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

Jason Khalipa http://www.jasonkhalipa.com/ (@jasonkhalipa IG https://www.instagram.com/jasonkhalipa/?hl=en, Twitter https://twitter.com/JasonKhalipa) is one of the fittest men in the world – a title that was officially his when he won the CrossFit Games in 2008. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_CrossFit_Games He is an 8-time CrossFit Games competitor, a 3-time Team USA CrossFit member, and -- among other athletic feats https://games.crossfit.com/athlete/12485 -- he has deadlifted 550 pounds, squatted 450 pounds, and performed 64 pullups at a bodyweight of 210 pounds. This podcast also has a bunch of video bonuses and tutorials from Jason, which you can find at youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e0iPI2WLrs. Beyond sports, Jason is also a successful entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of NC Fit https://nc.fit/, which has more than 20 locations in 8 different cities. And he is the co-founder of "Box to Business http://www.boxtoabusiness.com/," a non-profit that helps gyms become profitable businesses. Jason uses the proceeds from "Box to Business" to help fight pediatric cancer. In this episode, we cover a lot of cool stuff, including His training and diet The hardest workouts he's ever performed The mentor who taught him how to sell anything How he and his family has coped with his daughter's battle with cancer How he's navigated going from competitive athlete to business owner And much, much more I hope you enjoy the episode as much as much as I did, and don't forget to see the bonus videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e0iPI2WLrs at youtube.com/timferriss. https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This episode is brought to you by Inktel http://www.inktel.com/tim/. Ever since I wrote The 4-Hour Workweek, I've been frequently asked about how I choose to delegate tasks. At the root of many of my decisions is a simple question: "How can I invest money to improve my quality of life?" Or "how can I spend moderate money to save significant time?" Inktel http://www.inktel.com/tim/ is one of those investments. They are a turnkey solution for all of your customer care needs. Their team answers more than 1 million customer service requests each year. They can also interact with your customers across all platforms, including email, phone, social media, text, and chat. Inktel removes the logistics and headache of customer communication, allowing you to grow your business by focusing on your strengths. And as a listener of this podcast, you can get up to $10,000 off your start-up fees and costs waived by visiting inktel.com/tim. That's inktel.com/tim http://www.inktel.com/tim/. This episode is also brought to you by LegalZoom https://www.legalzoom.com/. I've used this service for many of my businesses, as have quite a few of the icons on this podcast -- such as Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg of WordPress fame. LegalZoom https://www.legalzoom.com/ is a reliable resource that more than a million people have already trusted for everything from setting up wills, proper trademark searches, forming LLCs, setting up non-profits, or finding simple cease-and-desist letter templates. LegalZoom https://www.legalzoom.com/ is not a law firm, but it does have a network of independent attorneys available in most states who can give you advice on the best way to get started, provide contract reviews, and otherwise help you run your business with complete transparency and up-front pricing. Check out LegalZoom.com and enter promo code TIM at checkout today https://www.legalzoom.com/ to save 15% and see how the fine folks there can make life easier for you and your business.

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  No, this is inappropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by InkTel. And I've used them personally. Ever since I wrote The Four Hour Work Week, I've been asked over and over again how I choose to delegate tasks, how I do 80/20 analysis, and so on. At the root of many of those decisions is a simple question, actually, two questions. Number one, how can I invest money to improve my quality of life? I use that in investing as well. The second, how can I spend a little money, or moderate money, to save significant time? InkTel is one of those investments. They're a turnkey solution for all of your imaginable customer care needs. I used InkTel during the launch of The Four Hour Body, which was very, very involved. And they provided 24/7 customer service for my Land Rush campaign,

• 1:08Tim Ferriss?

  because it was critical for me to take care of every person who purchased my books and participated. This allowed me to focus on the things that I am better at, my strengths, like the marketing plan that we'd worked on for six months, implementing that. InkTel trains their experienced customer service reps to know your business and your products inside and out, and make your customers raving fans. They answer more than a million customer service requests every year, and they can do so across all platforms, including email, phone, social media, text, even chat. Leaving your customers with poor service, or just mediocre service, which, by the way, in a competitive pool is a huge liability. Long wait times or unanswered messages

• 1:51Tim Ferriss?

  carries a massive cost and risk to your business. InkTel removes the logistics and headaches of this type of communication, allowing you to focus on your strengths and grow your business. It can be a real competitive advantage. And I see many, many e-commerce companies and tech companies thinking of... Of customer service as a good enough checkbox or an afterthought. And just like Airbnb used design and innovative ways to be a competitor and to win, you can do the same thing with customer service. So as a listener of this podcast, you can get up to $10,000 off. That's a big discount. $10,000 off your startup fees and costs by visiting inktel.com/tim.

• 2:36Tim Ferriss?

  So check it out. For more info, go to inktel.com, I-N-K-T-E-L dot com forward slash Tim. This episode is brought to you by LegalZoom. I have used LegalZoom myself for many of my businesses and many of the icons on this podcast have actually used LegalZoom. For instance, Matt Mullenweg of WordPress fame, CEO of Automattic, which is now worth more than a billion dollars, first incorporated his company on LegalZoom. LegalZoom is a reliable resource that more than a million people have already trusted to help with their businesses. Whether that's setting up a will, doing a proper trademark search, forming an LLC, setting up a nonprofit, or finding simple cease and desist letter templates. Man, do I use a lot of those.

• 3:21Tim Ferriss?

  LegalZoom is not a law firm, but they do have a network of independent attorneys available in most states. They can give you advice on the best way to get started, provide contract reviews, and otherwise help you run your business. And important, there are no surprises. LegalZoom provides complete transparency. That means upfront pricing, customer reviews, and a satisfaction guarantee. Check out LegalZoom.com today to see how they can make life better and easier for you and your business. If you're pretending to be a lawyer on the internet, then you are asking for trouble. Put together the safety nets, get your Ts crossed and your Is dotted. Enter promo code TIM, T-I-M, at LegalZoom.com to save 15%. That's T-I-M for 15% off.

• 4:06Tim Ferriss?

  Check it out, LegalZoom.com.

• 4:12Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types, from the worlds of business, military, entertainment, athletics, and sometimes combinations of different fields. And that is the case with this interview. Of course, the objective is to tease out tactics, routines, habits, specifics that you can use. And my guest this time around is, by popular request, Jason Kalipa. That's K-H-A-L-I-P-A. You can say hello @JasonKalipa on Instagram, Twitter, etc. He is one of

• 4:52Tim Ferriss?

  the fittest men in the world, a title that was officially his when he earned it at the CrossFit Games and won the CrossFit Games in 2008. He is an eight-time CrossFit Games competitor, a three-time Team USA CrossFit member, and, among other athletic feats, he has deadlifted 550 pounds, squatted 450 pounds, and performed 64 pull-ups at a body weight of 210 pounds. This podcast, very important note, of course, you are most likely listening to this as audio only, we have a bunch of video bonuses and tutorials from Jason, recorded in my home gym and elsewhere, which you can find at youtube.com/timferriss,

• 5:33Tim Ferriss?

  two R's and two S's. Keeping in mind that beyond sports, Jason is also a very successful entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of NC Fit, which has more than 20 locations in eight different cities. And he is the co-founder of Box to Business, which is a nonprofit that helps gyms become profitable businesses. Jason uses the proceeds from Box to Business to help fight pediatric cancer. We cover a ton of stuff in this episode, lot of specifics, a lot of stories, including his training and diet, the hardest workouts he's ever performed, the mentor who taught him how to sell anything, which is hilarious, how he and his family have coped with his daughter's battle with cancer, how he has

• 6:18Tim Ferriss?

  navigated going from competitive athlete to Very, very successful business owner and much, much more. So I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. Jason is a great guy and he is very, very generous with sharing his knowledge. And don't forget to check out the tutorial videos, his favorite warmups, et cetera, at youtube.com/timfaris.

• 6:43Tim Ferriss?

  Jason, we'll do a quick sound check. Could you please tell me what you had for breakfast?

• 6:48Speaker 02

  I had kale smoothie and an egg with bacon on top.

• 6:52Tim Ferriss?

  One egg with bacon on top?

• 6:54Speaker 02

  One egg.

• 6:55Tim Ferriss?

  Whole egg?

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Nope, because I was on the road at 4 a.m. I went to Starbucks and I took the sandwich. I took it apart and I just had the egg with the bacon on top.

• 7:01Tim Ferriss?

  Nice. And then the kale smoothie was before you left the house?

• 7:04Speaker 02

  Kale smoothie was at the gym before I, yeah, shortly after.

• 7:10Tim Ferriss?

  What is in the kale smoothie besides kale?

• 7:12Speaker 02

  Kale, peanut butter, some of this Progenics, like protein powder I like, and almond milk.

• 7:19Tim Ferriss?

  Fantastic. Well, I think we're just going to keep rolling since that sound check was so successful. And while my pooch molly is going to make a racket throwing around an elk antler, we're just going to get to it. So, welcome to the show and welcome to my living room. Thanks for coming.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  It's great to be here.

• 7:36Tim Ferriss?

  And we just had some fun demoing things and certainly learning things. I wasn't demoing anything. I was observing in the gym and the garage. So for people who are listening and want some additional video, which I highly, highly encourage, just go to tim.blog/podcast and click on this episode, or you can go to YouTube, Tim Ferriss, two R's, two S's, and you can find a bunch of video. Now, you are considered, and I know you're not going to say this, but a demigod within the world of CrossFit by a lot of people. People look up to you for a good reason. And I'm curious to know, if you were to look back at your peak competitive success, what do you think the advantages were that you had or developed?

• 8:19Tim Ferriss?

  Like, why were you as successful as you were? And of course, You have incredible work ethic and so on, but if you had to sort of dig into that, what do you think the the the elements were that made you as successful as you were?

• 8:34Speaker 02

  I think primarily was that I really enjoyed training. I didn't do it, you know, a lot of people, they like to compete. I didn't necessarily like to compete or did like to compete. I enjoyed competing, but I enjoyed training more. I liked being in an environment that just pushed me. I liked I liked getting comfortable uncomfortable. I liked leaving the gym and feeling like I just got my butt kicked. It made me feel really good about what I accomplished. And then I went on and tried to accomplish that same concept in the rest of my life. Right. And I think that was something I really picked up on early on when I first found CrossFit back in 2006. And then I won the CrossFit Games in 08 and I was able to compete eight more times, mainly because I just love to train, you know, and the byproduct or the expression of that was my ability to go out there and compete.

• 9:19Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any particular workouts that come to mind? Or exercises, anything that you find particularly enjoyable, even though they might be very painful?

• 9:31Speaker 02

  I mean, I like the ones that give you the biggest return. Right? I mean, I think if you're doing thrusters, yes, they're very challenging, but they give you a huge return in terms of benefit, in terms of the way you look, in terms of where you feel the byproduct of strength. So I think thrusters, burpees, those type of things. If I had to pick several items I would only do or several movements I'd only do for the rest of my life, it'd be things like that.

• 9:51Tim Ferriss?

  If we were to say, look, well, we're going to look forward in a second. I want to keep focusing on that for a moment. Any particular, if you wanted to gauge, say, the the fitness, right? The cross fitness of anyone for that matter. Are there any particular tests that you would put them through to evaluate that? Whether it's like a certain variation of Fran or anything like that?

• 10:13Speaker 02

  I would just look at like different metrics. I look at, you know, what is your mile time? How many pull ups can you complete? What is your max deadlift, back squat, press? And then start looking at a few like the movements that combine both. Right? And so I think sometimes there's people that are really good at running and there's some people that are really good at lifting. But I think the beauty is when you can combine those two. And so, you know, A lot of like the frans and the the different types of workout like a fight gone bad score. Those are good ways.

• 10:39Tim Ferriss?

  What is a fight gone bad?

• 10:40Speaker 02

  So Fight Gone Bad was originally created with BJ Penn and Greg Glassman.

• 10:45Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Long time ago and basically was was.

• 10:47Tim Ferriss?

  This was back when BJ was probably training at the Half Gracie Academy in Mountain View.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  Old school, right? Long time ago. And essentially what it is is one minute, one minute, one minute, five, five movements. And then you one minute rests and you do that for three rounds.

• 11:00Tim Ferriss?

  What are the five movements?

• 11:02Speaker 02

  So it's a sumo high pull. There's a push press. There's a rower, a wall ball and a box jump. And all the movements are light enough that you can keep moving on them. And so, you know, when BJ finished, as the story goes, when BJ finished, it was like, oh, man, that felt like a fight gone bad. And so that's kind of how the story goes.

• 11:19Tim Ferriss?

  Just as a random side note, I used to go to these chiropractors, the Jansons, who worked on a lot of fighters. And I remember they described BJ Penn's hip flexors as the hip flexors of a camel. They said they were just like a quadricep on normal humans.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  Just rocks.

• 11:37Tim Ferriss?

  If you were to say, want to get someone hooked on exercising because you enjoyed the training. Not everyone enjoys training. So let's say you're taking someone you want to get them hooked on that drug of training. Is there any particular approach that you would take? I mean, you've coached a lot of people. You've, I'm sure encountered every different type of person from NFL player to say, engineer who's never played sports and everybody in between. What do you do to get someone hooked so that they continue to come to the gym?

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Yes. I mean, I've been really fortunate, you know, over the years.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  I started a company, NC Fit, and we have a ton of members and I've been able to look at it and say, hey, what is generally gets them to kind of stay with us? And more times than not, it's starting off slow and then working their way up. I think a lot of people get gung ho, right? They come in. Oh, you know, I want to lose weight. I want to do this, one of that. I'll eat whatever you tell me. I'll do whatever you tell me. And then all of a sudden, a month later, they're gone.

• 12:31Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  So I think the secret to success is, hey, just take your time, right? This is not a, this is, this is a lifelong journey, right? It's not like a one month. You know, fad. It's, you know, I want to be fit and I want to be fit for the rest of my life. And so I think it's important to recognize that and to make small steps towards the right direction. You know, take out sugar, do this, do that, small little steps, then go into the gym and start doing certain stuff. But I think finding a camaraderie, finding a coach and finding a community to support you are rule number one. I think that doing it on your own is very challenging. You know, you and I were talking about cooking earlier and it's like, if I want to learn how to cook, really, really learn how to cook, I could learn from a book, I could learn from maybe watching a show, but to really kind of dive into the nuances, I would need to have someone to kind of show me in the kitchen what I would do next, at least for me, right?

• 13:14Speaker 02

  I don't have enough experience with it. And so when people go to the gym, sure, they could read books, they could do stuff, but I think having someone there like a coach advise them on different things is, is going to be an easier way for them to get more success from it.

• 13:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I think the, just to reiterate that, I think the social accountability piece is huge. So having some type of, of social cohesion is just gigantic. And for people who are listening who might be in the sticks, don't think you have access to that. You can certainly find communities online like coach.me and other, other, other sites or services along those lines. But the, the point you made also that I think is really important to underscore is, in the beginning, focusing on the good program that you will follow versus the perfect program that you'll fit, that you'll quit. Because a lot of people come in, like you said, and they're like, okay, I haven't done anything since college. Now I'm going to do a two hour workout, five times a week as my nearest resolution. And they just flame out, or they get injured,

• 14:11Tim Ferriss?

  or fill in the blank. And like you said, they're gone a few weeks later, as opposed to saying, look, since you're starting from zero, let's just do whatever it might be. Half hour workout twice a week so that you develop the habit and then you can always make it harder, more complex later. But if you make it too hard, too complex in the beginning, you're going to be gone.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, like we have a program that we've incorporated called the Rise Program. And what it incorporates the nutritionist, a mindset coach and a fitness coach. And for a lot of people, it's all a mindset, right? It's all for decades, they haven't exercised. They've used food as an outlet or whatever it may be, right? And that's okay, but they need to get over that in their head to truly make an impact and change for a long time, right? Instead of just making it like this short term thing, then you really get down to the root of the problem and make it as more of a part of their daily routine instead of just something they do, right? And that starts, but to start it slowly and then work it up is much easier than just to kind of go crazy. And then it just, I haven't seen it work as well.

• 15:14Tim Ferriss?

  And then, yeah, right, have a nuclear meltdown and have to restart again for your next New Year's resolution.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 15:22Tim Ferriss?

  I'm going to take a couple of questions here that have been volleyed over via the internet because there are some really good ones and they range from training to family to business. So we're going to get to that in a second, but I wanted to ask you, you mentioned NC Fit. How many locations do you currently have?

• 15:41Speaker 02

  Twenty-four.

• 15:42Tim Ferriss?

  Twenty-four locations.

• 15:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:43Tim Ferriss?

  So you've been very successful as an athlete and many people who put in the effort and focus that you did in athletics are so singularly focused that they have trouble, and I've observed this in friends, transferring then to a career outside of competitor, right? Sponsored athlete. If you were sitting down with an accomplished athlete or not, who wanted to say, get into business, and let's just for the sake of simplicity, say it's a similar business. They're somewhere in the Midwest and they want to get into fitness and gyms and so on. What advice would you give them or resources would you point them to, to increase the likelihood of success?

• 16:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, one of the things I'd ask them, and I get asked this often, is, you know, hey, I want to open up a gym. What do you think? I'm like, okay, well, let's start with these three simple questions, right? Number one, are you qualified to do so, right? What makes you qualified to open up this business? Do you have an expertise in it? Do you, how are you going to basically give yourself this competitive advantage? That you know that when you go to open it up, you're going to win.

• 16:52Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  What is your competitive?

• 16:53Tim Ferriss?

  What's the credibility?

• 16:54Speaker 02

  Right. Just because you like to work out doesn't mean you should necessarily go open up a gym. I love to eat. I love food, but I sure as hell are not going to open up a restaurant because I'm not qualified to do so. I don't have the training, the expertise, right? And it's okay if you don't in certain areas, just go find an expert in those other areas, right? The other thing I'd ask of you is, you know, are you doing it with a strong intention, a strong why? Right? Like, what is your why? Why do you want to open up this business? Is it to make money? Because if it's just to make money, just like competing at the CrossFit Games, you need to have a strong internal why, because when your back's up against the wall and it's very challenging, you need to revert back to that why to push through. And in business, it's not always, you know, rainbows and unicorns, right? There's challenging times.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  And so you need to be able to revert back to your internal why of why you started to be able to do well. So I would say, A, how are you going to win? Right? Tell me how you're going to win. Why are you better than the other guy down the street? Two, do you have a strong reason why you want to open it? And then three, is it a good time in your life to do it? Right? Is it a good time for you to open it? Do you just have a baby? Do you have tons of mortgages and different types of stuff, right? Or is it a good time in your life to go ahead and, you know, go open up this business? Is really what I like to ask people.

• 18:05Tim Ferriss?

  What are the most common mistakes that you see or that you think you avoided? Like, if you look back at your business, another way to phrase it, so you can tackle it however you want, is what were some of the most important decisions that you made, looking back?

• 18:21Speaker 02

  I think looking back, it was understanding that back in the day, you weren't going to make money off your competitive fitness career. And so I had to open up a business. And I had to open it. And I think one of the best things I ever did was I recognized to try and rob and steal as much as I can knowledge from people around me. So when I was in high school, I worked at the front desk at a conventional gym. Then when I graduated from high school and went to college, I started working as a sales associate there and I started making good money. So as I'm going to a junior college, I went to Vest Valley, actually. I was there and I just got woken up like, no one cares about me. I was like the jock and I was like the, you know, kind of like the class clown in high school. Then all of a sudden you get to college, it's like, they don't care about you, right?

• 19:02Speaker 02

  So I really turned a corner and I said, hey, look, you know, I need to take responsibility for what I need to get done. I want to be successful. And so I started going to school full time, working full time. But what I also did was I learned how to talk to people. I learned how to sell, which was really important because in my line of work, in the fitness industry, you're a coach and you're, you're talking to people, you're coaching them. But if you're a business owner, you also need to learn how to sell. But one of the things I would also do is on the, you know, about twice a week, I would go and ride the elliptical with the owner of the business and I would just pick his brain, understand what's going on. I think one of those things early on was recognizing I wanted to learn everything I could from his mistakes. I didn't make as many. And one of the things we've done a lot is delegate out things, right?

• 19:47Speaker 02

  Not, you know, have enough of a humbleness to be like, hey, look, I can't do everything best, the best. I need to hire outside people. And I think I learned that early on from him, learning from some of his mistakes.

• 19:59Tim Ferriss?

  How did you convince him to do the elliptical with you? What was the pitch, right? You were in sales, so how did you get the owner to hang out with the former class clown on the elliptical?

• 20:09Speaker 02

  So funny enough, he really took me on as like a mentor. He really did, like, he really mentored me really well. And he would ride the elliptical as part of his fitness routine. And I would just go over there and just go meet with him. And I don't think he disliked it because we would just, you know, bullshit, have a good conversation. I think it kind of made the time go by a little bit quicker.

• 20:25Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. So you would just roll up when he was working at?

• 20:27Speaker 02

  I would just roll.

• 20:30Tim Ferriss?

  And when your back is against the wall, you mentioned the why. So when you were competing and say, and this is actually a question that came up at least once from people who are listening to the podcast, wanted me to ask you, what, why did you go back to when you were competing in the games?

• 20:48Speaker 02

  I mean, at the time, right?

• 20:49Tim Ferriss?

  Or, or, sorry to keep rephrasing my questions, but I've had too much caffeine. And that is,

• 20:55Tim Ferriss?

  When you were say behind or you saw someone gaining on you, the why or like what is the self-talk to make sure that you don't fall out of like that you don't drop the ball or otherwise just get psyched out?

• 21:10Speaker 02

  Well, I think positive self-talk is a really hard thing to learn, but it's an important trait to develop. And I've learned that over the years with the mindset coach that I work with where, you know, you try and find ways to reframe things in your head. If something's going wrong, instead of saying, oh, my legs hurt, you say, hey, focus on mid-foot strike if you're running or whatever, right? You try and rephrase it into a positive. And reverting back to your why, I think it's really important that going into these games, what I would do is I would tell myself that I've made a commitment to myself, my family, to go out there and do this. And I wanted to do it because I wanted to get comfortable with uncomfortable. I wanted to see where I stacked up against my competitors and I wanted to do it for me, right? And at the time, I didn't have as many other obligations. Now, as life changes,

• 21:52Speaker 02

  right? Things change. But at the time, my why was, hey, I made a commitment, I'm gonna do this. And I remember one year, we did this Camp Pendleton race and I was, it's a 10-mile, just crazy hill run. And I was like halfway done, I just, you know, I'm like going through like this desert. And I look around, there's no one around, I'm just like, oh, gosh. And I see a tarantula, this is a true story, just walking across, I'm just looking at it, I'm like, what the hell? Or a big ass spider, maybe it wasn't tarantula, it was a big ass spider. And I was like, what am I doing out here, right? And I had to instantly revert back in my head, you know what? I made a commitment. That commitment was I was gonna finish out these games. So I better slap myself in the face, stop being a wimp and finish it. Because if I allowed myself to give in then, what other things would I allow myself to give into, right? I made a commitment to myself and I wanted

• 22:35Speaker 02

  to live up to that. Now, over the years, because of other things happening in my life, I haven't been able to make that strong of commitment. So therefore, I choose not even to go out there and attempt.

• 22:46Tim Ferriss?

  And the, I'm very fascinated by these little moments or days or weeks that can really affect the complete trajectory of people's lives. And you mentioned a couple of minutes ago, You get to college age, you realize, all right, I'm no longer the class clown in high school and you did a course correct, right? You started going to school full time. So what triggered that? Was it a particular conversation? Was it a particular afternoon?

• 23:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:13Tim Ferriss?

  What was it?

• 23:14Speaker 02

  So, you know, so going out of high school, I thought I was in play football. It ended up not working out. So I ended up going to West Valley and, you know, first day, it wasn't that big of a deal, right? I get to, I get there the first day. I'm like, ah, I'm at West Valley. No big deal. I'll transfer to another school in a couple of years. But all my friends had gone to a four year Santa Clara University, which where I ended up graduating from, right? But I just remember first day of school, we're going around and we're all saying our names, right? And it's like, hey, I'm John. This is my first, second year. Hey, I'm Mary. This is my, you know, whatever, second semester, whatever it is. And then all of a sudden you have this woman next to me and I kid you not, right? My first class of my first day at West Valley. And lady goes, hi, my name is Suzanne. I can't

• 23:55Speaker 02

  remember the name exactly. She was, but for a fact, this is my seventh year at West Valley. And I just remember looking at her and looking at this teacher and just being like, dude, I gotta get my ass in check and I need to get my shit together, right? And that's what I told myself, right? And so that moment I left there, I went to the counselor's office and said, hey, look, I need to figure out the fastest way to get the heck out of this school. And so I ended up taking full class loads, doing whatever I had to do. I ended up applying to Santa Clara two times after that and not being accepted because I tried after one year, I didn't get accepted. I tried after like a year and a half, I didn't get accepted. Then after two years I was accepted, which got me on track to graduating in four. So I graduated with all my peers, which was great. I graduated with my wife,

• 24:38Speaker 02

  actually, which was really cool. But that was the moment that really like kind of sparked it like, dude, like playtime's over. High school's done. It's you're in the real world and no one really cares about you. You better get your ass in check.

• 24:49Tim Ferriss?

  And when you applied, making me think of Rudy a little bit. So you applied, didn't get in, applied, didn't get in, then applied and got in. What did you change in between the not getting accepted and getting accepted?

• 25:01Speaker 02

  Well, I had more courses underneath my belts.

• 25:03Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. Okay.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  They didn't have to use my high school GPA anymore.

• 25:06Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  They were able to only use my college.

• 25:07Tim Ferriss?

  They could use your credits that would transfer.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 25:10Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. All right. So, so many questions, but I'm going to pull some in from the audiences. From Fern Hernandez, what are your thoughts on the frequency of doing CrossFit? Asked another way, what benefits do you lose or gain from doing, say, twice a week versus four to five times a week?

• 25:27Speaker 02

  I mean, I think by design, when you look at like a program and if it's constantly varied, by design, you should be able to do it, you know, five days a week and you should be okay. If the program is appropriate and the volume is good and you're listening to your body, you should be able to perform that program, you know, five days a week because of the variance, right? You should be able to go long one day, heavy one day, you know, below parallel one day. And that just depends on how much effort people put into the program itself. So, two days is better than no days, but two days is also challenging because you go in, you get really sore and then you recover and then you get really sore again and your body never gets in this rhythm. So, assuming you go to a gym that has good programming, I think you can go, you know, five days a week.

• 26:08Tim Ferriss?

  And you and I were also though, just to touch on good programming in the gym, when we were messing around, well messing around, you were demonstrating back squat, we're talking about five by five and so on, these five sets of five reps and so on. If the variance doesn't exist and someone's trying to do five by five, seven times a week with below parallel squat.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, you gotta, you gotta have a program that has variance, right? So, the way we do it at our gym is we have one person creates this template, the skeleton, then he creates the workouts and we have it peer reviewed by six other of our coaches and then it gets back to him. So, we try and have a lot of checks and balance in our program because regardless of who's programming the program, there's always going to be some type of bias towards what you like.

• 26:49Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Always. And so, you need to have other people have checks and balance on that.

• 26:53Tim Ferriss?

  How might someone create a skeleton of a program? And I'm not saying just Joe Blow in the street. I'm saying one of your coaches, right? What does that process look like? What are they thinking about or considering as they do it?

• 27:04Speaker 02

  Well, I think they're looking at time domains, right? So you're looking at, you know, are we talking five minutes? We talking 12 minutes? We talking 20 minutes? We talking 30 or 40 minute long workouts?

• 27:12Tim Ferriss?

  This is the, I got it, the total duration.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  The total duration of the actual, you know, AMRAP, whatever they're doing, right?

• 27:17Tim Ferriss?

  AMRAP just for non crossFit people.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  AMRAP is as many rounds or reps as possible. And then, you know, you start talking about in the skill work, right? What is a theme for the month? Are we trying to develop someone's handstand? Are we trying to? There's a lot of things in play. It's, it's, it's a, it's a challenging topic to discuss briefly, but in theory it's, hey, let's have a, let's have some big macro goal, right? Maybe it's to get everybody ready for a five kids coming up. Maybe it's to get the skill of maybe we start noticing that our gym members need benefit in X. Let's create that macro goal and then during our warmups, make sure we touch base on it several times a week. Then let's have these other goals where it's like, we go heavy two, three times a week, right? Then we go longer Metcons or metabolic conditioning workouts a couple of times a week. And we add any short burst, high intensity ones a couple of times a week.

• 28:03Speaker 02

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

• 28:45Tim Ferriss?

  And as you mentioned, uh, when we were chatting before recording, just the audio, the Olympic lifts generally would come after, say, a familiarity, at least familiarity, maybe a mastery of the mechanics of say, powerlifting movements and some gymnastic components.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Well, I think we incorporate the Olympic lifts early on, we do.

• 29:04Tim Ferriss?

  How do you do that safely?

• 29:05Speaker 02

  I think it ultimately just comes down to the coaches that are doing it, right? How do you, you start off, you make sure that people could do it right with just a PVC pipe or a light bar. And then you can work your way up. But I think the difference is that whereas with the power lifts, It doesn't take as long to develop the, all the techniques incorporated with it. With the Olympic lifts, it does. And so you need to be okay with doing the Olympic lifts early on, right? Almost from the beginning, it's okay. But you need to do them at a moderate controlled level. Versus the back squat, you can kind of push a little bit more. I mean, you could push them all, but you don't want to push the Olympic lifts so much so they start developing bad habits. And the same thing applies to the back squat. It's just a little bit less technical. So the Olympic lifts are a little bit easier to incorporate. You know, they're highly technical.

• 29:46Tim Ferriss?

  Sure. Let's just say you have average person off the street or powerlifter comes in. I want to learn Olympic weightlifting. If they have really bad thoracic mobility and shoulder extension, right? So they're, they're here, right? They can barely get their, their biceps past their, their ears. Give any, any favorite approaches to helping address that or any suggestions?

• 30:07Speaker 02

  You know, our friend Kelly has some good tools, mobility wad, right?

• 30:09Tim Ferriss?

  Kelly Starrett, yeah.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, Kelly Starrett. I mean, I think that there's multiple different things you could do, but ultimately you need to commit to it, right? I mean, if you have poor, uh, you know, shoulder range of motion, it's going to take you a while to develop that. And, you know, that doesn't mean you have to avoid all lifts altogether. Still do them. Just recognize you need to put in the time, you know, couple, you know, 10, 20 minutes a day to develop the range of motion and mobility. And the best way to do that is by incorporating the movements, slow and controlled with light to little, no, no weight, right? If you want to really develop a good squat, try and work on the squat up against the wall with no weight and work through the full range of motion of it.

• 30:47Tim Ferriss?

  Up against the wall, you mean facing the wall?

• 30:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:49Tim Ferriss?

  Question from Luke Campbell. Ask about his training with former endurance athlete and now coach Chris Henshaw. It was interesting to hear how a giant like Jason could build his aerobic capacity without sacrificing size or strength. How does he do it specifically?

• 31:02Speaker 02

  That's a great question. You know, Henshaw is great. You know, years ago I started looking at some of the results from across the games and it would be like, you know, top 10, top 10, top 10, top 10, 50th, you know, top 10, top 10. I'd be like, oh boy, I got a glaring weakness there. And so I found Chris and he really helped me out and he made running fun for me. He made running.

• 31:20Tim Ferriss?

  Who is, who is Chris? Just for those who don't know.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  He's a local guy, right? He's here out of Palo Alto.

• 31:25Tim Ferriss?

  In the Bay area.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he's a. Former, you know, Ironman triathlete, really successful, but he, but he has a unique way of making running quantifiable and fun. And what I mean by that is, you know, I'll go to the track and before it'd just be like, oh, run 400 meters. I would just like run it aimlessly. But it felt good for him to give me, you know, 100 meter pace goals, 200 meter pace goals, et cetera. And then those goals then turn into something I could really try and shoot for. And I think going back to the whole thing about someone going to the gym is for those people who are interested in doing running or doing types of stuff, having a program that kind of gives you quantifiable numbers to shoot for, I believe is a great way, not only to get better results, but also to keep it more fun. You don't need to just go out for a 5K on your own. That's cool. I get it. But you should start quantifying what your target numbers are and your target paces. And that's what I did

• 32:11Speaker 02

  with him. And that's why I was able to maintain those numbers.

• 32:14Tim Ferriss?

  When you were at your peak of, of training, what did your nutrition look like? And were there any go-to supplements on top of that? It's a tricky sort of murky waters that we get into sometimes. And it's fine if, if, if any of them were sponsors, but if you could just indicate which, which were, if that's the case, but diet. So what did your nutrition look like in, at the height of training? And then any particular supplements that were kind of your go-to?

• 32:40Speaker 02

  So I, I, I never have, and I, until this day, eat as much as what most people probably think I eat. But with the amount I was training, sometimes, you know, just broccoli and cauliflower weren't cutting it for the carbohydrates I needed to retain. So sweet potatoes had to be thrown in and things like that. I, I tried to eat real food, right? I still do. I try and eat real food. And I try and avoid excessive amounts of sugar and different types of things. But that doesn't mean that if my daughter wants to go out and, you know, if it's her birthday, I'm not going to eat her birthday cake. And it never has meant that, right? I'm okay with that. I train because at times, I want to be able to go in, in and enjoy a, you know, a margarita with my wife, right? And that's okay. And it always has been that same way, whether I've been training at the highest level or, or where I'm at today. And, you know, as far as recovery, you know, I partner

• 33:25Speaker 02

  with a company called Progenics. I think they make a good recovery tool for me. That's something I use. Outside of that, maybe some fish oil and, and that's pretty much the extent of it, right? It's just real food. I think people don't realize the value you can get from just consuming real, regular food.

• 33:42Tim Ferriss?

  And did you track macros and all that type of stuff? Just?

• 33:46Speaker 02

  No, a lot of the guys at the top don't really track all the macros. Some of them do, but not, not, not a lot of the guys, you know? A lot of them just work hard, train hard and just

• 33:56Speaker 02

  Appropriately.

• 33:56Tim Ferriss?

  Mm hmm. All right, this is, this is a question I would love to hear your thoughts on. This is from Lee Jackson. What do you picture your workout to be when you hit 60? Years of age, that is.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  I mean, I think my workout's gonna be roughly the way it is. Right now, just, just basically scaled down, meaning, you know, the, the demands that I have at, you know, my age with, you know, my strength, like, we all need to squat, we all need to press, we all need to lift. So whether I'm 60, 30, 50, I still want to be doing those same movements. I just might do a little bit of a less intensity, right? And even now, being 31, the intensity that I can bring to workouts is a little bit different than when I was 25. My body's been beat up a lot by doing that. And so I just need to recognize it, listen to my body and recover as well as I can. But the amount of volume I'm putting in isn't as much as it used to be. And I assume by the time I'm 60, the amount of volume I'm putting in wouldn't be as much, but the movements would be similar.

• 34:48Tim Ferriss?

  Is there any particular type of movement, conditioning, strength, fill in the blank, that you'd really like to work on and develop more now? In other words, you talked about like top 10, top 10, top 10, 50th place, top 10, top 10. Are there any particular weaknesses that you're trying to work on now? It doesn't have to be limited to the gym either. Like, is there anything that you're there, that you're working on currently?

• 35:10Speaker 02

  I mean, obviously, you know, I like rolling jiu jitsu. There's a ton of things to get better at there. But for me, it's really on the business side, on the family side, right? I'm trying to be the best dad I could be, the best husband I could be. And I'm trying to support our business and, and, and run it the best way possible and treat people that way. And that's what I'm really focused on, you know? Stealing a line from Mark Cuban, it's just a sport of business and I'm trying to win at that right now. For myself in particular, so that's what I'm focused on. My fitness side, I'm still hitting it all the time, right? I still work out really hard, but I don't have any specific goals other than just to maintain my fitness.

• 35:45Tim Ferriss?

  So this is, this is actually a segue. They're going to talk about family a little bit. And these were very highly upvoted. So this, this is a question from Sheri Gall. I've so admired him as an athlete and businessman, his work ethic and determination to continue to improve, as well as his humility have pushed him to great levels of success. I've also watched his journey through Ava's illness and seen him give back in the midst of it, blood drives, et cetera. I know behind all this is a good marriage. I'd like him to talk about marriage and how Ava is doing. It would also be fun to hear his perspective on the evolution of the sport, but let's, let's keep that separate. Could you talk a little bit just about the components of a good marriage? And also just tell us a little bit about your, about your family and, and Ava?

• 36:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:27Tim Ferriss?

  A lot of people listening aren't going to be familiar.

• 36:29Speaker 02

  Sure. Yeah. So my wife and I, Ashley, we started dating freshman year of high school. So 14, 15 years old. And we've been together almost ever since. What happened is we started dating for a week, two weeks, actually. I thought we were in love, right? I went home, I told my mom, I'm like, Mom, I found the woman I'm going to marry, right? And I was all fired up. And then of course, two weeks later, she dumps me because she said I was too nice. Well, you know, a year later, right? She knew, she knew, you know, we were meant to be together. So we ended up getting back together again a year later and we haven't been separated since, right? So that was, you know, 15, 16 years old. And so, you know, we went to college, graduated college together, did our thing, got married in 2009.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  Had our first child in 2011, Ava, and then we had our second child in 2014, Kayden. Ava was diagnosed with leukemia, January 21st, 2016. So about a little over a year ago. And, you know, I think when you talk about what makes a marriage successful, I think it's an obviously a number of things. You have to respect each other, you have to become best friends, you need to be able to be okay with, you know, supporting each other on their journeys. But you also need to align well on difficult times. And I didn't know that until Ava got sick. You know, when you're in high school, you don't know how your wife is going to react or girlfriend is going to react to a negative situation in life. And I think what's really intriguing about what happened to us is my wife and I and

• 37:58Speaker 02

  my family in general has gotten a lot closer through Ava's diagnosis, primarily because she was so strong and she still is. And that's something that's really exciting for me because I take on like, hey, you know, we're going to get after this, we're going to be successful. And she was the one who really started that from the beginning, you know? When we, when we first found out Ava had leukemia. We were called to ER at Stanford ER. Before that, she was having a lot of leg pain and different types of things. It was.

• 38:24Tim Ferriss?

  When did that start? How old was she?

• 38:26Speaker 02

  So she, so right now she's five. She'll be six in a month. You know, it's, look, looking back on it now, it probably, we probably could have identified that she had leukemia earlier. But everything like had a reason.

• 38:39Tim Ferriss?

  Like, sure.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  She had ear infection, then she had another one, then she had another one. And then, you know, the doctors, this is the worst ear infection I've ever seen. We're like, wow, well, her immune system seems kind of suppressed. Like, we didn't really think about it. We're just like, oh, we'll just keep getting her medicine because she has an ear infection. Then it's like, oh, my legs really hurt. I can't walk more than a hundred feet without stopping. Oh, man, it must be groin pains. Let's get you a trampoline. Let's get you into PT, all these different things. Then she started having bruising and that's where we knew something was up. And so we went in for blood work. We called in the ER. And when they told us that night that she had leukemia, it was at like 2:00 AM in the morning. And I should remember, you know, it was a, it was a very challenging time for us. And now I've had a lot of time to reflect on it. So I'm a little less, you know, uh, you know, I used to talk about it was a lot harder. Now that I've reflected on a lot, it's a little bit easier to talk about.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  But I just remember when I told my wife, you know, she just, we went out, you know, we're, you know, I was crying and she just looks at me. She's like, hey, look, you tell our family, uh, you know, tell our family, let them know she has leukemia. But just tell them that they want to cry, they can cry out outside. But as soon as they walk in the doors, they better be happy and they better have a smile on their face or else they can't be let in. Right? And it was kind of that mentality that was just like, you know, kind of like, you know, she's just like, yeah, hell yeah. We're going to crush this shit. And then it made me realize like, oh yeah, we're going to crush it. Like it was this very much so like football, like, you know, you're in the huddle and like you're in the fight of your life. And it's like, no, no, we're going to crush this thing. Right? And we've had that mentality ever since. And, you know, her strength has been, has been awesome to see from a marriage perspective. Right?

• 40:10Speaker 02

  So that's, that's a kind of a cool, cool thing to find out about your spouse.

• 40:14Tim Ferriss?

  For sure. What types of practices or?

• 40:19Tim Ferriss?

  Routines, anything really, do you have that helps the family to be as cohesive as possible?

• 40:27Speaker 02

  Well, I think we have a lot of really good family support. So we've been super blessed. You know, the night that my daughter was diagnosed, my mom and dad took my son and took him for a month. We were in the hospital for five weeks, right? Lucille Packard, they've done some really great things for us. But you know, like when you see that family around and then all of a sudden my father-in-law would be there every day. My father-in-law would just be sitting in the waiting room, right? We wouldn't call him, we wouldn't do anything, he would just be sitting there. And that family dynamic has been something that's been really special to see. And it's something that we'll never, I'll never forget. And even now, here we are over a year later, and we still have a lot of challenging times. And it's the family that helps us get through all of it, right? Because my, for example, on Saturday, we were in Vegas. My mom and dad helped watch our children, so my wife and I could go have a night out to ourselves.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  And those are really important things in life that my wife and I, since the beginning, have always said, hey, look, it's, we love our children, but it's me and you first for our relationships. If our relationship isn't good, then we're not going to be able to have a solid home for our children. And so we've really tried to set aside time to do date nights and do this and do that, which has really been helpful, especially during this time, because sometimes we have to have adult conversations. Like, right after this, I'm going to go see a counselor because, you know, we need to get some support to help us with this situation. And my wife and I had to have an adult conversation about that to go see a counselor.

• 41:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. If you were giving advice to someone who, for instance, just found out their child is diagnosed with X, some type of very intimidating disease, and they wanted any thoughts or advice from you whatsoever, like, for instance, what your wife said, which was, you can cry, but it has to be outside. Once you come in, you have to have a smile on your face. Is there, is there anything else that you would, that you would share with them?

• 42:06Speaker 02

  I think it's really important to educate yourself, right? Educate yourself on the disease. So my daughter is ALL. It's a specific type of leukemia. She's a, it's very treatable, which is awesome, right? There's a lot of them that aren't as treatable. And my heart goes out to those families. I mean, you come sit in the oncology department for a day with me, and you'll just be humbled. So what I would say to them is educate yourself. We've had phenomenal healthcare, phenomenal. But there's been one or two times where we've had to catch the doctors because sometimes, you know, they have other things going on, but for me, there's no, there's nothing else going on. It's just this, but I need to be able to educate myself on it with all the different medications. What's going on here? What is this? What are the side effects? What should we be looking for? Cause those things are critical, especially for us.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  I mean, we end up in the ER probably once every two weeks because of, um, uh, temperatures. But we have to be actively engaged to take the temperature. We have to be actively engaged on what the side effects are of certain medicines. I think that's the most critical piece is educate yourself on what's going on. Cause no one's going to care more than you're going to care.

• 43:06Tim Ferriss?

  This is going to seem maybe like a gear shift, but I think it could be related. When we were talking about transfer, when we were in the gym earlier, looking at say, modeling your push-up position so that it transfers to other movements. Your elbows aren't flaring out, looking at deadlifting, say, first and foremost in a conventional stance, that it transfers more to cleans and everything else. You mentioned AMRAP earlier, the as many reps or as many rounds as possible. And you mentioned AMRAP philosophy before I hit record. I was like, okay, I want to come back to that. So what does that, what does that mean? Does it apply to areas outside of, outside of the gym?

• 43:40Speaker 02

  So it's actually something I've been working on for a while and I've given talks about. It's called the AMRAP mentality. And to me, it's the way that, you know, I kind of live my life and I'm trying to live my life. And what the AMRAP mentality really means is think about if someone said to you, hey, I want you to do as many pushes as you can in, in a minute. While you're doing them, you're just focused on that, right? You're not focused on anything else, just focus on the push-ups. And then when you're done with that, you move on. Right now I'm podcasting with you. This is what I'm focused on. I'm AMRapping with you right now. We're trying to do the best we can together. But what I'm not doing is on my phone, right? And talking to you and trying to work out at the same time, right? I'm not doing that because, you know, I think nowadays I would make the argument, I don't know if we're less productive or more productive than we were 20 years ago.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  Cause 20 years ago, when you're at work, you're working. When you're at home, you're at home. Now it's this huge carryover. So what I found myself doing for many years, and I had to really nip myself in the butt. And I still am trying to be a lot better is I wouldn't be focused on my family or focused on what I was doing. I'd be focused on other things. There was times where I would go to dinner and I would be having dinner with my wife and I wouldn't remember anything we talked about. Cause I would be thinking about the CrossFit competition I had coming up, right? And that was an example of me not AMRapping, not being present and focused on what I was doing. So the theory is you identify your focus, right? Whatever it may be, and you know, for me, it's family fitness business. Then you work hard at it, right? You whatever it may be, then you switch gears and you do this throughout your day. And then every now and then you reevaluate. So I'll give you an example.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  For a while I was going competing at the highest level in CrossFit, owning the business, and I had the family. Then I had more children, the business grew and the competition got harder. So I decided to switch gears and go team because I didn't have as much time to allocate to these other things. So I had to switch gears, evaluate what was really important to me and then do that. But then when my daughter got sick, it was another time for me to reevaluate. What am I trying to really focus on? And how many things can I actually AMRAP? So now I chose not to compete because I want to do the best I can in business. Then I want to switch gears and go best I can with family. And then I still want to work out, but I can't spend as much time on it. And that's kind of the AMRAP mentality is identify your focus, work hard at it and switch gears and then every now and then reevaluate and get rid of some of the stuff on your plate.

• 45:54Tim Ferriss?

  And when you're, when you're reevaluating, do you sit down with a, a pad and a, and a pen and write it out? Do you, do you have a set time when you might do that in the morning or at night? Like if you could just describe perhaps some of the details of what that looks like?

• 46:12Speaker 02

  I mean, reevaluating happens with big moments in your life, such as your daughter getting sick, or you're getting married, or you have children, you have reevaluate with the things you're going on. You used to love maybe playing video games for three hours a day. Once you have a kid, you need to reevaluate. You can't do that anymore, right? You just can't. It, you need to reevaluate those times. And so reevaluation happens kind of internally for me, uh, whether I'm, you know, uh, on the bike, just kind of like, you know, thinking in my thoughts or whatever it may be, but I, I identify every so often when I reevaluate. But on a consistent daily basis, I try and check in with myself and try and ask myself, hey, did I do the best job today as I could to be a father, to be a husband, to be a business owner? And did I maintain my fitness?

• 46:57Speaker 02

  Did I do that today? And if the answer is yes, fuck, hell yeah. But if the answer is no, then there's always tomorrow. Right. And, and I think if you do those micro goals on a daily basis, it doesn't lead to these oh shit moments where you wake up and you've been doing the same thing for five years and you're unhappy. Right. You need to start taking that in your own hands on a daily basis and reeval and evaluating.

• 47:16Tim Ferriss?

  What are some of your goals right now, uh, from a business standpoint?

• 47:20Speaker 02

  I mean, I just think that service-based fitness is the way to go. I really do. I feel very passionate about it. I think that you look at.

• 47:25Tim Ferriss?

  What does that mean?

• 47:26Speaker 02

  Just service. Like you walk into a gym, I want to be serviced. I want someone to help me. I want their guidance and direction. You know, think about hotels, you go to a hotel gym, the Four Seasons. Everywhere else is like, hello, sir, how can I help you? This, that, you go to the gym, there's no one there. You just get on the elliptical and you have an aimless workout, no direction, no guidance. So from a business perspective, I want to bring service to the hotels. I want to bring service to corporate wellness where instead of people just going to the gym and, you know, wearing their headphones, now all of a sudden they're creating connections and that helps with productivity in the workplace. It creates with fostering a sense of, of more culture in that workplace. And then also I want to do that on the, uh, you know, commercial side, open to the public. I want to be experts in the best at service-based fitness, right?

• 48:09Speaker 02

  Bringing the highest level of, of, of quality coaching combined with quality programming in a fun atmosphere. That's what we're really focused on right now.

• 48:19Tim Ferriss?

  This, then if we could rewind the clock, this is from Tyler Eggman, I think it is. If you, that means Jason, could go back to 2008 after winning the CrossFit Games, what advice would you give yourself in regards for training for the Games and/or business? Yeah. What advice would you give yourself at that time? Doesn't have to be actually related to Games or business. I'd say, what advice, period?

• 48:41Speaker 02

  The advice I would say is earlier on, identify this whole concept of AMRAP mentality and evaluate more regularly because there's times in my life that I, that I regret not spending quality time with, you know, but I mean, I don't necessarily regret because it's got us where we're at today. But there's been times where I haven't been the most present father. I've been doing a lot of different things and I wish I had learned that earlier on. Um, at least now when I travel or like this morning, I left the house at four and I'm not going to be home until later. At least now, every time I do that, I recognize that it's a sacrifice I'm making. But that I have to accept it and then, you know, try and make it right in the future. Right. But at least being aware that there's sacrifice. I think before it was just kind of like, I was trying to just do so much.

• 49:26Speaker 02

  Now I need to identify and say no to more things so I could really start pinpointing my focus.

• 49:31Tim Ferriss?

  The question I had earlier about how you go about doing that is still one I'd like to dig into a little bit. Cause I think it's so important. For instance, I was chatting a few months ago with this older gent. He's in his sixties. He has a couple, a bunch of kids. And every quarter he gets a report card from his wife. And the report card is zero to 10 in four categories. He's got provider, husband, father, lover. Those are the four.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 50:01Tim Ferriss?

  And he, he owns his own company, at least one company and travels a lot. So let's say he's traveling, but it's for business purposes and he's opening up new manufacturing plants or whatever it might be in China, who knows? So he's gone. So he'll get, he might get a 10 out of 10 in provider, but he's got to probably be very low on the lover score and so on and so forth. You know, maybe five out of six on the others, who knows? And it's allowable as long as he has a good average. So it's like one can drop as long as the others are higher.

• 50:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:32Tim Ferriss?

  And so on. How do you keep track of reprioritizing or think about that? Is it, is it all in the head or do you put it down anywhere? Or is it something that you try to do at the end of each workday? I know we talked about it a little bit.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's just in my head. I think it's just constant evaluation, whether I'm, you know, I like to, let's just say, you know, be alone with my thoughts in like in the garage, working out. And I just think about, you know, hey, what am I doing right now? What am I doing well? What can we do better at? How can I be better at this, this, this, this, this? And it's just that constant pursuit of being better at whatever I'm doing. And I think it's an internal conversation with myself. And I think that if I ever get complacent or comfortable, that's where I start getting nervous. And I think I want to get uncomfortable in business. I want to get uncomfortable and get out there and start sharing my message of what I'm trying to do and what we're trying to accomplish and provide for more people to do what they love for a living. And these are the conversations I have in my head, right? Is hey, Ava's getting better.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  Now I can start focusing a little bit more on this, but don't forget about this, you know, and things like that.

• 51:35Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any favorite books or books that you've gifted to other people? Either or both?

• 51:41Speaker 02

  The one that stands out to me the most, I read a lot. I think there's some really poor books at the airport. I really do.

• 51:48Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  Anyways, for me, I like more of a practical application book. I like a book like Mark Cuban's Sport of Business. I like it because it gets me fired up. I like it because it's a real story from a real guy, just saying like it is, and it's easy reading. It's not so analytical and things like that. And so that's the book I like.

• 52:05Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. Let's talk about morning rituals, if you have any. So this is from D S G, no, or S J, excuse me. What are some morning rituals or reflections that he does to keep passions alive while juggling children and life's twists and turns? So I would say, let's focus on the, on the routines or rituals. Like, do you have, do you have any, if we look at the first 90 minutes of your day, and I'm sure it varies, but generally speaking, are there certain routines, habits, elements that you have?

• 52:34Speaker 02

  I'd say in general, it's probably some type of exercise. In general, there's exceptions to that, right? But in general, it's exercise, whether it be jujitsu, or, you know, hitting it in my garage, whatever it is, I like to get the body moving and I like to get flowing early in the morning.

• 52:47Tim Ferriss?

  Do you do that before breakfast, after breakfast?

• 52:50Speaker 02

  Before.

• 52:50Tim Ferriss?

  Before breakfast?

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So that's before the kids get up. That's before my wife is up. That's before everything.

• 52:56Tim Ferriss?

  That, what time is that typically, would you say?

• 52:58Speaker 02

  Um, I mean, it varies. You know, it used to be a lot earlier and now it's like, I mean, well, this morning I left early and yesterday I left early, but on average it's probably like six.

• 53:07Tim Ferriss?

  Six.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, because some days it's a lot earlier, some days it's seven.

• 53:10Tim Ferriss?

  And you're exercising on an empty stomach?

• 53:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:12Tim Ferriss?

  Do you drink coffee?

• 53:13Speaker 02

  I do. I love coffee.

• 53:16Tim Ferriss?

  Do you drink coffee before your workout? Do you save that for later? How many cups of coffee do you have a day?

• 53:19Speaker 02

  Um, I probably have one and a half.

• 53:22Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 53:23Speaker 02

  Two, maybe.

• 53:24Tim Ferriss?

  Very moderate.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  Maybe. I love coffee. Um, but what I would do is normally exercise, come in, see the kids, I'll make my coffee, like doing pour-overs. I want to get a really cool espresso machine. That's what I'm working on next. And, you know, hang out with the kids, they get breakfast, boom, they go off to school and I go off to work and we do our thing. And then I'll be there and I'll, you know, I'll go to meetings, go to different gyms, I'll try and just see what's going on. Then sometimes I'll do, uh, you know, a workout, I'll take one of our Classes, right? Throughout the Bay Area. And then I'm always home for dinner at 5:30 with the family and I get back on emails and different stuff around seven, eight, around 7:30 till about 10 when the because the kids go to sleep. So basically I regiment my days like it's exercise,

• 54:06Speaker 02

  get the body moving. It's time with the family briefly in the morning. They go to school, I go to work. Then when I get home at 5:30, we have dinner, we hang out. Then for the rest of the night, I'm doing work and I go to bed. I try and go to bed by 10, 30, 10, 10:30 and then do it all over again.

• 54:23Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any particular, and maybe this doesn't happen to you, but when you you have so many different hats, right? I mean, you have your business owner, father, husband, certainly competitor, perhaps not going to the games necessarily, but still you have extreme athletic drive. Do you have insomnia or do you find it easy to sleep? Do you ever have insomnia or are you so?

• 54:44Speaker 02

  No, I find it pretty easy to sleep. You know, you think with with the different stresses I have. No, I think it's because I exhaust myself throughout the day. I generally run at a high, like some people say it's like the full throttle or like, you know, like I generally run on a high level throughout the duration of the day. I'm kind of like a kid. You know, it's like, and then all of a sudden they get to like, like bedtime, it's like boom. Yeah, that's what happens to me.

• 55:09Tim Ferriss?

  You definitely have a sort of high standard RPM, which is good. Do you have any wind down routines or anything you like to do before bed?

• 55:20Speaker 02

  I mean, generally it's it's answering a lot of emails because during the day I'm doing a lot of other stuff. It's answering a lot of emails, getting back to people. And then sometimes my wife and I will watch a show together, but that's pretty much it.

• 55:30Tim Ferriss?

  That's it. And then face plant.

• 55:31Speaker 02

  And then face plant. And on the weekends, I like, you know, we like to travel. We like to go do things like last weekend or this weekend coming up, we're going to Disneyland with my daughter and the weekend after we're going to Mexico to see one of our locations, but also have a good time. So we try and travel as a family and have those times.

• 55:46Tim Ferriss?

  Who do you go to for business advice?

• 55:48Speaker 02

  I mean, I got a few. I mean, you know, we have a few mentors that have really helped out. Some of our corporate partners, Western Digital is one of them. Some of the executives in there have really been amazingly helpful just in Asking about things because for me in my industry, sometimes I get overwhelmed. So I need to get outside my industry to start asking what's going on. And you know, I have also friends through different sponsorships that I have that they've really helped me out from, you know, Paul and I have a lot of people and then in the beginning.

• 56:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no, but like who would they be?

• 56:17Speaker 02

  Paul Gomez, this guy, Mike Cordano, Jerry, and then Joe Gigantino back in the day, right? He was like the original guy that really kind of took men's wings from a business perspective. And then this guy Min taught me everything to do with sales.

• 56:30Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so wait, so is Joe the fellow on the elliptical?

• 56:32Speaker 02

  Yep. Joe's elliptical and Min was a guy who came over on a ship from Vietnam, got in a concentration camp in, I want to say like Korea or something, and then ended up getting here selling perfume door to door. And now he's doing really well for himself. So straight up hustler.

• 56:47Tim Ferriss?

  How did you meet Min?

• 56:48Speaker 02

  He was a gym sales guy and I wanted to be like him because he was making big checks.

• 56:52Tim Ferriss?

  So you met him at the same time that you were also later doing the elliptical.

• 56:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:57Tim Ferriss?

  Mentoring sessions.

• 56:58Speaker 02

  Yes, well, what happened is I was working. I was working the front desk and so Min would put in his sales slips. And I looked at his commission slips and I was like, dude, what's going on? Teach me how to sell. And he did. And that was really a cool experience because I learned how to talk to different people, identify what their wants and needs were. And you know, see what's going on, but it was also a time in my life where I started to recognize that you need to run an ethical business. Just because you make money, making money is not everything in life. Running a very ethical, successful business is critical for me. And what would happen is I would sell them the dream like, hey, join our gym for $9.99 a month. And you know, you're getting the best shape of your life, but they wouldn't. And I knew I was selling them a false hope. And so that's when I got into the kind of like the group coaching style, which just changed the game for me.

• 57:43Tim Ferriss?

  I want to talk about two, two pieces of that. What made Ben so good at selling?

• 57:48Speaker 02

  I mean, the best way to describe him is straight up hustler. I mean, just, just hustler, like.

• 57:53Tim Ferriss?

  Right. But for some people, that's going to conjure the image of like some guy with a fold out table and three card money. He was like picks up and runs away from the cops when the sirens start.

• 58:01Speaker 02

  He lived by the code, you know, ABCs always be closing. He would just identify what someone needed to hear and he would work really hard at doing it. And there was no sugar coating. He would follow up with people. He would tour people well. He showed me from an early age that there's no easy answer in life. You gotta put in the work and you gotta get on the phones and hustle it. And you wanna, you wanna get leads? Go to the collections who, like all the members who are past due. Call them all and try and collect it. Go back to people who visited the gym from five years ago and call them. And I would just end up with stacks, be on the phone.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  Maybe you get one.

• 58:37Tim Ferriss?

  What's the, uh, so what, what would be an example of say, and a potentially successful script or question when you're, when you're calling up the Glengarry leads that you have from five years ago? What, what, what does a good call look like? If you, if you, if you, if someone in your company had that job today and you're like, here's a stack, better start smiling and dialing. What would you tell them?

• 58:59Speaker 02

  I mean, I think you start off just saying, hey, I'm, you know, I'm Jason Klebo with NC Fit. Uh, just wanna follow up with your, you know, whatever. I think really what you would try and do is just identify, hey, so, you know, you know, how was your experience? We're just checking up. Did you enjoy your experience? What were you looking for out of your experience? And you identify what they're looking for, right? And they say, oh, well, did you hear that we actually just added this program that, you know, kinda tailors to what they were looking for? And I think finding out what people are looking for, I think is really important. Instead of trying to force feed what you think they want, find out what they do want.

• 59:30Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Asking good questions.

• 59:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:32Tim Ferriss?

  What's, what's, what are the magic ingredients to a good tour? He said men toured well.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  Oh, man, he toured the best, you know? You know, to some people it would just be treadmills and ellipticals. But to him, it was, it was money-making pieces of machinery that you could sell. Hey, this is the, you know, lifestyle 1032. Top of its class. It comes with a fan. It sings music to you, right? And you just.

• 59:59Tim Ferriss?

  You're like selling a Mercedes.

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  You know, it's like, and then you talk about the treadmill, you talk about this, that. Oh, by the way, let me show you downstairs. Did we, you know, and then finally you get down and da, da, da. And it's like, oh, did we tell you though, that you could, for an additional $8 a month, you can get towel service? And let me show you where those towels go. Let me show you what they look like. Let me show you the quality of them, right? And those are the type of things you learn, right? It's just.

• 1:00:22Tim Ferriss?

  Did he have a, did he have a strong accent or no?

• 1:00:24Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:00:25Tim Ferriss?

  No, that's great though, because it just shows you like it does not matter.

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  No, very strong Vietnamese.

• 1:00:29Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, but he powered through it. I mean, I used to live in San Jose and, and, uh, you know, I used to go to a Vietnamese barber shop and it's, it's, one of my best friends grew up, was Vietnamese in Long Island. And when, when anyone has a strong accent, it's a hard, it's a strong accent. But he was able, despite that, to just power through and become one of the top, if not the top.

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  Oh, he was, he was a dude.

• 1:00:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. He was, he was a baller. Learned a lot from him.

• 1:00:57Tim Ferriss?

  All right, I'm going to ask just a few more questions and then maybe we can do round two sometime since we're basically in the same, same neighborhood. One would be if you could put any message on a billboard, and this is a metaphor really, but just to get a, a message out to millions of people. Let's assume it's non-commercial, right? So it can't be an advertisement. But what might you put on a billboard?

• 1:01:18Speaker 02

  I mean, I would, I would love to get this out to as many people as you could possibly push this to. It would just say, like, just be easy. It's like, life is good. And I mean that because I really believe that. Meaning when you've seen children, you know, when you've seen children oncology, it changes your whole perspective. Yesterday I was on the road and this woman is just tailing me so hard, coming around, getting all crazy. I just look over at her and I'm just like, easy, like easy, like life is good. You have a beautiful car, you look healthy and young and pretty, whatever, like show the hell out, you know? And I think people, they get so caught up in these little problems and they let it manifest into something so great

• 1:02:03Speaker 02

  that they stopped to, they never stopped to reflect that, hey, look, life is okay. But I, I choose to look at the world, me personally, I choose to look at the world in a pair of glasses, not sunglasses. I choose to look at things in a brighter light because especially after, you know, I spent three nights in the ICU and I, my daughter was on the brink of not good. You know, you don't go to the ICU as a cancer patient. I mean, it was really, really not good, right? It was the only time that we really felt like it was a life and death situation. I'm sitting there and there's this baby to my left and he's seven months old. And his dad comes in, the baby had never left the ICU before. And all night they were, they were sucking fluid out of this kid's lung because he had pneumonia or whatever it was.

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  And I'm sitting there for two days straight, right? Up all night, eating muffins, looking at my daughter over here, like really not in good shape. And this guy, this baby over here in the den, I'm just sitting there like, and people are complaining that there's traffic and people are complaining and it's just, no, I'm not expecting people, I never want anybody to be in our position. I don't. But what I want them to do is to really reflect on their life and realize that everybody has something to be grateful for. If you think about it, right? You're alive, you're well, you have the ability to get up and go do some amazing things, you know? And I, I, I think that sometimes people get caught up and they forget that. I think they could use a reminder of that.

• 1:03:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, I think that is where we should wrap up. That is, I think that is, if, among many other things, what I want people to remember. So that's, that's a fantastic point. And just in closing, where can people find you online, learn more about you, learn more about your business and, and, and anything else you'd like them to take a look at?

• 1:03:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I, we're NC Fit, right? NC dot fit would be great. I'm very active on Instagram, Jason Klepa. I don't use Facebook as much, I probably should, and Twitter.

• 1:03:54Tim Ferriss?

  All right, Klepa KH.

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  KH A L I P A. And, you know, I do these things called Box of Business, there's seminars we do for affiliate owners or gym owners. My, my partner and I, JP, we do them all for charity and pediatric cancer. And so, you know, back to one of the questions, we have a blood drive coming up in September. We do that on a nationwide scale at different CrossFit gyms around the world.

• 1:04:14Tim Ferriss?

  Just to place it, since people might be listening five years from now, since 2017.

• 1:04:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're gonna do it on a daily, yearly basis.

• 1:04:21Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, you are? Okay.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:22Tim Ferriss?

  All right, all right.

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  But at, at the end of the day, yeah, you could just find me, NC dot fit, Jason Klepa dot com, or Jason Klepa on Instagram. You can find a lot of stuff about, about me on that.

• 1:04:30Tim Ferriss?

  Awesome. Well, guys, say hello to Jason and it's, it's great to meet you, man. It's been a long time coming. I mean, I've, I've followed your career for a while now. So it's, it's really nice to meet in person. And thanks, Mark Bell, Mr. Smelly himself, Mr. Thousand Pound Back Squat, for making the introduction. And so first and foremost, I should say thank you for taking the time. I appreciate you making, making the time today.

• 1:04:54Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you. Thanks for having me.

• 1:04:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, man. Really fun. And there's so much more to dig into. So hopefully folks will be able to do a round two and get more questions answered. And if you want to see some additional video, make sure you go to tim.blog/podcast, where you can find show notes for this episode, links to everything, books and so on mentioned, links to Jason, his sites and so on, as well as some demos and work in the gym that we recorded earlier. So you can find that at tim.blog/podcast. And as always, and until next time, thank you for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy

• 1:05:38Tim Ferriss?

  getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I have read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to

• 1:06:18Tim Ferriss?

  fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by LegalZoom. I have used LegalZoom myself for many of my businesses and many of the icons on this podcast have actually used LegalZoom. For instance, Matt Mullenweg of WordPress fame, CEO of Automattic, which is now worth more than a billion dollars, first incorporated his company on LegalZoom. LegalZoom is a reliable resource that more than a million people have already trusted to help with their businesses. Whether that's setting up a will, doing a proper trademark search, forming an LLC, setting up a nonprofit, or finding simple cease and desist letter templates.

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• 1:07:25Tim Ferriss?

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