Nick Bare Reveals How To Get Jacked & Run Sub-3 Marathons ft. Sahil Bloom

Episode 538: Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) nerds out on fitness with Nick Bare and Sahil Bloom. They answer listeners questions about training techniques, blood doping, and the worst things about fitness influencers and the trends they create. No more small boy spreadsheets, build your business on the free HubSpot CRM: https://mfmpod.link/hrd — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (1:00) Is Nick natural? (4:00) Genetics vs. Effort (12:30) Changing your brain chemistry (14:30) Monthly burn rates (20:00) Biggest health and fitness mistakes (29:00) The truth about running (35:00) Designing your workout program (40:30) Who are Sahil and Nick's influencers (51:00) Running a sub-3 hour marathon (1:04:00) The media machine behind BPN (1:10:00) The business of supplements (1:18:00) Outsourcing CEOs — Links: • Nick Bare Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ • Sahil Bloom Twitter - https://twitter.com/SahilBloom • Bare Performance Nutrition - https://www.bareperformancenutrition.com/ • Winning - http://tinyurl.com/jpxe2c39 • The Speed Project - https://www.instagram.com/thespeedproject/ • Carbon Diet Coach - https://www.joincarbon.com/ • Perplexity - https://www.perplexity.ai/ • Trust - http://tinyurl.com/2s3sxuu3 • Eric Cressey - https://ericcressey.com/ • Ben Bruno - https://benbruno.com/ • Zach Rocheleau - https://www.instagram.com/theflexibledietinglifestyle/ • CREAMi - http://tinyurl.com/y65x3uub — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/ • Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant • Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing • Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/ • Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/ Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. — Other episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto • #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

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

• 0:00Sam Parr?

  Alright everyone, what's happening? This is Sam. So on today's pod, I did something very selfish. So I've got these two friends. One is named Nick Bear. So you probably have seen Nick on Instagram or on YouTube. He's got millions of followers and he owns this company called VPN, Bear Performance Nutrition. They do something like $60 million a year in sales. So he's a really successful entrepreneur, but he's like a fitness fanatic. So he looks like a bodybuilder, but he runs the marathon in like 2 hours and 39 minutes, which is a freakish time, but it's also freakish considering how big he is. And then we have Sahil Bloom, who's another buddy of mine. He's really popular on social media, on Twitter. He's a writer. You probably have seen him all over the place. And I just nerded out on fitness with these guys. We also talked a little bit about business. So we asked the typical questions like, where do you guys spend your money? How much you spend each month?

• 0:44Sam Parr?

  Where do you like to invest your money? We talked about their companies and how they're growing. And we did a lot of business stuff, but most of this was about fitness. And I just asked them all the fitness questions that I had. I had a bunch of listeners send me questions and I think it was a great time and it was really fun to learn about what these guys are doing for training. Hopefully inspire you. So anyway, check out the pod.

• 1:14Sam Parr?

  Can I ask you? So I tweeted out that you guys were coming on and I got a bunch of questions. They range from personal finance, fitness, business, all types of stuff. I want to ask you guys both a couple of questions. I'm going to start, which I'm going to start with one that sounds like the hardest, but I actually think it's the easiest because you answer this all the time. And I'll preface this by saying, I've seen your father in videos. I've seen your brother in videos and I've seen you in real life. And so I think I know what the answer is because I know the genetics that you come from. But someone said, genuinely curious, how can Nick be natural given his performance? Please press him on this. And so you constantly get asked if you're natural.

• 1:53Sam Parr?

  I know you've answered it constantly, but just humor me for, because this was a very, a lot of people ask this question.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  I am natural and I used to address these, these.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Callouts and questions and claims all the time because I would get defensive and it like it was all the time. It's been like that since I started creating content. I even went to the extent of sharing blood work every month. I was going in blood work every month and I would share it only my videos during my bulk and my cut and people like, oh, he's faking it. He's fine. He's finding workarounds. I'm like, guys. So I finally have gotten to a point where I'm just over addressing the, the questions and the claims and the hate around it. And I'm just gonna do my thing. Like even in this last marathon, people were like, he's using EPO.

• 2:48Sam Parr?

  What is that?

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Like blood doping. I'm like, what amateur, what amateur athlete you know, that's running marathons, run marathons, is taking EPO and blood doping?

• 2:57Sam Parr?

  But then you're like, how do I, how do I get that? Does anyone have a guy?

• 3:01Speaker 01

  I'm like, yeah, I'm like, who, like, where do you get EPO?

• 3:05Sam Parr?

  I don't even know where you, you'd get that. Uh, I mean, I've seen you in real life. You just have, I think you're just a freak genetically. And, and I would be honored if someone asked if I was on a bunch of stuff. That would make me feel wonderful.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Dude, also, by the way, like my, um, my thing with this always is like, I have a few friends who everyone says this about. They're like, oh, they, you know, definitely not natural. And I just know for a fact that that person has just outworked me in the gym on a daily basis for the last like 10 fucking years. Excuse my language. And not by like a ton, but by a little bit every single day for 10 years. And that adds up to something insane. And it looks like a totally different human being. So like, when I see a dude that has way bigger shoulders than me or way bigger chest, like, I know that they probably did that extra set, or they did the extra two reps that I was just like, oh, six is good and stopped. And so like, I just, I think it's such a cop out when people freak out about like, oh, are you natural or not?

• 4:02Sam Parr?

  But the reality is like- Sometimes they don't because genetics are real. Like, for example-

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Genetics are real, but like- Genetics are like, definitely a real thing. Like the, the bear genetics are solid.

• 4:14Sam Parr?

  Dude, your dad ran like a sub six mile. I don't remember what age he is, but he was some, you know, he was a grown man and he still was huge. Like you got, then I saw your brother. Your brother looked like he competed in the strong man games. I mean, you guys are just huge.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Yes. My dad's 60. My uncle, his brother's 57. If you saw both of them with their shirts off-

• 4:37Speaker 01

  After running, they've still both run marathons, half marathons. I mean, six pack abs, chiseled arms and shoulders. They don't take anything. They're not, they're not on TRT or any of that stuff. They're just like farm boys who grew up in central Pennsylvania, milking cows and bale and hay.

• 4:53Sam Parr?

  Well, dude, listen to this. So Sahil texted me, I, I nerded out with him.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, this is good.

• 4:58Sam Parr?

  I go, dude, I just hung out with Nick Bear. Um, and, and it was amazing. And Sahil was like, yeah, he's, you know, he looks great, whatever. But how tall is he? And I was like, I'm pretty sure he's my height or just like an inch shorter. Uh, so he's pretty tall. And I sent him this picture and I remember in that photo, I think, I think Nick, you were at like your weakest, you were about to run a marathon. I was at my strongest and our squats and bench were like almost the same. I think you did five pounds ahead. And, um, you just like looked so much better. And, uh, you know, we were like, this sucks that like, we're kind of comparable, I guess in terms of strength. But like, he just, he just has it. He just has it. Like you, you just, you just have whatever it is that you just, you look good.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  I appreciate that.

• 5:43Sam Parr?

  Genetics are real. Ari's laughing at me.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  Being tan helps, Sam. You got, you, Sam, you gotta give a tan, man. You're too pale to, uh, you're too pale to have good looking abs.

• 5:51Sam Parr?

  That's genetics, man. It's, that's another genetics. He just has it. And so, I don't know. Everyone, everyone in the comments are gonna make fun of me that I'm just like flirting with you, but you know, I'm just saying what people think.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Genetics are like a real thing. You can take person A, person B, different genetics, same work ethic, same diet, same training program. And you're not gonna get the same results. People, people send me messages all the time. They're like, I eat exactly what you eat. I train exactly the way you train. I run exactly the same miles as you. But we don't look the same. Oh yeah, because genetically we are not the same. Like we have different DNA. So it's gonna have different results. It doesn't mean you shouldn't eat right and train and, and try to do your best. But like, I will give, I will give genetics the credit they deserve. But also I am one of the most consistent people I know in terms of training and recovery and diet. My diet is.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Dialed in, I still enjoy myself. Like me and my wife will go for dinner. I'll get some drinks. I'll like order the whole menu and try everything. I love food. I'm a big foodie. But my, my diet 90% of the time is so regimented and dialed in. I'm eating my meals when I'm not hungry. I'm eating my meals when I know I need nutrition to fuel workouts. Like it is for me, a lifestyle that I truly love and embrace.

• 7:15Sam Parr?

  Are you like that, Sahil? Are you as dialed in, you think?

• 7:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I'm just like, I, I probably have a similar wiring to you. Like I'm, I kind of have like a obsessive personality. And so when I, when I commit to something or dive in on it, it's going to piss off everyone around me because I'm like, if we were traveling during the day and I get home at 10:00 PM, but I had a six mile run to do, I'm going out at 10:00 PM and have to go hit the run. And it's not a question. And like, if I get home at midnight, but I'm the type of person that wakes up at four and gets in my cold plunge. I'm waking up at four and getting in my cold plunge. And I'm, I feel the same way as you in general on the genetics thing. Although I will say like, when people say, oh, I do the same workouts as you. I run the same miles. I did the same thing.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  I call bullshit because I, I just don't like, I've, I've trained super hard my whole life, but there are people that I just know have trained harder than me. Cause I know like in the back of my mind, I know for sure that like, I could have probably done two more reps on something, but I like, was working out on my own in my, in my home gym and I just like took it easy. And that two reps compounded over five years makes a difference. Um, to the point on like time being a lever. And so I'm honest enough with myself on some things where like with running, I post all my stats. And so there's no hiding, right? Like if I'm going to post my Coros, you know, screenshot or whatever on my Instagram from any run workout, I can't hide from whether or not I put in the right amount of effort on that workout.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  But lifting, I can totally hide from it. Like I'm not, you can't see all the stats exactly on what I did and how many reps I hit or whatever it was. And so it's also just like the accountability, um, that comes with sharing things publicly on your progress that I feel like for. You like you've been basically doing that for what six, seven, eight years like you've been showing your process in public. And the accountability that comes from that, that people are out there waiting like, oh, what's next, next thing, what's he going after? Is he going to hit his goal? That adds a whole lot of fire. Like when you're running SIM.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  And you're struggling mile 20 and you're like, this isn't for, this isn't for me. Like I have a million people out there that want to see me get this 239 done. So I'm going to go do it.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  I mean, that's, that's why we included a small clip in the video after that race was over. But that's why these, when you hit your goal in a race. Or you hit your goal in anything, it feels so good when you hit it. Cause you know, the work that went in. And all I kept saying after I got across that finish line at C I M, I kept saying, man, I'm so fucking proud of that. I'm so proud of that one. Because like you know, all the work that goes into it, the early mornings, hitting your workouts, making sure you hit your, your paces. Making sure you fueled properly the night before those big workouts. And when I was like mile 20, I knew I was, I was running sub 240.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  The guy, I just knew I was on pace. It's like, I could hold on for the six miles and I could feel this lump just like forming in my throat. It's getting emotional. So I was thinking, man, all this work, like this is why I did it. I'm holding 605 paces. At mile 20 with six miles left, like home stretch. And when you finally hit that goal and it's because of the work you put in, there is nothing that replaces that.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  My, um, my dad and I have been really close my whole life and. I played baseball in college, Nick, in case, in case we, we hadn't talked about that. And, um, when I had to retire because I was hurt. The hardest thing was telling my dad, um, because so much of our relationship had been built around the sport and built around. You know, him coming to all my practices, taking me to all my lessons, all that stuff over the years. And he told me at the time, like, I don't care. I'm going to be there to cheer you on and whatever your next thing is in life. And at my marathon. Uh, he surprised me and flew out for it. And I remember like those last six miles, I was hurting so, so bad.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  And all I was thinking the whole time was like, I gotta get to my dad. He's at the finish line. He's there waiting for me. And when I crossed the finish line and I had done it, I'd gone sub three, he was standing there and I like broke down completely. I like all of the emotion that you hold in from that, you know, from trying to get to something like struggling through it, hitting your goal. That emotion like it's completely unparalleled, like nothing I've ever experienced in life, just that, that rush.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  I think that's why people keep signing up and, and doing races or signing up and committing to hard things is because when you finally accomplish it. It's like, uh, I referenced this part of this book all the time because I think it's so applicable, but in Tim Grover's book, Winning. He talks about achieving your first win. And when you achieve that first win, no matter what it is. It builds this little ounce of confidence. So then you set out to achieve another win, but that win is larger. And more ambitious and it requires more work, more effort. But when you finally get it builds more confidence.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  And you keep applying this thing over years and years and years. And you keep pushing out what that win is and could be. Through the process of succeeding and failing and winning and losing, you build this massive amount of confidence. Where you finally get to a point thinking, oh, I can actually do whatever I want to do. That's a really powerful position to be in.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  That's why I always say there's no such thing as a loser who wakes up at 5am and works out. Because it is so hard to do. And if you are losing in life and you're not happy with where you are, get up early and work out.

• 12:55Sam Parr?

  I hate when you say that. You piss me off so much when you say that because I get out of bed at seven or eight, but I'll be doing stuff until 1am. Whenever you see that, I feel so guilty.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  But that is, I'm not saying it on the other end that you can't win. I'm saying if you're not happy with your position in life, one of the biggest reasons is that you need to change your self-identity, right? Like you need to start identifying as a winner. Exactly what Nick said, like you need to create evidence.

• 13:17Sam Parr?

  That proves to yourself that you're a winner and waking up early and working out is the easiest way to do that. And like, it still sucks. But if you do that for a week, you immediately are like, oh, wow, I can do that. That's one hard thing that I do. I'm like, you start to change your brain chemistry around who you are as a person. Dude, I feel so shitty. I'll wake up, I'll look at Instagram and I'll be like, all right, I just got up at eight. And then I see Nick post and it's like, I think on Saturday or something. It's like, dude, he just ran eight miles. He just ran 72 miles at a 615 pace. Like Instagram posts, I'm a shit. And fed his daughter a great meal. Yeah, like he does all those, probably even awake, but in my head, I'm like, that bitch is going to bed at nine, though. I'm gonna fuck him up between 10 and 10 and 1 AM.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  I am a morning person. I am not a night owl by any means. But now, now my daughter's born and she's getting older. If I don't wake up at five and work out, there's a chance it's, it might not get done. So right now, we're going through this sleep regression where she's waking up at the oddest times and screaming her head off in the night. So last night, woke up middle of the night, gave her a bottle, put her down. She didn't want me to leave her room. So I ended up sleeping the rest of the night next to her crib. My alarm went off at five. I was like, all right, here we go. Went downstairs, went through my routine, went out for my run.

• 14:41Sam Parr?

  There's nothing that makes me more sick to my stomach than morning air. Um, let me ask you guys, let me ask you guys a quick question. Um, this will be, it's meant for Nick, but I want to hear your answer to. Nick covers all fitness and diet stuff extensively on his channel, but I want to know his monthly burn. So what he spends his money on and where he puts his money, invests his money outside of BPM.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  So investing wise, at this point in my life, I haven't gotten to a point where I have any personal interest in investing. So I just hire a financial advisor and he takes care of all of my investments for me. Maybe at some point I'll actually be curious and explore that curiosity, but like, I work with a guy.

• 15:20Sam Parr?

  Which is index funds, probably.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm just like, take this money, put it where you think it's going to make me some money. Uh, other than that, I mean, most of my money I'm spending is either going towards.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  My mortgage, investing back into the business, my personal brand, and mainly food, to be honest, like me and my wife.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  How much you spend per month on food?

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Just groceries, maybe like,

• 15:49Speaker 01

  it's hard to say, because we'll do like one big grocery haul a week and I go like every other day to the grocery store. I'm going like these exclusive like butcher shops here in Nashville. So like maybe I spend two thousand, twenty five hundred dollars a month on groceries, but then we're going out to dinner and like, when we go out to dinner, it's, we want every appetizer, every entree, we're gonna sample stuff, get a few cocktails, like, we, that's our thing is we love.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Experiences like that. And we'll do some big vacations every year, but I'm not going out and buying a lot of materialistic things right now. It's more so on experiences.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  So you haven't gotten on the no alcohol train, Nick?

• 16:27Speaker 01

  Nope. Uh, to be honest, I, I really have no interest on the, the no alcohol train, like, I'm not a big drinker, but like if me and my wife are going to date night on Thursday, because Thursday is our date night night, I'll get one drink, maybe two drinks, but I really, really never drink over two drinks. Ever.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  Wait, do you drink Sahel?

• 16:53Speaker 02

  I'm the same way as Nick. Like I, I, um, I think like when it enhances the experience with the person you're with, I love it. And then I just, I've cut all like drink by myself at home out of my life.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't do any drinking by myself, but like if, if I'm with a group of people and we're having like a, an old fashioned or opening a bottle of wine, I do think it enhances the experience and conversation's always good and it lightens the mood a little bit and it just allows you to. Relax.

• 17:28Sam Parr?

  What what's your style? What's your answer to that question? What do you? What do you do? You do it your money the same thing I do. You just are in Vanguard index, right?

• 17:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, we were like, I was much more fun with my money when I was in my private equity days. Cause then it was like, I don't know, it was just like freewheeling in my twenties, doing whatever the hell. And then we had a kid and I was like, I should probably start just being really boring with this. And I feel like you influenced me in this. Like, we're in this group chat all together with a bunch of absolute degenerate. And they all like sling their money into the most degenerate stuff and they're always texting the thread like this is the best.

• 18:04Sam Parr?

  They'll like buy like a million dollars of aluminum or a million dollars of some, some shit that I'd never even heard of.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  And without fail, by the way, like six months later, it's at its all time low. Like this thing just absolutely tanks.

• 18:19Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's stupid or little short stuff or whatever. I don't even know what they do, but it's like these terminology that I don't even understand.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  I mean, it goes back to like, the fundamental thing is like, you should spend more time figuring out how to increase your income versus like what your returns are investing for the vast majority of people. Because that's a much bigger lever for your long-term financial wealth.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  That's what I did for a while. I just, I just focused on how to make more money, how to, how to build revenue streams. And then it got to a point where like, I was finally ready to start investing and I was able to invest or put away a lot of money a month that I didn't need to spend or have liquid.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's just like, I just like to not have to think about where that is though. Like, yeah, I do that too. I just want it to sit in like, I basically want to just track an index and just go sit there. But to the burn question, Sam, we probably spend like, I don't know, 20, 30 a month or something like that. All in on everything and groceries probably similar to, similar to Nick. We probably spend three to five a month on food.

• 19:25Sam Parr?

  I don't even know. I don't know what my monthly spend is at the moment, but maybe 20, but I can see why New York would be significantly higher, but.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  You're about to get on the Northeast grind, right?

• 19:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm thinking about moving up there and I'm looking at the difference in prices and like it's, it's, it's pretty meaningful compared to Texas. Yeah.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Are you thinking about going to the city?

• 19:49Sam Parr?

  So my in-laws live around in this in Manhattan and I frankly hate Manhattan. I like Brooklyn, but I have a newborn and I think that we will likely do the most bougie thing on earth, but there's a town called the Westport, Connecticut. It's next to Greenwich, Connecticut. So you could say I'm going to move to Greenwich, Connecticut, which is like clay, clay tennis courts and white skirts and shit like that, but I think we're going to, yeah. But we like, I'm testing it out. So I rented a place for a few weeks in late January, just to see what it's like. And I'm looking at what the rent is and like a comparable home to where I am now, because I don't want to buy at the moment. It's like 20 grand a month in rent. I mean, it's just like crazy.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  The biggest reason, by the way, that Sam's not saying for why he's moving here is because it's like 20 minutes from me and we have a long-term plan of my son, Roman, and his daughter, Naomi, starting to build the Par Bloom empire here. So we need to like start cultivating it early in their, in their young years.

• 20:51Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm okay with that. We're just planning ahead. Let me ask you guys another question.

• 20:59Sam Parr?

  This is a two-parter. So what do most people get wrong about health and fitness? What makes you want to, Nick, what makes you want to throw your computer out the window when people say it online? And the second thing is, would love an honest assessment of time requirements and what's the best bang for your buck for workouts? Because a lot of us listening are entrepreneurs and we don't have a ton of time. So what's like the best bang for your buck? So it's a two-parter.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  I think I can answer both probably in one answer. I think most people think that they need to spend like an hour running a day and an hour strength training a day. So everyone thinks they have to spend like two hours training a day. I think you could easily split that 45 minutes to an hour a day, split between strength and endurance training and get like a really, really solid workout. But I think you have some sort of, you have to have some sort of level of cardiovascular conditioning as well as strength into your programming.

• 22:00Sam Parr?

  When you say cardiovascular, do you mean like HIIT, like a 60 minute Barry's? Or do you mean like a Barry's Boot Camp class, something like that, or a body weight thing? Or do you mean walking? Or do you mean zone two steady pace stuff?

• 22:12Speaker 01

  I'd say it's a mixture between zone two, zone three, because most people, to be honest, aren't spending their time in zone two. Zone two is actually like super low.

• 22:20Sam Parr?

  Which is like 130 beats per minute for like a 30 year old?

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's low. And most people are not doing any zone two training. So I like to refer-

• 22:31Sam Parr?

  What's the benefit of zone two, though?

• 22:33Speaker 01

  Aerobic base building.

• 22:35Sam Parr?

  But what's that mean for, does that make me live longer? Does that make me less likely to have a heart attack? What's it do?

• 22:40Speaker 01

  All those things helps cardiovascular health. It helps build your aerobic foundation so that you can utilize oxygen more efficiently. Like, you're not going to go run a sub three hour marathon by just doing speed work. You need that aerobic base building where your body is learning how to utilize the oxygen at a more effective and efficient rate by then using fuel sources appropriately alongside of. So like, I'd say a split between, you probably want, just talking about cardiovascular conditioning, 70 to 80% of that training being your aerobic zone, whether that's zone two, zone three, which is like lighter, say you're

• 23:21Speaker 01

  walking, hiking, jogging, something like that. And then 20 to 30% of your cardiovascular conditioning is more HIIT. You go do a Barry's Boot Camp, you can go do like a, my, my wife does SoulCycle, like a SoulCycle class, hop on your Peloton, go do some sprints, speed workout, something like that, where the heart rate is getting elevated, lactate threshold type stuff. So if you split your, your cardiovascular training between aerobic zones and some high intensity interval training, and then you have compound movements, strength training, you're doing some, some heavier movements, working with free weights, barbells, machines,

• 24:03Speaker 01

  stuff like that. You don't need to spend two hours every day. You can spend 45 minutes to an hour. You know, four days a week, five days a week. I personally love to train, so I'm working out every day a week, doing something, move my body.

• 24:19Sam Parr?

  For strength training, what do you, what do you say? It's like, do you tell people like, do the five by five or like, what's your suggestion? Just squat, deadlift, bench? What do you do?

• 24:29Speaker 01

  I mean, there's a lot of different ways to approach it. Like, right now, I personally enjoy the push-pull leg split, which is a, a three-day split. You can do three workouts a week, or you can do six workouts a week. So like, a push day would be all pushing movements. It'd be chest-focused, shoulders, triceps, pushing being upper body. And then a pull day would be back, biceps, movements like rows, all upper body again. And then your lower day is, um, lower body, legs, quads, hamstrings, glutes. I like starting every strength workout with some, some warm-up

• 25:10Speaker 01

  movements and then going into a, a heavy working compound movement exercise, like a barbell squat, you do a deadlift, you do a hex bar deadlift, bench press, or dumbbell chest press, and then having some accessory movements alongside of that to support the development of the muscles that you're utilizing for those big compound movements. So that's the way I like to approach cardiovascular and then strength training. I don't personally like to mix the two, like the, the CrossFit approach. I've never fallen in love with that. Like, when I'm strength training, I like strength training. And when I'm doing my cardio, I like cardio. But I don't, I don't like, like, doing them together. I like when they're separate and distinct and separated.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Now, moving on to, I think we're, like, what irks me about the fitness space. I actually made a post about this yesterday.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Because everyone going into a new year is going to have new training and diet goals. Then everyone thinks that there's this new thing that they're going to do that's going to change their life. It's going to change their body. It's going to change their health. So January 1st starts. People are thinking, I need to do something new. What should I do? I'm going to do carnivore. Now I'm going to do keto. I'm going to go strictly bodybuilding. No, I'm just like, just going to run. So people go to these extremes thinking it's like the magic pill they haven't tried yet. That's going to unlock this hidden potential that was just disguised by everything else they were doing previously. And the reality is that like, that's not going to change anything. If it does, like the, the changes are incremental.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  But what makes this compounding change in your life and your fitness is your health is just being consistent with eating better, drinking more water, moving your body. That's why everyone's talking about getting in more steps. When you're getting in more steps, you're just being more active, going to the gym on a regular, consistent basis. It's creating, creating habits and routines in your life that help you facilitate these healthy habits on a consistent and regular routine.

• 27:21Sam Parr?

  Sean was telling me that he was talking or he saw the guy who started a slice. It's like a piece pizza app. He was like, between January 1st and January 11th, our sales slump. And he goes, on January 12th, that's national quitting day. And he goes, we see all time high sales on, for people ordering pizza. Cause everyone from their new year's resolution is giving in on January 12th. That's where, that's where it ends.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  11 days. That's wild.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  We owned a ton of Planet Fitnesses back in my PE days. And that like first 10 days of the year is like rainmaker season. Like you're just sitting there, just like watching the fees pour in, like praying to the rain gods for all the money that's coming in. And then inevitably those people just don't end up going to the gym.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  But they still pay.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, they still buy.

• 28:06Sam Parr?

  Dude, and Planet Fitness, basically the possible.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  Business model.

• 28:09Sam Parr?

  Dude, they begin possible to cancel.

• 28:10Speaker 02

  Is like, yeah, I mean, you get, you get like 10,000 members for a gym and maybe like, you know, five, 10% of them actually like regularly use it. So the equipment doesn't have to get refreshed that often. It's like, I mean, it's an incredible business model.

• 28:23Sam Parr?

  All right. Here's a question for Sahil. So we didn't even mention this, but Sahil, Sahil, you mentioned that you were a baseball player. I was a runner all through high school and college. The baseball players were usually the douches who made fun of the runners because of our shorts. And about a year ago, you got it.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Sounds about right.

• 28:39Sam Parr?

  You got into running. You made all these grand claims about these times that you were going to run. You said you were going to break 18 in the 5K. You're going to break through. I was like, you're an idiot, dude. You don't know what the hell you're talking about. Turns out you were completely right. You nailed all of it. You, you, you crushed it in running. And someone asked what the biggest, so at this point, by the way, you're a pretty like, you're like a pretty successful runner for like in the weekend category, in the weekend warrior category. You're like top, top in that category, uh, which is, uh, sounds like a left-handed compliment. That's not what it, that wasn't supposed to be that. It was, that was a compliment.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  I take that. That's good.

• 29:12Sam Parr?

  That was a compliment. Someone said, what's the biggest surprise Sahil's learned from getting more into running?

• 29:16Speaker 02

  Honestly, it goes back to what you said. Like when I was, um, when I was in high school, like I thought runners were nerds. Um, and in my mind, it was like the nerdiest sport. Like I couldn't imagine running or like being into it. I was like, ah, it's not, you know, it's not a team sport. Like it's not, it's, it doesn't seem hard, whatever. And I have developed unbelievable respect for endurance athletes and for runners from having gone through this because, I mean, a few reasons. First off, the training is so many hours and so monotonous. And you have to fall in love with the long, slow runs. Like, you know, in baseball, it was all intensity. So you could get excited about, you know, like a really fast sprint. Uh, you know, I was a pitcher.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  So like a bullpen session or whatever. But with running, like if you're going to be a marathoner, you have to love the 22 mile at a like 830 pace, just zero fun. Like you have to fall in love with that and be willing to do that over and over and over again in order to become a great amateur or. To become elite, you know, like on Nick's level and above. And you have to do it consistently over a long period of time. And then the second one is just like the mental fortitude to pull through a race is badass. Like it hurts so bad. I mean, I would argue that the 5K is the most painful. Like I did. So my, my PRs were the 257 marathon, which was painful, but in like a your legs are cramping kind of way where you just need to like grit your teeth to the finish.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  I ran the 459 mile, which honestly didn't hurt that bad because it was too short to hurt. Like it was just, it was over before it could really start to hurt. It was like you're breathing really fast, but didn't hurt that bad. But the 5K, which I ran 1752 was like excruciating pain. Absolutely. Like the last five laps of that were the most miserable experience maybe of my life. Just like past your lactate threshold awful. And the mental fortitude that runners have and that endurance athletes have to grind through that. I now like, I no longer think runners are nerds. I think it is legit badassery. And especially when it's like a runner that has body weight on them. I think it's unbelievable.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Well, the, the, the runner, the, the runner has evolved over the years too. Like now running has become so popular in the past couple of years. It's, it's

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Do you think it's because of people like you? I mean, I think, I think that you've created like a huge trend of these like it's, it's now macho to be a runner.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do think that like COVID and the pandemic definitely contributed to a lot of that where gyms were closed down. And this is why a lot of my content actually started growing is because I was pumping out running content for like a year and a half before the pandemic hit. And then pandemic hits, all these gyms close. People have nowhere to, to work out and train. And they need it for their physical health, but also their mental health. So people start running and looking for running content. And my content blew up during that time because everyone was looking for how to run, especially, you know, people who are focused on strength now transitioning and evolving towards running. But I, I mean, I think.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Running has become core because there's a different look to running now. Like you can carry more weight. You can look like a bodybuilder. You can look like a strength athlete. And there's these different parts of running that exist. Like the ultra scene has come up and I didn't know what ultra running was years ago. And you have like these badass disruptive races. Like, have you guys heard of the Speed Project? No, what's that? No. So, Speed Project is like this underground race that happens. And you start in LA and it goes to Las Vegas. There's no spectators. There's no rules. You just get there as fast as possible and it's a relay race. So you have a team of, I say like, maybe six people.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  I think it's like 300 miles and someone has to be running all the time. Holy shit. But it's like super disruptive, really like aggressive, in-your-face look and feel. It's badass. And then you have races, like, have you guys heard of the Barclay Marathons? No, what are these? Dude, you guys, you guys need to watch this documentary like tonight. It's called Where Dreams Go to Die. Oh, I have seen this. And this race happens in Tennessee. It's, I think there, there's five loops and it's run by this guy named Laz. And you can't have a GPS watch. You don't have, uh, like any sort of sense of where the route is.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  You're given a map and the map has points on it. There's no trail and you're given a bib number. So say your bib number is 13. On this map, you have to go find all these points before you come back to the checkpoint. And at each point on the map is a book and you have to pull out the corresponding page with your bib number and bring it back to Laz after each loop to be able to go out and start again. And I think there were like- Six years where no one finished, no one won?

• 34:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like 15 runners in 38 years.

• 34:28Sam Parr?

  Dude, that sounds like a pain in the butt. I'm not trying to learn how to read maps. I just want to look good naked.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  Like, by the way, like, running, to Nick's point, running has definitely changed in public perception. Like, I just, more and more now, I'm like, I used to think, oh, okay, lifting, like, deadlifting to me. I'm like, oh, it's so primal, deadlifting, like, you gotta pick a car up off of your wife or off of your kid. Like, you gotta get it up off of them in order to save their life. And now I add running to that, where I'm like, if you can't go run, like, super fast to go call for help when someone's in trouble, like, that's super primal to me. Like, you gotta pick the car up and then you gotta go run two miles to get help from, like, the nearest aid station.

• 35:09Sam Parr?

  We had Scott Galloway on, Nick, Scott Galloway's just like big successful entrepreneur, whatever. And he, um, he said something that was brilliant. He's like a, he's like a poet. He's really good with words. And he said, um, he goes, my fitness regime, I want to be able to kill and eat most everyone in a room or outrun them.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  I like that.

• 35:30Sam Parr?

  That's great. I love that. That sounds very, like, a very practical way to, to exercise. I enjoy that.

• 35:37Speaker 02

  Have you seen Theo Von on Joe Rogan talking about, uh, who he would eat in a plane crash? If you, if you haven't seen it, it's like one of the funniest Theo Von clips I've ever seen.

• 35:47Sam Parr?

  Let me, uh, all right, I'll ask one or two more. Uh, the, so someone asked, you guys, um, do you guys religiously stick to your programming and do you ever create the programming yourself?

• 36:00Speaker 01

  It really depends on, for me, like, what I'm training for. If I have a very specific goal, then my training program is specialized to get to that specific goal. So like for my, my marathon prep, working with Jeff Cunningham, like, he would give me my workouts for the week and I would hit those workouts to a T. I wouldn't miss or skip anything. I mean, there, there's been times where Jeff has accidentally sent me my workouts with wrong paces and I'll look at him like, oh shit, that seems fast. And I go out and hit him. He said, what are you doing? I'm like, you sent this over to me. He's like, oh, that's a typo. So like, if you, if he, if you send the program when I'm in a prep, I'm doing whatever you tell me to do.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  But outside of that, I have a lot of flexibility. Like today I woke up and I was thinking, how does my body feel? How far do I want to run? I went and ran 10 miles. Sometimes in the middle of the run, like two to three miles in, I decide how far I'm going to run based off my feel. That's called auto regulation. So you adjust your training programming based off your recovery and how you're feeling and how well you slept and all those things. So a lot of my training now is flexible, but it's not as rigid because I don't have a specific competition goal at the moment.

• 37:19Sam Parr?

  What about you, Sahil?

• 37:21Speaker 02

  I need someone else to write the programs for me. Otherwise, I don't take them seriously and I need to pay for them. I've found because when I pay for something, I take it way more seriously. So my, um, my marathon training, I had no program. I was just running with my neighbor, Brian Maza, who's also, uh, I know Nick knows him also. Um, he's like a fitness influencer and personality that was really into hybrid training as well. So I started running with him, had no program. And then I got connected on text with Nick and I was like, Nick, I want to run a sub three hour marathon. What's a workout I should do? And Nick replied and was like, try doing this. And it was, I don't think I'd run over like 16 miles at the time, by the way. And Nick replied and said, 22 mile run. It was six miles easy to

• 38:06Speaker 02

  warm up. And then it was four rounds of three at 6:30 with one at 7:10 float. He was like, if you can do that, you'll feel good about being able to run sub three. And I had never, I mean, I had not come close to that. But that weekend, I had the same thing as what you said with your trainer, Nick. We're like, I was like, all right, I gotta go do that, I guess. And so I went out and hit that. Um, and then I started following Nick's marathon program as a result. Um, that got me through it.

• 38:32Sam Parr?

  Wow. Um, I, I do the same thing, by the way. I've got a guy that does my programming here in Austin. His name's Jesse at Central Athlete and it's expensive. I think I pay $400 a month. And I only, I do everything that I'm told because I'm paying money for it. And if I won't take it seriously if I'm doing it, or I wouldn't go, my intensity would be lower. I'd be like, dude, I can't do this. It's like, well, Jesse told me I have to do it, therefore I will do it. All right, last question.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Do you get nutrition coaching too?

• 39:01Sam Parr?

  I get nutrition coaching, yeah, I use MyBodyTutor. It's basically a service. When I was like really into it, I would call them for five minutes every single day. And they would be like, all right, what's the plan today? Where like you, you have like a quarterly plan. You're like, I want to lose weight, gain weight. I don't want to eat this. I do want to eat this, whatever. And it's like, all right, what's, what, what's your plan today in order to hit your goals? And you, and you'd have to like show them and then they review your MyFitnessPal every night. And it's like, all right, you're, you're doing, you're doing everything according to plan. So it kind of guilt, guilt me into doing it, but it also teaches me like, like I didn't know that you had to get a gram of protein per body pound or per pound of body weight. Like I didn't know any of that shit. And so they like educated me.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Tracking nutrition can be super beneficial for people just getting into health, fitness, it just teaches them about serving sizes and macronutrients and total calories.

• 39:57Sam Parr?

  Well, I started weighing my food after I saw Nick, you did it on some of your videos. You were like, and I thought weighing your food was like cumbersome, but like I just saw you like just have a bowl on top of the scale. And when you were pouring the chicken in there, like I just need about half a pound. And you just poured it in there. I'm like, oh, cool. That was really simple and easy. You just poured it right into the bowl and put it in the microwave. And it was like a very easy thing to track. So I started doing it after I saw your videos, actually.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't track my nutrition right now, but I still weigh my food just for like serving size allocation.

• 40:27Sam Parr?

  Yeah, now I know, but now I just buy like, like if I buy red meat, I buy it by the pound. And I know that a pound of red meat reduces to point seven. And I know what's in point seven of, uh, you know, ground beef or point seven of chicken. And so, yeah, that's how I do a lot of it now, uh, for weighing. Last question. And this is from me. I'm actually curious, who influences you guys and what sources do you turn to for like, like for example, there's this guy. What's the guy on, uh, I think his name's Bio Lane on Instagram. What's his name?

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, Lane Norton.

• 40:59Sam Parr?

  Lane Norton. So like, I like, he's like, you know, New York Times did an article where they're like, now everyone has their own fitness guru who they trust. And so like Huberman is like a guy for someone. Nick, you're a guy for someone probably where I'm like, if they say this, I do what they say. Who are your, your gurus, your fitness guys that you trust for health and nutrition and what sources do you use?

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Lane Norton is definitely one for me. What I like about Lane is like, if anyone's ever saying something and it seems so ridiculous and bold and new and fresh, I will literally go over to Lane's platform and wait for him to do a response because he typically does.

• 41:42Sam Parr?

  I love his carnivore stuff and like the guy who says like vegetables are bad for you. Like it's great.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Lane has like a really holistic, science-based approach to health and nutrition. He also has a really good app called Carbon that is great for people who wanna track their nutrition and, and reach their fitness goal. Like fitness-wise, I follow Lane. I listen to some Huberman stuff. I'm typically just like, I don't, I don't have one person I'm, I'm following for fitness and nutrition. I'm kind of just like having a pulse and feeling what's out there. And then if I hear about something, I'll go do my own research. So I'll read the actual articles and peer-reviewed literature to see what.

• 42:25Sam Parr?

  What do you use for that? Have you heard of, I've been using perplexity for that. It's been kind of cool for, it's like a chat GPT for studies.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  Interesting. Perplexity?

• 42:35Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I have it bookmarked here, perplexity. And it's a, uh, they do a bad job of explaining what it is. But they basically review tons of different studies. So you don't have to read all of them. And so you can ask, you can ask it a question of like, is aspartame proven to give cancer? And I'll say like, well, of all these studies, here's what, here's what they, here's the summary.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  I'll check that out. Lane, Lane has one called reps. I also use examine.com.

• 43:01Sam Parr?

  Same. Love them.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Examine.com is really good. And then I'll just go like to PubMed, PubMed and just like read the, the articles there. From like fitness, that's where I'm like pulling a lot of my info. Outside of fitness, um, just like audiobooks, like whenever I'm running, I'm typically listening to an audiobook.

• 43:22Sam Parr?

  That's crazy to me. That's insane to me that you do that.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  You can't do that?

• 43:28Sam Parr?

  Dude, no, like A, I don't pay attention and B, like it like usually what I like to do is, uh, I like when I go for a run, I know how many, I like beat, uh, beat per minute songs, uh, you know, songs that are a certain beat per minute. And so my stride will go to that, that beat per minute, you know what I mean? Which is typically like, like around 80 or 85 beats per minute.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  I used to do that. When I first started running, I would do that. But yeah, I'll listen to an audiobook and like 10 miles. I forget I'm running for 10 miles. Yeah, I just.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  I listened to an audiobook during the marathon. I did the exact same thing.

• 44:02Sam Parr?

  What?

• 44:02Speaker 02

  I listened to, uh, The Martian, Andy Weir's, uh, the sci-fi.

• 44:06Sam Parr?

  Dude, you guys are so weird. That is so weird to me.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Dude, you know what book I just finished up that like I can't recommend enough? It's called Trust by Henry Cloud. If you guys haven't read that yet or heard of it. It's, I mean, maybe it's just hitting me at like the right time in my life, but it is a powerful, good book.

• 44:24Sam Parr?

  What is it?

• 44:25Speaker 01

  It's all about like how to evaluate relationships and trust, how to regain or rebuild trust. When you've been betrayed, what to look for in, in, in trusting someone. A lot of the times we think that trust is someone who just like won't lie, steal or cheat. So like we'll hire people or bring people onto our team who meet those requirements. Oh, they don't lie, steal or cheat. I can trust them. Or can we trust them in the capacity of the role that we're expecting them to perform?

• 44:56Sam Parr?

  Dude, this is serial killer shit that you could listen to a self-help book while you're like, while you're like running a marathon. I think that's so weird. Uh, like I would read this book.

• 45:07Speaker 02

  You went no headphones for the marathon, right Nick?

• 45:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I did no headphones.

• 45:12Sam Parr?

  That's what ballers do, Sahil. Like if you

• 45:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, that is what ballers do.

• 45:16Sam Parr?

  I grew up going across country.

• 45:17Speaker 02

  Real runners will definitely give you shit.

• 45:18Sam Parr?

  Yeah, if you like go to a cross-country practice or something and you go run with headphones on, like the the hard cores will totally mock you. But I do it anyway because I'm like, this is fun for me. I'm doing what I want. I'm not going to be hardcore.

• 45:30Speaker 02

  It was what Nick said at the beginning, by the way, which is like, when you, if you publicly state you're going to hit some sort of like goals, um, the running, like the the running hard cores will definitely talk crap and troll you until you post proof that you actually did it. And then you kind of like have earned enough clout. Like, I sort of feel like everyone made fun of me for getting into running and then I like posted some actual verifiable stats. And now you, you know, now I'm like a solid amateur and people can't really make fun of you anymore. So now you've like, you've like earned the respect of the crew, like the cool kids in the in the cafeteria. So now like they can't come beat you up.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  So that's a real thing that actually happens. Yeah.

• 46:07Sam Parr?

  What's your, what's your answer to that?

• 46:08Speaker 02

  Um, what's my answer to, uh, where I go to?

• 46:11Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And who influences you? Who's like your, your person?

• 46:15Speaker 02

  I mean, I grew up, um, so my baseball training, I was the first client of this guy named Eric Cressy, who has now become pretty famous. Um, he's the performance coach for the Yankees, but is now like the major league baseball strength guy, like trains Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, all of like the who's who of baseball.

• 46:33Sam Parr?

  Dude, I feel like a baseball guy is the worst person to get fitness advice from. That's like the fattest sport there is.

• 46:39Speaker 02

  No, he was like the, um, he was the first guy to like really bring strength and performance training to baseball. So it was that. It was like the fat guys or the steroid era guys who were just meatheads. And he brought like true performance training to the sport, which now is like the real driver of why every guy throws 100 miles an hour. Like guys are hitting absolute tanks all the time. Like he was really the pioneer of that. I mean, he's been on like Tim Ferriss's podcast. He's really, really big time and a close friend. Incredible. Uh, and then there's this guy Ben Bruno, who is like a celebrity trainer, um, pretty big Instagram presence and he's more of the like stuff for regular people to actually implement in their life, um, training. And, um, I, I just love that stuff because it's kind of a cool blend of the like

• 47:22Speaker 02

  more extreme things that I like doing with the actionable stuff that people can actually take as advice.

• 47:28Sam Parr?

  Yeah, Ben Bruno, he's got like the, uh, like the everyday rip guy vibe.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  He's super, super strong functionally and trains like insane legit celebrities out of like a 150 square foot gym in his garage.

• 47:44Sam Parr?

  Yeah, here's him with Justin Timberlake.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, Timberlake is like one of his, one of his good friends rolls up there and trains with them. He's incredible. And then on diet stuff, there's this guy, Zach, I think Ruschel is how you pronounce his last name. He's like the flexible dieting lifestyle is his Instagram handle. And he just posts like insane macro recipes, basically, things that are like delicious, but don't completely screw up your diet. And I just, I nerd out on that kind of stuff.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  He's, he's Austin, Texas based.

• 48:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's Austin based. Yeah.

• 48:14Sam Parr?

  Dude, Nick, you probably know like half these guys, I would bet.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  I know, I know Zach. I know Zach personally. You know who else is really good for a general health information, health and fitness information for people just getting started is Jordan Syatt.

• 48:28Sam Parr?

  Jordan.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Jordan Syatt.

• 48:30Speaker 02

  So Jordan was an intern at Eric Cressy's gym. So Jordan is my year in high school. He went to Lincoln Sudbury High School, which was like our rival high school. And he was an intern at Cressy's gym when I was training there. So I've known Jordan since we were like, we were kids.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  Wow. Yeah, he's, he's, he's got good stuff.

• 48:46Sam Parr?

  By the way.

• 48:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was Gary Vee's trainer.

• 48:48Sam Parr?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw that. I just went to this guy, the flexible dieting lifestyle. And I'm, I'm like typing all this in as you guys are talking and I'll, I'll do a little flex. I go to follow this guy and it says, follow back.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:03Sam Parr?

  That's awesome.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  Zach is awesome. The protein ice cream recipes are like the best thing in the world.

• 49:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he, this is a great Instagram. This guy kills it.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Do you have a creamy at home? Ninja creamy?

• 49:14Speaker 02

  I do. Oh, it's the best. One of our best purchases, my wife and I, like every Saturday.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  The ninja creamy, you can make like protein ice cream with it. They were, they got popular based off of TikTok early on and they like were sold out for months. And then they finally came back on the market and we purchased one.

• 49:32Sam Parr?

  Well, I used to do that. So what I do with your, so BPN, so I like to do a scent protein with just water. And then I use BPN to like eat. And so like, for example, I'll mix it with some type of liquid and I'll microwave BPN. And it's almost like I'm eating like, um, I don't, I don't know. I mean, it's like a dessert. Cause you gave me a key lime pie one and then you gave me a birthday cake one. And I think the birthday cake one is discontinued. And I would just, we would microwave it and just eat it. And it was like a souffle or something. Now I guess I'll use BPN for this creamy.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  Sam, I will change your life right now. Two cups of whole milk, like fair life whole milk, a scoop of BPN vanilla. Maybe like two tiny little packets of stevia and some sugar free vanilla pudding mix. Freeze it overnight, put it into the ninja creamy and it is literally identical to like a vanilla McDonald's McFlurry.

• 50:28Sam Parr?

  Really?

• 50:29Speaker 02

  It comes out insane. And then you can put a couple like Oreo thins in there and get like a legit McDonald's McFlurry. That has like 40 grams of protein and is great for you.

• 50:38Sam Parr?

  Shoot, this is awesome. I'm like literally writing all this down and I'm, I just add the creamy to my cart.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  It will change your life. I'm not joking.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  It is, it is pretty wild. I did it my first time and like I only mixed it once and it came out like, what's this?

• 50:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, you gotta go twice.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  I did it twice. Completely different thing. After like one more mix.

• 50:56Speaker 02

  Light ice cream setting once, open it up, pour like a tiny, like a tablespoon of whole milk in. And then blend it on light ice cream again, and it makes the perfect consistency.

• 51:06Sam Parr?

  All right. I literally just bought it off Amazon, the creamy. And now, uh, I only have, uh,

• 51:11Speaker 02

  It's the best.

• 51:11Sam Parr?

  I gotta get, uh, BPN vanilla now. Cause I only did chocolate birthday cake and key lime pie.

• 51:16Speaker 02

  You can do it with whatever flavor you like. I just think the vanilla base is so good. I want to hear about this 239 though. I'm going to nerd out on this.

• 51:22Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So Nick, you're trying to run 239 now for the marathon, right?

• 51:27Speaker 01

  No, I just did. So.

• 51:28Sam Parr?

  You just did?

• 51:29Speaker 01

  At CIM, which is the California International Marathon, that was December 3rd. I ran a 239 20. And when I went into that prep, I was shooting for a sub 245. And, and sub 245 is about a 615 minute per mile pace. Ended up doing 605 minute per mile pace for all 26.2 of those miles.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  Can you just walk through your progression on the marathon stuff? Cause I feel like I've seen a video. So I mean, I only, I started running in March and someone mentioned your name as soon as I started getting into running as like the person that was pioneering this whole idea of like hybrid athlete, whatever. It's kind of become like an in vogue thing now, but basically a guy that can be both jacked and fit in cardio things, not CrossFit, like actual, you know, strength related stuff and then, and then running. And I remember seeing a video of you, like a four hour marathon, maybe. And your progression from that to running maybe sub three for the first time. Can you just walk through like what your progression has been from start to finish on the different marathons you've done?

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, first off, when you and I first started talking and you said you wanted to do a sub three for your first marathon.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  I thought he was crazy when he said that.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Dude, so did I. I was like, man, that's, that's, I think I even told you like, that's a bold move, but you did it. So congratulations on that.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  But yeah, my, my marathon progression, so my first marathon was in 2018. It was about a year after I got out of the military. And what's funny is the day I got out of the military, I said, I would never run a day in my life again. And about a year later, I was running my first marathon and here we are like thousands of miles later. But 2018 Austin marathon, I ran a 357, which was just an absolute dumpster fire.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  But you weighed like 225, right?

• 53:20Speaker 01

  I was like 225. I didn't have a training program. I was a bodybuilder, like I was, I just wanted to be as big and yoked as possible. Ran this marathon.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  After mile 16, I hit the wall. It was just all downhill from there. A year later, I signed up for the Austin marathon again, same training program, which was lack thereof. And I ran a four hour, 15 minute marathon. So I ran 18 minutes slower than the previous year. And then after that, I signed up for my first Ironman, trained for an Ironman, did Ironman Florida, actually started to learn what it takes to build endurance and get better at endurance events and racing.

• 54:03Sam Parr?

  You broke 12 hours in that one?

• 54:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did my Ironman Florida in 1128, but I ran the marathon in four hours and four minutes. So the reason that was so kind of significant was I looked back at my previous two marathons. I was like, man, after I just swam and biked and then ran, I was able to run a pretty decent marathon. So I told myself I want to run sub three and that was the goal. And I, I, I posted this online. I said, I'm doing a sub three hour marathon. And the internet trolls and activity just blew up. I mean, there are forums on let's run, there are forums on, on Reddit. Everyone was like, this guy will not run a sub three hour marathon.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  So then I signed up for the Austin marathon again. I, I followed a training program. It was a better prep. But even in my head, I was like, I'm not in sub three shape. But at the starting line, I told myself, you can mentally out will anything. I was like, if I just like, I can mentally overcome the physical weakness that I have to run the sub three hour marathon.

• 55:11Sam Parr?

  And what's sub three? Is sub three 650 per mile?

• 55:14Speaker 02

  I think 651 is like 259 59, like if you sneak in under one second. And the only reason I know that is because of exactly what Nick said about mine, that everyone was like, dude, there's no way. So I knew in my mind, like, I just have to keep this under 651, my watch base and I'm going to be fine.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  See, I like banking time. So I always like, I like saving time. So at the end, if I needed, I have it.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  Which is the opposite of what like real runners tell you to do. I did the same thing, by the way, like I went out way too fast and then was just like hanging on for dear life, doing the math in my head of like, okay, if I run like a 10 minute mile here, I'm still going to make it. I'm still.

• 55:51Sam Parr?

  Because there's like, they call it the wall. The wall is basically, I think it's like when you burn 1800 or 2200 calories or something like that. And you start going into, what's it called? Where you like, start using muscle as energy, I believe, or instead of car. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and that's when that wall is where you're like, I can't go any further. Usually that's in like mile 20, right?

• 56:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, ranges, yeah, based off the individual of like your conditioning, your experience, glycogen stores, how, how fast you burn through your body's energy. So I went out that Austin marathon with a goal of running sub three. I went out way too fast and within the first six miles, I knew I wasn't going to do sub three. Like in the first six miles, I was done for. And the Austin marathon is not flat. It's hills. It's, it's like a horrible PR course. No one PRs that I know of at the Austin marathon.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  So then the remainder of that race, I was just holding on, ended up running three 24, so 24 minutes over sub three. Everyone on the internet that doubted me loved it. And I went into another training block immediately after that race was done. I actually did a real prep this time, had a really solid coach, Jeff Cunningham. And I ended up running a marathon a year later in two hours, 56 minutes, 27 seconds. So it was the first time I went sub three. Then a year later, I did the Buffalo, New York marathon in two 48. And then just recently, December 3rd, 2023, I ran a two 39 20,

• 57:26Speaker 01

  which is a 605 mile pace.

• 57:29Sam Parr?

  What weight were you?

• 57:31Speaker 01

  I was 195 pounds.

• 57:32Sam Parr?

  Oh my God. That's ridiculous at 195.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  And we use ridiculous at any, at any body weight, but it's insane at 195.

• 57:40Sam Parr?

  Were you still squatting and benching while you're, I mean, were you still strong?

• 57:43Speaker 01

  I, I, I took a lot of time off strength training during that prep. So for like 13 weeks leading up to that race, I was still lifting here and there. But I wasn't lifting legs heavy. I wasn't lifting even upper body really heavy. I was just getting some movement in just to maintain and feel good. But the priority was, was running.

• 58:06Sam Parr?

  Because what a lot of runners don't realize is like, So 239, that's impressive. That's very impressive. But it's more impressive that you're doing it at your body weight. That is, that is, that is like out of this world. I, I got dinner one time recently with this guy named Josh Kerr. You guys know who Josh Kerr is, unless you're a running nerd, you don't know who he is. But he won the world, he won the world championships recently in the 1500 meter. He's like a 345 miler, so one of the fastest milers ever, whatever. But he's pretty big for a miler. For a normal human being, you'd think he's skinny, but for a miler, he's big. And I started talking to him and I was like, you're pretty big. How'd you do this? He goes, man, he's from Scotland, I think. He goes, when I, I came to America when I was 17 to go to college.

• 58:49Sam Parr?

  And I was training for the mile and I, but I wasn't used to having fast food. And like having restaurants open 24 hours a day. And so I got fat like my first semester there and I weighed 200 pounds. And I broke the mile when I was 17 or 18 that year when I weighed 200 pounds. He goes, I think I owned the world record for the fattest sub four mile. And like 200 pounds for like just a guy who's six foot, that's not huge. But to be able to run that time or the time even that you're running, or even Sahel, you're pretty big too. For running those times with that weight, that's just like inconceivable. Not only because it's hard, but what's inconceivable is that you're not getting hurt. Running 50 to 80 miles a week leading up to it. That's what's like in my mind, the most impressive part here.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. When I first started running, I, I had a lot of injuries. Just because my, my body mechanics weren't super efficient. So I've had knee injuries, uh, quads, ankles, shins, calves, like everything. But now as I've, I've run longer with more miles. My body has become pretty efficient at form and function. And I rarely get injured anymore unless I do like a, an ultra marathon.

• 1:00:03Sam Parr?

  I had two.

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  You know, from my training, I just had two like random life lesson type things from the running that I'm curious, Nick, if you've experienced these. One was before my marathon, I was trying to figure out like how to just like mentally take on the goal of running sub three for it and how to think about like if I'm six miles into the race and I realize I'm not going to hit it, how to make sure I still finish the race and don't just like mentally completely lose it. And this marathoner told me that for every single race or anything that you're going after, you want to have basically three goals. He was like, you have your A goal, which is the main thing you're trying to hit. And then you have a B goal, which is like just slightly worse. And then you have a C goal, which is just like finish the damn race. And

• 1:00:49Speaker 02

  you can always like you lock in on your A goal from the start. But if you start falling off that and realize you're not going to hit it, you need something to fall back on that keeps you motivated when you're in it. And so you have your B goal. And then the C goal is just get to the finish line. And I have taken that and like run with it in every area of life now. Like no matter what it is, if you have a fitness goal, like a daily fitness goal, you want to, you know, run every day and work out every day. It's good to have that A goal. But the reality is that like shit hits the fan sometimes. Like your kid is up all night or, you know, like you have a problem at home or something at work pops up. And so having that idea of like, what is the B goal? Maybe it's a slightly lower version. And then the C goal is like, I'm just going to go for a walk and get 15 minutes of movement in. That has helped me so

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  much in terms of just like navigating the vagaries of life that inevitably hit when you know, you're not going to have your perfect day every single day.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like the mindset of like all or nothing. It's like you see so many people at every marathon, every race. It's very applicable to anything else in life, but you see these elite runners go out. And as soon as they fall off of pace, they drop out. They just fall to the side. And I was actually talking to Ken Rideout a few weeks ago when he was on my podcast. And now he lives right down the road from me here in Nashville. But he was telling me when he did Kona Ironman years and years and years ago. During the race, he realized he wasn't going to hit the time he wanted. So he just dropped down to the race and him and his family traveled to Hawaii for this race.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  So there's a lot of time, effort, energy, money going into it. He dropped down to the race and he said it was like his greatest regret ever. So he forced himself to go back the next year for for redemption, just to prove to himself that he could do it. But I think the the feelings and the emotions and just everything that's created when you quit something and drop out because you weren't on pace for that A goal. I mean, that's like self destruction. That hurts so much more than not actually finishing the race.

• 1:02:52Speaker 02

  The other thing that's funny to me about all runners that I feel like they've gone through. You said it like with your first marathon or when you left the military, you were like, I'm never going to run again. I'm done with this. It's like, it's like women after they have, after they have babies, there's like that chemical that gets released that makes them forget how much it hurts going through childbirth. I think the same thing happens with running. It just is like a little more delayed. Like when I finished my marathon, I was like, fuck this, I'm never running another marathon. I'm like, that was the most painful thing I had ever experienced. Like the last six miles, I wouldn't wish that on my worst damn enemy in the world. And then like two weeks later, I'm like, hmm, like which one should I sign up for next year? Like, I gotta go 249, I gotta do this.

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I'm the same way with ultras. Like I finished an ultra and I'm out for two weeks, I can't walk, my toenails are falling off. And I talked to my wife, I'm like, this is, this was stupid. Why did I do this? I'm useless, I can't help out at home. And I find myself signing up for another ultra shortly after.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  Dude, your ultra documentary was so good. I remember I like had, I subscribed for like the premiere. So I was like sitting at my TV, waiting for it to come out. It was an hour long about Leadville, I think, right?

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  It was so good. I remember I was like one of the first ones. I was like, all right, it's coming up at this time, Sarah, let's sit down and watch it. And what's crazy about you is like,

• 1:04:08Sam Parr?

  There's this whole thing where these people who want to talk in cliches are like every media or every company should be a media company, yada, yada, yada. And the thing is, they mostly suck at it. You're actually one of the few guys that has like your supplements, they meet, I don't know what the grade is, but you know, I know I've talked to you and I've talked to other people about it and your competitors will be like, yeah, BPN, they, they meet this particular grade. They are of high quality. But you also, you nailed that, the supplement thing, but then you also are nailing the media thing. And no one else, or very few other people are doing that, where you're actually really nailing it. It's almost, you could argue that your media is even better than the supplements because supplements like, I don't know how the industry works, but it seems like, yeah, they're like, these five are great, but your media is awesome.

• 1:04:52Speaker 01

  I appreciate that.

• 1:04:53Sam Parr?

  You had like, it looked like you had three or four guys following you around the whole time. Your wife was there. I feel like I know her because of, of the videos. And then she was following you on Instagram or, and talking about your splits. And these guys had these beautiful cameras. It was just like, it was a great documentary. How many views did that have?

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  The Leadville doc now has, I think, one and a half million.

• 1:05:16Sam Parr?

  It was so good, man. It was so good. Are you, did you come up with that storyline or did you just hire a good, a good team?

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  That's my creative director, Jordan, in-house here.

• 1:05:26Sam Parr?

  Where's he from?

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  Jordan is from Ohio, geographically, but he was just, when I met him, he was employee number four at BPN. And he was filming for another YouTuber when I met him as a freelancer. And I was looking for a videographer at the time because this was 2019. At the time, I was still filming and editing all my own videos.

• 1:05:50Sam Parr?

  That's crazy. That's a shit ton of work.

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  I mean, all I did, all, literally all I did was work. And 2019 was the first time I was able to bring someone on, but I was looking for like over a year for the right person. I would fly people down. They would stay with me and meet them. We'd film something. It just didn't feel right, so I didn't pursue it. Met Jordan. Felt right. He moved down, creative director. He led my content for a while, then he went and led BPN's content for a while, and now he's back working directly on my content again. But he came up with the storyline, the the whole production, the scouting, the editing process. Obviously, we had a lot of guys on the team

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  supporting that editing and filming and production, but Jordan led that that project. We just launched The Last Man Standing Ultra that he led and created with Ian Rodriguez here on my team, and we posted the C I M race video Monday. But yeah, Jordan is a super talented creative.

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  What's your, how much are you spending per year on a team for content? And are you able to, are you tracking the ROI? Or is this just like a thing where you're like, I'm pretty sure it's worth it?

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  It's a, I'm pretty sure it's working. I mean, our, our media team

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  is, I mean, with video, just videographers, photographers, we have

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  10, but then we have our social team and a lot of my business decisions as like, as an entrepreneur, one thing I've learned, and I think we were talking about this when, when you were on my podcast a few months ago, is that I make a lot of my decisions, and I've made a lot of my decisions in business based off of intuition and gut feeling. I never looked at the P and L, I never looked at the balance sheet. If I had this feeling that it was working and I could feel momentum and I had a pulse on it, I was just like, keep, keep spending, keep hiring. Then finally, at one point, I hired operators, a CFO, a CEO, and they're like, hey, we gotta put some, some guardrails around this.

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  But like, all of my decisions in business have been intuition, gut. If it feels right, I'm gonna do it. I have a feeling there's gonna be an ROI. I might not be able to measure it, but I can subjectively tell if it's gonna work or it is working.

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  Is it separate at all? Like the Nick Bear fitness platform and your personal social media, is that separate from BPN as like a functional entity? Or are the people like videographers, the 10 people, is that all under BPN?

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, the whole process has, has changed significantly over the last couple of years. So originally, it was all one team. And then at one point, we separated out where I have now have the Nick Bear Fitness business and then the Bear Performance Nutrition business. So there were like two separate teams.

• 1:08:54Sam Parr?

  And the Nick Bear Fitness business is your app, right? Your app and your channel?

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like my, my content, my IP, uh, my, my channel, my training app, stuff like that. I used to do brand deals. I don't do any brand deals anymore.

• 1:09:12Sam Parr?

  Dude, Hoka should have been paying you like seven figures a year. I bought Hoka's because of you. Cause I saw, I was like, oh, big guy wears Hoka's. Hoka's is the thing.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  The amount of, the amount of Hoka Rincons I sold when I first started running has to be absolutely ridiculous. So just talking about the separation, we separated out Nick Bear Fitness team and BPN team for a while. Really it, it made no sense of what we were doing and why we were doing it. Just, I just thought it was the professional move to take in that next step and stage of business. Now we've brought it all back into one entity. I still have the Nick Bear Fitness business, but everyone that is working on media is on BPN payroll, is a BPN team member and all the content we're creating

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  is in the hope of building the supplement business. Now the teams are separated, working on different projects. Like I have my creative director, Jordan, who's leading my content, Ian, who's working on my content, Everett, who's a podcast producer. And then we have videographers, creatives that are working on just BPN stuff, but there's definitely crossover and the lines are blur, blurrier than they used to be.

• 1:10:24Sam Parr?

  Do you think that dings your valuation if you ever wanted to sell the company because it's so tied on to you?

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  I don't know if it dings the valuation, but I definitely think that a process and a sale would come with a whole lot of structure. A lot of IP, well, IP negotiations and possibly issues.

• 1:10:48Speaker 02

  I feel like it's less than you think, actually. I was always impressed. So I had actually taken VPN supplements before knowing you and had no idea who you were or that you were involved. They just like popped up as one of the supplements I was taking.

• 1:11:02Sam Parr?

  That's not the bulk, you think? You think Sahil, that's the bulk of customers?

• 1:11:05Speaker 02

  Honestly, I have no idea. I just remember like back in my private equity days, we looked at Onnit. You remember that brand? I don't know if it's still around. Onnit was selling and it was like-

• 1:11:13Sam Parr?

  They had a huge exit.

• 1:11:14Speaker 02

  Well, it was so tied to Joe Rogan and what was his name? Aubrey?

• 1:11:18Sam Parr?

  Marcus.

• 1:11:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, Aubrey Marcus. And that was like when we were looking at it, private equity guys, like that's their biggest fear is like, oh, how involved are these two guys? Like, is it a key man risk? All this stuff. And then ultimately, they ended up getting to an amazing exit with somebody. And, you know, they put guardrails around it. They get like key man insurance or whatever it is. But I would, I mean, I'd be interested to find out, actually, like run a survey of your customers, like what proportion actually end up coming through you and your media versus now, just like the flywheel is spinning, SEO is there, and the business kind of just, you know, is self-propagating.

• 1:11:53Sam Parr?

  Well, that's been the fear with my businesses, which is I don't want to make it me. I want to make it its own thing. But me, or Nick, or Sahil, like that gets initial base, but it's like, at what point do you, when do you make the transition? And it's a, that's a challenging, there's a, I don't know the answer to that question. And I'm afraid of the repercussions of making the wrong, making the wrong choice. You know what I mean?

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's been a topic of discussion for the last couple of years with us, and trying to figure out how to navigate that. And for a while, I kept leaning into, okay, well, let's separate in the hopes of building VPN away from myself, so that it's separate and distinct and can stand on its own. But what I found by doing that is the separation created this loss of vision and brand.

• 1:12:48Speaker 01

  So I've kind of just like flipped my whole thought process on that and said, screw whatever happens in the future and I'm going to lean fully back in and I don't care really how it affects valuation or the end process anymore. I'm just going to build a brand that I'm really proud of and the way I want to build it and whatever happens, happens. And if someone comes knocking on my door in the next couple of years and says like, hey, we love what you're doing, let's talk. But if you don't like it, you know, I just want to make sure I'm enjoying the process and not building a business based off of KPIs and milestones.

• 1:13:21Sam Parr?

  And I bet you're, I mean, I have, I have no idea. I've never seen you comment on this, but I would, I would have to assume the app that you have, how much do you charge? 50 bucks a month or something?

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  It's 1999 a month.

• 1:13:33Sam Parr?

  So I would have to imagine that's doing well too, right?

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  I mean, I, I make much more money outside of BPN than I make personally with BPN.

• 1:13:44Sam Parr?

  Yeah. I mean, I, I think it's killing it. Syle, have you ever thought about doing it?

• 1:13:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, that type of business model is incredible, right? It's just like the ultimate scalability and you know, as your personal brand, like it just for you, as you think about reinvesting cash flows into your brand building, it just makes, it makes it so much more dynamic because you can run all of your media stuff at break even if you want to, like you can just reinvest all the cash that you're generating from YouTube ads, from the app, from any of those things into creating better and better content and create this massive flywheel and just count on BPN as the like long-term upside bet.

• 1:14:19Sam Parr?

  Yeah. But if I had a bet, I, I bet you, Nick, if I had a bet, Nick has probably been, even though his net worth has skyrocketed, I, if I had to bet, you'd, you've lived relatively poor compared to the net worth that you've created, cash flow poor. And now you probably taste this and you're like, okay, finally I can afford like, uh, to live like I want to live as opposed to just living on $80,000 a year.

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, for the first.

• 1:14:47Speaker 01

  I didn't take any money out of the business for the first five years.

• 1:14:52Speaker 02

  What do you get like just like a like a army or you get like a military stipend or something?

• 1:14:57Speaker 01

  Yes, it worked. It worked well because I started the business 2012. 2017 is the year I transitioned out of the army. So I actually had to start paying myself then me and my brother, he moved down from Pennsylvania to help us build a business. We signed our first warehouse lease that year. It was the first year we hit seven figures in revenue. And it was also like the most challenging year of my entire life because I didn't know anything about financing inventory. I didn't know anything about leveraging debt. I didn't know anything about taking out

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  business loans, utilizing lines of credit. Cash flow is an absolute nightmare. The only money I thought I had to spend was the money that was in the bank account. We had no terms with manufacturers. Like 2017 was arguably the worst and hardest year of my life, but also the best year of my life. That if I could go relive any year right now, it'd be that year.

• 1:15:51Speaker 02

  That's insane. That's one thing, by the way, like just the timeframe on all of this. I feel like people don't appreciate time as a lever for growth on anything as much as they should. And actually, like people in fitness and athletes understand it better because they understand that like growing slowly is the game and just getting better slowly. Like when I look at your YouTube channel and go to most popular videos, a bunch of these videos like you've been at this for years and years. There's like six year old video, four year old video, three year old video, like eight year old video, the 10,000 calorie cheat day challenge. Like some of this stuff, you've just been at it and I know you just said it. You were editing these, like you were actually on the ground, spending the like hundred hour weeks doing this stuff for a long, long time.

• 1:16:34Speaker 02

  It wasn't like you all of a sudden popped up and had this unbelievable, you know, production quality that you have today. So I also just think like appreciating time as a lever for growth on these fronts is incredible.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  That is one, one thing that's been.

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  A powerful skill for myself over this last decade plus is just the consistency at which I've just kept doing the thing. But even the one thing Sam and I talked about when he was on my podcast, I think you were going to do like a speech and you were back in like the green room before going out to the speech and you're talking to all these high worth individuals who are super powerful and they're all sitting there super insecure and scared and nervous and like, yeah, very holy shit. These people aren't any more secure, confident, or better than me. And I think once you realize that, that I have all the skills that I need to take whatever's I want to take to the top,

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  I just have to apply it. Because I used to think, and I went through this phase where I was like, okay, I'll get this business, I'll get this thing to this level, but at some point, I'm not going to be smart enough. So I'm going to have to outsource people to come in and take it from where I build it to where it needs or can go. And sometimes you do that, but you don't have to. And I've realized that there's no one smarter than me that's going to take this business to the level it needs to go. I just have to be super consistent at this approach for a long period of time, and it's going to pay off in dividends.

• 1:18:05Sam Parr?

  But you did hire a CEO. I think, what are you, a year into that?

• 1:18:09Speaker 01

  A little over a year. Yeah.

• 1:18:10Sam Parr?

  How's that?

• 1:18:12Speaker 01

  It's been great. I mean, the main reason I wanted to step out of the CEO role, and I wasn't actively looking to hire a CEO, but Kat came into the business, first as kind of just an advisor, and then she joined as the chief revenue officer, leaning into more operations. And then we just had a conversation one day. I was like, hey, would you ever want to be CEO? Because I really just want to like focus on creating content and brand building. And she was like, yeah, if you want me to be CEO, I'll be CEO. So we made the switch, because the business got to a point and a size where I wasn't spending my time on the things that I was passionate about anymore.

• 1:18:56Speaker 01

  I was spending my time on like, people management, and lawsuits, and retail, and finances, and P and L, and balance sheets. And I was like,

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  This is all like super critical, important stuff, but I don't love it. I want to focus on what I love and that's creating content, that's building brand, that's getting people jacked up. It's talking about the products, it's working on new product innovation. And that's why I wanted to make that change, which has been like much harder than I thought it would be. And I'm only now a year in of that transition, really finding my lane. But this last year for me has been an interesting one.

• 1:19:39Sam Parr?

  Dude, and it's hard. So I, I have a CEO too. We'll be at one year in a couple of months. And it's hard because you want to be a good, I don't know what it's called, a good partner with your CEO, where you want them to make mistakes and you want them to, you know, put their flavor and stuff. Cause you gotta let a CEO do that. But then at the same time, you're like, but I already did all this and I can tell you what the outcome of this is going to be. Or, uh, you know, it's just like, it's really, it's a, it's a, it's like getting married where you, and but not living together right away. And so you get married and then you move in and you're like, oh, you're fucking quit leaving the cap off the toothpaste. And it's like, well, no, you can't like bitch about little stuff. You gotta let them do what they want to do. You know what I mean?

• 1:20:21Sam Parr?

  It's like, kind of weird. It's like a, it's like a weird, it's a weird thing, but you have to learn how to like manage each other. And it's, and it is a challenge, but when it works, it's hard. It's, it's the best.

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  At any point, do you feel the need to jump back into the CEO role?

• 1:20:37Sam Parr?

  Well, in my, when I get pissed off, I'll be like, I gotta do this. And then I'll get like end of week or end of month updates. And I'm like, oh my God, Jordan is so much better at me than all of these things. And I, and, and also like, I would have done this different, this different, this different. And those three things I probably would have been wrong about. So like the, the name of the game isn't being right a hundred percent of the time. The name of the game is being right for the right things most of the time. And I just had to like, kind of like have empathy and put myself in his shoes and that helped a lot. But, uh, no, like when I, on a bad day, when I get pissed off, I'm like, I should do this. And then 99% of the time, I'm like, you are more talented than I am at so many things. I cannot do this.

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think sometimes too, when you're, when you're.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  Far removed from the position for an extended period of time, you forget all of the bad things you used to deal with.

• 1:21:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:31Speaker 01

  You only remember the good. Like, man, I kind of miss this. And you get exposed to all the things, the bad things that you don't miss.

• 1:21:37Speaker 02

  Too much.

• 1:21:38Speaker 01

  No, you got it. You run with it.

• 1:21:40Speaker 02

  It also kind of, just before you jump forward from that, Sam, it also differs greatly between like a true business operations endeavor and a creative endeavor.

• 1:21:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:52Speaker 02

  You couldn't step away and truly have a CEO just like running your content apparatus because it would lose, it would lose the like, the nick soul that is in it. It's in every single piece of content that exists. You can like build your team around it, but you actually being in that creatively, I think is so key. There was this, I think it was Jerry Seinfeld did an interview with, I think it was like the Harvard Business Review and they, they asked him about the fact that him and Larry David basically like wrote every episode of Seinfeld and after nine years, they had basically burned out. And so the show just had to end because they had burned out on doing it. And the Harvard Business Review was like, could you have hired McKinsey to come in and like help you find a better model and design something? And Jerry Seinfeld said, who's McKinsey?

• 1:22:38Speaker 02

  And they said, it's a consulting firm. And Seinfeld responded, are they funny? And then basically his point was you don't like, I don't need them if they're not funny because the efficient way of doing the creative thing is actually the wrong way. And what he said is the right way is the hard way. The show was successful because they did it the hard way. They micromanaged every single detail of the creative process and they really had their soul in it. And so I think that like your creative success and what has allowed all your businesses to thrive are also fundamentally tied to the fact that you have your soul in every single piece of content that you guys are putting together.

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree with that. I think sometimes entrepreneurship and building a business and founding a company.

• 1:23:20Speaker 01

  From the outside looking in, like people make it seem easy. So it's romanticized and everyone's like, oh, I could start a business. I could do it. And then you finally do it. And you have this passion around everything you're building, but then it gets hard and it gets challenging. And then it grows and then, you know, your passions are sidelined for the priorities of the, for other parts of the business. But it's just maintaining that consistent work ethic, even when you're working on things that you truly weren't passionate about in the beginning. But you know, it drives business and leads you to an ultimate end goal.

• 1:23:59Sam Parr?

  Well, guys, I appreciate you coming on. It was a little impromptu, but this is fun. I just like hanging out with you guys and learning. Nick Sahil, I'm close to Sahil, so I don't have to say this to him, but Nick, I've, I've looked up to you for a while now and I appreciate you doing this. Sahil, I appreciate you doing this too. This is awesome.

• 1:24:18Speaker 01

  Thanks, guys. Appreciate the opportunity.

• 1:24:20Sam Parr?

  All right, that's the pod.