alone

So part of my Everest was I because you have to hike pretty much the entire time for 36 hours I slept for two hours But my goal for myself was to do three laps which is over six hours of hiking and I wanted to do it by myself So I'm out there and you wanted to do it by yourself for personal discovery yeah just I wanted to be by myself It's kind of like one of those things I wanted to get over my biggest fear so I took myself we started at six o'clock in the morning And I hiked all the way through till 530 the next morning and then I slept for two hours and then got back up at seven and started hiking again, but my whole point is, is I wanted to be by myself because I knew if I take myself way farther physically than I've ever been, I've never exercised longer than two hours. And here I am on like my 20th hour straight hiking this mountain at

245 pounds. The first 11 hours of the hike, I ate 1,000 calories per hour and drink 100 ounces for the first 11 hours. And I still lost 11 pounds during this whole 36 hour thing. So anyway, I was able to accomplish my goal of selectively taking myself to the place of being like broken, beaten, and defeated, mentally, physically, spiritually. And my whole thing was like, I wanted to create, I wanted to create an experience where I had never been more physically exhausted or mentally. And the only thing that you can lean on in that moment is like your faith. And so here I am, like 3 o'clock in the morning. I've got my headphones on and I never put my headphones on until I was by myself. and I'm listening to like this worship music

and I'm just literally praying out to God and I'm not kidding you. It's a great image. All right, God. You know, let me get 50 more steps because the air is thin, dude. You know what I mean? You get lightheaded too, right?

We started at like 13,000 feet elevation. So it wasn't like we only went up 23. We started at 11,000. So it's already lightheaded. Already lightheaded. So I'm literally like praying to God, 50 more steps and I'd get there. I catch my breath and then I'd do a 50 more.

So literally I did an entire lap. It took me two and a half hours. but 50 steps at a time. And so it was cool because after doing that event, and I only got 12 laps, by the way. I didn't finish the 13. But I remember checking my phone during one of the waypoints because I was going to call my wife to check in with her

because she was worried, you know, obviously. And I saw that I had a DM for you and you're like, dude, this is crazy. I love watching your Instagram story. What's your daily strain? And I screenshoted it. Yeah, because I wanted to know what you're strange. It was 20.3.

Yeah. It was, dude, I had nothing left. It was to the point where, and I'd never experienced this in my life. And that was like back-to-back days or something. Yeah, yeah. It's 30-6, yeah. It was literally back-to-back days. Yeah.

So I got to, I had about a half a mile left on the climb to finish the last lap I was going to do before I was going to take a nap for two hours. And it was the last part. And so I'm walking up this last part. And it was the last, the last section was like the most safe area. And so I'm walking up this road, it's like a rocky road, big incline, but I closed my eyes and the waypoints were like they had a light. So I would close my eyes because I knew I was walking straight and I had these walking sticks. But if you close your eyes, you know, and when it's pitch black, you can see a little bit of the light through your eyelids. And so I was just resting my eyes.

And about two minutes later, and I was doing this every lap, the last like three laps. And so I was doing this, and the next thing I know, I woke up, I smacked the ground. I fell asleep walking because I was just resting my eyes. I didn't think I would ever fall asleep if I'm awake and moving. But I fell asleep walking, like hit the ground. And then I decided like, all right, I need, that's why I ended up taking that to our nap. Because I wasn't going to, because I knew I was going so slow by comparison to all the other people that I was going to, that I couldn't sleep and still finish it. And that's the reason I only got 12 instead of 13 is because it was a safety precaution at that.

time. I'm climbing a freaking mountain and I can't stay awake even walking. So I went to sleep and that's why I didn't do 13. But coming back from that trip and writing down all the notes in my phone of like all kind of like the personal discoveries that I have. Before we wrap this show up, I want to read some of those things off to you. Yeah, do it. Because I know we're probably over time, but I got to share these. Yeah, it's all good. All right. So these are the things that I wrote down on the plane on the right home, I'll breeze through some of them and then I'll maybe unpack one or two of them.

Make a right turn and don't think about it. So when you got down from the gondola, if you take a right, that means you're going back up the mountain. If you take a left, that means you're going to get water or ice cream or calories or whatever. So that was one thing that I wrote down because if you think about it, when you know, like, I got done with my first lap,

man, I got freaking 12 more. Oh my gosh. And you take a right turn, you go back up and you chip down. on that or you take a left turn and get water and like let me get some calories you know what I mean and that's where I screwed myself so I'm writing these notes because these are the mistakes I made and the things I learned not to beat myself up over them but like if you go and do something like that learn from it regardless if you hit 13 or not um don't give your pain a voice the reason I said

that is like every time these skinny little people that look like you are zooming up past me and like not out of breath and they're having conversations with each other and they're like hey big guy how you doing they all said the same thing hey you're not built for this they always had not to be a jerk derogatory yeah it wasn't even to being a jerk they were just noticing that like you probably shouldn't be on this mountain yeah how you doing no matter how bad I felt I always said like hey man I'm doing great man just put one foot in front of the other mind you I'm dying inside but that's why I wrote that um the other thing was don't look up focus where your feet are at because when you start this mountain if you look at how far it is to get to the top instead of just

focusing on, you know, 50 steps at a time or 10 steps on a time. Whatever, whoever's listening to this, like, pick your goal and your vision, but just do 10 steps at a time. The next one was micro goals make big goals small. It kind of goes along with that. Yeah, I like that. 50 steps at a time or whatever you can do towards your goal, do that. If that's all you can do, do that.

Take a deep breath and then do that again because if you know if you did it once, you can do it again. And then the more you do it, the stronger you're going to get. So if it's only two steps, do two steps for 10 sets, and then you're 20 steps down, and then maybe you're strong enough to do three. What's the next one? Obviously, slow and steady wins the race. I knew I was going slow as hell, and all these people are, you know, Rich Roll, maybe you've

heard of him. He's like this ultra endurance. Oh, yeah, those guys are nuts. Just a freak, and he was flying by. I mean, I was, like, super encouraging, but I hate him. Right, yeah. Being broken and alone allows God's voice to be loud and clear. I think that's kind of a self-explanetable.

man when you take yourself to the end of your physical and mental and spiritual rope like you're willing to listen it's kind of like when when people hit you know figuratively the the rock bottom with drug addiction or bankruptcy or divorce like that's when we all turn to God and this was just a cool opportunity for me to like selectively take myself of being broken so I could hear God's voice without going bankrupt or getting divorced um and then another thing that uh that Jesse shared that I thought was really cool. And this, you know, really kind of goes maybe something that, that will serve you as well, is caring about people is the biggest difference between successful and unsuccessful people and businesses. And when he said that, I'm like, because I'm a business

owner, I have two businesses. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, and I care about people. I'm like, well, how could caring about people make my business more successful? And the more I thought about it, because he said that right before we took off. And I'm thinking about that. I'm like, you know, I guess my customer service is not the greatest, you know? I can probably improve that because if I care about these people, I want them after they buy a product to be like, oh, just, you know, like, ridiculously happy that they did that versus, like, sometimes people have complaints.

And I know you're never going to get rid of it. You have a tech company, so I'm sure customer service is like your jam. And by the way, something we're trying to invest even more in. It's so important. It's tech, dude, because you guys are always evolving. So there's always going to be things that, you know, if you try to push technology forward that hasn't been there before, you're going to have bugs.

So, but yeah, just to think about that, like, how could caring about people more make my business more successful? I understand how it makes relationships more successful because you want to treat people as you want to be treated. But anyway, that was just some of the things that, and I have more, but I know we're almost out of time, but this has been awesome, man. No, this is fun, man.

It's, it's great hearing about kind of all the things that you've learned about yourself over time. And also, it's refreshing for me to hear how much work it takes to, like, learn about yourself too, right? Like, you're clearly consciously doing things to put yourself in a certain situation, like, like this race you just did. I would never do that if in 2018, though, because I would have been in such an adrenal fatigue because I'm hustling and gunning and grinding that I didn't have. Now, how'd you know you were in adrenal fatigue? Dude, just dark depression, didn't want to get out of bed.

Like, I didn't care about the things I cared so much about. And it was at the point where, like, my wife was like, hey, like, we need to go see a doctor. Not like, not like she was worried about my health, but she had never seen me like that, but I had never worked that hard. And it was, I think it was 90% of it was the Adderall because even when it was time to go to sleep, my body was still all jacked up on these amphetamines. And so I couldn't go to sleep. And then even when you do go to sleep, you don't really hit that deep rim sleep because you're, you still have that stuff coursing through your veins. And you probably had to take other things to fall asleep. Oh, yeah, dude, I was using cannabis to go to sleep and then amphetamines to come back up.

And it's a lot. Yeah. It's too much, dude. Like, why do you have to do one for the other? Why can't? And it did take me a while, dude, after I started like really paying attention to the statistics and all the metrics with my training and my sleep on the whip in. It still took me almost two months to get to where I'm like, man, I feel amazing. I felt better after about four weeks.

four weeks of no no drugs oh no it's been way longer than that but when you said four weeks i meant i had been off the drugs for probably i don't know probably two or three months and then you started wearing whoop and then i started wearing whoop about then and i was failing forward because i'd have i was still in like a wacky circadian rhythm totally your body screwed up four or five weeks to find any type of rhythm okay so that's what you mean because you know you're you still like it takes months and months for the neurons in your brain to like get back to normal after being on amphetamines for you know a year or two sure um so it was a lot of things that were recalibrating in my body my cortisol levels have gotten way better my

testosterone levels have gotten way better because I have I don't know if it's genetically or it's because I train so hard all the time that my testosterone is like wicked low like you wouldn't think that because I'm I'm bigger now but you don't necessarily have to have high testosterone to build muscle over time and that's essentially what I've done you know yeah it only took me 21 years to get jacked and and and today what are some of your sleep tips for people listening um probably the basic ones that people have heard um i really enjoy a nice eps and salt bath beforehand cool you know they say do it for 20 minutes i can't sit still for for longer than 10 but i get in there for like 10 minutes a nice soak

no phone because i used to bring my phone in there um no phone and then i do like a like literally like a two-minute um yoga thing because i've got i've got a bad back so i get out of that eps and salt bath and just a really nice light stretch on my low back. And then I like to watch an iPad when I'm in bed. So I'm not recommending this to people, but I like to watch criminal mind reruns because they're boring and I've seen all of them. So that kind of like winds me down.

But I do wear those blue blocker glasses. I've started wearing those too. I like them. Yeah. So that has been helpful for me. And I've also been using CBD. I don't want to like recommend that to people because I don't know enough about it. So I'm not recommending that to people.

But I've been using it. And I've found for for inflammation. and also for just like an higher percentage of deep rim sleep, my percentages, and I'm only about three weeks into using it consistently. But you've seen on more REM. I've seen more REM from CBD versus I used cannabis in 2018 and getting, trying to get away from that completely. Now I'm using CBD.

And I've never had trouble falling asleep, but I'm always trying to find like, what's the one little thing I can increase? Stay asleep, less disturbances, more. I don't have problems with the services. I'm looking for more deep REM sleep and trying to find ways that I can improve that. CBD's been good with that little protocol. And you take a pill or it's an oil? No, it's the tincture.

I don't have a brand that I'm in love with yet. I'm on one brand right now. I'm going to take it for a month and I'm going to try a different brand next month and then kind of compare those metrics because CBD from what I hear isn't like cumulative. Like you don't have to take it for a month and then it starts to work. Yeah. But I love what you just said is that you're effective. using WOOP to figure out which of these drugs. I also am I going to do.

I don't want to go get a blood test like every month. I do that every three or four months. But just, it gives me the metrics that I want. You can only manage what you measure, right? If you want to get more REM sleep, you got to measure it and then figure out all the things in your life. Yeah, I need you guys to figure out how we can test inflammation. Because then CBD, I'll have all the metrics that I need. It'll be our next product out.

Yeah, man. This has been great, man. It's been such a pleasure, such a pleasure having you on the Woop podcast. And I'm really a pleasure meeting you in person. Yeah, man. I appreciate it, man. Appreciate you having me. Yeah, thank you. If you're not already a whoop member, you can join our community for as low as $30 to begin. We provide you with 24-7 access to your biometric data, as well as analytics across strain, sleep, recovery, heart rate variability, and more. The membership comes with a free whoop strap 3.0. We offer 6, 12, and 18-month memberships,

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