172: Are You an Asset Or a Liability? | DJ Shipley of GBRS

In this episode, I’m sitting down with DJ Shipley of GBRS (Global Battlefield Research Solutions) to talk about how a life dedicated to becoming the most elite at your craft can the ultimate asset for your family. Especially when that craft is elevating your physical and mental health and abilities. Be an asset, never a liability. ORDER MY BOOK HERE: ⁠https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210 FOLLOW: Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 25% off FOR LIFE ⁠ https://www.bareperformancenutrition.com/collections/performance-nutrition IG: ⁠instagram.com/nickbarefitness/⁠ YT: ⁠youtube.com/@nickbarefitness This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal [health or profession] advice. Bare Performance Nutrition (BPN) is not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical advice. This podcast may not be republished without the written consent of Bare Performance Nutrition (BPN)

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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

• 0:10Nick Bare?

  What you were being asked to do required every ounce of your focus.

• 0:14Speaker 00

  The hostage rescue stuff is so dicey. If that door goes and your buddy goes, you are going right behind him.

• 0:20Nick Bare?

  What separates tier one units?

• 0:23Speaker 00

  Commitment to the craft. They wake up every day and they just live that life. You get out and you realize that you've been developing a skill set that no one needs. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, man.

• 0:32Nick Bare?

  So what about GBRS?

• 0:34Speaker 00

  I'm here to change people's lives. I'm not chasing a dollar sign, I'm chasing a feeling. And I think that's one of the reasons we've been so successful.

• 0:40Nick Bare?

  If you can get the people right, you can get the culture right.

• 0:43Speaker 00

  Not enough people have physical presence in themselves anymore. There's an internal mechanism you have to turn on to make yourself self motivated. I'm chasing what I did last week, pushing myself just a little bit further. It's a universal formula. Surround yourself with people that are better than you. Magic one lock.

• 1:06Nick Bare?

  All right, ladies and gentlemen, today we have DJ Shipley on the podcast. Navy SEAL for 17 years, SEAL Team 10. Part of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, also known as DEVGRU. Medically retired in 2019. A husband and father to two daughters. Co-founder of GBRS Group. Welcome.

• 1:34Speaker 00

  Dude, thanks for having me.

• 1:35Nick Bare?

  How are we doing?

• 1:36Speaker 00

  Great, man. Awesome morning. Dinner was awesome last night. Got a super cool crew. Yeah, it's, uh, it's great having the boys in the building.

• 1:44Nick Bare?

  Good workout this morning?

• 1:45Speaker 00

  Awesome. Yeah, vibes are good. Facility is amazing. Yeah, you guys are killing it, dude.

• 1:48Nick Bare?

  Thank you. Your team has been great. I, uh, I love having these conversations, but I love spending time with the person, the people, the night before, the day before. Having dinner, getting to know each other a little bit better, introducing you to the team, and then diving in for a more meaningful conversation.

• 2:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, man, it makes it more natural. You don't have to walk around sniffing each other's ass for 45 minutes like it's out of the way. But everybody here. If we here's got the exact same vibe that my team does back there. It's like they get it. Got to wake up, got to live the routine. You gotta, you gotta hold the standard. When you walk in every day, better clear that threshold, holding the BPM standard, the GPR standard, whatever it is. And it's usually just a little bit farther than you went the day before. It's the same vibe in here. I love it. The fact that everybody in here lifts, they all work out, the meals. That's exactly how it should be, dude.

• 2:39Nick Bare?

  Yeah, we were talking about this a little bit last night at dinner. The, the power and complexities of culture. And culture is all people. And if you can get the people right, you get the culture right. You get the team right, you get the mission right. But people is the, it's the best part, but it's the hardest part.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  Ah, it is, man. It is the hardest part.

• 3:03Nick Bare?

  So I want to talk about being a part of a tier one unit.

• 3:08Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:09Nick Bare?

  And as I was preparing for this, this conversation, you know, studying your story and your background, your experience. I was thinking about being a part of a team. You being on and a part of this tier one unit, this tier one team. And I was applying it to my life right now of what's going to take to get my business to the, the next chapter, the next level. Building BPM continuously. And going back to what we just said, it's the culture, it's the people. I want to build my team, my business, as a tier one special operations unit. And I was thinking about like, what, what are some of those components?

• 3:53Nick Bare?

  And things that came top of mind, trust, candor, the ability to have hard conversations, standards, readiness, performance, competence, selflessness, the will to fight, the will to win, and experience. From your perspective, you know, 17 years in the military, what separates tier one units from tier two, tier three, and then conventional military?

• 4:30Speaker 00

  Commitment to the craft. Like, they are professionals. They're no different than professional hockey players, baseball players. They wake up every day and they just live that life. Not the best to be in husbands, not the best to be in fathers, but they are committed to the craft. And I think that's what, I mean, you were in the military, you said, even the guys who were disciplined, they wake up, they do fitness, and then you do whatever the army needs you to do the rest of the day. It's the same way in a SEAL team. That might be a block of training, it might be whatever. At a certain level, in a tier one level, the army's the exact same way, the air force is the exact same way. They wake up and they look at that day, how many things can I touch today that are going to make a difference to my overall readiness? Is that waking up and doing fitness every day?

• 5:15Speaker 00

  Is that Fight Club three to five days a week? How many sessions on the flat range? That's outside of what the team is going to ask you to do anyway. The team standard, even though it exceeds every other unit I've ever been a part of, that becomes the minimum standard. How much further can you take it past that? When you see the entire team do it, you walk in, brand new guy off the street, you know, you've been a SEAL for six, eight years, you walk in, everybody else has more experience than you, everybody has more deployments than you, they have more reps than you, they're better than you at everything you're good at, they're better already. How are you going to match them? Not by meeting the minimum standards. It's like if I'm, I'm trying to play professional basketball, I walk in, I only do the workouts a team prescribes. It's not what Kobe Bryant does. It's a standard, not what LeBron James does.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  How much time he spends, sleep schedules, diet, everything in between, it's the same thing. They just take it further.

• 6:07Nick Bare?

  Have you experienced that level of commitment and standard anywhere else in the world other than being a part of a tier one unit?

• 6:20Speaker 00

  No, you see individuals who do it. I haven't seen entire teams adopt it. Not in, not in any sport. You see three or four dudes per team that are just devout. And I think a lot of it is, it increases your confidence and it gives you no more excuses. But it gives you the ability to look like, hey, win, lose, or draw, it's not because of the lack of preparation or commitment to the craft. I've been exhausting all of my resources to be as good at doing this one thing as humanly possible. Some days, the cards just don't fall in your favor. Like, I'm training as much as I can, I'm on a purpose-built diet, my sleep routine's there, I'm really just focused on this one thing. I'm not gonna get it right every single time, but it won't be for a lack of discipline.

• 7:04Speaker 00

  I'm showing up every day trying to be better. And they just do it. And you see the guys. I mean, you're in the military, you get it. At a certain rank, you don't have to be the best dude. You don't have to be the best fighter, you damn sure don't have to be the best on a flat range. It's not like that over there. You got guys that have fourteen, fifteen combat rotations. They're in the gym five days a week, they're Fight Club five days a week, they've never missed a session for a fucking decade. Why? Because they're obsessed. They are. Like, if they would've been born in a different city, a different family, they'd be playing professional baseball. Like, they're addicted to whatever that is. And when they transition out, they have to find something else. If not, there's a huge fall from grace.

• 7:45Nick Bare?

  What does the military do to facilitate that, that commitment, that work ethic, that culture, that we haven't been able to recreate outside of the military? I think about...

• 7:59Speaker 00

  They end up covering all your logistics.

• 8:01Nick Bare?

  So you only have to focus on the craft?

• 8:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, if you were, if you were a professional baseball player, you've got the talent, you've got the drive, what do they really want you to do? Not be distracted. They don't want you to get divorced, they don't want you to get a DUI, they don't want you to get hooked on drugs. No drama, no social media bullshit, just focus on the thing. That's the same thing. They don't want you to have social media. They've got a full legal team, they've got full medical, dental in-house, whatever you need, it gets out there. I just want you to focus on being the best assaultor you can be. Perfect. It's the same thing for any other craft inside of that building. I just want you to focus on that. So when we call you and ask you to do the thing, you're ready to go. Cut out all the distractions. I was out talking to the Houston Rockets. Kevin Durant's out there, one of the best players that's ever lived.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  It's the same thing. They cut out all distractions, just focus on the thing they can control, and it eliminates all the excuses. Look at Steph Curry. Pretty amazing to watch. It's not genetically given. It's discipline, it's work ethic. It's blocking out everything else and just focusing on the thing you can control.

• 9:09Nick Bare?

  Yeah, my brain turning right now. I was at, uh, I was in New York City this past summer for an event around my book launch and one of the employees from Google was there and toured us around Google's facility. It was my first time ever seeing a Google building. And I was mind blown. I mean, they, they have dining facilities on every floor. You can get any meal, any food for free at any point of the day. Coffee, gyms, recovery setups, doctors, barbers, hairdressers. Everything you need logistically is taken care of.

• 9:52Nick Bare?

  Google has the top tier talent and these people have owned their craft and was also super unique about being there. People are coming into work when they want to and they're leaving when they want to. It is on them to get their work done. And they're getting paid a whole lot of money to turn some pretty big levers. That skyrocket, that organization makes me think of the way that I could take that same approach to turning the environment here in my business to eliminate as many logistical and operational distractions so the team can just focus on their craft.

• 10:32Nick Bare?

  Have you applied that at G B R S at all?

• 10:35Speaker 00

  We certainly tried to, but I mean, you have capital constraints. You have all the other things.

• 10:39Nick Bare?

  For sure.

• 10:40Speaker 00

  Where you guys are at now, I'd say is a pretty good solution. Like, we've got laundry, we've got showers, dryers, sauna, cold plunge, hyperbaric chamber, got the gym. We've got all of that stuff there. We've got snacks. We try to do catered lunches when we can, all that kind of stuff, but ideally in a perfect world, that's what it would be. We're serving breakfast and lunches every single day. Come here, stay here. Like, you don't have to go out in town. I don't want you to spend money. I got that. Like, stay here, focus on you, focus on the embroidery, focus on this, focus on designing tech packs and media and all the other things. Just focus on the main thing and we'll take care of everything else. I mean, Google's a great example. That's what it is. I just want you to walk through here in a clear headspace, no distractions, and just be you.

• 11:23Speaker 00

  Like, when you talk about a tier one organization, that's what I tell all the guys and they all laugh at me. There's no, there's no system in place. The entire place is run off a whiteboard.

• 11:35Speaker 00

  Like, there are no K P I's. You show up every day and be the best you can be at that one thing. And we ask the whole team to jump in here, do this thing. You have to be able to pull it off first time. There's no mulligan. There's no get back on, I will just reset and send it again. It's the only opportunity. You gotta be ready. Okay? What do you do? You create Disneyland for operators and put them in there and don't let them leave. Build a team, keep them together for a decade, till you build a dynasty.

• 12:02Speaker 00

  Awesome. Dude, it makes life so much easier. It makes it so much harder to leave though.

• 12:07Nick Bare?

  Do you miss being on the team?

• 12:08Speaker 00

  Oh my God, more than anything on this planet. I don't.

• 12:12Nick Bare?

  What are you missing most?

• 12:14Speaker 00

  The routine.

• 12:17Speaker 00

  Waiting up every day with a purpose. Knowing you're either, you're either prepping for a thing, you're just getting back from a thing, or you're on standby on a 30 minute phone call away from doing something.

• 12:29Speaker 00

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

• 12:51Nick Bare?

  Yeah, I was listening to your conversation with Andrew Heberman. And it was a great, it was a great conversation discussion. But I heard you, you discussing early on in the conversation, how when you would go to work, you would almost have to forget about your family. When you go on deployment, you forgot about your family. And I, I'll be honest, I had mixed emotions while I was listening to this conversation of, dude, how can, how can he be saying this? How can he feel that? Cause I couldn't relate. And the deeper I got into the conversation you were having, I then was able to respect it and understand it on a whole other level.

• 13:31Nick Bare?

  Because what you were being asked to do required every ounce of your focus. And any distraction, no matter what that distraction was, ended up being a liability, not just to yourself, but to the team. And as I was listening to this conversation, it all started clicking and making sense. Where initially it was like, ah, that's a little harsh. Sounds rough, but I get it. What was that like? How, how did you? How did you learn how to turn that off? Or was that an instinct from the beginning?

• 14:09Speaker 00

  It was kind of by default and it was almost my own fault. And that's what I talk a lot about, dials not switches. There's a way to have a balance. And if you do it correctly, you can totally have that balance to where you can think about your family. You can power them off and you get so good at spinning that dial. Now it's time to go to work, not thinking about my family. The moment work is done, I'm thinking about them again.

• 14:29Speaker 00

  But everybody has hesitations. There's natural human reactions you just can't get around. And a lot of these, a lot of these operations you prep for, it's dicey, dude. It is. I mean, the hostage rescue stuff is so dicey. The training methodology goes behind it. You're so committed to the tactic and the SOP that if that door goes, it opens and your buddy goes and we'll just say a million rounds of AK pour out of it. You are going right behind him. It's very hard to know that I'm not going to orphan my kids and make my wife a two-time widow in NSW. It's very hard to just, yeah, fuck, I'll just go. You have to build that in. So every single training run, kamikaze pilot, man, if you go, I'm going. Here we go. And you get really obsessed in the craft.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  CQB, noise mitigation, trying to buy down as much risk as humanly possible. But it's so hard to do because every time you power on your phone, I need this, I need this. You gotta stop at the grocery store, gotta take kids to ballet and dance. None of that makes me better. It ends up becoming a distraction. And that's why I tell the guys now, if you can commit your first four years to being a monk, like just being a Navy SEAL, don't rush to get a girlfriend, don't get a fiance, don't have a kid, don't get a dog, show up every single day, Monday through Sunday and just grind, just lay a foundation, shooting five days a week, always in gym, Fight Club, living the culture. Then by the time you transition, you can be a true professional. You can get a girlfriend, make her fiance, then we can work on the balance point.

• 15:56Speaker 00

  But so many guys rush into it. Now you're not laying all those foundational blocks. And now you get to the tier one organization. It's like, I still got some baseline I gotta iron out here. I gotta burn all these reps. And it takes you away from home. Now you're not building that rapport with your wife, not building that relationship with your kids. And it's like you're living two separate lives. And every time you converge, you don't feel like you're supposed to be there. You knock them out of the routine. She resents you. She resents work. She's asking you to leave the job. You're not going to leave it. That's why we got 100% divorce rate. It's over 100%.

• 16:27Nick Bare?

  That's wild.

• 16:28Speaker 00

  It's crazy. If we would focus on building that team the same way you build the assault team, you'd get through anything. I'm, I'm truly blessed to be married. I shouldn't be, but I married a unicorn. But she's also part of the culture. That's the only way we got through it.

• 16:45Nick Bare?

  Do you think it's even possible to?

• 16:49Nick Bare?

  At that level of professionalism and for the job that is required, the mission that's required, can you live a balanced life and still be an effective operator?

• 17:02Speaker 00

  I want to say you can if you have laid the foundation down thick enough to withstand all the external stuff. I never did. And if I'm honest, all the guys that I looked up to that I chased the most didn't have balance. They weren't doing college online, they weren't doing this, like, they lived at work all day, every day. They were clearing the threshold, 5, 6 a.m., they'd be there till 8 p.m. at night, Monday through Friday. Like, they lived inside that compound. If you went there Saturday and Sunday, you'd be shocked with how many people were in there. On the range, Saturday and Sunday, in their cage, tweaking gear, packing for this, packing for that, just always in there. I'd love to say you have a balance point. There's very few people I've seen, and again, you don't live with

• 17:47Speaker 00

  them, so you don't know how it is truly at home. It certainly looks like they have a balance, because if you look at them on paper, jumping, amazing jumper. Look at his CQB, amazing CQB. He could beat the brakes off a 95% of anybody you ever walk in front of. Okay, he's super well-rounded. Got a great relationship with his wife, great relationship with his kids, he looks like he has a good balance, but you don't know how it really is. And you see him, he gets out and he gets divorced two years later. Like, did he have balance? Was he just faking it? What is it really? Man, it's so hard because it's so addictive being in there. Because you feel the progression, you can see it in real time. The day you come in, your confidence, it takes six months to a year to like really gel with a team, but you keep that team together for so long, the culture remains, even guys

• 18:31Speaker 00

  cycle in and out. It's like, man, dude. Like, I feel like, I feel like you're one of the Spartans. Like, there's so very few people that do that job. It takes a lot out of you, man. But the model for making great assaulters is the same thing for making great anything else. If I wanted to Google, it's the same thing. Take people that are super passionate about that one thing, put them in this building, knock out all the logistics for them, just let them focus on their craft. That's it. Okay. Everywhere I do that, it's the same thing. Go to the army side, it's the same thing.

• 19:05Speaker 00

  Okay, now, now I know the model. Now it's repeatable. How do I maximize all the opportunities throughout the day? Because you could spend all day. You could spend 24 hours day in there and never get tired. There's cryo, sleep, or the, um,

• 19:21Speaker 00

  the deprivation pods, Mind Gym, everything. You could, you could spend the entire day and just do physical rehabilitation, strength training, whatever you want to do. Strength coaches for everybody, rehab specialists, underwater treadmills, they have everything you'd ever need. Looks like the Olympic Training Center. Like you get guys that get way down the rabbit hole. Talking about longevity, they're freaks, dude. They live it all day. Because you have every opportunity to be whatever you want to be. You want to be a professional skydiver? You could do. I know guys that have done 1,000 skydivings a year. That's wild deploying, everything else. That's an ungodly amount of jumps. They do it. That's what they got asked to do. I need you to be the best jumper. Jump. All they do is jump.

• 20:07Speaker 00

  You'll make subject matter experts, let them be a subject matter expert. Don't ask them to do these 55 other things right now. Just focus on one, increase your baseline, touch all the other things you gotta be good at, increase your baseline, touch all the other things. It's like playing drums. Just break it down. What are the five things I really gotta be good at? Let's just focus on those.

• 20:25Speaker 00

  I couldn't tell you who does my taxes. I couldn't tell you who redid my roof. My wife does it all. I'm not involved in any of that. It's been the same model since I got out. I don't do that. I gotta focus on this. You do all of them.

• 20:39Nick Bare?

  I love that.

• 20:40Speaker 00

  It makes it, because then you are a team. She's running everything. Run it, dude. I trust you. Go. She's got it. Put some new roof on, redo the kitchen. I don't know anything about it. I couldn't tell you how much it cost. Couldn't tell you who did it. I'm just gonna focus on GPRAS. It's all I need to focus on. Makes it.

• 21:01Speaker 00

  Wildly comfortable. Just know I don't have to be everything to everyone.

• 21:06Nick Bare?

  Yeah, people make fun of me all the time because I hand, uh, I hire handymen to do a lot of work at home. And my argument is that's not my focus. My focus is building this, this brand, this business. And every other thing that I focus on, I spend my time on, hanging a photo or fixing a broken faucet or mending a fence. That is a distraction from the job that I'm called to do. So I have no problem hiring people to do all of these crafts and skills that I am not an expert in. I'm going to hire the experts, I'm going to pay the experts to do it better. I'm not going to watch a YouTube video for four hours,

• 21:50Nick Bare?

  read a PDF online for three hours and then learn how to do it after buying all the tools. I'm going to pay someone to do it.

• 21:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, my, same thing. She's like, you can't do anything around here. I've never spent any of my ability to learn these skill sets. If that was my job, I would have learned it. If I wanted to be Bob Vila, I'd be Bob Vila. I don't want to be. I don't need to be ten toolman Taylor. But he can't do what I can do. So what do you want? If somebody kicks in the front door, you're in a really good spot. I can give you a handyman, couldn't find himself out of wet paper bag if you want that guy. It's not what I'm best suited for. So no, I don't do the same thing. The refrigerator breaks, I call a guy. If it's down hard, I just replace it. I don't know. I'm not going to sit there and start changing stuff. No. I don't have time for that. Cause then you think about the amount of time you spend. Military guys, you know, for us,

• 22:40Speaker 00

  two seventy-five at a minimum to three hundred days a year gone on the road. Think about that, even on the days you're in town. I mean, you're at work till eight o'clock at night. You're not seeing your family. There's no integration time, there's none of that. Now I look at it as I've got to buy back all that time. I don't wanna be on the road. I don't wanna do all this stuff. Like, I'm trying to, I don't wanna go cut the grass for two hours on a Saturday. I'd much rather grab my kids, make them breakfast in bed and watch Stranger Things. Like, I'm gonna be like a normal dude. I don't wanna spend my time doing the stuff I don't wanna do. I owe them huge debt. I'm trying to buy back time now. If that's doing nothing, doing nothing is something. I'd much rather just sit there on Saturday and do nothing. Sit in pajamas, just, just put some on TV, eat, eat Cheerios, man, I don't care, let's just hang out.

• 23:25Speaker 00

  I'd much rather do that.

• 23:27Nick Bare?

  How old were your daughters when you got out of the military?

• 23:32Speaker 00

  My oldest was eight or nine. And up until that point, she called me DJ.

• 23:38Nick Bare?

  Oh, wow.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, in, not very uncommon, 'cause you're never home. And when she hears you on FaceTime, it's always DJ, DJ, DJ, 'cause me and Patsy talking back and forth, so she hears it and that's just what it is. Now it's transitioned. Now they all call me Papa and, but I mean, it took a while. Thank God my youngest was, we just had her probably a year and a half before I got out. So I came home, I came home from my last deployment, two weeks later she was born. So, pretty much gone for the entire pregnancy.

• 24:10Nick Bare?

  What was that transition out of the military like for you going from, I mean, I've seen a lot of my guys that I was in with, transitioning out and struggle. But we're coming from a, a conventional mechanized infantry unit at Fort Hood, Texas. Coming out of a tier one unit where the standards, the routine, the lifestyle, the op tempo is so high and different. How hard was that transition of coming back to the reality of, you're now being surrounded by,

• 24:43Nick Bare?

  for lack of better terms, a bunch of lazy men?

• 24:48Speaker 00

  It was the hardest thing I've ever done, man. No one ever talked about it, because you know, you know the deal, when you get out and like, "Oh, you're gonna have freedom, do whatever you want to, you know, rich guy's gonna pay you a couple hundred grand a year to teach them how to shoot on their flat range, and there's millions of jobs, and Google's gonna hire you, and Amazon," all the nonsense people throw out there. And you get out and you realize that you have been developing a skill set that no one needs. Unless you're an officer, or unless you're like senior, senior enlisted, a bunch of leadership schools that they like, you went to war in business school, enlisted guys don't do any of that, because we're so obsessed with the craft. Now, for me, I'm medically retired 17 years in, if I would've done 20 or 22, it would've been the same thing, I was never going to college.

• 25:28Speaker 00

  I can shoot really good, CQB's nasty, my jumping's great, mission planning, I can do all of those things, Google's not gonna pay you to do that. No one is. What are you gonna do? Contract. That was the plan. But it was, um, it was terrible, man, that first Monday, like I retired on a Friday, I had a really good transition job for a little bit, I was teaching, uh, selection for the Air Force guys, for their tier one dudes, that was one of the best three years of my life, but personally, the worst. Never been more depressed, suicidal, on all kinds of meds, got electrocuted, went through multiple shoulder surgeries, hand surgeries, everything in between, it was just terrible, man.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  Not having a group chat, there's no purpose, no one's gonna call you, you're never gonna put the thing on again. Like, what am I doing here? I don't have any transferable skill sets, I can't do anything else. Like, now that my shoulder's blown, jumping hurts so bad, now I can't even do it, and it's a thing I love to do the most, I can't even do it. What do I do? Like, I never got to finish a bunch of chapters that I started, and now it just haunts me. The transition's the worst thing I've ever done, by far.

• 26:39Nick Bare?

  I'm curious, you know, leaving the team, um...

• 26:46Nick Bare?

  How those lines of communication maintained for, for example, that is somewhat similar but different. When people leave this organization, you know, on their way out, say, hey, we're gonna stay in contact, we're gonna keep hanging out, we're gonna keep talking. As soon as they exit that door, this thing keeps humming and moving. And if you're not in it, you almost become forgotten. Hmm. Is it like that in the teams where, yeah, we're gonna keep talking, but once you leave, they're still doing the job. It's hard to maintain communication.

• 27:21Speaker 00

  It's a bullet train, man. It's going. You jump off, it doesn't even know you left. Like, at the end of the day, and I think that's the hardest thing, is because you're so committed to it, all the guys are, and you love it so much, because at the end of the day, you're a magnet on a whiteboard. You get shot, you get killed, you get retired, you get whatever. Magnet gets thrown off, and no one goes in your place. So it's very hard to come to terms with. So, I mean, when guys get out, that's usually where you reconnect, is now you're out, I'm out, hey, what did you do? You start talking a little bit, but the guys that are in are gone. See them every now and then, but no. Because, I mean, all the stuff they're doing, they can't talk about anyway.

• 27:57Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 27:58Speaker 00

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

• 28:08Nick Bare?

  I can see that. We talked about that last night a little bit.

• 28:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, it's like that with everybody. While you're in, while you're in the spell, I get it, I was the same way. But I would also say that I would have never done this. Never. I would have never got on social media. It was the evolution of the transition. It's how you help people. It's how you do. It's like, yeah, I gotta unblur my face, gotta tell my story, but I think I try to do it in a professional way where it's never chest beating, it's always elevating up everybody else I served with.

• 28:42Nick Bare?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:45Speaker 00

  I was talking to one of the guys, not too long ago.

• 28:50Speaker 00

  I said a quote on Sean Ryan. I said, "Watching those guys do CQB was like watching Gretzky take the ice." Like, I'm a purist. I love CQB. It's my thing. I could watch it and train and do it all day, every day for the rest of my life, never had a board session. And at a certain point, you think you know CQB well enough until you see a professional team that that's all they do. Bro, it's hard to put into words. It'll make you emotional. Like, when you're a purist, when that it becomes the only thing you do, it's like...

• 29:22Speaker 00

  It's like if you're a golfer and you watch Rory McIlroy or Tiger Woods really go on a burner and you're like, "Oh, my God. I can't believe it." Now imagine 12 guys doing it in unison. Like, "Oh, my God." Doesn't matter the opposition, doesn't matter the pressure, the time constraint, the lighting conditions. It's amazing to watch.

• 29:43Speaker 00

  It is. Oh, my God. It's amazing. It's like always trying to elevate them. Like, I want little kids to grow up to want to join the military. That's why I talk so high about Rangers and Marsoc and PJs and CCTs, like, because I've got to see the extreme end of the spectrum. I've got to see them right when they come in, and then I've got to watch all of those same units go up, you know, where they've been doing it for decades plus. It's amazing. It'll blow your mind how far people are willing to take the craft. And it never gets the attention it deserves. There's no difference in the amount of time, the discipline, the work ethic it takes to make a really good green beret that it is this guy in the NFL. It's the same thing. If you look at numbers, it's pretty damn close anyway. There's not too many people who do that job.

• 30:25Speaker 00

  Nobody ever puts a spotlight on that. Like, "Oh, yeah, they wear a green beret. Yeah, they're they're Afghans." They don't know anything about what they do. Do you know how hard it is to make that guy? Do you know how hard it is to make a Ranger at 75th? Not not easy, dude. There's not millions of them running around, super high attrition rates. It's hard to make. Trying to elevate those guys like we got away from it years ago. Defund the police didn't help. It's like you remember back in the day. You show up for career day. It'd be three people. There'd be some jack cop with a perfect mustache. There'd be that handlebar mustache with a fireman. It'd typically be a black guy, marine on a pull up bar. Super yoked, knocking out sets of twenty five all day long. Any comer, here we go, pull ups head to head.

• 31:08Speaker 00

  That's those are your three options as a boy in the eighties. What do you want to do? Cop, fireman, military. That's it. We got away from that. Nobody wants to do those jobs anymore. Why? We don't highlight them enough. Everything's just a negative spotlight, negative spotlight. I don't know, man. To me. Every little kid should want to grow up and be a marine. You should want to draw them, be of service. I got eight year olds now, like I want to be a TikTok influencer. Like, oh, my God, dude. It's not even a thing. What are you talking about? Like, be a fighter pilot. Oh, yeah, maybe it's better than a TikTok star. And be of service, man. Right? Did you watch that Blue Angels documentary?

• 31:48Nick Bare?

  No, I didn't.

• 31:49Speaker 00

  Spend some time to watch that. Watch their dirt dive. It'll change your whole perspective on anything. It's amazing, dude. The the level of detail they pour into that craft. That's how they can do it. It's not wizardry. It's not AI generated planes. Those are humans flying those things. It's so impressive. That's what it's like. They just take it to a level you like. The level of detail, my God, okay. Now I get to see it. It's so impressive. Now, when you get to see all these people now. I get to do these speaking engagements now in me all these different teams. And you get to see like the savants of their craft. That's all it is. They live a routine every single day. They wake up, they've got a minimum standard they're going to meet that super exceeds everybody else's standard. And they just live it unbroken. Like Tiger Woods makes a thousand contacts with a golf ball a day.

• 32:36Speaker 00

  When he says that, he doesn't mean, I don't know, two, three days a week. He does mean seven days a week. When Steph Curry says whatever his shot routine is that he shoots every single day, he doesn't mean roughly, like he's doing that. Negative, if it's 500 made threes a day, he's making 500 threes every single day. He's living a routine. Kobe Bryant, same way. It's like, look at that inspiration, the level of detail, the ownership, the accountability, the obsession now applies to everything else in life. That's it. Everybody in super high success, that's what they've been doing.

• 33:08Nick Bare?

  Yeah, I haven't thought much about how the aspirations of the younger children, especially young boys, has evolved over the years. Going from service-focused industries and positions to selfish, self-imposed hero mindset, jobs, social media influencing careers, if you will. Where do you think that's leading us to? Where's it leading the world to? And more importantly, where's it leading men to?

• 33:47Speaker 00

  It's making us weak. That's exactly what it's doing. It's making everybody weak. It's making everybody soft. And the fact that we can't say three quarters of the things we used to say in the eighties and nineties now because it hurts people's feelings is absolutely absurd. The fact we're having argues about gender and everything, like it's absolutely insane. All of it is. And it's just by weak men. It is. Like you feel guilty about being a man. Why? Why? I don't get it. You don't have a choice in the matter. You're born to do the most you can. But I don't know, man. Being of service has always just been the highlight of my life. It's all I've ever wanted. Everybody in my family's been of service. Everybody. Grandfather was a fighter pilot, had another one laying on Omaha Beach, stacked Nazis 10 foot tall. Uncle's an army ranger, jumped into Panama.

• 34:30Speaker 00

  25 years on the counter sniper team, Secret Service. Got another uncle's Marine, dad was a SEAL, father-in-law's SEAL, brother-in-law's a SEAL, wife is in the Navy, mother was in the Navy. I mean, the whole family's of service. Everybody gets it. But I think it makes you.

• 34:45Speaker 00

  Almost sacrificial to a group. Like you have to do whatever that group needs. Okay, when you transition out, now you're working for somebody, you have extreme buy-in on whatever it is because you're trying to replace the void, the Navy, the Army, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, whatever left you. Same thing. I see it the most like out of Joey. Andy, guys are in teams, Cole, they're so committed because they're trying to place the void the team left. Like GBRs becomes the team. I'm showing up every day just trying to be better than I was yesterday. I'm trying to be good for the team.

• 35:17Nick Bare?

  For the team.

• 35:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. Like not because of me, and that's what we talk about a lot. Like, don't put your individual needs above the needs of the group. Every time I've ever really messed up my life, that's what it's been. I haven't asked myself, does this make the team better? Is this just some selfish shit I'm doing? Is this good for the team or is it good for me? Team first, always team first. Well, that solves it. Continue. If it's not, don't do it. Don't do it.

• 35:41Nick Bare?

  What happens to guys who show up to the team? Who don't have that mindset? Who are selfish?

• 35:47Speaker 00

  Well, they go away pretty quick. Yeah, they go away quick. You just get voted out. Usually they get them in training, especially the tier one level, they'll catch them in training. We'll get peer, uh, peer eval out, top five, bottom five. We'll take a bottom five guys and just drop them. What is it? Culture, culture, culture, gone. It's like it's a performance thing. It's like, well, he's got a great culture. Like, you know, performance and trust. We want the high performer of high trust, but really we'll take a medium performer of high trust well before we'll take a high performer of low trust. Like, oh, this dude is awesome, but he's an individual, bro. I don't care at all about his performance. I can teach a monkey to do this job. I just need to lock him in a room with 12 other monkeys that are way better than him and he'll naturally progress. That's what I need. Is he super disciplined?

• 36:32Speaker 00

  Ah, he's hungry too. How is he? Super humble, love it, bring him. We'll take that guy all day long. High performer of high trust. You don't have that, I don't want you at all. Don't have it. You can be amazing. We see dudes that are so farts, dude. Oh my God, you see him on a flat range, you see him in a kill house, you're like, okay. Like, could you make 25 of him? I'll take him. And then you watch one cultural component break down, you're like, why is he eating alone?

• 37:00Speaker 00

  Like there's sixty five dudes in this class right now. Why is he eating alone? Why is he walking back alone? Why is he the last guy in here? Okay, why is he never taking out the trash? What's everybody else saying about him? And you watch the peer reviews come out and you're like, oh, okay. That's what that is. Shows up late, first gotta leave, never takes out trash, never volunteers for anything, doesn't care about anybody else. He's a singleton. He's in isolation. Never making jokes, never offers to drive, blah, blah, blah. The small things add up. Do you want twenty five of those? No, I don't. Eat it. Solves it pretty quick.

• 37:36Nick Bare?

  And that's the hardest part about building an organization, especially outside of the military. Is, you know, we talked about this last night. Even hiring C-level executive roles or higher positions. You're looking for experience. You're looking for competency. You're looking for talent, skill. And sometimes you have to sacrifice a little bit of that experience, a little bit of that competence for higher trust. It's very rare to find someone, I found, that has lots of experience, the right experience, high competency, and also high trust. They're more of a unicorn than I would like to believe.

• 38:15Speaker 00

  They are, and I don't know why that is.

• 38:18Nick Bare?

  I'm still racking my head around why.

• 38:20Speaker 00

  Or like,

• 38:22Speaker 00

  I've only been here for an hour. I can feel the culture in this place and I dig it. When people don't come in and they immediately feel it and they're like, ooh, I'll put this on, okay. They want to come in and try to change it to something they know. It's super rigid, overly structured, like, nope, gotta put them in uniforms of the day. Gotta have clock in times, nope, gotta do this, gotta have a geo fence. What are we doing?

• 38:46Speaker 00

  Like, we shouldn't have to do that. We shouldn't, we should be hiring off culture. So I have a thing I always tell the guys, like, I'm trying to draft, not trade.

• 38:55Speaker 00

  Like I'd rather bring you in here, teach you the skillset, make you a product of the culture, and then watch you naturally blossom. We got a dude out there, Jared, Jared Tapper. His dad was in teams, unfortunately passed away overseas in combat, but I've known him since he was knee-high to a duck. He came in here ripping up carpet in the building. He was like a, he's like a multi-tool of a human. He ran tribe skates, he ran filming, he ran customer service, he came over to training, now he went to media, now he's a creative director. Could I mass produce him? No, but I wish I could. If I could have 25 Jared Tappers, I'd be in a much better position. I would. He's got amazing work ethic, and he's just a great human. Everybody loves him. That's what you need. Why can't I find a CFO like that? Why can't I find anybody who has corporate experience who isn't corporate?

• 39:40Speaker 00

  That's the hardest thing. You want to try to come in here and reinvent the wheel? We don't want to reinvent the wheel. I just need to add some C-level people in here. That's the hard thing, man. Brad Gary's always say, um, culture is strategy for breakfast.

• 39:52Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 39:52Speaker 00

  You have an amazing strategy. Best battle plan you've ever written up in your whole life. Goes against cultures, the groups will never adopt it. If you don't adopt the plan as your own, you'll never commit to it. Great plan, sir. Nobody's gonna do that.

• 40:04Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 40:05Speaker 00

  No. What do you do? Gotta go culture first. You gotta hammer them with it. No, we're not doing that. Nope. Not willing to compromise on these things. This does matter. Fitness, like you brought in the, the CEO of McDonald's, he walked in here right now and he's like, tear down that gym, we're not catering meals, we're not doing that, we're putting in uniforms of the day, we're doing these KPIs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's like, guarantee you'll double revenue. I don't give a shit about that. I don't care at all. That doesn't matter to me a bit, dude. I'm not chasing a dollar sign, I'm chasing a feeling. I want to wake up every day with the same feeling I had inside that comp and I go, I'm making a difference. Everybody in this room is rowing in the exact same direction. I might not know

• 40:47Speaker 00

  the final destination because there isn't one, we're just gonna keep going in a positive direction. Everybody row. Same stroke, same cadence, let's go. And they are. It's amazing, dude. I'm, I'm, I'm truly blessed. We have an amazing team. But it's so hard to have that team grow, man. Especially when they come in with outside experience. We see the same thing in special operations. You get guys that come from the Fleet Navy. Say they do four, six, even eight years. Then they come in to NSW, they have a very hard transition. They're not used to an unconventional mindset. We don't salute, we don't call each other sir, we don't call each other by rank. Everything's on a first name basis. When it's time to snap it in gear, you snap it in gear. It's very unconventional. It feels like a professional sports team way before it feels like anything in the military. They're not used to that.

• 41:32Speaker 00

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

• 41:50Speaker 00

  The only reason we have those customers is YouTube. Right? Nobody understands that business model. So it's hard, man. It'd be a lot easier just to get them and build them. Like, I don't wanna trade. I don't wanna lose Jared Tapper, I'm bringing in a creative director from Nike. I don't give a shit what Nike's done. Doesn't matter to me a bit. I'm not trying to be Nike.

• 42:09Speaker 00

  I think if you just hold, hold true to the culture, hold true to the values, you'll eventually build a team.

• 42:14Nick Bare?

  It's equal parts art and science. I heard this quote a long time ago, and I still think about it all the time. In regards to people. If you can understand someone's incentives, you can predict their behaviors.

• 42:29Nick Bare?

  If you bring someone in who's incentivized to build their LinkedIn profile and their resume. And people.

• 42:38Speaker 00

  I'd love you to say that.

• 42:39Nick Bare?

  This is, this is like a, a hard fact that there are people who live their life to build their LinkedIn resume.

• 42:47Nick Bare?

  And it's like.

• 42:49Speaker 00

  We have to be really careful, and I'm sure you do too, even when you put on jobs like Indeed.

• 42:55Speaker 00

  Often, you can't really tell them where the job is. Because you tell them, all the guys on social stalk you, little spam, you do the whole thing. It's like, no, man, I'm like, I need really committed people. Now because of COVID, everybody's working remote. Oh, can I do this job from Albuquerque? No, I need you here.

• 43:12Speaker 00

  Okay. What do you want to do? I could jam a lot of stuff up too, but yeah, getting through it.

• 43:18Nick Bare?

  And me and Trey were talking about this last night. Um, cause we drove to dinner and then we drove back to HQ from dinner. And just, you know, watching your team communicate and you can just feel the energy of your team. And I think we were talking about, you know, how the workforce has changed over the years is it used to be. And probably similar to the way that the military still operates. It's the mission first. It's the organization. You are there to support the organization, the mission. But a lot of people now believe that.

• 43:57Nick Bare?

  The organization and mission is there to support them as the employee. So it's what is this, what is this company? What is this mission going to do for me as opposed to what am I going to do to build this company up? It's completely flip flopped and messed up and selfish as opposed to selfless. It is not service oriented. It is me oriented.

• 44:19Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 44:20Nick Bare?

  It's painful.

• 44:22Speaker 00

  It is. We got super lucky though. You've just been around a lot longer than us. But right when we started to get momentum, we brought in basically a core group. Davis is one of them. Jared's one of them. Many, a bunch of the creatives, they were the first ones in there. Like before it was even a thing, like before we even opened up social media. So they've been there for the entirety. So they got a lot of buy-in, a lot of brand loyalty to it, and they know it better than anybody else because they've lived it day by day. But they've seen, there's a business model. Like we're not held by any standard. We're setting our own standard every single day. So they show up. If you turn on the security cameras, nine o'clock, nine on Tuesday, three quarters of creative team is still in there. It's one of those jobs, like you couldn't pay them for the time they put in or the passion they put in for it because we couldn't afford it.

• 45:07Speaker 00

  Right? You pay them well, but they understand it's like that we're building this place. It's as many hours I've logged, they've equally logged the same. It's nice having a team full behind it.

• 45:18Nick Bare?

  Oh, those are the people you, you never want to lose.

• 45:20Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 45:21Nick Bare?

  Right or dies.

• 45:22Speaker 00

  And I heard one, I don't know if it was Gary Vee, one of the, one of the dudes online. And he goes, um, we're going to go through and he goes, I'm going to line out every single person in the company. And if they turn in their two weeks now, if I wouldn't beg them to stay, I'm going to fire them.

• 45:39Speaker 00

  And you look down at the list of everybody we have in the company right now, like who if they turn their two weeks, but I go, no, dude, come on. Okay. Let's have an honest conversation here. Everybody on the team right now would have a hard conversation. Like, don't do this right now. Don't, I don't want to lose you. There's nobody on the team where it's like, oh, God, it'd be so much easier if you just left. We're good. We're in a great spot. And I think that that's part of the success. Started small, scaled it as we could. But now we've got a team that's like, we're all buddies. And I know that's got, that's got flaws in it too, but not culturally speaking. It was the same way in the team. Everybody loved each other. Get the highest performers out because now it's a group buy-in. Like, I really care about my performance because I really want you to be able to go home at the end of the day. And if I mess this up, chances are I'm going to die or you're going

• 46:24Speaker 00

  to die. I don't want that to happen. Same thing in work. Like, everything they do truly matters. Now they get it. From order fulfillment, customer service, ops, everything. They got true buy-in.

• 46:35Nick Bare?

  I'm curious on your thoughts on this. And maybe it's just a matter of

• 46:43Nick Bare?

  different ways to describe the same thing, or different titles that really don't matter. But I think it kind of sets up the way you run our organization. You can either call your organization a family or a team. And we've gone back and forth over the years. And again, does it really matter? Maybe, but I think it sets realistic expectations of what is your role here and how are we going to operate together. Where when you're a family, it's like you put up with a lot of stuff. You gotta live with them. You gotta stay with them. It's like, we're in this together. We're blood. You can be a turd and you're still my brother. Or you can be a team, a professional sports team, for example.

• 47:27Nick Bare?

  Or it's like, hey, we got a mission. We're here to win championships. And if you're not holding the standard, you're off the team. Do you view your organization as a family or a team? Or a combination of the both?

• 47:38Speaker 00

  A combination of both. It definitely started as a family. And now we You know, you have to redefine the standards. They're like GBR sets at True North. Like, I check in with it every single day. On days I don't want to get up, I don't want to go to the gym, I don't want to do this, I don't want to do that. I do it because the brand deserves it. Everybody else does the exact same thing. We hold each other accountable. I mean, there's people in there, personality-wise, that they got their quirks, you navigate around, but you love them at the end of the day. You'd beg them to stay. But it's easy to get them for full buy-in. Like, right now, do you think you're upholding the standard that that sets? No. Fix it. Okay. If you can't fix it, you gotta go. The brand deserves more. Same thing for me. If I'm not cutting it, I'll leave. I said it from day one.

• 48:22Speaker 00

  The moment I can't hold the standard, I'm gone. Everybody else has the exact same mindset. If you put that at True North, it'll keep going in the right direction. The family stuff, you're right, you'll put up with a lot of stuff. A lot of piss poor performance, a lot of bad attitudes, bad cultural stuff. If you don't have to put up with the cultural stuff, it is a family, you can have those hard conversations, the rough ones you don't want to have. But at the end of the day, we are a performing team. We do have to perform. So what is a team? If you can't meet the minimum standard, if you can't exceed our standard right now, if you're not putting in a work ethic, you can't be part of the team.

• 48:55Nick Bare?

  When you were in the teams, in the Navy, did you have to have many hard conversations? Or did everyone show up with the understanding of this is the standard?

• 49:09Speaker 00

  When I was first in, you'd have to have a couple of them with the new guys when they checked in.

• 49:12Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 49:13Speaker 00

  And usually that was, they just got it up buds, you know, you're broken down, you're kind of weak. It's like, here's a lifting protocol, you need to put on 25 pounds right now. Like, we've got new guy Olympics coming up, there's body weight bench, weighted pull-ups, like, you better crush that test. Okay. Forcing that kind of stuff, if guys aren't well-rounded on the flat range, you need to shoot more. Like, you're gonna get attached to this guy, you guys can hit the range two, three days a week. But at a certain level, you never have to. The only time you'd have to have hard conversations are Liberty incidents. Guys drinking out in town, guys getting in trouble, it's like, you gotta tighten this up.

• 49:48Nick Bare?

  Outside of work?

• 49:49Speaker 00

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

• 50:08Nick Bare?

  Can you talk about DevGru and, you know, like even for me, over the years, I've heard DevGru getting thrown out a lot. And to be honest, I thought being a Navy SEAL was tier one.

• 50:21Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 50:22Nick Bare?

  I didn't understand that being a Navy SEAL was tier two. I'm checking if I'm wrong.

• 50:28Nick Bare?

  But I was researching it, said like DevGru, for example, is tier one.

• 50:32Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 50:32Nick Bare?

  What it, what is, what is DevGru? And what does its selection process look like to get there?

• 50:40Speaker 00

  It's the, it's a maritime counterterrorism unit. Army's got one too. You got legacy tasks and all that, but we basically divide the world up fifty fifty. You got revolving schedules for blowouts, but high value targets, hostage rescue, direct action, counterterrorism. If any of that pops up, we're going. So we've got supporting assets. We've got Army helicopter assets. It's all under, um, a joint special operations command, but it's very hush, hush. Don't talk about it much, but they're prepped, ready to go on whatever happens. Any scenario in the world that could throw out, they're trained for it. They're the response element for it. And you are always on call, even when you're not on call, you're on call. Cause if something happens and you gotta go, you have to be able to spin up and go.

• 51:23Speaker 00

  Essentially, you know, blocks throughout the year, you're on a thirty minute recall. If you get that ta, you get that text, you get that page, you're inside on a bus heading to the airfield in thirty minutes.

• 51:33Nick Bare?

  Wow.

• 51:34Speaker 00

  You gotta be ready to go. Can't be drunk, can't drive over a bridge, like there's a whole bunch of stuff you have to be with inside of this geo fence. If you leave it, you can't make the recall time, you're off the manifest and their heads are gonna roll. So you gotta be locked in.

• 51:47Nick Bare?

  How long were you a SEAL before going through that selection process?

• 51:51Speaker 00

  I did three deployments, sorry, Rex.

• 51:57Speaker 00

  Six years. I screened after my second deployment, so I was like twenty one, twenty two years old when I screened. And then I did one more rotation in Iraq and then I went in two thousand and ten. So I was twenty, twenty three,

• 52:13Speaker 00

  twenty two when I screened, it got picked up, twenty four when I went and I turned twenty five at the end of selection. Something like that.

• 52:19Nick Bare?

  And you you choose to go through selection or you get selected?

• 52:24Speaker 00

  You have to screen.

• 52:25Nick Bare?

  Okay.

• 52:25Speaker 00

  You have to put in a package, your command has to sign a bunch of paperwork, you gotta go there and do a week long screening process, psych, shooting, CQB, physical fitness, the whole thing, formal boards, everything in between. You get through all of that, they'll give you a slot to attend selection training. And it is intense, dude. I'd go through BUDs twice if I go through Green Team again.

• 52:46Nick Bare?

  Really?

• 52:47Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:48Nick Bare?

  Can you talk about what that selection process looks like?

• 52:50Speaker 00

  It's everything you'd have to do in BUDs, just because now you're broken down. So even the screen test to get in, the one to get in the BUDs is pretty easy. And the order you take it in sucks because you gotta do the swim first and a bunch of stuff like that, but the pushups are doubled, the situps are doubled, the pullups are doubled, the runs twice as long, the swims twice as long, it's open water, a bunch of those different things just to get in. Then you've got legacy test, body weight bench, broad jump, whole NFL combine, but it's nothing but assaulting. You're just doing CQB and trained on that. And all the infill methods, jumping, diving, walking, helos, driving, every aspect of that. And then every type of problem set you used to see. Every type of building, everything, and all you do is CQB. So everything that goes into that.

• 53:35Nick Bare?

  And how long is that selection?

• 53:36Speaker 00

  Nine months.

• 53:37Nick Bare?

  It's nine months

• 53:40Nick Bare?

  of just getting neatly crap.

• 53:43Speaker 00

  You you get smashed, dude, but it's cool because you bring in the world's best at whatever that discipline is. So it's the same model, right?

• 53:51Speaker 00

  So you'll bring out the world's best shooting instructors for four weeks and all you do is shoot eight hours a day and then you go off and do CQB or you'll break it up four hours in a range, four hours in a house, four hours in a house, four hours in a range, back and forth and you'll do that for four, eight weeks consecutive and then you'll just shoot three to five days a week after that, then you'll do another shooting block so your baseline keeps increasing. Do the same thing with jumping. You'll go out and do a hundred jumps in a couple of weeks and then you'll jump once every month, but you'll do 25 jumps in those two or three days. So now you're just increasing currency. Do the exact same thing, exact same thing. Then you put it all together and you do a month of just straight full mission profiles, jumping in, helos, driving in, every different type

• 54:31Speaker 00

  of scenario. It's sick dude. It's, but man, it is intense, especially for me because I'm an idealist. Like I grew up in the community. I didn't know anything about the command. I knew nothing about Dev Group, never heard about it growing up, really didn't know what it was, didn't know the mission set. Until you got in and you would see the older guys in your deployments leave and then you'd see them at a bar six months later, hair down to their shoulders, beard down to here and you're like, what happened to JT? And he's like, oh, he went over to, went over to Dev Group. What is that? And you're like, ah, it's another team. Oh, okay. Don't know anything about it. And then later on in your career, you get the mission brief and you hear about the whole organization, screening process and drop your application and go.

• 55:16Nick Bare?

  How many guys are in Dev Group at the time?

• 55:18Speaker 00

  Um, like going through like a selection course?

• 55:21Nick Bare?

  Like actively in a, in a team?

• 55:23Speaker 00

  You can't talk about it, but it, I'll tell you the number off camera, shockingly low.

• 55:28Nick Bare?

  Wow.

• 55:29Speaker 00

  Like you know everybody in the building. You've heard every single person's name. You've seen every single person. It's very, very small. Very small.

• 55:35Nick Bare?

  When you're going through that process and then on that team?

• 55:41Nick Bare?

  Were you mind blown at the level of professionalism that you're surrounded by? Or was just, that's what you grew up in?

• 55:48Speaker 00

  Very different, very professional, very locked in, very disciplined. Extremely funny. Team guys are funny. Team guys are funny dude. And some of the instructors you have, they can be stand up comedians. They are hysterical. But when it's time to switch it on, they'll go from that to being a crankster back and forth. Really, really quick, they'll be able to toggle in and out.

• 56:11Nick Bare?

  Those are my favorite type of people.

• 56:13Speaker 00

  They're amazing, but I'll tell you, you talk about performance anxiety, performance pressure. I was eating double Benadryl every day before CQB to try to drop my heart rate down. Try to be kind of lethargic. Because every dude you've ever looked up to, because all the guys you've worked with eventually elevate up and now they're there. So when you'll go in, they'll put you in a room as big as this. Four guys will take it down. There's not a target in it. And up in the rafters will be 25 dudes that are demigods to you. It's like Tom Brady standing up there watching me about to catch passes, you know? Oh my God. Don't look up, don't look up. Heart rate's at 190, you're like, oh, here we go. Everything you do. You're walking down, he's like, stop, freeze. Back up one inch, half of that.

• 56:56Speaker 00

  Back up, scan over, move back a half inch, four and a half inch, back three quarters of an inch, right there. That's where you have to scream and it's you're like, oh my God, okay. When they, when they mean right there, they do mean right there. They don't mean two inches further, they don't mean an inch past, they mean right there. So very disciplined.

• 57:13Nick Bare?

  That's incredible. It's like, it's a remarkable craft to hone in. And just become an expert.

• 57:22Speaker 00

  It is man, but a lot of it's big boy rules apply. Like, once you get in, there's no command PT. Like, no one's forcing you to do anything, you just better hold up the standard. Like, if a human being can do it in this job, everybody's expected to be able to do it. Can one guy climb up and down that mountain? Yep, everybody's going, let's go. You should be able to do it. So a lot of guys, they adopt weird routines. But I mean, everybody's old, everybody's broken, but somehow they're still maintaining a super high standard. It's, uh, it's super impressive to watch.

• 57:52Nick Bare?

  I've heard you talk about. This and other interviews and podcasts, but just the amount of injuries you have sustained over the years.

• 57:59Speaker 00

  No, I have nothing to compare to some of the guys in M. We got dudes, double pec tear, double bicep tear, torn hamstring, torn quad, been shot twice, blown up, countless TBIs. I mean, as soon as you start getting the replacements, that's where it gets dicey. But there's multiple dudes with no ACL. They took a cadaver ACL, didn't, now they don't have anything. They're just operating on braces. Like, I don't care. You'll never be able to tell. But as soon as you have to get a hip replacement, that's where it gets dicey. You get a shoulder replacement, you gotta go. But outside of that, I mean, everybody, and most of the guys, and it's not a good thing, I'm not super proud of it, but the injuries you hide, they become your limiting factor. Like now, now I'm at a point where I can't hide it. Like, I can't throw a grenade.

• 58:42Speaker 00

  Like, it's 50/50, my shoulder comes out of socket. Like, now we've got a serious issue. Okay, well, how long can I KTT that thing in place, taking, you know, 1,600 milligrams of Motrin and PRP shots and all this other stuff? How long can I push this off? Can I get through deployment? And as soon as you get back, you've got a surgery scheduled, you walk in, and now you've got four guys working on you for the next 12 weeks, trying to get your shoulder back up, so you don't miss the next deployment. So you time everything. You get really used to just dealing with injuries, bad ones. Like ones that would just, I mean, we've got dudes that have been shot before, have made it through, made it through training, checked in, and had to have two or three more surgeries because the wound won't heal. They've just been training on it anyway.

• 59:24Speaker 00

  Waterproof bandages and just legs pissing out, draining their boot, and you're like, oh my God. You're not gonna be able to pull him out. Like, he's never gonna tap out. He's just gonna suck that up forever. Eventually, you gotta pull him out, like, you have to get a surgery on that. You have to fix that. We need you at 100%. Not 100% mindset, we need the total package right now. And that's what happened to everybody. Everybody's hurt, man.

• 59:45Nick Bare?

  And these are injuries from training and from combat?

• 59:49Speaker 00

  From everything, yeah. Everything. But I mean, training's super dangerous, dude. Dangerous, doing hundreds of skydives a year, all the CQB, all the breaching, all the combatives, everything. I mean, dudes' shoulders get blown out, hip, I mean, I broke my femoral neck off in green team. I just kept jumping on it. Made it all the way through. Finished selection, walked in, had emergency surgery, pumped in 15 inches of titanium. I was on a plane in Afghanistan in, I don't know, a couple of weeks.

• 1:00:18Speaker 00

  We'll just hide it.

• 1:00:20Nick Bare?

  And the up tempo and frequency is so high, you just don't have time to recover?

• 1:00:23Speaker 00

  No, no. When we get done, I'll show you a picture of the day I checked in. It's still on my ID and you'll see what I look like now. It ages you quick, man. It looks like the presidency, like four years in air. I mean, it puts on 15 years on you quick. Not sleeping, just everything.

• 1:00:43Nick Bare?

  Transitioning out of the military, then? That's when you got all of the, or most of the surgeries and rehab and start taking care of yourself again?

• 1:00:51Speaker 00

  No, um, I did my hip, I did my stomach three times. A bunch of stitches, stuff like that, fractures while I was in, nothing crazy.

• 1:01:01Nick Bare?

  What happened to your stomach?

• 1:01:03Speaker 00

  I, uh, not a cool story. I had an inguinal hernia surgery when I was a kid. So balls were like this big. We were overseas, we were in Afghanistan doing something, we were doing Fight Club. One of the guys gave me a push kick in my lower abdomen. And as soon as he did, I felt something else. What the hell is that? And I looked down, it looked like a half an egg was under my skin. So I went over to the surgeon's command, I was like, yo, check this out. The ultrasound, he's like, it looks like a big cyst, dude, let's just cut it. Stuck a knife in it and cut that thing. Little bit of fluid came out, but nothing. He's like, I don't really see anything. Closed it up. Two days later, this little green thing came to the surface. I picked it up and I pulled it and a strand of like eight sutures came out from 1985.

• 1:01:42Nick Bare?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:01:42Speaker 00

  So pulled them out, I was like, what the hell? Went back in there, there was a fistule track. It went from my testicles, up my leg, connected to my hip surgery and then ran into my stomach. It was like that long, you could scope the whole thing. Yeah, oh, it was dicey, dude. So I had to pack that whole thing for months, dude. It was a, yeah, it was a nightmare.

• 1:02:02Nick Bare?

  So you were getting surgeries while you were still in?

• 1:02:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, but I mean, you have to do that one because now I have an open wound. I mean, I can put four fingers inside like this marsupial pouch and palpated. I couldn't feel anything, the skin just wasn't connected. It was just a huge void, distilled with pus and fluid, it's disgusting. Yeah, I did three rounds of plastic surgery on that. It wouldn't, it wouldn't heal.

• 1:02:25Speaker 00

  Um, and yeah, when I got out, I had a gnarly shoulder dislocations really did me in. Nothing medically retired me. It shredded everything in my shoulder. They wanted to fuse my lower back, my neck, had to get double shoulder surgery, double hip surgery. What are we doing? I'm not going to sit here and get five years worth of surgery and never deploy. I'm not doing that.

• 1:02:44Nick Bare?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:44Speaker 00

  So got a medical retirement, started knocking them out.

• 1:02:48Nick Bare?

  I've heard the story of your, your transition out between

• 1:02:52Nick Bare?

  surgeries and then being on a bunch of medication that doctors had you on. And then you got electrocuted while doing up skateboards.

• 1:03:03Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:03:04Nick Bare?

  Like, did you, you've gotten just beat to crap on?

• 1:03:08Speaker 00

  Been through the wringer, man.

• 1:03:09Nick Bare?

  On the journey?

• 1:03:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. Some people had a lot worse than me. I mean, still got ten fingers, ten toes, but a lot of, um, a lot of emotional distress. Because when you're there, you've got such a purpose, you feel like you're well-rounded, you feel like you there's a reason I'm waking up every single day. When you don't have that anymore and then you get hurt. Now I don't have the physical connection. My mental health is right behind it. Then I start to spiral. Now there's no purpose, there's no reason for me to get out of bed now. No one needs me. What am I doing now? And now when you get so hurt that I can't get out of bed, I can't feed myself, can't shower. It's like, oh my God, how did I get here? Like, I don't want to live like this. I don't.

• 1:03:49Nick Bare?

  How'd you dig out of that?

• 1:03:51Speaker 00

  My wife and Vernon.

• 1:03:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, man, I came out of the hospital. Had two plates, twenty something screws. It tore all the anchors out we had previously put in the shoulder. I had the Mumford, the bicep tendonitis. Five or seven anchors in my shoulder. And from the contraction, it ripped all those anchors out and it shattered my collarbone, shattered my opposite scapula.

• 1:04:12Nick Bare?

  This is from getting electrocuted?

• 1:04:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Blew out of my thumb, welded that tendon to the nerve bundle. So my thumb was like this. So we had to do a Z lengthening, break up all that scar tissue, relocate my tendon. Blew it out the top of my hand, out of my thighs, one spot right next to my ass, probably about that deep. Um, blew it out the top of my head, like small ones, like almost like, um, ingrown hairs. It just electricity was coming out of them. So shorts catching on fire, the whole thing. And.

• 1:04:39Speaker 00

  I mean, you're familiar because you're endurance, Rabdo.

• 1:04:42Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:42Speaker 00

  When you get electrocuted, your body goes through a process very similar to Rabdo. Releases some kind of enzyme, it gets to all your muscles and basically liquefies them, they turn septic and you die. So I'm laying in a hospital bed and this doctor comes in and he's like, hey, man, I gotta come back here every hour, I gotta track your blood markers. When this enzyme hits this number, I gotta start chopping you up. I was, I just came out of that shoulder surgery. I'd been with Vernon for like a year, some change straight. I was probably 230 pounds, 6% body fat, built like a brick ship, best physical condition I've been in. And it made me really second guess getting out. It's like, dude, if I could build back to this, we'd just diet lifting twice a day. Like, I could still do this job. Like, I'm good. Then I got electrocuted.

• 1:05:25Speaker 00

  So I had this huge fall from grace. Now I'm back on high. I'm like, okay, like, I'll be able to transition out, have a nice, easy roll, boom, get electrocuted. And now I can't do anything. I'm in double slings for months. I can't wash my hair, can't wipe my ass. I can't do anything, dude.

• 1:05:42Speaker 00

  I mean, nothing. I couldn't do anything. And he shows up at my house, brings over a two-pound dumbbell. He went through a range of motions. What can you do? Like, nothing.

• 1:05:52Speaker 00

  Well, you can do wrist curls. You can do wrist curls and 20-minute walks, man. That's what we did. Got into there until I could actually pressurize my upper body. If you were broken in collarbone, it's measurable. Your scapula's even worse. You can believe that. But we had a belt squat in the gym he was working in, and we did that probably for a month straight. That and anything lower body we could do. I couldn't do anything upper body. And as soon as I'd get moving back around, we hit it again, two a days, every day, and rebuilt back. So without him, yeah, I probably wouldn't be here. I didn't want to play the game anymore.

• 1:06:26Speaker 00

  I hate saying that, but, man, I was, I was in the depths of it, dude.

• 1:06:32Speaker 00

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

• 1:06:53Speaker 00

  He showed up. He's like, no, no, we're living the same routine. We're gonna wake up 6 a.m. We're gonna do this every day. Okay. I find, or that two pound dumbbell went to a five, went to a 10, went to a 15, went to a 30, went to a 40. Now we're doing all these grip things to try to rebuild my hand strength. I got the surgery on my thumb. We had to rehab that. Surge around a bunch of different other stuff and just kept building. So now I just don't break the routine, no matter what. Every time I have, something bad has happened. So I just don't break it. I force it. Even on days where logistically I don't have time, I'll find time. I'll do something.

• 1:07:27Speaker 00

  Stick to the routine, man.

• 1:07:28Nick Bare?

  That's the power of routine and people, having the right people in your life.

• 1:07:32Speaker 00

  Dude, Vernon's been more of a life coach than, than a strength coach in a lot of different ways. But that combination, man, he's just such a good human, but he's so knowledgeable. And he can look at me. He can read my energy level from across the room. He can, what's going with that foot? It's like, no, it's fine. He's like, no, put your sock off and sit. No, all right, we're doing foot health this morning. Like, he sees everything that's going on, all, all my limitations, and he helps me navigate them. Cause I got a laundry list, dude. But all the things I want to be able to do in life, he just develops a program so I can still do those things.

• 1:08:06Speaker 00

  But live the routine, man. Surround yourself with people better than you and live the routine. You'll naturally progress.

• 1:08:10Nick Bare?

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

• 1:08:56Nick Bare?

  I think about fitness as a whole.

• 1:08:59Nick Bare?

  A lot of people turn fitness, and I've done this too for many of my years of my life. Fitness has been a selfish pursuit to make myself look impressive. So I'm going to train for this race to get a PR, not necessarily for myself, but so that I can say, hey, look how fast I am, look how impressive I am. And what I'm now is, you know, getting older and my focus is my wife, my children, my teen. Fitness is a responsibility I have to be an asset to the people in my life.

• 1:09:34Nick Bare?

  So I would rather be able to train in the morning that builds all of this sustainable energy to show up for my family in the afternoon, as opposed to train in the morning that fatigues me, so I'm just hanging on by a thread until the evening and I'm a zombie for my children. But viewing fitness as it's not for me necessarily, it's for the people in my life to show up as an asset to them and avoid being a liability.

• 1:10:01Speaker 00

  I mean, do you know the deal too, because you train so much? When you're not able to train, the guilt you feel.

• 1:10:07Nick Bare?

  Oh, definitely.

• 1:10:09Speaker 00

  You know, people tell me, it's like, you know, you do too much. If I was a bodybuilder, I know I do too much. I know I should probably train three days a week, I need to optimize recovery. I do this more for my mental health and for just force myself to be well-rounded. Like you said, for the people around me, trying to redefine my own standard, especially on days I don't want to go. When I wake up and I'm super sore, I'm like, oh God, I don't want to do this. Those are the days I love the most, because everybody else will go, I'll just take the day off. I know you would. Yeah, so I'm not doing it. I'm going in. I mean, we'll land on a red eye, two o'clock in the morning. My alarm clock goes off at five, my wife looks and she goes, you're insane. She's like, nobody's expecting you to be in there. Honey, the fact that you think I'm going in there for them alarms me. I'm going in for me. I'm going for my mental health.

• 1:10:51Speaker 00

  This is my little, little spiritual conquest, like I need this time for me. Self-connect every single day. But no, I mean, it's make yourself well-rounded, make yourself an asset. Like, I don't need to be a marathon runner. I need to be. Eight weeks away from doing whatever I want to be able to do. Maintain a high average, but something's repeatable. Like I see guys that do these crazy diets and these crazy fads. And you know, I call it David Goggins all the time because people look at him and it's so impressive. When he's 50, able to do all that. And they're like, man, I can't run 100 miles. Brother, you don't have to. That's his thing. That's what he does. You don't have to do that thing. The discipline, the work ethic he puts in, just apply that to your life. That could be a 20 minute walk fasted every single morning, 365 days a year.

• 1:11:34Speaker 00

  Don't ever miss it. Add the exact same thing at night. You want to see a cheat code to a diet, walk after every meal. I'll change your whole life. I pulled hundreds of pounds off people with that. Walk 20 minutes after everything, single thing you consume. Just do that. You just lose weight. Oh my God. It's easy, dude. Just be disciplined. You don't have to run 50 miles. You don't have to.

• 1:11:56Speaker 00

  You need to get on a program. You need to make yourself well-rounded.

• 1:11:59Nick Bare?

  What is your view on long distance running? I'm curious, you and Vernon and.

• 1:12:02Speaker 00

  I like, I like, I mean, I've had to do long distance running. When I call it long distance, anything over 12 miles is long distance to me. Actually, anything over eight miles is long distance to me. But we've had to do crazy long runs, man. And I get it. The more I got into running, the more I was forced into running, the worse I got at everything else. Right? Like when you actually get in the gym, everything else, but I like it for the mental preparation.

• 1:12:29Speaker 00

  Like we weren't listening to music. Like I told you, like on our run, we don't wear a watch. There's no music. It's just you. That's very different. Like if you ran a 100 mile race with no stimulus, just you, that's very, very different. Like you gotta go into spirit world to get that thing done.

• 1:12:43Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:44Speaker 00

  I mean,

• 1:12:48Speaker 00

  I've never seen anybody

• 1:12:51Speaker 00

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

• 1:13:16Speaker 00

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

• 1:13:37Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:38Speaker 00

  Like, I want little people to look at you and go, dude, my dad's an ultra marathon runner. Like, sick, what do you think that kid's gonna do? Be an ultra marathon runner? He is. He said he's gonna run in college. He's gonna run professionally.

• 1:13:50Speaker 00

  Not enough people have physical presence themselves anymore. Like, you don't have to look like Seabom, Mr. Olympia. You don't have to do any of that. I'm not hugging him aesthetically. Can you perform? Like, if somebody grabs your, somebody grabs your daughter in a Walmart parking lot right now, what are you gonna do about it? You don't have any tools on you. You ain't calling 911. What are you gonna do about it? You're not gonna run them to death. What are you gonna do? You need to be well-rounded.

• 1:14:13Nick Bare?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:14:14Speaker 00

  You don't have to be a Fortune 300 black belt in this, but you need to put in some significant, some significant effort early in the phase to lay down a foundation to where you're capable. And we talk to cops all the time. Like, if I was a cop right now, and I had to make a mandatory rule, I'd make every cop do 100 classes of BJJ a year. Twice a week. I'd make the department pay for it and make it mandatory. Make them well-rounded. Get them in the gym. Like, why we're not putting gyms in all these police departments baffles me. Like, guys having to put a kitty together, buy their own gym equipment. It's like, whoa. What are we doing, man?

• 1:14:48Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:48Speaker 00

  What are we doing? Firemen, same thing. It's like they're buying their own gym equipment. What are we doing? Like, you want them to be physically fit. It saves them. That becomes their first lifeline. What's the best EDC? Me. I wish I had a bunch of tools, but if I don't and I'm stuck on an airplane, I'm not a victim. Not by a damn stretch. That's what we're trying to push. You can get a lot of it done. The work ethic, the discipline, the routine, just by sticking with the gym. Now you add in one more factor. Cool, now we're gonna do this. We're gonna go boxing one day a week. I'm gonna run that for six months. I've got a pretty decent base. Let's add in BJJ. I'll be one day of boxing, one day of BJJ. Do that for two years straight. You've got a really good foundation that's gonna stick with you for a decade. Add in one more discipline. Now we add in shooting, we add in something else.

• 1:15:32Speaker 00

  Maybe you're not a runner. Maybe we add in running now. Maybe you're super strong, you're a hybrid athlete, but you don't run. You only sprint. Let's push it out to four miles, push it out to eight miles. Let's see where you start to fall off. You learn more about yourself, become more well-rounded.

• 1:15:46Nick Bare?

  How do you guys at GBRS establish goals within fitness programming? So instead of just showing up and going through the motions, I was talking to Vernon a little bit last night at dinner. He was talking about how you guys are in this focus right now of a training block. How do you as a team identify what's the goal for this training block? And like, how is it established and met to keep training interesting, but also have these things that are driving the motivation of fitness?

• 1:16:19Speaker 00

  Well, I'm blessed because we got a bunch of strong dudes in the gym. So you're really always chasing. So we do them in blocks. That first week is kind of like a feel out week. The movements might be slightly different. The order might be out of sequence. When we typically did before, you're like, oh, we're starting off the incline dumbbell press. Okay, what's three working sets? Okay, what was the last time we did that? Okay, well, that was at the end of the workout and I only did 70, 80, 90, 90. We'll make it up. Okay, well, now since I'm fresh, I'm going to go 80, 90, 100, 110s. Let's see how far we can push this. Let's see how far I can milk out these reps and really try to make it more challenging. Because now I'm listening with Vernon, Davis, Jared, they're all super strong. We're all basically chasing each other. Like Joey drops down and knocks out a set of 12 with a 110. You're like, Jesus Christ, okay. Okay, here we go. It's like everybody's making you push a little bit further.

• 1:17:04Speaker 00

  The sprints are the same way, everything we do, even though we don't have to say it, we're chasing. Like Vernon's in there, he's right over top of you. He's doing all the movements with you. He's strong as an ox anyway. His movements fantastic. Like he's setting the example. Now everybody else is setting their own individual example. How much intensity can you show up? Some days you're drained, dude. On those days where you land at two o'clock in the morning and then they're at five, I'm not firing at 100%, but I'm giving you 100% of whatever I have.

• 1:17:32Speaker 00

  I think that's the whole point is there's an internal mechanism you have to turn on to make yourself self motivated. Like I can just go through the motions, like I can do that exact same workout with 40 pound dumbbells and not feel a single thing from it. That's not the point. The point is I'm chasing what I did last week, pushing myself just a little bit further. Like last week I did 80, 80, 90 and I did 8, 8, 8. Okay, let's go 80, 90, 100, 110 and I'm gonna go 8, 8. I'm gonna make a push for 10. Like really, really push it. Just a little bit more and the confidence it goes called stacking micro wins. The same condition I do in my morning routine, I'm putting all the conditions in place to where I'm not late, my car's full of gas, phones at 100%. I've taken all my pills, done all my things.

• 1:18:15Speaker 00

  I'm not stuck behind a school bus, I'm not late by any means. I walk in, everything, all conditions are set. I'm not thinking about anything else except for the lift. How far am I willing to push? The whole way. We got to. Crank up the intensity, as soon as we're done, power down, not thinking about the gym anymore. Not thinking about my family now, I'm only thinking about the meeting I have to walk into right now. How do I put myself mentally in the best condition to be the version of DJ I want to be before I clear that threshold? I have to have that morning routine. If I don't have the gym, like you got a speaking engagements kicking off at 9am, they don't have a gym and I'm down in the Marriott, dumbbells to 40, it's like it's even worth me going down there? Yep, I'm going to maximize everything I can with those 40 pound dumbbells and I'm gonna try to give myself the same physical exertion I would at my home gym.

• 1:19:00Speaker 00

  So I feel the exact same because I know how I normally would feel if I had a perfect morning routine. I'm not just gonna look at the gym and go, apparently I got dumbbells to 40, I'll take the day off. I will feel so out of sync the whole rest of my day. I'll think about that one day for months. Nope. Not what Steph Curry would do. Nah dude, I'm going. Just wake up and, just wake up and push, man. You gotta be able to control your own intensity.

• 1:19:23Nick Bare?

  And my wife gives me crap all the time for, where she's she, she sees me wake up and I'm, I'm trashed. I did a nine mile run the day before in lower body strength. And I'm waking up to go run eight miles. You know, I feel every part of that previous day in my legs. She's like, what are you doing? Just chill. And no, I need this. And I know some of my training, probably a lot of my training. Creates diminishing return. But mentally, I need that to lay into the foundation of the day. Cause for, for me, just like you, it is so much of my morning routine. Whether I'm running or strength training.

• 1:20:01Speaker 00

  Have you ever tried working out in the afternoons?

• 1:20:05Nick Bare?

  Only when I have a good second workout.

• 1:20:09Speaker 00

  Everybody will argue with me like, ah, you know, I get better lifting in the evening. I bet you're not as consistent as I am.

• 1:20:16Speaker 00

  You won't. Your kid will miss the school bus. You'll have to go pick her up. You'll have to get Chick-fil-A. You'll have to come home. You gotta do this. One daughter's got soccer practice. One's got ballet. Your wife can't be in both places at once. You're gonna miss the gym. Not if I wake up before they do. And that's the whole point. It's like that, that was the routine. I'm gonna wake up before my family's gonna ask me, hey, can you take out the trash? Can you do this? Can you do that? Hey, can you make them breakfast real quick? No, we're not even having that conversation because I'm not going to be here. Gonna power them down, only focus on my routine. And I know it sounds selfish and it is, but it's selfish now to be selfless later. So like you talked about, when I come home at five, six o'clock now, I'm not thinking about any of those other things and I'm just gonna think about six o'clock to nine thirty when I put them down. I'm only gonna get three hours, three and a half hours a night with them.

• 1:21:01Speaker 00

  Let's maximize those three and a half hours with the same intensity and focus that I have in the gym. It's very hard to do. If now I'm sitting here like, I should be in the gym right now, but I'm not. Cause you miss the school bus, because you want to talk to your friends after class. I, I live inside of a reality. I'm not going to be consistent if I don't get it in first thing in the morning.

• 1:21:17Nick Bare?

  Yeah, I'm the same way.

• 1:21:18Speaker 00

  In the spillover, like you talked, the dopamine hitting everything else cascades. Like I walk in a 10 a.m. meeting like, I feel like I had to drink four shots of espresso and I'm, I'm good to go. If I don't have it, I just feel lethargic. I feel broken. I feel like I'm on the wrong side of forty. Not if I get my lift in. Why would I ever break that? I'm not going to.

• 1:21:38Nick Bare?

  Yeah, as soon as I get home, that is no longer my time. That is my family's time.

• 1:21:44Nick Bare?

  And um, even if I, if I try to save a training session for the back half of the day because our gym is here at HQ, it's very easy for people to access me when I'm in that gym. Hey, just got a quick question here. We just came out of a meeting, can you answer this? When I'm in the training session, I'm, I'm focused. That's all I want to focus on. Do you do most of your training sessions with the team? Or do you do some alone?

• 1:22:08Speaker 00

  I do most of them with the team. And a lot of that's to, it sounds stupid. A lot of it's to show the example. Like, nobody in that team will ever ask me if I'm coming in, in the morning to lift. Like, you should have stopped asking that seven years ago. Like, I'm never going to miss it. And if nobody else can make it, I'm still in it. Like, I'm not doing it for you. I love having a group there, but if you ain't going, I'm still going. It's just part of it. So, no, I mean, I'd love to have a group in your lift, but I'm fine in isolation. Doesn't matter to me, but...

• 1:22:39Nick Bare?

  I'm the same way. But I have found that when I train with a group of people who have the same intention behind training, the intensity is on a whole other level. You're pushing reps to places that you couldn't push on your own.

• 1:22:52Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:22:53Nick Bare?

  You get a bunch of dudes together that are throwing down in a gym. I mean, you walk out of there, a whole lot more fatigued and tired.

• 1:23:01Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:02Nick Bare?

  And sore the next day.

• 1:23:03Speaker 00

  It's what I love, man. Like, that's why, you know, I tell you, it's a universal formula. Surround yourself with people that are better than you. Magic, one lot. Same thing in the gym. If I was the strongest dude in my gym, I would need to move gyms. I'm just, I'm blessed. I've got a bunch of people that have the same work ethic, same intensity, same focus. They're bigger, they're stronger, they're faster. It just helps me push. I love it, dude. That's why I like coming in here. Beautiful facility, everybody lifts, everybody gets it. It's not like a bunch of novice in there. One of the things I, um, you watch Pumping Iron, right?

• 1:23:37Nick Bare?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:23:37Speaker 00

  Everybody's watched Pumping Iron. I fucking love Pumping Iron. That scene when Lou Ferrigno is in there training that old school gym and that dude with that soft bodies next to him with those 15-pound dumbbells. Dude, what a, oh, so demotivating, right? And then you watch the exact same session in Gold's Gym. It's like, very different, very different, just by scenario, just by scene. You gotta find those places where every day you show up, you're like, man, I don't have it today. Well, that's unfortunate because Vernon feels like a striped ass Aiden. He's about to push today and you're like, oh, okay. Okay, here we go. In the days you don't want to have it, somebody will have another level they're going. You're like, oh, thanks, Davis. He just pulled 605 off the floor. You're like, oh, God, here we go. It's one of those, man. Yeah, you gotta surround yourself, man.

• 1:24:22Speaker 00

  That big fish, small pond thing just never works. You outgrow it really quick.

• 1:24:26Nick Bare?

  There was this gym we went to in Pittsburgh in January. We were there for, we're, we're the on course nutrition sponsor for the Pittsburgh Marathon.

• 1:24:35Speaker 00

  Oh, sick.

• 1:24:36Nick Bare?

  In May, and there was a kickoff run in January. So we went to Pittsburgh with the team to, to create some content, film this kickoff run. We found this gym called Exercise Warehouse in Pittsburgh. Backstreet, probably built in the sixties, seventies. To this day, it's the coolest gym I've ever been to in my life. All the old Bodymasters, Precor, Cybex machines. If I ever build a, a public gym, I'm getting old, old equipment. I'm getting nothing new.

• 1:25:07Speaker 00

  Old school Nautilus.

• 1:25:09Nick Bare?

  Dude, yeah, all, all that, like, it just hits perfect. Old York dumbbells. There were bodybuilding signs everywhere. It was one of those environments where you walk in and you feel like you have to perform because of what was created there, the legacy that was in that gym. And then there's 70 year old dudes there training in a stringer and old wrestling shoes, crowing 70 pound dumbbells.

• 1:25:36Nick Bare?

  But they, that, that is the standard of that place. You don't walk in there and just go through the motions. I love places like that. I love cultures, environments that

• 1:25:47Nick Bare?

  set this level of excellence. It's one of the reasons I love going to, to dinner. I love going to a good restaurant that really cares about the experience, the environment, the ambiance, the music, the, the, the service, the food, the intention. I love that level of professionalism, no matter where it's at, because I respect it.

• 1:26:09Speaker 00

  You learn a lot from kitchens, man. You can't, efficiency, culture. I think a lot of them are expecting Gordon Ramsay slamming a plate, screaming. I got to tour Nobu.

• 1:26:19Nick Bare?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:26:20Speaker 00

  Dude, pretty, pretty amazing. You could have a conference call in the middle of it. You can't hear a thing. Everybody. They look like they're putting together Rolex's.

• 1:26:32Speaker 00

  It's master, dude.

• 1:26:33Nick Bare?

  You ever watch that show, The Bear?

• 1:26:35Speaker 00

  I love that show.

• 1:26:36Nick Bare?

  Dude, I love that show.

• 1:26:37Speaker 00

  We've seen the show, uh, the movie Burnt with Bradley Cooper.

• 1:26:39Nick Bare?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:26:39Speaker 00

  I, I've watched that movie probably 50 times, dude. I love that.

• 1:26:42Nick Bare?

  I think about that scene all the time where he intentionally messed up the dish when they were going.

• 1:26:46Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:26:46Nick Bare?

  Dude, I don't know why it pops in my head all the time.

• 1:26:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a little touch. Yeah.

• 1:26:50Nick Bare?

  It's a level of.

• 1:26:55Nick Bare?

  Professionalism with intensity and just raw anger and emotionally driven.

• 1:27:05Nick Bare?

  So I want to talk about GBRS and how that came to be.

• 1:27:13Speaker 00

  We started that thing with a couple buddies. Me and Cole have been best friends for 20 something years now, went to Bud together, Team 10 together, three deployments together, screen together. He went to a different squadron, but essentially the exact same career path. And we opened that thing up in 2019. I was supposed to contract with the agency. We had other guys doing stuff, military contracts. Cole was doing real estate. Everybody's doing fine. And a bunch of my buddies that were overseas kept getting shot, getting blown up, they were getting killed. And I'd just gotten electrocuted. We were doing a skateboard thing and Cole Davis just came on board.

• 1:27:53Speaker 00

  And he looked at me one day and he's like, why don't we just do our own thing? I was doing contracting. I was teaching a thing with the Air Force and I loved doing it, but it wasn't consistent. But he wasn't giving me 180 days of work a year, which is what I needed to maintain functionality for the family, plus retirement, all that stuff. It wasn't consistent. So I was picking up jump contracts and still skydiving, still teaching, still throwing tandems, doing the whole thing. He's like, why don't we just do our own thing? Like, what? So we'll just get a couple guys, we'll teach CQB, flat range, you can still jump? Like, we'll just do that. Okay, let's do that. And COVID slammed us. So we opened up a social media page, didn't know anything about it, never had an Instagram,

• 1:28:35Speaker 00

  didn't know how to do anything. Opened that thing up and, you know, started following a bunch of SWAT teams in the area. And right when we posted our first photos and videos, it started growing, started getting momentum. A bunch of guys started hitting us up, hey, can you come down here? Can we train? Can we do CQB and flat range? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Boom, COVID, nothing. Oh my God, now what? We had a mentor we had met, we were in teams that he ran marketing for Nike, Adidas basketball, football, Beijing Olympics, I mean, a brand builder. Came down, gave us a crash course on how to build it, started selling soft goods. And that was a big thing. He's like, you have to start selling t-shirts and hats. It's funny you say that. Everybody keeps asking us in the DMs, do you have t-shirts we can buy and hats?

• 1:29:19Speaker 00

  Why would you want a t-shirt and a hat? So it was your logo on it.

• 1:29:23Speaker 00

  No, man, it's just for us. He's like, we should sell them. Like, nah, now we're good. Cause it's that thing, you know, in the team, like, we don't sell the patch. I don't post a picture of what it looks like, like, very keep behind, close hold. And that's how we thought the brand needed to be. Exclusive, right? Like invite only type of stuff.

• 1:29:42Nick Bare?

  Reserved.

• 1:29:42Speaker 00

  Very reserved, like, you know, my face was blurred. We never really said where we came from. The guys put two and two together, but you didn't want to come out and say it. I think a lot of that during backlash from the community, really. You can't come out like, oh, we used to work at this unit. We did the, so try to stay away from that.

• 1:29:59Speaker 00

  And then he came down, we did our first run of T-shirts and they flash sold within minutes, seconds. We thought the website crashed. Refreshed it, refreshed it, refreshed it. Big number, inventories at zero, and you're like, oh, my God. Okay, let's take all that money, let's buy more T-shirts. And we basically did that until COVID lifted and we could start training again. And in that time, we're making those soft goods, we just sat around the table like this. Bunch of coffee and just talk trash about all the gear that we hated. Like, how do we make this better? How do we make a better belt? Let's make a better belt. Let's make a better sling. I was teaching CQB at the time. And they were running their, they were running their carbines in a weird configuration. Their laser slid all the way back. Pressure pads in front, because I had done nothing with CQB at night for 20 years, essentially.

• 1:30:45Speaker 00

  I knew all the issues with that, but I knew what they were trying to solve for. So I went back, me and Cole, and sketch out this thing. And I was like, this is what they're trying to do. I knew the objectives, I knew the end state they were trying to perform at. And it was the first time I'd ever heard anybody talk about, we want to be able to perform regardless of lighting condition. I want to be able to shoot just as fast in daytime as I can at night with a laser, pass it through night vision and with a gas mask. Which has never been done before because the, you ever shoot in a gas mask?

• 1:31:13Nick Bare?

  No.

• 1:31:14Speaker 00

  It's a nightmare. You can't get a cheek weld, the optic's not high enough, you can't see anything. And then trying to look through actual tubes when it's on the rail line, like, you can't get your head articulated over to shoot through it. So we just used nothing but lasers. So I knew what they wanted. Went back and sketched that out. And then as the brand started going, got more popular on social media, the product line launched, those started to sell, dealer networks grew, media team grew, operations grew, fulfillment grew. All those things. And yeah, then I went on a Sean Ryan podcast and the whole thing exploded. Yeah, it went from a handful of employees to thirty, forty pretty quick. And now we're just trying to grow the verticals. So we had Vernon, he was my strength coach for when I was retiring. Been with him for seven years now, never missed a session.

• 1:32:00Speaker 00

  He came inside, so we opened up GBR's performance program with him. It's essentially just my personal program. We just opened it up for everybody else. Got a fitness vertical. Soft goods, hard goods, so belt, tactical nylon, gear. Patreon subscription does really well. I love that. That built its own little ecosystem, its own little community. So it's all the behind the scenes stuff. We get on monthly Zoom calls and you know, there's tier access into it. We started hosting specialty events, so three day shooting courses just for Patreon. And we did that because we were trying to buy down the risk. Like after the Chris Kyle stuff and a lot of this stuff, you start getting popular on social media and like,

• 1:32:38Speaker 00

  how do I get these guys through a background check? How do I know they're not psychopaths? How do I know they they actually want to train? They just want to come out here and hurt somebody? Like, how do you do all that? Get them on a live stream. Start talking to them, start DMing back and forth and you build some really intimate connections with a bunch of these people. And then you have a training course. So when they come down there, it's just 25 of them, like, I legit know all 25 of you. Now it's super cool. They've got personal rapport with us, with all the cadre, all the staff. So now it feels like a big family reunion. Now we just trained for three days. Started swapping us out. We added in courses. You know, one day pistol, one day rifle. Next day is live tissue medical training. We'll do high speed driving, marksmanship. We'll bring out SAAT tactical group, knife fighting, blade work.

• 1:33:23Speaker 00

  All the different stuff to try to force guys the opportunity to be well rounded. We had in fitness every single morning with it. Then we shrunk them down. We got a mobile training team knocking out CQB and flat range for SWAT teams, SEAL teams, all the tactical teams in between, knocking all of those. Dealers from here to Poland, everywhere in between. And it's been great, man, but.

• 1:33:44Speaker 00

  It's been a lot harder than I thought it would be.

• 1:33:46Nick Bare?

  It sounds like a lot going on.

• 1:33:48Speaker 00

  Oh, there's a ton going on.

• 1:33:49Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:50Speaker 00

  And like, and now we're finally at the point where you can see where we need to really invest the time and energy into. It's like, but there's so many things happening at the exact same time. I feel, I feel like I'm just sitting in front of a drum set. It's like fitness. Soft goods, hard goods. Oh my God, training. Oh my God, oh my God, podcast. Back and forth, back and forth. Like, how do I do all this stuff?

• 1:34:13Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:15Speaker 00

  But we've been super fortunate, man. We got Davis running the brand team. Got his brother running all of operations now and soft goods. So we sit in a room, we drop out a piece of content, we'll pull out a snippet, hard to kill. We'll do a whole soft goods collection with that, runoff products off that. It's just, it helps connect the audience to us.

• 1:34:35Speaker 00

  I'm about the most normal dude you'll ever meet. When you build that rapport on social, we were talking about last night, like, they know you. That's in the secrets of me. I fucked this whole thing up, dude. But I just, I want you to be better than me. I want you to exceed your own standard because now that I've seen, I've seen a performance plan, it's so easy to maintain. You just have to live it. I just want everybody to be better than you were yesterday. That's essentially the essence of GBRAS, what it is now. Got a bunch of different verticals, trying to do them at high levels and trying to collaborate with people that are doing those things at a high level. But really try to prop people up on a pedestal, wherever you can. For a lot of stuff, the guys that we see, these guys we got to train with, there's no fanfare

• 1:35:15Speaker 00

  for those guys. Like, you see a lot of these countries in Europe, kids don't grow up wanting to be of service because they've been so cloak and dagger for so long that they don't even know that's an option. It becomes an afterthought. Like, they join the army out of necessity and then they find out like, oh my God, it's specialized units that I could have been training for this whole time. And, oh my God, my grandfather was in a unit. I had no idea. So we try to give credit where credit is due. All the guys we work with, put them on a pedestal. Like, tell, tell their people how amazing 22 SAS are. They have no idea because nobody ever talks about it. They're, they're exquisite, dude. Try to do that.

• 1:35:52Nick Bare?

  I love that.

• 1:35:54Speaker 00

  It's super cool. It's super humbling. But again, man, it is so much harder than being in the military. It just is. I had no idea. I thought it was gonna be sunshine and rainbows and we'll build another team room. We'll build a gym. We'll be training like be easy. No, brother, hardest thing I've ever done by far.

• 1:36:11Nick Bare?

  Well, it goes back to, you know, you don't get to focus on us. So the craft, you are now the logistics manager of. So everyone else can focus on their craft.

• 1:36:20Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 1:36:21Nick Bare?

  That's what makes it so challenging as you scale and grow. It's more logistics. It's more overhead. It's more verticals. It's more things.

• 1:36:29Speaker 00

  Uh huh. And saying no is, is something we have to get better at doing. I'm the worst at it. I'll, I'll stop whatever I'm doing. They'll run upstairs like, hey, there's some kid downstairs. He drove here from, from Minnesota. No phone call and he just wants to know if he met you.

• 1:36:46Speaker 00

  Yep. I'll walk downstairs. Two and a half hours later, walking through this store, getting to work, whatever. Like I have to stop doing that.

• 1:36:54Nick Bare?

  I learned that the hard way. And how to say no was, I used to set zero boundaries. And then I found it. It started wearing on my family and my ability to show up for, for doing my life. So I've, I've gotten really good in my opinion at setting hard boundaries, even when I don't want to. Like as much as I want to say yes to this, I gotta say no. And it's made a big difference.

• 1:37:21Speaker 00

  Even for us, like opportunities, everything sounds great. And you're like, oh, that sounds great. Let's do that. You don't really realize logistics to pull that thing off. You're like, man, we dug ourselves in a hole with this one.

• 1:37:33Nick Bare?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:37:34Speaker 00

  And at what point do you go, this isn't even worth it. Just shoot it in the head and be done with it. You have a hard time.

• 1:37:39Nick Bare?

  It's kind of like we were talking about last night.

• 1:37:42Nick Bare?

  I, I heard, um, there's this podcast. Have you heard of the founders podcast?

• 1:37:47Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 1:37:47Nick Bare?

  David Senra. And I forget what founder he was, he was talking about who said this.

• 1:37:56Nick Bare?

  I think it was the guy who created uh

• 1:38:00Nick Bare?

  this popular vacuum brand.

• 1:38:04Nick Bare?

  And the guy referred to himself as founder as the anti-business billionaire.

• 1:38:11Nick Bare?

  Because there's entrepreneurs, there's brand builders, and then there's business people. I'm not a business person.

• 1:38:17Speaker 00

  Me?

• 1:38:18Nick Bare?

  I'm a brand builder. I love bringing people together to go chase down a mission.

• 1:38:24Nick Bare?

  I don't like look at the numbers. I don't care about the numbers. It's a feel. It's exactly how you described about walking into this building. There's a feel. It either has it or it doesn't. And that's what keeps me in this fight. I'm a brand builder. I'm not a business person.

• 1:38:40Speaker 00

  Same. I've been saying it forever. And I think, you know, we were talking about it last night, the issue trying to bring big corporate over is they don't understand it's a brand. Like they look at it and it's like, well, you sell the most of this, so you're a product company. It's like, no. I'm not a product company. It's a brand. It's a culture. It's a cult. It can be whatever you want it to be, but it's not a product company. You can't look at it like it's a product company because there's so many intangibles with it. It just is. I'm here to change people's lives. I don't care about top line, bottom line. I don't care. I'm never chasing a number. And I think that's one of the reasons we've been so successful. Is we've been trying to be bought a bunch and not just actually bought like,

• 1:39:20Speaker 00

  hey, run this product exclusively, we'll pay you X amount of money. No. Why? Because I fucking hate that product. He's like, well, we'll pay you this much. I don't, I'm not chasing dollars, man. I'm not coin operated. And a lot of people in business hate that. It's like, well, so and so does it. Like, I don't care what so and so does. I'm not shooting it. I'm not wearing it. I'm not drinking it. I'm not smoking it. No. But we'll pay you money. I don't care about money. I care about a feeling. If I don't like it. I mean, but it keeps you true. Keeps you honest. And it helps you avoid a lot of stuff you normally wouldn't do. Me and Vernon were talking about it, like, what? Saw a picture, it was like Sofia Vergara holding a pair of Skechers. Gorgeous, right next to her face, like, do you think she wears Skechers? No. How much money would it cost you to wear that?

• 1:40:06Speaker 00

  I'm not, because I don't wear Skechers. I'm not going to. I'll give you half a million dollars to do it. No.

• 1:40:12Speaker 00

  Everybody's got a price at some point, but I'm not going to tell you I wear that shoe and I don't. If you just want to take my photo holding it, yeah, maybe we'll talk about that, but I'll be completely honest.

• 1:40:19Nick Bare?

  Some people can't understand that.

• 1:40:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:40:22Nick Bare?

  Like with this podcast, for example, we don't monetize this podcast. And we'll talk to people at these podcast networks. They're like, how much you guys pulling in on this podcast? Like, oh, we don't, we don't monetize it. We don't run any ads. What do you mean you don't run any ads? Yeah, we don't, we don't run any ads. We don't monetize it. Well, then why do you do it? Well, we do it because it helps people and it provides value, which should be the reason of doing it.

• 1:40:48Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 1:40:49Nick Bare?

  Once you start focusing on the money, like I've watched people who turn this passion of a show into a money grab and they monetize it. And you can just watch the passion in their eyes turn off overnight.

• 1:41:01Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:41:01Nick Bare?

  When you start chasing the dollar, it, it, it changes the whole mission of everything you're doing. And I've had to learn it the hard way at certain intersections and parts of my life. And when you focus on the mission, you focus on the people, you focus on providing value. It all ends up working out in your favor.

• 1:41:19Speaker 00

  Same.

• 1:41:21Speaker 00

  Man, when you're starting out though, it's hard.

• 1:41:23Nick Bare?

  Oh, it's so hard.

• 1:41:25Speaker 00

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

• 1:41:40Nick Bare?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:41:41Speaker 00

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

• 1:41:51Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:52Speaker 00

  No. But it keeps you true to yourself.

• 1:41:54Nick Bare?

  It does. And that is, like, that provides sustainability and longevity.

• 1:42:00Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:42:01Nick Bare?

  And I started creating the fitness content in 2014. The fitness industry was a whole lot different then.

• 1:42:07Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:42:08Nick Bare?

  And a lot of people that I started creating with back in 2014 aren't doing this stuff anymore. It sold out.

• 1:42:14Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:42:15Nick Bare?

  They chased the dollar. Our growth was a whole lot slower. And I watched people early on fly by me and explode. I was, man, what am I doing wrong? And now I'm like, oh, hmm, what do we do right?

• 1:42:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:29Nick Bare?

  Just playing the long game.

• 1:42:31Speaker 00

  Playing the long game.

• 1:42:33Nick Bare?

  But as I heard you describing the way you guys built GBRS last night at dinner, I related to a lot of that. Cause a lot of the investments you make, a lot of decisions, they don't make any financial sense. But like you just have this gut intuition feel of this feels right. We're just gonna keep depositing to what feels right in hopes that it pays off in the end. In most cases it does. Sometimes you're gonna miss, but you'll feel better about the way you build it.

• 1:43:03Speaker 00

  For sure. Yeah, I've been saying that forever, man. I'm not chasing a dollar amount, chasing a feeling. Like I want to wake up in the morning and just

• 1:43:12Speaker 00

  be so content with the work we've done, the lives we changed, the products we've made, the stories we've told, whatever. I want to wake up and go, this is now the true north. I wake up every day as a representative of this thing because I put it above myself. Makes you feel better, man. It's so hard when you're tied to a financially like, oh, we got these investors now. I got this like I have to. Man, I can't do this. Man, what's the ROI? Well, we got a feeling like rather nope, nope, we are in debt up to our eyeballs. Like we have to have a true ROI established. You can't do one. How are you gonna do it? The whole thing's based off a hunch, based off a gut feeling, off intuition, off experience and all the intangibles that you can't quantify. So now you're not comfortable. Yeah, well, this is how it is.

• 1:43:57Nick Bare?

  It's this tough balance of being financially responsible, but also not letting the data and the finances drive all the decisions. And it's, it's this dance. It's art and science. It's like, I have to just say no to certain things because if I said yes, it'd be financially irresponsible. But sometimes I say yes to things that make zero financial sense, but I know it's the right thing to do.

• 1:44:26Nick Bare?

  But that's what makes visionaries and entrepreneurs and founders, visionaries, entrepreneurs and founders. It's that, that ability to take massive risk and being okay that none of it works out.

• 1:44:41Speaker 00

  It's hard to do when you're starting though.

• 1:44:43Nick Bare?

  Ah dude.

• 1:44:43Speaker 00

  The stress level.

• 1:44:45Nick Bare?

  I've made so many mistakes, lost so much money.

• 1:44:49Nick Bare?

  But I never sweat any of it. It's part of it.

• 1:44:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, man, as long as you get revenue coming in. You can lose it here, you can lose there.

• 1:44:57Speaker 00

  You need to diversify the portfolios, like, you're good. Like, I can lean all in on this one thing. Oh, it didn't hit all the way. Okay. At least I tried it.

• 1:45:05Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:06Speaker 00

  Did we really go all in? Yeah. Okay. Well, it's not working. Shooting ahead, be done with it. Close it out. We've done that with. You know, performance brands and all this other stuff too, and like, this just ain't working. Manufacturing's not there, the cutting stove's not there, like, let's just be done with this. Cool. Kill it. Done. Next.

• 1:45:23Nick Bare?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:45:23Speaker 00

  A lot of people just hold on to it. It's a lot of ego pushes, like, no. Like, I'm going all in on this one thing. At a certain point, you have to realize it's not working. Make a different plan, dude. Let's go around the backside.

• 1:45:34Nick Bare?

  Yeah, kill what's not working.

• 1:45:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. This isn't working anymore. Let's kill this. Let's do this. Yeah, be quick to pivot, be nimble, quick to pivot.

• 1:45:42Nick Bare?

  Well, I love what you guys are building. I love what you're doing it. It's got a unique look and feel. Very well branded. And, um. I wish you guys massive continued success.

• 1:45:54Speaker 00

  You too, man. This is, um. It's one of the things coming out here and seeing it. You know, you're always trying to chase someone, always looking for a mentor, a role model, or somebody a little bit further down the path than you. You can just see them turning the corner like, okay. I'm still going in the right direction. Coming here, it looks like that.

• 1:46:11Nick Bare?

  Yeah, I was able to. Talk to the Jim Sharp crew a little bit a few weeks ago, because we hosted our race at the ranch. And. Their chief brand officer was there, their creative director was there. I mean, they're, they're on the way of doing two million, two billion dollars in revenue a year. But it was so refreshing to have a conversation with them. Of hearing the story of where they started and what they went through. And even the problems they're experiencing today. And as a brand that is much smaller. Seeing yourself in their previous shoes, or even their current shoes, it's reaffirming of, okay. We're not that far off.

• 1:46:52Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:46:52Nick Bare?

  And everyone's got these problems. We uh.

• 1:46:57Nick Bare?

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

• 1:47:26Nick Bare?

  There's just scales and levels to it.

• 1:47:28Speaker 00

  Levels to everything.

• 1:47:29Nick Bare?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:47:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, I got a really good mentor now. He said thousands of employees, all these businesses, taking companies public and all that. And he's like, it's the same thing. He's like, just at a bigger scale. Like you think Elon Musk isn't dealing with this? Of course he is. But just at a way bigger scale. Everybody has the exact same issues, man.

• 1:47:48Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:48Speaker 00

  Like, but if you, again, it's no different building a salter, building Steph Curry. If you set the foundation, you stack with great people and a great culture. You can withstand all of that bullshit.

• 1:47:59Nick Bare?

  Consistently.

• 1:48:00Speaker 00

  Consistently. Get the right people in the building, man, magic unlocks. Okay, Google does it. Amazon does it, Tesla does it, and all these other massive brands, they do the exact same thing. They hold a super high standard. They try to lock in all logistics, try to pack in the best performers in there and make them all roll in the same direction. It's the same thing.

• 1:48:17Nick Bare?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:48:18Speaker 00

  Man, I'll tell you, when you're building that ship on high seas, brother, it feels unsteady.

• 1:48:22Nick Bare?

  Oh, completely.

• 1:48:24Speaker 00

  Like, I mean.

• 1:48:25Nick Bare?

  Completely.

• 1:48:26Speaker 00

  I didn't know. I don't know anything. Nothing. Like, none of, we were talking about last night dinner, none of this is part of the plan. None of this. This is one massive pivot. We were supposed to be no more than five people. Essentially, four guys teaching CQB, jumping and shooting, maybe one person in finance. We were never going to do soft goods, never going to make products, never. No subscription, we were basically going to open up Instagram, YouTube is an afterthought. Like, all that stuff. There's no business plan. We just keep pivoting.

• 1:48:58Speaker 00

  Commit to the pivot. Commit, it's not working, kill it, go around.

• 1:49:01Nick Bare?

  And that's what makes entrepreneurs successful. The ability to pivot really hard, really fast, when it's needed. Instead of staying stuck and getting shot down.

• 1:49:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, we talked about it last night, too, like so many people, they spend years crafting this amazing plan. I could have never done that. Never. I would have been so committed to the plan that if it wouldn't have worked, I just would have ran into the ground. It's almost better that, you know, you step in a ring with Mike Tyson, you're just getting smacked, and you're like, okay, well, he's not killing me. I'm eventually just gonna figure this thing out. It's like, I'm just trying to survive, trying to survive, and eventually it ends. You're like, I got a ton of experience from that beating, I'll be better prepared for the next one.

• 1:49:39Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:39Speaker 00

  Better prepare for the next one. Okay, we weathered that storm, what's the next one? Oh, man, what about this one? You just keep coming, dude. No, it's great, man. You got amazing facility, you got a sick team, stoked on your success. I appreciate you, um, sharing it. Not a lot of people do. Like, they get in there, they build a massive brand, they do whatever, and they kind of just become a recluse. Like, they don't want to tell the story, they don't want to talk about their failures, their successes, all that stuff. It's just super nice to see.

• 1:50:08Nick Bare?

  I appreciate it.

• 1:50:09Speaker 00

  And in fact, you had a good transition out of the military, good for you.

• 1:50:12Nick Bare?

  No, thank you.

• 1:50:13Speaker 00

  Mine was terrible.

• 1:50:14Nick Bare?

  I found that the failures are more fun to talk about than the successes.

• 1:50:17Speaker 00

  Because they're more relatable.

• 1:50:18Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:19Speaker 00

  You come in here and it's like, everybody expects everybody to be like Mr. Beast, like, brother. It's significantly harder than anything.

• 1:50:26Nick Bare?

  Absolutely. Well, DJ, I appreciate you, man.

• 1:50:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, man, I appreciate you. Looking forward to staying here today.

• 1:50:31Nick Bare?

  All right, thanks, man.