Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell's Power Project EP. 238 - Nick Bare

Episode Date: August 21, 2019

Nick Bare is a YouTube vlogger, Army veteran, and a fitness enthusiast. He founded Bare Performance Nutrition in 2012 out of a small Western Pennsylvania college apartment. He continued building the company as he served as an Active Duty Army Infantry Officer. After the military, he was able to grow BPN to a 7 figure company. BPN is a supplement company that stood out because they were designed with label transparency and no proprietary blends. ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Find the Podcast on all platforms: ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4YQE02jPOboQrltVoAD8bp ➢Listen on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject  FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/  Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

hello hello check check mm-hmm one two one two two one three four five yeah okay good yeah i've remembered to turn everything on this time thank you i remember to turn g uh turn your microphone not you how many buttons are there it's quite a bit actually there we go it's complicated yeah yeah uh yeah i don't know what maybe one day i will count all the buttons like original nintendo you had you know like the controller part where you move the guy and then you had two buttons basically well you forgot start and select yeah they didn't really come into play that much though every once did you ever use select for anything no so the only time i used it was on contra to hit select to go to player two.

Other than that, I never used select. Didn't know what it was for. I feel like I'm not legit because I never messed with the original Nintendo. Yeah, you're not very legit. Started with the Game Boy. Game Boy is good. I actually pulled my Game Boy out the other day. Oh, yeah.

Dusted it off? Dusted it off, yeah. I was playing Donkey Kong. Yeah. Oh, man. Donkey Kong. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. Donkey Kong's hard. You got to master the backwards jump.

That's a key with any Mario game. You got to master that, where you toggle them back just the other way, just ever so slightly, and then get them to jump over the barrel. Yeah. If you don't have that, you're done. I was playing Donkey Kong and then Paperboy. And Paperboy is probably And Paperboy is tough. It was tough, but to me it was the most boring game I've ever played.

Yeah, you ride around on a bike? Yeah. I'm still out here clueless. I didn't play Paperboy. No, but... What did you play? I played Pokemon. I started off with Pokemon. Oh, I hated Pokemon.

So was this not the original Game Boy? Was it like... Oh, yeah. This wasn't the Tetris Game Boy. This was like Game Boy Color. Yeah, no. You have to have the Tetris that's the size of a full-size brick. All right.

So I can't relate to all of you. Oh, I only had the Game Boy Pocket. I didn't know I didn't have that either. Okay. I had a Game Gear. Wow. That sounds old. It's very old.

The screen was like two inches big. You could never see it. It was supposed to be like the answer to the Game Boy. It was Sega's what's called portable device, but it was supposed to be the uh like the answer to the game boy it was sega's uh uh what's called portable device but it was in color it's supposed to be like a mini sega genesis not to be confused with the now new mini sega genesis that's currently out have any of you guys played an arcade game in a long time just straight up arcade uh when we went to the movies i wanted to you thought about it yeah there's a spot called

coin op downtown they're like it's it's meant for like it has alcohol and stuff like that but yeah they have a bunch of arcade we need to all go to combat and stuff we need to all go one day but i forgot about how slow the response is it's like you hit a button and it's like 40 seconds later that the thing responds to it it seems like it's so frustrating. I was actually let down by the graphics on Game Boy. You know, it's just contrast. I couldn't see shit. I didn't know what I was looking at. You go from 4K stuff back to Game Boy, and I wanted to do this.

Do you remember the little arm with the light? If you wanted to play in the dark, you had to have an external light. It wasn't backlit. That's how crazy that... Well, I kept trying to turn up my saturation contrast, and I can't figure... There's no perfect. It just doesn't work.

Yeah, no. Look, we grew up playing video games, and look at how great all of us turned out. I mean, we're totally fine, right? For the most part. You guys are okay. For the most part. You're still damaged goods over there?

I'm still recouping, yeah. Yeah. It was tough. There's a lot of good games. Yeah. A lot of good games to play. I still watch old footage of video games. That's how much of a loser I am.

You are scarred. Yeah. What's the deal with Minecraft? How did that become a thing? Because that was like, it's such a step back graphics-wise. It's digital Legos. Yeah. So if you can imagine how fun Legos were when you were a kid now imagine you can build whatever you want as high and big as you want and as much as you want but just in a digital space you can build your own world yeah

it's uh i played it with jasmine for a while i wonder how they came like to that those graphics so they're so bad what's the what's the like did they start out with that mindset or were they like hey if you're gonna be able to do whatever the hell you want then we're gonna have to chill on the graphics down it was probably just some like programmer just like like i only put this piece of crap out there see what happens and then oh like it blew up and then you know somebody was just high yeah then like microsoft bought it or something like that yeah he was a swedish dude he made it with that intent. The graphics were that bad from the start, but then people picked it up because you could build anything. What's the game that people are playing now

where it's this alternate reality? Have you heard about it? You create yourself in this alternate reality, and then you pretty much stop living your life outside of the game, and you live your life. World of Warcraft? Is it called YouTube?

I like that. I don't know what it is, but I heard about this game where it's like you create yourself in this alternate reality online with other people and you create the life

you wanted to always have that you weren't able to create in actual reality. Damn. Well, there's Sims, but that's been... been is this new is this like a new thing i heard about like two years ago but sims sims fans are hardcore yeah not so people that like sims they get deep in that what you just described to me looks like seems like any

multi like mmorpg any game where you can just like create a character and like go in and have a clan and i've lived that life it's not good so i think i think that there's a that's the direction of a lot of stuff i think even like social media like so you know like right now social media wise you just post like oh here i was in tahoe you know this like i went to tahoe this past weekend right but they're gonna have simulated stuff where you're gonna be able to put yourself into any environment with anybody. I could be like sitting down drinking fucking coffee with like Babe Ruth or something. Yeah.

You could like go into these like alternate universes type thing. Yeah. Does it have to do with VR or no? I think it was VR. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Virtual reality type stuff.

But like what you were talking about, Mark, they kind of already do that on Instagram though. Right. Like somebody to like hey put me at the eiffel tower and then they pretend that like oh i took this trip you know right to paris and like and they like kind of follow like a map and there's been people that have been caught like lying with photos and stuff right that's even funnier there's people that have trolled and been like i pretended that i was rich on instagram for a month see what happened And they get like hundreds of thousands of followers. Yeah.

No, there's a guy that did that. I'm going to do that next. You got to think how far is it going to go? Like I had this vision the other day when I was running and like everyone, you want to document more and more and more, right? I was thinking, well, what if I had like this, this eye contact, I could put my eye and I just like, I stream everything. I was like, it's got to get to a point where

you're taking people through your entire life and people are just dropping into you, streaming your life. What was that Jim Carrey movie? There's a lot of good Jim Carrey movies. Truman Show. Have you seen the Truman Show? It's Truman Show.

But that's almost like today's vlog. Yeah, and it's also like a reality show, right? Yeah. But I think almost what he's talking about is like, Truman still gets followed around by somebody. He's talking about like right through his own eyeballs. Yeah. Which that would be crazy.

People are seeing what you see all the time. Like if I could tune in on his IG and like just see like what he's doing at Jiu-Jitsu or whatever, and I could see Andrew like coming into work, and I could see you doing stuff down at Jiu Jitsu or whatever. I could see Andrew coming into work and I could see you doing stuff down in Texas. That would be wild. I always wonder too, sometimes I wonder if someone's dropping in on my phone watching me.

Someone's dropping in on your eye contact watching. How far is it going to get? I don't know. My SD card would get full quick. Pop it in my forehead. You've had a successful YouTube channel, and you still have a successful YouTube channel. Do you sometimes just not want to share shit?

Yeah. It's that point? I mean, because it's great to share things, and it feels awesome to have fans and people following along and all that, but sometimes you're just like, fuck, I just don't want to share anything right now. Yeah, I think in the beginning it was, it was amazing where I started sharing my story and the whole process by documenting everything.

Um, and at that point in my life, I just moved to Texas. I was, it was in the military and the army and, and just started documenting. So like I wasn't in a relationship. I didn't have any other really responsibilities or priorities other than build my business and be in the army. So I could document everything and it was on my own terms. But as my life progresses and I've kind of already set that standard for myself of documenting, showing everything, well, we're just getting to a point where I don't want to show it anymore? I think that's one of the things I think about all the time.

Like, when do I stop the vlog? Somebody goes to your YouTube channel and it like pops up with you just talking and you go to do something and then it just flashes pay site. Yeah. People are like, no. I mean, I enjoy. He's gone dark. I enjoy it. I enjoy taking people through the process and sharing it.

But I've definitely shared less throughout the years. Because I think some things have to be personal. I think there's things that aren't supposed to be shared. And for people to expect to see everything, I think that's just, it's unrealistic. Yeah, we film so much in the gym. And a lot of times I just tell the guys, just don't bother. I'm not mad or angry or any i just i love training and sometimes it's just for me you know like sometimes i just want it uh it's therapeutic you said running feels very therapeutic to you

right yeah it's like and that's the thing with uh with his iron man right now it's hard to document so like when i would film workouts in the gym I can get someone to hold a camera I can set up a tripod and I can train stationary when I'm covering tens of miles

you know one trying to find someone to cover that distance with you and have the logistics to be able to do that it's hard but then when

don't they make shit that can follow you around a drone yeah like a little drone but I get to a point where you know i'm 10 miles in the last thing i want to do is pull up my camera and vlog i've i've actually run eight plus miles with a sony a73 in my hand before some of the stupidest

things i've done like miserable now i just pull my phone with me right um but sometimes when i'm in that moment i don't want to pull out the camera and like record it. I just want to like embrace it. Would you try an Ironman? Oh dude. No, I was like thinking, cause you've done marathons, you're doing the Ironman, you're doing all this super endurance stuff.

And I'm just, I don't think I right now. No, I don't think you don't really like to run very much. I don't like it bothers your knees. It bothers my knees. That's what I used to play soccer, but it was always running on grass. Now, if like I just run on concrete, my knees don't really like to run very much, right? I don't like to run. It bothers your knees and stuff, right? It bothers my knees. That's why I used to play soccer, but I was always running on grass. Now, if I just run on concrete, my knees don't like it. So Ironman looks super dope, and it's hardcore. And the swimming part kind of is not in my alley, and that's just because I don't swim well.

I'm really, you know, I'm mass, nothing else. Yeah, you're going to sink pretty good. I sink. But, yeah, no, it looks super cool. What do you weigh? 245. I mean, you're a big guy. Yeah.

For a big guy like that to be running, that is hard on the joints. I'd have to drop. You're like, what, 195, 205? I'm like 205 right now. 205. But I will tell you, going from 215 to 205 has had a massive difference in my joints running. I'm just having the right pair of shoes, too. But carrying that amount of mass around, for one, it's uncomfortable.

That's why you don't see many big guys running long distances. From a wind perspective, has there been a big difference in just dropping a little bit of weight? Or is it more just like how you feel carrying yourself, like your joints and stuff? I'm definitely able to run faster now, but it's hard to say because as I'm dropping weight, it's directly proportionate to my training volume. So as my volume of training and endurance increases, I'm also dropping weight. I see. So is it, am I getting stronger?

You're working on your endurance. Of course, it's getting better, right? Yeah, but joints definitely feel a whole lot better when i'm later what about in terms of like you know people that want to like just look better you know aesthetically they just want to lose some body fat you think running cycling swimming do you think these things have benefit because sometimes we're hearing mixed messages out there sometimes people are like no man don't do cardio you're going to burn muscle you know what are you're jacked you're in really good shape. And we trained today. And, uh, not only were you efficient with the, all the, uh, stamina type stuff, but you were strong as well.

And you've deadlifted over 700 pounds before. So, you know, what are some of your thoughts on this? I think it's like, what's most practical for your goals. So like, if, if you're training for endurance, obviously you have to get some miles under your feet. You have to get the volume, but if you want to look good aesthetically, it doesn't maybe not make sense for you to go run five plus miles. You might not have the time or the energy. And like, like we were talking about earlier, if you're training for aesthetics and strength and volume, well, does the cardio that you're applying take away from that? Because there's a lot of people that,

if you focus on the training in the gym, well, a five-mile run the morning of or the evening of is going to take away from that strength training. It will, whether you want it to or not. So does the cardio you're applying make sense to your goals? And I think that's the best way to look at it.

So like metabolic conditioning, like we did earlier, like a HIIT session, that's great for a lot of people. But then like professional bodybuilders, the low impact steady state stuff is great too. If you're an endurance athlete, well, you have to get the miles in. So it's like, what are your goals and how does that cardio apply to your goals? Yeah. Metcon could be any variety of things, but basically the way a lot of CrossFitters use it could be a 12 to like 20-minute workout.

And normally it involves pairing two things or three things back and forth, and sometimes you go through more than one circuit. That's kind of what we did today. We did a bunch of stuff. We did the bike, then we did the pull-ups and then we moved into doing the tank and the tank was kind of like interval based because we just kind of get going back and forth and then we messed around with some uh sledgehammer type stuff yeah i mean i love including metabolic conditioning like metcons because you can choose like a few

select exercises run some rounds gets your heart rate up really high. But I think depending on when you're talking fitness, you're talking to different groups of fitness. You're talking to the powerlifting community, the bodybuilding community, the CrossFit community, endurance athlete community. There's multi facets of fitness. So a lot of times you say Metcon,

they're like, oh, CrossFit. Well, you can take some functional movements. You can do any version of it you want. And just get your heart rate up, and you're going to be in a metabolic conditioning state. Yeah, someone that just wants to maybe burn some extra calories in the gym. And I don't know what the science behind this would be, but I can't imagine it would negatively impact anything. If you were to do hammer curls, and in between every set of hammer curls, did some box jumps just five reps a box jump you know you don't have to do a million of them just do five reps in between it's going to elevate your heart rate and again i i could be wrong but i i don't i don't

know why it would negatively impact it shouldn't negatively impact your strength because it's only five jumps so you should still be able to lift something heavy. And we know that, you know, you need something heavy to get a stimulus for muscle growth. And so you should be fine. You should be fine being able to do something like that. What I find really interesting about training like that, and I know you've done some training like that as well. It's so unconventional, like you don't normally do it except for like in the case of these kind of CrossFit workouts, these Metcon workouts. You go back and forth between using your legs, like using your lower body, and using your upper body.

And that is like really hard for me. I don't know about everybody else, but like for me, it seems really hard to recuperate, recover from that. And then sometimes you really get fucked over because you use something like the assault bike, which is working both.

Yeah. And now you're like, okay, man, my legs are dying. I'm just going to use my arms. And you're like, oh shit, which is working both. And now you're like, okay, man, my legs are dying. I'm just going to use my arms. And then you're like, oh shit,

now my arms are dying. I'm just going to try to use my legs. And you're trying to like balance it out, but you die quick on that stuff. I think that's the hardest part is, and it took me a little bit to realize it. It's like, why does this hurt so much?

Why is this uncomfortable? Well, the blood is in the bottom of your body for some of the mints. And then you can literally feel it moving to the top of your body as you're doing like pull-ups or maybe push-ups or something like that. And you can feel the blood moving back and forth. So that's what makes it uncomfortable, you know? It's hard to get that oxygen supply when you're shifting around that much energy, right? Going back and forth between so many different things.

going back and forth between so many different things right now with with all the triathlon stuff that you're doing is your goal to do the triathlon and then to like maybe continue doing triathlons through the next few years or are you just trying to do the triathlon thing because you've talked about in video you know that yeah you're going to lose a little bit of muscle because you're building endurance but do you plan on transferring back to having more muscle maybe doing crossfit type work or is this like something you like enjoy? So in the beginning, I didn't know what I wanted to do after because the Ironman was a, it was a bucket list thing. So the way I decided I wanted to do it was I finished up a hundred mile ruck march and

it was like two days later and I was sitting on the couch with my fiance and we were debating whether to go to the hospital or not because my feet felt like they were broken. So I had the computer on my lap and said I ended up on Ironman's website and that's when I decided I was going to do it. And it's always been one of those things in the back of my mind that I wanted to complete. To be honest, like when I said originally I wanted to do an Ironman, I didn't know what an Ironman was. I knew there was a swim, bike and run.

I didn't know the distances. But it was like that challenge that was appealing to me. Now that I'm like 10 weeks into this prep, I've learned that I still love running, but I'm not in love with cycling and surfing. So I don't think like the triathlon life is for me after this, but it's one of those things I want to accomplish. So after it's done, like I know I will lose size and strength during this prep, which I'm kind of looking forward to because afterwards, well, then I get the opportunity to document the rebuild. Yeah. To show people how to get back to that point. And the focus will be size and strength again after this Ironman.

How about CrossFit? Are you going to mix that type of work into? Yeah. again after this Ironman. How about CrossFit? Are you going to mix that type of work into? Yeah, there'll still be like some metabolic conditioning and body weight movements. I still like some body weight movements, but we're still moving weight and getting volume into like hypertrophy type workouts. So my training sessions, like we were kind of talking about earlier, they're in a sense all over the place where I enjoy a lot of different things. So if I want to go run five miles, I'm going to go run five miles.

If I want to come in and deadlift, I'm going to come in and deadlift. Sometimes I want to do strength training. Sometimes I want to do bodybuilding stuff. Sometimes I want to go run. But I'm a fan of trying all these different things and experimenting with them and gaining the experience through. So that I don't want to be one of those people that say, well, the research says, I'm going to say, well, I tried this and this is how it worked for me. So this is how it might work for you. So like apply all these things that people are talking about to this multidimensional

facet of fitness, find out what I really like. And then I'll decide years later, okay, I know what I don't like. I'm not going to do that anymore. I know what I like. I'm going to keep training that. Let's not rewind real quick. You mentioned a 100 mile ruck walk. I think you just mentioned that. What, what, what's that about?

Yes. I did. I've done ruck marches in the military in the past. My longest day was 150 miles. And we did that to raise money for hurricane Harvey victims. So we raised over $10,000 rucked from Austin to Houston in four days

and completed that ruck. And it was pretty beat down and rough. And I've done other ruck races outside of the military like the Baton Memorial Death March, which is a massive event and it's down south in White Sands, New Mexicoxico and that's just a massive

military and civilian event um 26.2 miles in the high desert and then i decided well i want to do 100 miles for time so i want to do 100 miles as fast as possible with 50 pounds on my back and i'm doing that in 30 hours, which is probably the most pain I've experienced through a ruck ever. But that was one of those things where the best way to put it is running and endurance events is where my mind is the most clear and it's kind of therapeutic for me. I can think very deeply about business or fitness, like my vision and my goals. And as much as it sucks, it puts my body and my goals. And as much as like it sucks,

it puts my body and my mind in a place where there's no distractions other than, okay, what am I gonna think about here? You're running, you get hit with a really good idea. What do you do? You record it on your phone or something or? A lot of times I will stop. Like I'll stop and I'll write down in my notes.

You're like, shit, that's a good idea. Yeah, and then I'll go back. But that's where like a lot of my ideas and concepts and visions for business and fitness and whatnot have come from times running. Like there was, and this is the video of me on the ruck march right here. Why is there such a huge difference between the bike, the run, and the swimming? Like are those equivalent to each other? Like a hundred and 112 mile bike ride versus, you know, 26 miles or running and 2.4, like, are those similar? Like, or is it just random that someone made that up? I don't know where the numbers came from,

but I will tell you that. Like, this is a weird question, but do they take a similar amount of, I'm sure it would depend on how well you did on weird question but do they take a similar amount of time I'm sure it would depend on how well you did on certain things but they take a similar amount of time or something or

no I mean I'll give you like the there was a a pro that just competed this past week and her time

was like 8 hours and 30 minutes for overall I think her swim was 54 minutes her bike was like 4 hours and her run

was like 3.30 something like that around those time frames they should just say do an hour each one that'd be nice there are shorter events like there's their sprint triathlon do an hour each one we're going to tally up how far you go yeah but i'll tell you like when i found out what an ironman actually was i was like okay i gotta learn how to swim now i got some time uh you did not assume at all or you know i can swim but i mean the last time i like freestyle stroke before this was five years ago okay um the requirements to swim in the military are pretty slim especially for certain schools so i get in the pool and i swim i'm gonna

see how far i can swim i know i gotta do 2.4 miles for this iron man i get 25 meters down the pool i come out like, that's me. And I was like, Holy crap. Uh, I got some work and learning to do. It was one of those things though, where it's very humbling and that's what I kind of enjoy.

So it was relooking breathing and stroke and feet, uh, and moving in water. I, I worked with a coach to talk, you know, technique, but it was one of the things for me where,

wait, I'm going to get better. It's just more time in the water. Um, so I still don't love swimming and I know I'm doing something wrong because I'm definitely breathing wrong still. Yeah. Cause when I finished a swim, I must be swallowing air as I'm breathing. Cause my stomach, it looks like I'm pregnant. I'm so bloated and gassy for the rest of the day because i'm swallowing so much air so like right now what in terms of distance you haven't swam 2.4 miles yet or have you done that now the farthest i've gone is 2600 meters okay which is about i think it's like a mile and a quarter oh god so it still sounds rough we'll get there with time yeah with these uh long walks you said it uh really messed up your feet why do your feet get so messed up i mean i i know you're you're going

like a long distance but um are your feet like getting wet like or you're just like sweating because i imagine that would be the worst part if your feet get wet and dry they go back and forth between those things that's when you blister up and things like that yeah so when i was in the army my feet didn't really get torn up because my feet were conditioned to this kind of stuff now that i'm out it's very rare that i ruck it's like once or twice a year so my feet aren't conditioned to this kind of stuff oh damn yeah that's my feet afterwards cutting into like a blister or something like that yeah that uh that was some i don't say clickbait because it was actually real but that video performed very well with that that's gotta fucking that's

gotta hurt people love seeing that kind of stuff that has to hurt yeah curling my toes right now what sucked what sucked about this dude your feet are sensitive like when you're when you have a thing with your toenail or something like that man it hurts or you stub your toe fuck well what sucked about this one is uh when i started walking we were on a shoulder and the shoulder was on a 45 degree angle so every step i took my feet kept sliding my boots oh and i was really messing my feet up so i think that was the biggest the biggest problem and the the vest too i assume you said it was a 50 pound vest 50 pound r-pound ruck. It's like a backpack pretty much. Yeah.

Man. All this endurance stuff is... As a big guy, honestly, it's super impressive that you're able to manage all of this with all the size you're lugging around. I don't know if you've watched much Ironman content, but do you see or is there anyone out there that like has size like you that you're like okay he's done this okay it's it's not not like the i mean the pros are all same body type they're thin skinny um very mobile they don't they don't strength train like i have in the past um so no like you don't you don't see people like with size and strength really crossing the finish line in the front pack.

What's the difference between that and a triathlon? So it is a triathlon, but like a triathlon is typically shorter distances like the sprint, Olympic, even like the half Ironman. But Ironman is like the ultra of triathlons. Going all in. So you couldn't have tried a triathlon first. You had to dive right into the Ironman. Yeah. I mean, that's like the same thing with a marathon. Everyone's like, why don't you just run a half marathon first? No, I'm doing a full marathon.

So you did the 26.2. I've done a marathon. I've done two marathons before. Yeah. Oh God. Yeah. How, how do you like, how do you do on time in terms of those? Are you like just a naturally good runner that now, like, it's not really that bad for you no uh my first one i think it was like a 358 and i did my own training on that one second one i hired a coach got worse i got 415 what but what's interesting too is during my first ironman training that coach myself i kept training legs and the second one i stopped training legs throughout the whole prep, did worse. So I don't know if there's a correlation between the two.

The thing with running, though, is I think it's the best way to put it. When I first joined the military, they break you up into ability group runs in the beginning, when you're in your infantry officer basic course. So there's Alpha, alpha,

Bravo, Charlie, the alpha guys are fast. Bravo guys aren't as fast. Charlie guys are the slowest. And the alpha group is typically like the skinny, small guys who are just running like six minute per mile paces, holding a conversation.

I know, I knew I didn't fit in with them, but I decided to run with them. So I'd be in the back, just like sucking and they would turn around. Like, what are you doing? Like go run with Bravo, go somewhere else. I'd be in the back just like sucking and they would turn around like, what are you doing? Like,

go run with Bravo, go somewhere else. I couldn't talk. I just, I'm in the back just like, you know, eight miles

because I knew if I put myself in that position, it would make me better. So I've never been like, I still don't call myself a good runner. It's just that

I have the ability to like just drive through it a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, it's challenging. I mean, how do you get yourself to that point to where you're able to run like that? Do you feel like it's just mainly a mental capacity at a certain point? It's a mental capacity to kind of break through.

But with endurance training, if you start adding more, like the question people ask me all the time is how do I start running? Well, just get out there and start. It's like anything else. Just start – if you want to start going to the gym, just start moving some weight. If you want to start running, just put some miles on your feet. Then over time, try to add a little bit more mileage on your feet and see how far you can go. There's a point where your body will start adapting to that stress. There's – I heard someone talking the other day on a podcast about endurance training. This guy went and ran 10 miles every day

to see how far he could do it. I think he did for like two months straight. And for the first like half that month, it sucked. It was really hard. After that, his body started adapting to that volume. It just became the norm and he started eating faster. So it's just like, start adding more volume to that run and eventually you'll get better. You've been able to maintain a lot of strength as well. And you were, you were telling me in the gym about a goal that you have to be able to run like a five minute mile, I think you said, and still be able to squat 500 pounds. Same day. That's my goal. I want to do a five minute mile and 500 pounds squats. Like me and my brother go back and Same day. That's my goal. I want to do a five-minute mile and 500-pound squat.

Me and my brother go back and forth. That's our goal to accomplish. Your brother trains like this too? No, he's strictly strength and hypertrophy. He still runs. He did a half marathon when I ran the marathon. And he enjoys running, but he's more size and strength type. Yeah.

So we're both naturally bigger guys, and we grew up strength training, and that's what we loved and were passionate about. But for me, it's trying these different facets of fitness. We're seeing more and more people that are training like this where they just kind of love these different challenges, and I think it's cool because a lot of times back years ago, you would travel somewhere, and you were like, ah, times back you know years ago you would travel somewhere and you're like

ah you know this area has shitty gyms and if you were to travel somewhere and you were really passionate about still training you might have to drive 30 minutes to find a good gym but now you see just there's so much information out there in fitness and there's so much there's so many different styles of workouts it's like well you don't even really need a gym like if you want to just go work out on the beach and not not like you couldn't do that before but there's just more information out there now about people that are doing these styles of workouts and there's so many challenging things you can do you know do do some fucking burpees oh yeah do some push-ups do some uh

lunges you know you'll die i mean it's brutal this stuff's it's it's really difficult it's challenging still get a great workout from it it's just getting the body moving like for me if i don't move my body for a day it feels like crap yeah right so i prefer to go to the gym and hit a workout a full workout basically exercise every day uh at this point yeah yeah yeah i really don't take a day off what was it like cory slushinger he was here what did he call that there was a term for that when you're doing just little stuff even if it's not a big workout every day i don't remember exactly what he called it but i like the fact that he was referring to you know really focusing in on kind of like one thing every day you know you uh you also do a lot of push-ups right yeah so i've done a hundred push-ups pretty much every day for like the past

decade wow um and that was because like watching my dad growing up he'd be in the kitchen he just hit the floor yeah while we're eating breakfast he's in the great habit yeah he's knocking on his push-ups and sit-ups um so i started doing that when i got to college because i had to do to get tested on my push-ups in the military. So it just became like every day, whether I'm hitting chest or not, 100 pushups. Is your dad or was your dad into the gym as well? Oh, yeah. He was the guy in the 80s who was wearing the stringer, the mullet, the short shorts. Nice.

He was tan and he was jacked. That's great. Yeah. You know, I think that's great that he was that into fitness, but I think if you have this idea in your head that, you know, you're going to figure out ways to just keep moving and you go on walks and you do pushups and stuff,

that could possibly even be a way to like avoid going to the gym at all. Like if you do a couple hundred pushups every single day and you're walking and you're exercising, if you're somebody that maybe doesn't love the gym necessarily, or don't feel like you have the quote-unquote time,

everyone's got time to knock out 10 push-ups a couple times, 10 times a day, right? Oh, yeah. Maybe every time you use the restroom in a day, bust out 10 or 15 push-ups. That'd probably get you close to your number, you know? Yeah, a lot of people have been asking, am I still weight training during Ironman prep?

I'm still lifting like three to four days a week because for me, I feel – it's all about feeling. I feel good if I'm doing some sort of resistance training. If I start feeling soft, like if I grab my abs or my arms and they start feeling soft, well, it makes me feel like crap. So I still want to be in somewhat decent shape crossing that finish line. That's actually great. You know, it sounds like, uh, you know, we get a little fucking crazy in our head, but like, that's actually a good thing. It's good to rec, it's good to recognize what you want.

You mentioned earlier finding things that you don't like. And I wish more people would work on experiencing, uh, different things when it comes to their nutrition and experience different things when it comes to their nutrition and experience different things when it comes to their training, like just try fasting for a few days and, and not, not fasting for a few days, but try some intermittent fasting for the course of about a week. You may find out in that, in that week that you fucking hate fasting more than you hate anything else in life. That's fine. That's, that's actually good information for you. Now, you know, like you really dislike it. That's fine. That's actually good information for you. Now you know, like you really dislike it. It's not your favorite thing, but it's also a weapon. It's also something that you can

utilize whenever you feel the need to use it. And same thing with training. You know, you find out that every time you go to do a certain movement, you hurt yourself every time you do it. It's like, okay, we'll scratch it off the list. You don't need that exercise anymore. Hopefully you can find something that you do like. Yeah. That was actually a big question that popped up on my uh instagram a few days ago someone said i see you doing all these fad diets and fad workouts um it sounds so negative yeah well he's like why do you why do you start and stop them and quit them all the time i said well they're not they're not fads. Maybe it's my fault of documenting and showing all of it, but I want to experiment with all these things because they are tools. I don't necessarily have

to use intermittent fasting and high fat, low carb or high carb, low fat or drop sets and super sets and all this stuff every single day, but there are tools I have in my toolbox to use at certain times and places. And if you know how your body responds and how you like certain things, well, you can use these in the right time and the right place. But by no means are they fads. They're just tools in the toolbox. You go by how you feel from it, right? Right.

How did that progression look for you? Because there was even a video that you tried vegan for a while. Like you gave it a shot so how did like your i guess your diet progress through the years look to where you are now uh well the vegan video is actually clickbait oh that was clickbait i was just trying to uh a vegan restaurant in seoul south korea is anything that you do real? Damn it, Nick. Christ. No, I never got into, vegan was never an interest to me. Yeah. It just never has been.

That's the one thing, but with diet, I've tried a bunch of different things. I don't know if I'd try that. I don't know. I'm not against it. Whatever people want to try, you know,

but like, for me personally, I don't know if I would, I don't, I really like meat a lot. I like meat too. Yeah, a massive part of our diet is meat. Yeah.

So that's one thing I have no interest in trying. Okay. But for nutrition, I keep things pretty simple. And especially with the training I'm doing right now, I haven't tracked macros for the past year and a half. Unless I'm dieting. If I'm dieting, I track my nutrition. But everything's based off of performance, recovery, and the scale. And what I'm finding with this prep I'm doing right now is because it's so intense and volume-driven,

and with the heat in Texas right now, my body just naturally is craving nutrient-dense foods. Like foods that are whole foods high in vitamins and minerals. And it doesn't get better than this right here. 15 double doubles. Oh, yeah. Me and my brother went back to back to see who could eat the most double doubles. It was probably like literally the worst idea of our lives. Who won?

I won. How many did you actually eat though? I honestly can't remember off the top of my head. I think it was like five or six. wow um but talk about feeling like absolute garbage and you eat the patty not the patties the buns yeah that's that's what would get me that would get me i could handle the meat but those buns bro in and out is game we have one next to our warehouse and it's when we were that's how i got the 230 pounds when we were building our warehouse our first one uh me and my brother would be there till like 2 a.m because i was still in the army

and every night we hit two double doubles and two things of fries animal style yeah yeah food goes down pretty easy man oh yeah that kind of food yeah the uh the location of an in and out was a big determining factor in the house that we just bought like recently it was like okay well how far away is this house from In-N-Out? It's like, damn, that's 15 minutes. It's like, how about this one over here? Dude, that's only five. All right, we're going with this one.

In-N-Out is one of those meals, too, that when I'm done, I'm sad. Wait, why? Because you want more? Because it's over. Yeah. That's the one thing about In-N-Out. I agree. You know, Nick, real quick, I want us to come back to the nutrition bit but i was really curious when you were mentioning like you were filming in the

military when i think about that like obviously i don't know anything about that but i was surprised that they actually let you film all the things that you filmed like how were you just carrying your camera around and doing all that with with all that going on yes that's that's a massive question in the beginning i was very careful with what I filmed. So I was never at work, like vlogging publicly. Um, and if you were in the same building as me and you didn't know that I had a

YouTube channel, you never knew I was really a vlogger. Okay. So I would carry a camera with me. I film like PT sessions with my platoon or some pieces of training that, that was able to film. But then I would kind of talk about it like back in my barracks room. Or when no, for me, like the military when I was in was a priority.

And YouTube was always secondary, right? So as long as it didn't interfere with my job, well, then I would film something if I had the time. Obviously, I would have loved to capture more content when I was in. But there's just certain things that you can't film and it's not the right place. I do remember one time though, it's like when my channel was probably like 30,000 subscribers and we were in South Korea and I'm filming a PT session.

So I have a GoPro and I'm like, I'm low crawling with these guys getting the good angles and the good shots. And some guy calls me and he's like, hey, you come here. And I thought for a second, he was like a fan of the channel. I was like, all right, cool. getting the good angles and the good shots and some guy calls me or say hey you come here i thought for a second he was like a fan of the channel i was like all right cool so i walk over to him like hey what's going on he's like do you know who i am i was like and i started oh shit

start getting scared he's like this colonel uh high ranking officer so i like snapped to attention and he's just tearing me up for having this GoPro so after that I kind of like stopped filming certain things but mostly the filming I've done in the military was when I was in South Korea and it was not during times of work you know but I documented the process of being over there and what it was like

yeah is that on your YouTube channel or is that like somewhere else what's that? all this footage that you're talking about yeah it's all on my YouTube channel or is that like somewhere else? What's that? All this footage that you're talking about? Yeah, it's all on my YouTube channel. Okay. So I got there in, it was February 2016 and I was there until October of 2016. Wow.

How did all this start, man? How did you did you, uh, you know, make the decision to, you know, even want to pursue the military? So I was in, I was in high school and my cousin, he was, uh, he was active duty army. He's 101st, uh, stationed out of Fort Campbell. And at the time, like war was really kinetic. So there's a lot going on. This is probably 2006, 2007. So I saw him coming back from deployments from Iraq and Afghanistan and kind of the way he was changing, like how his values were changing and the respect he gained from people when he was coming back. So I thought, well, I want, I want something like that. And then it was one moment. I will always remember we were at my uncle's house. He came back on R&R and my grandma said something like, you know, why are you doing this?

And he said, well, someone's got to do it. So I was like, well, you know, that makes me that made me want to join at least do my four years, like serve the country. So I applied for an Army ROTC scholarship. And at the time, it was pretty, I don't say it was easy, but if you applied for an Army ROTC scholarship, there was a somewhat high chance of getting it where they paid for all of your school and everything, but you had to serve afterwards. Now it's a lot more competitive. So I applied for this Army ROTC scholarship junior year of high school, got that, went to college at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh, and then did ROTC there And then commissioned in 2013 as an infantry officer. So really the reason I wanted to join is just because I saw it was influenced by my cousin and I always had,

I always wanted to serve and I wanted to enlist, but my mom wouldn't let me, she made me go to college. So was she scared at all or she just wanted you to go to school? She wanted me to go to school and she was scared. Okay. A little bit, a little bit of both. Yeah.

So you ended up finishing college and then military after that? Yeah. So because I went through ROTC, it was a commissioning route. So I was an officer going in. So I commissioned in 2013 with a degree in nutrition. Oh. And then I commissioned as an infantry officer. So almost immediately after graduating,

went to Fort Benning, Georgia for a year where I did the infantry officer basic course, ranger school, airborne school. And then I went to my unit in Fort Hood in 2014 where I was a platoon leader. That's cool, man. Not an easy thing to get into. How hard was it once you got there where I was a platoon leader. That's cool, man. Not an easy thing to get into.

How hard was it once you got there where you're like, oh man, maybe I made a mistake. Did they kick the shit out of you? Infantry officer basic course was like a smooth transition into active duty. So I learned a lot. But ranger school was definitely a kick in the dick. So I think that was the moment in my life that I realized asking for help was okay. Because up until then, it was one of those things, well, I'll kind of fake it until I make it, one of those things.

When I got to ranger school, that's when I quickly realized, day one, if I don't know something, I have to ask how to do it. And that was like a lifelong lesson moving forward. But that was tough because that's a 61-day course. And I think I was there for like 141 days because I failed the first phase, had to recycle for six weeks, failed the second phase, and then went through in the third phase. So I was there for a hot minute. So I was there for a hot minute, but a massive, massive learning experience about myself for one and then managing and leading people as another. And the interesting part about the military that I always talk about is you put people in like management leadership positions. But a lot of times there's some sort of monetary incentive that's driving that.

So like to influence someone through leadership and management, sometimes there's a monetary reward associated with that. You work more, you get paid more. You make the company more, you get paid more. With the military, no matter what you do, you're not getting paid more. You know when that paid jump is coming based off time and service and rank. So learning how to manage and lead people

and have them and influence them to make decisions based off of trust and leadership was a massive takeaway during my time in the military. It's really complicated because, you know, like people have to at least like, maybe not like you, but they have to respect you a lot. Right? So that can be really hard because you're not going to like, you're not going to get along with everybody. You know, everybody that you're trying to lead, you're not going to necessarily like vibe with perfectly. So then you got to figure out a way to communicate with each person kind of on an individual basis. Are those some of the things that you learned? Yeah, I think one of the biggest takeaways and decisions I made when I

first got there was I knew I was doing four years and getting out pretty much. In my mind, I was going to do four years, but I just timed up with my business and social media that I was able to transition after four years pretty easily. But when I got there, I knew I was doing four years. So a lot of officers in my year group with me, they had a priority that they wanted to make this a career. So they were going to try to get the best evaluations possible based off of pleasing their boss or their hires. My intent was, well, I'm just going to take care of my platoon

and do whatever is best for them. Not necessarily like screw hire, but their intent and end state comes first, but my platoon is like priority so i would go to bat for them all the time and like i would i wouldn't no i showed up with the intent of this is their platoon and i'm just they're welcoming me into it yeah so it's a tough position because you gotta realize that i'm a brand new commissioned lieutenant with zero experience in the military coming to a platoon to lead 40 guys where some of those guys have been in the military for 10 to 15 years. So they're welcoming their essentially new boss that's saying, hey, guys, I'm in charge.

I have no experience. And you guys have been in 10 to 15 years. I have no experience and you guys have been in 10 to 15 years so it's one of those things you have to tread pretty lightly where you show up, you sit back and observe for the first couple weeks let them do their thing and then allow them to kind of introduce you into the platoon but it went pretty smooth for me where I had some really good non-commissioned officers, some really good soldiers really good platoon sergeant and our platoon was just like – we clicked.

We were so close. But it was – that's the part that I miss is the relationships and the camaraderie you build there because it's unlike anything else you find outside of that. Were you able to get respect from some people when it came to your physical prowess? Because you are strong. You could kind of lead by example, maybe doing certain tasks and stuff like that like hey we're all going to do this today and you could kind of show them how to do something like did any of that work well 100 it's like initial impression is a lasting impression right so i showed up with the ranger tab on my shoulder which was for for one, a good thing. And then being in really good shape was that first impression.

Okay. This guy like can hang. Um, and I kind of took that to my advantage and I'd put them through some workouts where I'd smoke their balls to show like, Hey, this is the shape I'm in. Like, this is how I can run. This is how I can do pushups. So we would do some platoon runs where, you know, we're, I'm pushing people hard and we're moving fast.

And I think like if I talk to my platoon still to this day, they'll talk about some like the runs we did. I was never a runner when I first got in, but I knew that I had the ability to drive through a run. So I was going to kind of use that to my advantage and show them, hey, this is how we're going to work here. This is how I work. And this is what I have to offer. So, I mean, that initial evaluation, just based on a physical assessment,

especially in the infantry is massive. You know, I really hope this question I'm about to ask you makes sense because you mentioned that if your goal was to, or like guys came in with a goal to make that a career, right? So they'd maybe please their higher ups a little bit more, but you came in, right. And you knew you were going to be there for not that long. So you chose to look out for the people that were underneath you. I feel like that outlook is like, even if you were to make that a career, that should still be right. How you would lead. So would you have changed anything if you knew that it was going to be a career for you and the way you went about that? Would you go the opposite route or would you still go in with that same intent?

No, I think just because that's the type of person I am. And I think for a lot of people, that's how you take care of your team. If you take care of your team, the team takes care of you. And if you're able to share the same values and vision as your team, you're unbeatable. But when you start serving higher and then taking advantage of your team to meet your preferences, well, that's when shit starts going sideways. That's when you start losing respect. So my intent from the beginning was to earn and gain respect and never lose it from those guys. And I was a platoon leader for two years, so I was fortunate enough to have that same platoon for that whole time. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. How did you start a business while you were in the military? So I started my business in 2012, the year before I went into the military. Oh, okay. Interesting concept though, because I was in love with the fitness industry and especially supplements being a nutrition degree. I was in love with the fitness industry and especially supplements being a nutrition degree.

So if I had $30 in my bank account in college, I would go buy pre-workout rather than anything else. That's just – I loved it. So I had to go to this – it was called an advanced camp between my junior and senior year of college for ROTC where you get assessed as a cadet essentially from your abilities to perform and lead based off of all the other 6,000 cadets in the nation. Based off that evaluation, you come back and you get to choose what job you do in the military and kind of where you go, where you're stationed. So I went to this camp really nervous, but prepared. And my evaluations were like really, really good.

So I came back with this like newfound confidence which i never really had up until that point i had the comments but now that i'm tested and evaluated and it's almost proven i was like well shit i can do anything so the this army bank called usaa offers up to a twenty five thousand dollar loan USAA offers up to a $25,000 loan for students commissioning the army. So I took on a $20,000 loan with them to buy the inventory for my supplement company, which I didn't have to start making payments for for a year and a half. So I thought I was golden. So I put the inventory into production, built the website, all this stuff, and sent the products to a few YouTubers.

My plan – I told my dad this. I was like, hey, I'm going to send this product to the YouTubers. It's going to sell out. We're going to make a million dollars year one. So I sent it to the YouTubers, put it into production, get the inventory, launch a company. First week, maybe two sales, I quickly learned that that was going to be a difficult trek and in the next three and a half years after that,

fairly difficult as well. And it wasn't really until I started doing social media that I started picking up a little bit of traction. So I didn't start doing YouTube until it was October of 2014 when I first got to Texas because all my military training was over.

And I got to Texas. My unit was in Germany at the time. So I was like, what am I going to do until they get back? It was like 60 days till they get back. So I'm going to start a YouTube channel. And you still had the company at this time. Still had the company. Yeah.

Okay. It was actually the third time trying to start a YouTube channel. Tried it once in college, posted a video got hate deleted it tried once when i was at fort benning uh posted a few videos got hate deleted it then finally october 2014 i was like i'm gonna commit so i bought like 500 worth of camera gear and started making videos every single day pretty much for like two years straight. And in two years, I gained like 30,000 YouTube subscribers just from documenting training and nutrition and some military stuff, not so much, and some business stuff. I was trying to figure it out.

I was trying to figure out how this platform works and what I'm supposed to be doing. And then my unit got sent to South Korea for a nine-month rotation, and I decided to keep making YouTube videos then. And at the time, before leaving for South Korea, my accountant pulls me in, and he's like, hey, you should consider closing this business because the past three years, you've only done $20,000 in revenue a year. You're not making a profit. I don't think it's worth it.

So I declined. I said, no, I'm not going to close this business. Go to South Korea. And I had this one video that went somewhat viral. It was called The Day in the Life of the Infantry Platoon Leader. And I was actually in the field when it took off. And I get back to my phone. I check this video.

It's like 500,000 views. And then it went to a million views. And it was like a million and two. And it took my YouTube subscribers from 30,000 to 80,000 in 30 days. And that's kind of just what picked up the ball. And business started growing and I started

that whole nine months in Korea was my most productive nine months of my life. And I went there with the intent of if I'm not training or working in the military, every moment outside of that is going to be learning how to build this business. So I'd wake up at 4 a.m. I work until PT at 6.

PT from 6 to 7.30. In the gym filming videos from 7.30 to 9. Work from 9 to 5. And then from 5 to like 1 or 2 a.m. Vlogging and how to learn to build the business and the brand. Did you have people at home? Because like, okay, I don't know the logistics of this, but you're on the base. Did you have anyone family that was helping with any of the other stuff as far as the business was concerned? Or were you just like, yeah, so I had to leave the business back in Pennsylvania. Um, and my dad and brother were

shipping out orders from me out of the house at the time. And then when I transitioned back from Korea to the States, my brother moved the business from Pennsylvania to Texas. And that's when we started operating in Texas. Okay. And then when it like in that period, when you kind of blew up on YouTube, I'm assuming that the business also blew up too. It got more exposure. It didn't necessarily blow up. We saw more sales coming in. But it was a combination of like, we did a rebrand on all the products on the website. We started doing more stuff on social media. It was a combination of compounding effects. Okay. So during like this video, this was all okay to film? Or were you still kind of like trying to hide your camera?

Because you show like the GoPro camera and then... Yeah, so I was able to film like PT sessions. Oh, okay. But things I couldn't film are like operational security. So I can't film like tactical planning or operational planning or going to the field and shooting, stuff like that. But just like us working out, I was able to film. This clip right here, this is me working out.

The only time I could film was when no one else was in the gym. This was after PT from 7.30 to 9. And so after this video went viral, did people give you shit? Like, oh, it's a YouTube guy and kind of throw jabs at you for that? Oh, it's probably my most hated video. The funny thing is, though, the way it went viral is a military hate group took that video and put it on a forum to kind of like talk down on me and it kept getting shared and just went nuts. That's amazing. Yeah. Blew up out of hate. Yeah. You know, okay. You were a nutrition degree and

you built this successful business. So like when you were, when you said you were, you know, spending all of your free time learning about it, what, like, what did you look up? What kind of stuff were you like learning from? So I was listening to every business podcast, audio book, reading every book I could, because I had no background in anything. I was learning how to edit videos properly. Before, it was just like a mosh posh, and then when I got to Korea, I was like, well, how do I actually put videos together and tell a story?

How do I grow this platform? Photography-type videos, learning about camera gear. It's all stuff you can look up on YouTube. It was everything. Everything was at my disposal, and that's where I really learned if I needed to build something, I don't need someone to tell me how to do it.

I'll figure it out because it's all out there. And even more now than ever before. Everything you need. It's people that tried and failed and maybe they got some quick and easy tips for you. Pretty cool. I failed multiple, multiple times. I lost tens of thousands of dollars, wasted hours. But I mean, it's all part of the process and the journey.

So when you came back, you, you finished up the military, you came back. How did the, how did everything change in terms of the way you did business and stuff like that with your family? Yeah. So my brother moved down to Texas and he started operating the business out of my house that I had in Texas. Give you kind of a little background on like Texas real estate. I bought a house in Texas, first house in 2014, brand new, three bedroom, two bath, $130,000. Yeah. Wow. So I bought that house and my brother moved into it when I was gone and he was fulfilling orders out of, out of that house.

Yeah. And he moved down with the intent of finding our first warehouse. So the first warehouse was actually supposed to be because the business still wasn't making enough money to really sustain like employees and rent and all that stuff. So we're going to build a public gym in this warehouse. And then we're going to also use it to ship our supplements out of. So we opened the gym like two months later, we closed the gym because the supplements grew so much.

So we just turned it all into industrial shelving and racks, kept a small portion of the gym for our own personal use. And we operated on there for two years before moving into our, our new warehouse. Okay. So do you still have another gym now or no gym? We have like, it's like 1200 square feet in our, our new warehouse, which is just like a private gym leftover equipment that we had at the old spot. Yeah. That's an interesting decision. You just you just thought like you know if we focus on this uh gym business there's we're not really sure what that will do or what it'll become we're already making money on the supplements and might as well just double down there yeah because i figured the gym's ability to scale

is limited yeah by members and space uh you have more overhead and with a supplement company i mean you can like e-commerce business you know you can scale exponentially yeah so it only made sense close the gym double down on what's scalable right that does that makes a ton of sense cool um with like these crazy not crazy with the like how long is a rec walk again Um, with like these crazy, not crazy, but the, like, how long is a rec walk again? The last one I did was, uh, a hundred miles in 30 hours. Cool. You're, you're taking a blade to your foot, you know, all this, like, I can't even imagine what that's like.

What are you doing for recovery? Um, no, I think a lot of people like talk these crazy recovery protocols and I don't have one to be honest. Oh, that's great. I'll tell you right now, though, for Ironman prep, I'm sleeping a lot more than I was in the past. Yay.

So for me, I was always one of these people that would stay up until midnight and wake up at five and I'd be good in four or five hours of sleep. You had a high-level triathlete on the show and he said that he slept like 10 hours a day. Yeah.

I'm sleeping like probably eight, seven to eight hours right now. But on the weekends I'm, I'm probably getting nine to 10 maybe. And I find that I need that. I definitely need that. So like priority for recovery for me is sleep, nutrition. So nutrition in terms of getting enough in, but like micronutrient dense, especially with in Texas, hydration, electrolytes. So nutrition is huge right now for me. And then some sort of like active stretching or I've been using the PowerDot recently.

Matt Vincent sent it over to me. So I've been using those but like in terms of recovery it's it's just been um sleep nutrition and some sort of stretching mobility um like power dot things i've been hearing a lot about that maybe as volume increases i'll start including um it's some sort of like ice bath sauna type work. Yeah. For like inflammation and improved recovery. And of course supplements. Yeah, and supplements, yeah.

Do you guys make branch chains or essential amino acids or anything like that? Yeah, we do a BCAA. We got whey protein. And then like our green superfood, which has been a massive game changer for like digestive gut health. Oh, a lot of people really like that because they don't want to eat, you know, that much

in like vegetables. Right. And so a lot of times those things taste pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. So that's been a, that's probably our best seller for our company. Wow. Um, but like supplement protocol, but nutrition, like I've been putting so much importance

on where if I have the opportunity, it's funny because when I look back to when I was strength training and bodybuilding, tracking macros, like a cheat meal for me, I look forward to that. And after a cheat meal, I could go in the gym the next day and I'd probably knock it out even harder. You know what I mean? But with the training I'm doing now, I don't even want a cheat meal really anymore because I know what it'll do to my training the next day. Like, I can feel the effects from eating an unhealthy cheat meal into that next day's training. That's really interesting. It depends on the activity, right?

Like, from a powerlifting perspective, you could eat a bunch of pizza and come in here and have a great powerlifting workout. Yeah. Especially if you have, you know,

long rest intervals planned for the day. It really, really is not going to make a huge difference. But if you're going to do, like, jujitsu, or wrestling really, really is not going to make a huge difference. But if you're going to do like jujitsu or wrestling practice, you probably throw up all over everybody else, you know? And if you're doing triathlon type stuff, I mean,

I can't imagine that that would have to be difficult with that much movement. Yeah. I mean, like I probably sound like I'm from Austin here, but I'll go to like Whole Foods and I'll get a juice afterwards, like, you know, kale, ginger, because I know like those vitamins and minerals are essential to, to my body just performing. Obviously I still need to, uh, you know, fill it with the proteins, fats, and carbs. Right. But micronutrients for me are super important right now.

Knowing as much as like you do about subs, obviously you own a supplement company. We were just talking about like nootropics and all that type of stuff. What like are some supplements that you continuously use on a day-to-day basis? So green superfood is a daily thing. Even when traveling, I have to take that. Whey protein is an everyday amino acid supplements. We have intraflavius or amino acid supplement every day. And then if I'm strength training or going to the gym, I'll use a pump supplement and pre-workout. But I don't use any stimulants for cardio. That's actually a massive question I get all the time.

It's like, oh, do you take pre-workout before your runs? Well, even before a Metcon, I won't. If I'm going to do a Metcon and then train, I won't take pre-workout because your heart rate is already being elevated during the training. train, I won't take pre-workout because your heart rate's already being elevated during the training. And like, if you take a stimulant, it's already increasing your heart rate and throw a Metcon on that. Sometimes it's a recipe for disaster. It's just too much. So like, I will do my metabolic conditioning, then take pre-workout and then go into my strength training. Also with any sort of conditioning work, if you're, once you're warm and once you're like two or three minutes in you don't need any you don't need anything to hype you up you you are

very much into the workout no matter how tired you are yeah you have no choice right you know you're like all right well now you know now you're in it yeah it's just it's just going through it it's different than doing sets of squats and you put 405 on and it feels like 700 pounds you're like oh shit i have no idea how the rest of this shit's gonna work out you know yeah and for that reason i could see the point you know in a pre-workout because you do want something to kind of hype you up a little bit sometimes you might need music or you might need other people around you need something yeah well for me like a pre-workout is an experience that's like the best way i can like um talk about pre-workout supplements like there's a there's a bunch of pre-workout is an experience. That's like the best way I can like talk about pre-workout supplements.

There's a bunch of pre-workout supplements and they're all – a lot of them are different. But they all provide a different experience. Like some are more stim heavy. Some are more nootropic heavy. Some are more endurance focused. Some don't have stims. Some of them are like red line, which no one will touch because it's like oh my god like people talk about different pre-workout a lot of times and on this podcast we'll mention something

like red line or something and somebody will go oh my god no no not that one it's like the one it's like everyone loves a badass pre-workout but when it comes to that one everyone's always like too much yeah yeah tells you on the side to drink half of it but who's gonna do that no um with so many supplement companies out there i, like, we can throw a rock and hit, like, four from here. How do you guys stand out? Yeah, so, I mean, it's – when you talk about a brand, you can compare a product versus a brand. They're two different things. Let's talk about – what's the show?

Shark Tank. Shark Tank doesn't necessarily pick up brands. Um, let's talk about, um, what's the show shark tank. Shark tank doesn't necessarily pick up brands. They pick up products that are proprietary. Something that stands, makes them stand apart because anyone can really market that product. Essentially when you have a brand, there is a vision and mission behind that company that aligns with other people. So like, how does your brand align with others and what other people connect with your brand? Well, that's all behind branding, marketing, advertising, and content, right? So you know, you might have a million supplement companies and their products might be similar.

Um, and that's another piece to talk about, but like, how does your brand stand apart and what does it stand for? How does it connect to the customers? Most of your customers, it's your belief that they know who you are right yep got it when you're talking products um i mean there are superior products and there are inferior products based on formulations so then there's no factoring so then there's no question that they're going to pick yours over uh someone else because they're they're gaining a lot from your youtube channel you know they have they have like a quote-unquote relationship with you. They see you every day.

They see the videos. They're gaining knowledge about running and Metcons and nutrition. And so they're all bought into everything that you're doing. And it's not just whether they're going to choose your product over First Form or one of the other big supplement companies. Right. I mean, I think behind any brand there is the educational piece. There's the motivation,

inspiration, and there's the product you're selling was the product or service. And through the product, it's a, what does that product look like? What's the quality and what's the social proof? Social proof keeps your customers coming back, but you can't be a solid brand with a shitty product because no one's going to

keep coming back and buying that. Yeah. If everyone has your protein and they think it tastes like crap or it hurts their stomach or something, right? You're not going to last very long. Yeah. So everyone out there will tell you that owns a supplement brand, our products are the best. Right. Everyone will tell you that.

Anyone that owns a company will tell you that. And they might be right. But the thing is, like I said, there's a pre-workout for everyone. And there's not a universal pre-workout that's perfect for every single person. Everyone's looking for a different experience. At bodybuilding.com, I had the opportunity to go up there a couple times and got to talk to a lot of the younger people that are there. And they told me some pretty crazy experiences they've had because they're so excited about training and everything. They try every new product that comes through the door.

They're like the bodybuilding.com guinea pigs. So bodybuilding.com, they won't take on a new client. They won't take on new products to sell unless they test it out. They want to try it out and stuff like that. And so a lot of these young kids there they'll take stuff and a bunch of them told me like yeah we've had people end up going to the emergency room because they'll try two or three pre-workouts you know from two or three different companies and then they're like well shit we cannot even identify like what the problem

was you know yeah but yeah people just getting uh getting overhyped you know it's too much yeah we're constantly stimulated in this environment, whether it's through products or content. Yeah, that's true. And then there's coffee, drinking a lot of coffee. Do you drink a lot of coffee as well? I drink, he actually asked me this question earlier. I drink one or two cups in the morning,

and that's essentially just for me to go to the bathroom before I go out on my run. Oh, I love that. Yeah, it gets you going. Yeah like that plus my strong greens like stimulates the plumbing it really does though you know i think it's part of its mental because if i brew coffee and i smell it brewing it already hits me yep yep yeah that response as well yeah mark calls it like a time machine like you think you have time, like I'll wait for the coffee to brew and drink it and then I'll go, but then it's like, whoop,

it's moving, I gotta go. I don't even want the coffee at that point. You're still non-caffeinated, huh? I am, yeah. I did have a cup of coffee when I was in Tahoe. Just took a day off the diet and just ate whatever and had a nitro cold brew in the

morning and I thought, I was like, this is probably going to hit me like a ton of bricks. Like everyone should probably not be around me. I don't know what's going to happen or whatever. But I didn't actually even notice anything. I was fine. I enjoyed it because I got it with some heavy cream in it. So it tasted good. But I was just like, it's weird.

I feel like I'm over the hump, dude. I feel like I'm past it. I feel like I'm over the hump, dude. I feel like I'm past it. I feel like I'm over it. So you went off the diet. What did you have? Anything exciting? You know, it's funny because I was like, man, this is going to be cool. I'm just going to kind of eat whatever.

And I tried to, but eating whatever is actually way more complicated than staying on a strict diet. Because when you're on a strict diet and when you are, like I love steak. I really, really do. I love steak. I love a lot of the meat that I eat. I love a lot of the food choices that I have now. And these other foods didn't have like the flavor I was searching for

because every restaurant is a little different and like the quality of food is a little different at certain places. Like I ordered like an enchilada at a place and it was just like i don't know it's just just a kind of bowl of like mush like it wasn't very good so it's like ah that really wasn't worth it but the chips and salsa were good okay and the martini was good there you go you know but uh yeah i mean you know it's always just fun to kind of do it and then be like okay that's why i don't do that and then every once in a while you eat something and you're like, yeah, that's why I enjoy that every once in a while, you know? So mix it up a little bit and try to think if

there's anything else I had that was, uh, really awesome, but no, everything was kind of like, yeah. And SEMA is already off of the no coffee or no caffeine yeah couldn't hang on the last episode of the podcast i mentioned this to you i mentioned that i was going to try it out you know doing no two or three days is really hard i'll admit that by 10 a.m on day one i was like fuck yeah i'm out so i was like let me let me just do some green tea to wean myself off and on day two day three i think i did green tea so in total maybe 75 milligrams versus my normal like 300 or 400 i picture him like sitting on the floor like trying to meditate trying to like block it out but he just couldn't resist it yeah so he couldn't jujitsu his way out

of it yeah i had i had my first cup of coffee back today but i love what you said earlier about you know um you said two things one you said with youtube you were just shooting like a bunch of content and you were just trying to figure it out. I think that that's huge. And I think that's what people should be looking for when they're thinking about their workout, thinking about their diet, try different shit and like see what sticks and see what works. And earlier, you also mentioned kind of a similar approach with diet where people said, oh, why are you quitting on this diet and going to the next one? You're like, no, I'm just, I'm going from this one because this one had this effect. And now I'm hopping onto this one because I want to see if this one has this effect. And now you can start to weave your way through and say, I don't like that. I like that. What I've landed

on with coffee is that I enjoy it enough to where I'm not going to like abstain from it forever. It's just like, I'm just trying it out. Maybe stay away from it for about a month. And then like I was telling my wife this morning, I was like, I realized I like coffee enough to where it should be part of probably, maybe not every day, but it should be part of like a daily-ish routine, you know? And because I think that's good to realize too.

Like how far do you want to take shit? You know, do you want to be, if you, like we can all agree that within reason, I think that just about anybody could get down to maybe like single digit body fat, right? And however, there's a lot of people that would never get there because they don't want to give up all the things that it would entail and all the things that it would involve and all the bullshit you got to put up with to get that lean. So, and that's a great thing. I think it's really healthy for you to get your mind wrapped around that. Like how far do I want to take this? And that will change over a period of time. Maybe when, maybe when you're 25, if you're not in great

shape, you know, maybe you're just like, man, I just want to feel good with my shirt off. But maybe what, by the time you're 35 or the time you're 30 and you've been training for a long time maybe you're like hey you know what i'd actually love to have a six-pack and that'll all change and maybe you do get that lean and maybe you're like fuck that i don't even like that i just want to deadlift i just want to lift heavy weight right i i personally like going to the extremes. I like going to like that 100% because I know where it sits and I know where 80 and 90 is. Right? Because a lot of people will say like, I'm going 100% every day. They're not.

Well, you're probably operating like 50%. You just don't know what 100% feels or looks like. And I think when you do stuff like you reach single digit body fat percentages, you know what it takes to get there. Well, you know what a hundred percent feels like to operate at, but a lot of people will never feel that because they don't go to those extremes. So I don't, I'm not an advocate of saying going a hundred percent every single day, every single week, every single month, every single year is great or even optimal. But every so often, testing yourself and doing that is good to know where that sits, where that exists. Do you have a goal to maybe push the deadlift higher?

Because you said after this, you're probably going to go back to strength. Do you have a desire to deadlift? You said you deadlifted 700 pounds, right? Yeah, 700 is – that was my max. You did it in front of a bunch ofed 700 pounds, right? Yeah, 700 is, that was my max. You did it in front of a bunch of people or something, right? Yeah, it was at a gym grand opening, actually. I remember I threw back like, I had like four donuts before that, probably two monsters.

Oh, there we go. I walked out, actually, funny story. One of the deadlifts before that, I think it was like, it might have been like 650. We just moved into the warehouse so all I had in this warehouse was a deadlift platform, a bar, and some weights. So I'm like, I'm going to go for 6.50

right here in this moment. I'm wearing tights. I think it was like shirtless. I had it on film and my buddy was there. I'm going for 6.50. As I'm going up on 6.50 I feel myself starting to cry my pants. So it was one of those things

like, okay, my PR before that was like 620. I was like, I'm going to commit. I pull that weight up, but I also completely

shit my pants. And I finished the lift. My buddy comes over to high five me. I just, no, stop. Tell him to stop. I walk to the dumpster, take my pants off, throw them in. That's how we broke in the warehouse.

So when I hit 700 and the gym was full of people, that's all that was going through my mind the entire time was, don't shit my pants. Wow. Do you have that on YouTube, like the 650? This is the rare stuff this is 700 okay was that was the 650 recorded though i want to see the reaction as it gets to the top did you shit yourself kind of halfway up and then the rest kind of

on the 650 yeah or just all hit you at once no it was like i could feel it halfway up and then it was almost like simultaneously as I was pulling up, it was coming out. Oh, wow. It was timed up pretty well. Wow. This exercise looks torturous. What's this?

Like a hack squat type of deal? A sissy squat? Yeah, hack squat slash sissy squat thing. That looked painful. Have you competed in bodybuilding before? Yeah, so I did a show in 2013. Oh, okay. I did a bodybuilding before? Yes, I did a show in 2000 and 2013. Oh, okay. I did a bodybuilding show.

And it was right before This is completely normal, by the way. Three guys close off, posing in front of a mirror at the gym. Nothing like it. Yes, I did a bodybuilding show in 2013. Did a powerlifting competition in 2015.

Dude, we got to get Russ here. We do need to get Russ here. That fucker is so strong. God dang, he's legendary. He's actually one of our athletes. Look at his thickness. Look at everyone's thickness. Yeah.

I just hate guys like that. He's so strong. He is a beast we actually have Amanda Lawrence on our team now too god damn she's strong

she's a girl oh yeah yeah yeah no no no 570 or whatever 5 I forget what it was it was ridiculous her deadlift's like

5 something 2 mid 5 it's crazy yeah she's ridiculous yeah what's going on with all these women how old were you when you like

started lifting I was probably when I first started like just getting into lifting i was probably 17 or 18 really that that was me just going into um like a high school gym and just knocking out some some workouts like some bro stuff okay and when i got to college that's when like i was hooked that's when i would skip class to go to the gym I remember like sitting in college classes had my pre-workout mixed up drinking it halfway through so the last half of class

I don't know anything that happened because the pre-workout was just like in me and you're just sitting there like writing out your like workout I'm gonna try this on curls today all bro-ing out yep I've been there myself good old days I saw that like when you were i saw the article

of you in train mag when you mentioned like when you were younger you had an eating disorder right now how like how did you navigate that because like were you lifting at that time or were you i wasn't lifting no so that was uh i was a freshman in, in high school then. Um, so I was 14, 15 years old. Uh, and I was playing sports. I was playing baseball at a time.

I was very active in baseball. And to be honest, like looking back, I don't know what triggered it, but all I remember is like wanting to be able to control my weight to an extreme. So I would slowly like do these crazy workouts in the gym, which were like me wearing a sweatsuit, um, jump roping or on the treadmill with a sweatsuit, trying to sweat out

as much. And I slowly started reducing my food more and more and more. And it got to the point where I had to get the hospital because my body just stopped working. Like my, my organs stopped, uh, my digestive system stopped digesting food. I couldn't get out. I was so lethargic. And it got to a point where I was in pretty bad shape because I was so thin. And this was for a year. I lost a lot of weight in a year.

And then my mom was taking me to all these doctor's appointments because they were trying to figure out what was going on at the time. I knew the whole time I was starving myself. And now this 14-year-old kid, I'm not going to admit to anyone what's going on. So one day we're going to another appointment and we pull up to – it said the eating disorder clinic. That's when I was like, oh, damn, like everyone knows what's going on. They got me. Yeah. So I walked in.

Doctor confronts me. And it just clicked like that. Like I was like, okay, I'm like, everyone knows what's going on. They got me. Yep. So I walked in, doctor confronts me and it just clicked like that. Like I was like, okay, I'm done. So like, I'm not going to say I went home and like everything was normal again, but I do remember going home that day and eating two pop tarts and realizing it was 400 calories, which is probably more than I was consuming an entire day's worth of food up until that point. Wow. Um, I remember just like getting over the hurdle of eating two Pop-Tarts was difficult.

And then it probably took a year and a half to like get comfortable with eating again. But then I will admit that like getting into bodybuilding and tracking food when I did my bodybuilding show did kind of bring back some of those unhealthy tendencies. So after that kind of bring back some of those unhealthy tendencies. So after that kind of struggle, but it was then time when I was transitioning to the military where it kind of just disappeared.

Yeah. And now like I have a completely healthy relationship with food where I can track if I want to track to reach a goal, but I don't track if I'm not using it to lose weight. That's good. You know, but I, I will admit that when I'm not using it to lose weight. That's good. You know, but I will admit that when I did my bodybuilding show in 2013, it did trigger unhealthy relationships with food again.

I almost wish that like everyone's eating would be handled in the same way. You know, whether they eat too much or whether they eat too little, you know, somebody that wakes up and, you know, wants to eat like a bunch of junk food to kind of start their day, I view that as an eating disorder as well

and hugely problematic. Obviously, a 14-year-old kid not eating is a big problem and it's great that it got addressed. But as you're saying it, I'm like, man, I wish even adults could be kind of walked through. What you're doing just isn't smart. Like this is just not a good idea. Right.

Like there's a lot of options. There's a lot of great options in terms of foods that you could choose over some of the foods you're currently choosing and you could make healthier choices. And it doesn't have to be real painful. It doesn't always have to be really hard. The type of nutrition that you have right now, is it difficult at all? Like, cause you mentioned that you really kind of want to fill yourself up with nutritious stuff to kind of fuel what you're doing right now for your goals. No, it's, I mean, it's not difficult at all. So my diet right now is focused on higher protein,

higher fat and moderate carb. So everyone thinks thinks because I'm doing this Ironman, my carbs are like 1,000 grams. In reality, my carbs might be 200 to 250, maybe 300 grams of carbs given day of workout, like on days where I'm doing six-hour workouts, carbs are higher. But generally, if it's like an hour workout a day, my carbs are like 200, 250

because I feel better that way. I've experimented with all these different ways of dieting and nutrition. I found that like my first two meals are strictly fats and protein. And then around training is when I start to include, include carbs and I found that before and after. Yep. And I feel really, really good that way. But in the morning, if I throw a bunch, like my, the thing, the thing I hate. But in the morning, if I throw a bunch of – the thing I hate the most is having – if I'm back home, for example, in Pennsylvania, and we all go for breakfast and I get pancakes, well, I'm dead for the rest of the day. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's like I try to eliminate carbs in the morning as much as possible. Maybe like an English muffin here and there.

But I do a bunch of whole eggs. And then if I have like English muffin, I put a bunch of Kerrygold's butter on there. And then in the morning, it's just hydrating as much as possible to prepare for training in the evening. And then as much like nutrient dense stuff as possible. So I will go and get like a juice

or maybe a fruit smoothie or try to add more fruits and vegetables into my diet. But it's not like forced right now. It's because that's what my body is craving. After a run, when I come back, most of the time I'm craving pineapple at this moment. When I get back, all I want is to eat a bunch of pineapple and mango. It's not weird when it's hot. For some reason, you just want fruit or juices.

Oh, yeah. It stimulates that for some reason you just want like fruit or juices. Oh yeah. You know, it stimulates that for some reason. Yeah. Especially like in Texas right now where I get back from a run, like the last mile of my run, all I'm thinking about is that drink. Like I've been drinking a lot of Gatorade zeros lately. I walk in, I throw back two Gatorade zeros and like a light lemonade and that like refreshes me.

But you take heat on top of the training i'm doing right now and it's like next level you know when you were like growing and focusing on just purely purely muscle right right now you're doing way more work than you were back then and yeah you're losing some weight but back then were you still eating fewer carbs than you were fat or were you eating way more carbs? Yeah. I mean, when I was in Korea, my carbs were like 650. Oh, 650. Yeah.

Yeah. My car, I remember my, my protein, my dot, my macros in Korea were when I was trying to put on size, two 50 protein, six 50 carbs,

like 85 fat. And I just remember being like in between meals, like lethargic, like just passing out. And I was like, man, I just feel like I in between meals, like lethargic, like just passing out. And I was like, man, I just feel like I shouldn't feel this way. You know, like I'm getting bigger and stronger and I feel good, but I don't want to eat this two cups of rice right now, you know? So for the longest time, I just thought that's what I had to do.

And so I, and it was never like when keto started getting popular or these, these different diets, it was like kind of based off of experimentation. Like, okay, let's reduce some carbs a little bit. This is how I feel. This feels great. I'm gonna keep doing this. So I think a lot of people, when they see my diet too, they want to, if I ever say I'm lowering carbs, keto, it's like, no, I just feel better personally off of lower carbs yeah do you eat a lot of meat too yeah yeah we do a lot of meats what about uh you ever mess around with liver because you talk about nutrient dense foods that's like one of the most nutrient dense you can get i've never done liver but when i was my mom was pregnant with me that was her the she craved liver and onions

every night so that's what she ate when she was pregnant with me. That's great. Yeah. I wish I'd be like a superfood for you. Once you start having liver, then just start blowing up. Yeah, just go nuts. Yeah, no, we do a lot of meats, like steaks, chickens. It's a massive part of my diet.

Yeah. It's so interesting. That's kind of like what happened to me too. I was on the whole, when I was focusing on growing and gaining strength and gaining size, I ate a heck of carbs, lower fat, high protein. And I felt like, okay, well, this is what every, like everyone says. And so I read that is high beneficial for gaining. And then I was feeling the same way, super tired, lethargic sometimes. So when I lowered it and went higher fat, moderate carb, lower carb, I just felt, and I feel better doing that. I never would have thought

that it would be possible to do that, you know? Right. So it's pretty awesome. Yeah. I mean, it's something I'm going to sustain probably forever just because of the way I feel energy wise. Yeah. And it just makes sense to me. Also too, I think that, you know, maybe the amount of carbohydrates that we need just may have been maybe a little overdone. You know, like when Stan gave his presentation just a few days ago here at Super Training, he was talking about carbohydrates and protein and, you know, where he thought it should be approximately, you know, per each person. And he was saying approximately a gram of protein per pound of body weight.

And then he said carbohydrates about the same. You could scale it up if you need more energy. If you need more, if you're Brian Shaw and you need to stay big and you need to get bigger, then you could scale it up and same with the protein. But I just thought that that was really interesting because that's really not a massive amount of carbohydrates. Someone weighs 200 pounds, 200 grams of carbohydrates is not a lot. massive amount of carbohydrates. Someone weighs 200 pounds, 200 grams of carbohydrates is not a lot. I think the big problem in the United States and the reason why, you know, I started like a war on carbs and have a book on it and talk about it often is just because a lot of people really

aren't moving around much. And so if you really don't move around much, in my opinion, you don't really need a lot of excess energy, a lot of excess calories. And then we end up getting excess energy from not just eating carbohydrates, but processed foods that we love to eat and we tend to overeat them. It's really hard just to eat one potato chip. It's really hard to go to a Mexican restaurant and they put the tortilla chips down. It's hard just to eat like one or two, right? You're not going to be that modest with that. You're going to probably want to overdo that. The burrito is probably going to be loaded with a lot of ingredients and stuff too. It'll be really

easy to eat. You'll probably eat it kind of fast. It's not going to probably leave you all that satisfied. You might feel kind of full, but a lot of times when I eat stuff like that, all I'm thinking about next is like something sweet. I'm like, I want like ice cream or something, you know? And whereas when I've changed a lot of the foods that I eat and I just, you know, eat a steak, maybe have some vegetables with it. I eat like fruit throughout the day, some dairy. But when I kind of stick to those types of foods, they don't really spark another craving on top of me just, you know, eating dinner or whatever.

I think a lot of people underestimate how many carbs are in actual foods too. If you're going out to eat, you can't, it's hard to estimate how many carbs are a meal sometimes. Yeah. And the facts, they might use a bunch of oil and stuff. Right.

So we're talking about like a society to eat down a lot too and makes not the healthiest choices. Well, they might think they're eating 2000 calories today, but in reality eating 4,000. You know? So I think that's a massive problem too. It's just the ability to realize what's actually in your food and what you're eating.

What's a discipline that you've taken from the military, the things you learned in the military with leadership and things like that, that you've taken into your business? I think one of the biggest things is having a vision, but making sure everyone on that team understands that vision. So when I say team, too, with building a social media platform, like the people that follow you and follow you closely and are a fan of your products and your brand, they should see and understand your vision, too. Right? And if that's not clear, well, then it becomes becomes very distorted on what you're trying to accomplish.

Same thing with leadership and management. If the platoon doesn't understand what you're trying to accomplish and what your vision is for maybe that day, week, month, training mission, quarter, then if communication is broken, they don't realize where their part is. They don't feel their part in the entire vision or mission. So taking that to business, even social media, is like making people understand if they come to see to my platform, they understand what they're getting. You know, so I think creating that vision and then making sure everyone knows what that is is super important. That's been one of the biggest things. And then making sure everyone knows what that is is super important. That's been one of the biggest things.

Was there a big turning point with your business where you were like, oh, shit, okay, now we're doing pretty well and we can focus more in on marketing or you can focus more in on things that would make it easier to get out to more people? Yeah, so there was a year between 2000, 2016, 2017, we grew 750% in a year, which was great, but sucked, as you know, from growing a business for cashflow reasons, we were always on inventory. But once we kind of recovered out of that, that growth period, that's when we fell into a rhythm. Yeah. And everything after that, it's just, that's when we fell into a rhythm and everything after that, it's just, you know, you can focus on the things that grow you rather than sustain you at that point. So when you, I think when you reach that threshold and you have brand exposure

and brand presence, then you can focus on pushing that reach out further for more people to be part of that, that movement or that brand. I think in the beginning, it's hard to get traction, especially when you don't know where you're starting. When you're a very small fish in a big tank or big sea, what do I do? What's the first step? And it's super overwhelming. When you start putting things into rhythm,

I'm a huge fan of backwards planning, another thing I took from the military. So people always have problems with the plan. So, you know, people always have problems with the plan. You can apply this to fitness, nutrition, doing a bodybuilding show or powerlifting competition. Like let's say bodybuilding show on the left, if you make a physical board, this is where you're at today on the right is where your competition is. Okay. Well now I have to fill in the middle, what I have to accomplish in between today and objective in order to make it happen and then allocate time to each of those positions to make sure you reach your objective.

So then applying that to, to business. Yeah. And if you go with a forward plan rather than a backward plan, it might seem, uh, he might really look at it and be like, Holy shit, man. I don't know if I can do that. Yeah. Super overwhelming. You kind of start backwards and you're like, well, the last three weeks I got to do more cardio. Like you, you write down all these things, write down all these steps to get you to the show. As you look at it, you're like, nah, I can handle that shit in like three or four week blocks. It's going to be fine. Yeah. You break it up that way. Right. It seems less overwhelming. Less. Yeah. Yeah. Less scary. I think that's one of the reasons a lot of people are intimidated

in getting into fitness is because they see where they're at and where they want to be, and they realize it's a long road. But if you break it into chunks and make these small objectives towards your big objective, it makes it seem a little bit easier. I've had friends before tell me they'll say, once again, I'm kind of on a diet. Once they start heading in the right direction, they'll say once again I'm like kind of on a diet once they start heading in the right direction they'll say you know what you know by the time I'm uh you know 30 they might be 30 years old by

the time I'm 35 I want to be you know 220 pounds and you know at that moment when they say they might weigh 250 and I'm like Jesus Christ I'm like dude that's that's fucking that's great thinking like good good on you that you're like. And then also, too, they're learning. They're recognizing. I don't want to just drop a bunch of weight because I might put it all back on. And yes, we could get them down quicker, but that's a good progression. And a lot of people could look at things like that. What if you just thought to yourself, how did you gain the weight?

How did you get to wherever you're at now? How did you get there? Probably How did you get to wherever you're at now? How did you get there? Probably put on a couple pounds every year. What if you worked on taking a couple pounds off every year? Maybe you lose 8 pounds, 10 pounds every year for the next 2, 3 years. You'd probably be, that would be 30 pounds. Hopefully that would get you to where you feel better and look better and be healthier. Just making some small lifestyle changes instead of these drastic changes

where you make these big drastic changes, people are more likely to fall off. Make these small lifestyle changes while you make that part of their routine, and that's forever. From a business perspective, they say one of the things that can sink a company the fastest is the growth. So how did you kind of get over that hump of having that growth and being out of inventory? And also like, how do you relay the message? Like, didn't people get pissed? Oh, people were so pissed. Like, no, we want to support your company, but you're always on

inventory. Get your stuff in the order and say, I wish I could make a video explaining this to you, but it won't make sense. It's the growing pains of building a brand. And when I started a business with a $20,000 loan where all that money went into inventory and obviously years and years and years I took it hit. When you have a growth of 750%, it's how do I recover from this? And I knew it wasn't going to be a quick thing. It was going to be slow. cover from this. And I knew it wasn't going to be a quick thing. It was going to be slow. So it was working with manufacturers to get better lead times and manufacturing times,

plus terms on payments, which helped out a lot. And then reducing expenses and spending on things that we didn't need to put back into the business. So it was, I mean, it took us a year, year and a half to get out of that spot. But once we got out of it, we'll make sure we never go back into it. I mean, with us, obviously everyone wants to blow up as soon as you start, but sometimes that's the death of you. And I recently made a podcast talking about how 750% growth in one year almost killed us because if you want to grow that much in that much time period, you're probably not prepared for it. So I would rather be a $100 million company in 20 years as opposed to the next 12 months.

Because I know in the next 12 months, I'm not ready for it. And there's things I'm going to have to learn, but in the next 20 years, well, I'll be prepared for that. So I think having that mindset where we're so focused on building a brand that's sustainable and building long-term within relationships and manufacturing and products and outreach and marketing, as opposed to,

hey, let's just go find all the influencers with the biggest followings right now, take out a loan, give them all this money, have them push it. And then we have this little boop speed bump and we're back down where we started and those kind of companies that's the kind of company that you know uh somebody's going to probably raise money for right the kind of

style that you're talking about where you you get affiliates and and people to post about it and um that gets to be really complicated too and you're like owning a business with like 20 other people that's tough yeah and they do rounds and rounds of funding and it's it works great you know for the people that know how to execute it there's these kind of serial entrepreneurs that can own any business and they can punch a bunch of buttons and they understand the back end you know of these websites and they know how to like really market stuff and they understand um digital marketing that's the world that we're in now. And some companies don't even use, they don't even, they won't even have their own website.

They just sell shit on Amazon. Right. And they're able to kind of like blow up through that. But for people listening to this podcast, you know, that takes a very special, that's a certain type of person. Otherwise, you're probably going to have to learn the way that you've learned, which is kind of the hard way. You could kind of go through the paces and feel it out. And you have to really stay under your expenses and really be careful because it could really screw you up. And I've been lucky the whole time because my wife has been running the business the entire

time. So we've been running it together. So fortunately, we never really dealt with anything quite like that. We did have some really good growth, but we always kind of moved slowly. One thing that did help us was that when we did have trouble with customers, when it came to being out of inventory or even just having a faulty product, just having a shit product that ripped or something happened to it, that actually helped us gain a lot of loyalty with our audience because it gave us an excuse to communicate with them further. And we're like, hey, look, you know what? We're sorry. You're right. You're right. We fucking suck. We do. We really do. But let me give you me, you know, give you a, you know, a hundred dollar

gift card to the store, get whatever you want, whatever, whatever we were able to afford to do, whatever way we could make it right. And then that person, they'd like flip out the other way. So here they were like, they were so angry, waving their fist. You kind of picture them on the, on the phone that they're that mad, right? You, you completely spin them around the other way. And so, you know what, that, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And a lot of times those customers were reoccurring customers. That's awesome. It just gave us an excuse to talk to them more, you know? Yeah. And it's, it's one of the things we focus on a lot too, is customer service and

order fulfillment. So like one of the praises we get all the time is how fast we get orders out. Oh, that's great. So like we, we won't sit on orders at all. And even like for 4th of July, we got hit like 4th of July, every year we do a sale, but it's not like Black Friday. We did a sale 4th of July this year that hit us harder than Black Friday, which we weren't prepared for. So that's like, that was four days of sleeping at the warehouse,

fulfilling orders in order to, to get the orders out. But the thing is the team understands that vision and it was never me asking like, Hey, will you guys stay all night? This, it was,

Hey, we're staying tonight whether you want us to or not. So that was like a, a massive, you know, the thing that I realized after that moment was, okay, the team's on board.

Let's make it happen. Do you film a lot of stuff like that? Do you share that with your audience as well? Yeah, we do a lot of behind the scenes of the warehouse stuff, order fulfillment. My brother handles all operations there, so I put him on camera a lot. But having that transparency factor too has been super helpful for us because it's been from the beginning. Like people that have been following my journey since 2014 on YouTube have seen the company go from,

you know, my parents upstairs bedroom to my house in Texas to our first warehouse to now our new warehouse and showing those steps of progress is evergreen content forever to see the evolution of the business and the brand. I think that's super important now more than ever where you have millions of brands and companies popping up where if I wanted to go start a new company tomorrow, I could have a website made on Shopify tonight,

get some drop shipping stuff on that site and boom, it's a company. But there's no really social proof. So having social proof for like an e-commerce business is massive. How is it working with your brother? You ever want to strangle him or you guys work well together?

I think so. There's two factors in that. One, we're both so passionate about the business. That's sometimes where we clash because sometimes people have different ideas but then in the long run though you can both always realize that and be like all right well yeah so we're trying to kill each other but it's all for the same goal yeah so i mean we're both in it together um and we both think two different ways so he's more conservative thinking i'm the one who i go for a run. I think of this idea. I come to the warehouse. I'm like, yo, this is the new plan. Oh, that's perfect.

So my brother says, sit down. Brother's like, that's dumb. Yeah. So, I mean, if we implemented all of my ideas, we probably wouldn't have a business anymore. So my brother is the voice of reason for a lot of things. His brother sounds like Andy from what you've explained, Mark. Yeah. My wife. Yeah. Does your fiance help out with anything? Yeah, so Steph is part of BPN as well. So she handles a lot of our social media marketing campaigns, working with paid advertising. I don't think we mentioned this,

but what is it that spurred that growth of 750%? What change did you make that maybe caused that to happen without you expecting it? A sex tape? Oh, yeah. Is that what it was? Oh, I got the wrong information in front of me. Bareback.

It was actually a rebrand. Oh. So I decided, I started with the company at the first round of labels and website and it was done by a buddy in college. I paid like 500 bucks for this website he did everything and all i could run sales through was through paypal and our products

were this um this old like pink and yellow and black bottle and our logo was different and just the brand wasn't super professional looking so i said okay when i was in korea i'm going to revamp everything. So I started a new website on Shopify. I got a new logo made, do all new logos, added new products to the platform and the line. We added protein finally. So I think it was like the brand presence plus the exposure and documenting on YouTube plus the new products, all that combined. plus the exposure and documenting on YouTube,

plus the new products, all that combined. Starting, sounds like you may have started without like a, maybe you had a vision, but you didn't have like a plan. And in the beginning, there was no plan or vision. And that's what held me back for the first three years is I didn't know what I was doing. And I was just throwing darts at dartboard, hoping something stuck. So I remember going to this.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that, by the way. I think it's just a different way of doing it. People used to ask me all the time when I was starting my business. They're like, did you write out a business plan? I'm like, no. I didn't. Fuck you. I'm still going to do it.

I'm just going to do it. I'm just going to go. And it doesn't have to be that you don't have to always do things the way that everyone else always says you have to do them. You can do them your own way. Yeah, and I was all on board with just figuring out as I was going. But I remember sitting in this – me and my brother hired this marketing agency back in Pennsylvania to do our ads. And at the time, we were doing maybe one or two sales a day. So I walked in, and we sat down, and they're probably just like, oh, we're taking these kids' money.

We're just kids sitting in front of this table with them. And they're like, what's your goal? I said, I want to do 20 orders a day. They kind of just laughed like, I don't know if we can ever make that happen. So paid them like $500 a month for like six months. That's supposed to be a marketing team. So zero, zero return. And that's when I was like, okay, I need to like take this into my own hands and try to figure this out myself. So that's when I became like the Swiss army pocket knife of BPN,

trying to learn every aspect of the business to save money and to be the key personnel behind it. It feels like, like, you know, all of those things that you did at the beginning though, allowed you to, even though you weren't necessarily ready for that 750% growth, you've been doing things for so long that it was just all in place for that to happen. Yeah. I think it was compounded at that moment. Yeah.

And we look back sometimes, even though we messed up a lot, made a lot of bad decisions, a lot of things that we did with like pure intentions actually just worked out. Like I remember being in Korea and I was like, you know, I'm going to write thank you notes.

This is before like all the entrepreneurship, like social media buzz was going on. I was like, you know, I'm just going to write thank you notes to everyone who's placed an order. So every night in my room, write thank you notes, send them from South Korea back to the States where they lived.

And I just did this for like months to the point where I couldn't do it anymore. But it was one of those things just having a personal touch with the customer, which it wasn't because I was hearing people talk about it. I was like, I should do this. Or we would call everyone that placed an order that day. Just reach out, hey, thanks for placing this order. Maybe you were genuinely thankful.

So you're like, hey, I should just thank everybody. But we look back at this stuff and now there're like, I should just thank everybody. We look back at this stuff and now there's like, there's podcasts and there's courses and all these things that teach this stuff. And it's like,

well, if you are just authentic and genuine and do the right thing, well, it'll just be part of building that brand. So instead of following

this game plan and the script that everyone else is writing for you, sometimes just like doing the right thing and caring about the customer and the brand and having that vision. It's what it takes. There's like software nowadays that can like hand write for you. Really?

Yeah. Yeah. Pretty badass. So that's I mean, that's how the big companies are still doing it. I mean, maybe there's a couple that are still just paying people just to write, but I think some of the bigger companies are just, they could take like my hand. Well, maybe they can't mimic my handwriting. It's pretty unique to say the least, but it can mimic most handwriting

or not even mimic it. It could be identical to it. And that's how you do your handwritten note. That's interesting. Yeah. With the, yeah, the supplement company, you know, you're exchanging money for goods, you know, there's a transaction there. They can physically hold on to something that they bought from you and

your company for your YouTube channel. After that, that one video went viral. How did you like retain a lot of the, uh, like the growth that you got in from your YouTube channel? a lot of the uh like the growth that you got in from your uh youtube channel so there was never really a yeah i didn't sit down i wasn't very strategy driven for youtube at that point i was still trying to figure out what works and what doesn't work so i was like okay i just need to pump out more and more content and a lot of the content was more military stuff because i saw a military video did well. So I attracted this massive military audience and following from that video and retain them through like more military videos, but it was more so they became part of the journey in the process. Like, and they wanted

to see what I was doing. It wasn't like I was a topic video like hey here's how to join the military here's how to survive basic training it was this is my life and this is part of my life right now and this is what i'm doing and people became like fans and an audience of following that process they weren't there for like the how-to's or to learn how to join the military it was they see, I mean, I'm sure some of them wanted to see me fail, but then others wanted to see me succeed. And they wanted to see where that was going to end up because it was a pretty interesting time in my life where I was in a different country on my way back to transition out to open this gym and sign this lease for this warehouse.

So people knew something was going to happen and maybe they wanted to see how's it going to play out. So people knew something was going to happen and maybe they wanted to see how's it going to play out. I think you mentioned I'm curious about this, actually, the whole idea of like committing, because you mentioned that like three times during this podcast where, you know, you did YouTube once and twice. You didn't like it, but then you just decided to actually just commit to it. And then all of these things you're doing in terms of like you wanted to do a marathon. It's a different, well, you liked running before, but a 26.2 is difficult. You committed to it. Ironman, you just committed and went all out. Um, where, where do you think that came from? Because a lot of people like will tip, put, you know, put your toe in, see how it is. Okay. Progress a little bit. Whereas you just seem to just go

all in. So where did that come from for you? It was when I rebranded BPM where I said, okay, progress a little bit. Whereas you just seem to just go all in. So where did that come from for you? It was when I rebranded BPM where I said, okay, you know what? When I got to Korea, I said, my goal was to make $10,000 a month in revenue when I got there. Cause at the time we were making maybe $3,000 a month in revenue with the business and I wanted to do 10,000. So I said, okay, no, I mean, over there, you have a lot of free time when you're not working. So people are watching TV shows, watching movies, playing video games, going to the bars and drinking. If we were able to play in sports with friends, I was like the most antisocial Lieutenant in South Korea because I went all in like while I was there, every waking moment, I was just dedicated to building that brand. So within the first 90 days, we were making $10,000 in revenue with the business.

And then after, like I said, that was the most productive time of my life. And realizing what I can do when I go all in on something, I realized, well, that shit works. So I've applied that to everything else in my life like if i want to do something like when i signed up for my first marathon it was literally just me one night hey i want to run a marathon went on the website signed up now let's establish a plan same thing for the iron man hey i want to do an iron man go on the website sign up now let's establish a plan so it's one of those things like i go all in on things that i want to do and there's by no means ever a time where i'm paralyzed by analysis i think so many people are and i think naturally it's one of those things that i just don't get paralyzed by analysis i just i decided i'm going to do something and then i figure it out and you feel like this

happened after the bear rebrand when you figured out that work that beforehand you weren't like this but i might have been but that was this was the actual moment where i realized it like this is where i actually applied it 100 and realized well this works if you do it like if you literally dedicate everything yeah well nothing feels better than a taste of some success, you know, and success can breed success because you, you have a successful, um, thing that, that happened with your business. And you're like, Oh, well, I put a lot into that. And like, look at it. It's fucking doing pretty damn good. Maybe I can do better over here in my, in this aspect of my life. Um, before that time, or just in general, it sounds to me like you may not be a

very organized person. I could be wrong. I'd say I'm organized. I was organized in a sense, but I didn't know exactly what I wanted to be organized in. I'm an organized person. Yeah, that's a great point. I was confused in the beginning of like growing up. And once you know what it is that you want to do, you can set a plan

and organize yourself towards it. Yeah, because if you don't know before that, you're not really sure what you want to organize your energy towards. Yeah, because I remember in high school,

I remember like people were saying, what do you want to do with your life? I don't know. I know I want to join the military and I'll figure out after that. So it's like that was the only organization I had, but I didn't have this plan for the next 30 years. I had a plan for the next three.

And then when I finally went all in on the business, when I realized, okay, this is what I want to do. This is my passion. Then it was like the tables turned and there was like no looking back it was like this is what i'm going to do you know there was never like there was never a plan b it was like this is what i want to do i'm going to make it happen how does it feel now to have a business where you do have multiple employees and it sounds like uh for yourself and it sounds like for your brother you guys are are doing well um you know doing well as a family, doing well as brothers together. That's pretty cool on a project. And then in addition to that, you have employees and stuff that you're taking care of.

How does that feel for you? I mean, it's definitely a responsibility. And I'll tell you, when I look back at my time in the Army, I thought I had a lot of responsibility then, which I did, my responsibility now I almost feel is greater because you have people in their families you're taking care of and that rely on you. So there is a lot that's on the shoulders, obviously, to perform. But I am forever and always grateful for the last seven years of work I've put up into this point. But it always reminds me like I can't slow down today or tomorrow, the next day I have to be bigger and better.

So I think I always wake up like feeling almost like a, like I'm behind. I wake up, it's like, how do I win this day back? How do I win this day back to get to the following day and the next day? Because if I just keep sustaining what i'm doing it's almost like the person that always reflects on their past the person that's posting the same transformation picture from like 10 years ago it's like yeah that was the last seven years of my life that was my last seven

years it got me to here but the next 10 years can't just sustain on the past seven years so it's always a constant reminder of like, this is what it took to get here. Now, what does it take to get to that next point? You wake up every morning going, I'm fucked. Well, they say, you know, the day of an entrepreneur is like this. It's like a roller coaster. You know, it's highs and lows. But I can't imagine my life without it.

Have you had to fire people before? Yeah, we had to fire only one person so far. When you first started out, were you kind of taking on just friends, family, people that you knew in the gym type thing? And has that changed at all? Yeah, so in the beginning, it was me and my brother and then a kid that moved down from college to help. And then we opened the gym. We hired some more people to help out there. And that's when I had to start firing people because I realized that everyone doesn't believe

or this is a hard lesson to learn. Everyone isn't as committed to the way you feel about your business. Everyone doesn't feel the same way. So that's hard. It's a hard way to make people feel. And when they don't feel that way and they're almost toxic to the team, well, you have to get rid of them.

And that was the same thing. Yeah. You don't want people complaining and be like, I don't know why we're doing this. And it's like, oh shit. Well, God damn.

Now we got to get rid of this guy because, because now five other people are saying the same thing now because it gets contagious. You're right. I think it was a massive learning lesson in the military too is you have 40 people. And if you have one or two toxic people, that takes over the entire platoon. So you have to eliminate it as fast as possible, whether that's moving people around or firing people. And maintaining that structure and that positivity is super important, that energy to move forward. So taking that now to the business sector, it's, and this is why I think

hiring is so hard is how do you find not the perfect people or the right people that have the right vision and the right intentions for the job. And I think building the team that is building team is my massive priority over these next couple of years, because I realized the importance of having the strongest team possible. And when you have a strong team behind you, we can only do great things. But when you have just a team and some of those team members are weak and some are strong and some are invested and some are not, well, that's when those weak take over the strong. So building the team is the most important aspect of building a business right now. And with that team, you can do so much.

Yeah, it makes a huge difference if you have people that are excited about what they're doing. They're really into what they're doing. Have you ever read books in that regard or have you gone to seminars or anything like that for some of the stuff you just talked about, or you just kind of figured some of this out on your own? I just figured that stuff out on my own. You know, like I said, a lot of the lessons I learned were from the military with working with people, especially as a platoon leader and especially in ranger school and just influencing people or having the inspiration like influencing people to make decisions that are better for the team

not just for the individual benefit and those experiences i will always carry with me they've had lasting impressions of my life that's great i've been to uh i went to a seminar this year. It was a leadership-based seminar down in San Diego. It was awesome. But it kept going back to leadership and it kept going back to being really careful on how you hire people. And one of the things they said is you want to be really slow to hire and fast to fire. So if something ain't working, it's hard, you know, because you're like, well, this dude, you know, or girl or whatever is like, they have a family, they have friends, like they have, like, this is just sucks to have to let them go. But it's, what I've learned is it's not even fair to them anymore.

Like if they're complaining and they're not happy, I think it's easy to sit them down and just say, you know what? It doesn't seem like you're very happy from the things that we're hearing. And I don't think this, like, do you, like, you can ask him, like, do you honestly feel this is like still working well? You know? And they might, at that point they might just be like, no, I think you're right. It's okay. We've got to go our separate ways. Yeah. You can almost let them say it because a lot of times they already kind of feel that, you know,

I definitely agree with the slow to hire aspect of it. You got to take your time. You make sure it's the right, the right fit. Yeah. Cause I mean, we hired this one guy and on paper he was gold interview, gold performance.

I was like, is this the same person you know um but that was one of those quick hires where we needed someone to pinch yeah and it ended up biting me what about like does somebody have to have like a minimum 500 pound deadlift or something or not a minimum requirement no we don't we don't have that yes do you guys have that no no the workaround is you have to be on peds or have a 500 pound deadlift so nice question answered wait so wait do you agree you agree with the slow to fire but you don't agree with the fast to fire no i agree with that as well oh you agree with that i agree with the whole thing but like the slow to hire it resonates with me very very true i got you yeah and also

too i mean if there's a big problem like like there shouldn't, it's like a relationship, you know, if you, if you're in a relationship for the first time and like, it's real rocky in the first couple like weeks or something, like it doesn't really make any sense. Right. It's like, you shouldn't really be, shouldn't really be arguing. I mean, if you're together for a few years and then you get into some fights here and there, it's very natural, very normal. But yeah, if you have someone and it's like something's rocky and something's not right, you can treat it whatever way you want. It's a luxury

to have in your own business, but it is probably best to let them go before it carries on for too long. Yeah. I mean, it ends up having short and long-term effects on the whole team and in the business operations. Is it important at all that they exercise. I mean, on the whole team and the business operations. Is it important at all that they exercise?

I mean, I think like... You kind of want... I hope they do. And they embrace the lifestyle. And I mean, depending on their position, I almost hope... I prefer someone that was active and worked out because they're relatable to the brand.

If they can't relate to the brand or the content or the products, then what are they doing? Well, you also want them to be excited. If you guys are to film something with somebody, you want them to be like, oh, there's Russ Swole. You want them to be pumped up, right? You don't want them to be like, oh, who's another Jacked guy here? You don't want them just kind of taking it for granted. You're hoping that they're all excited about it. That's been a problem too.

Like, you know, it's not content we do and social media stuff. Like they have to be okay with being on camera. And when the camera's on, like you're, you're diving behind packages and shit. It's like the energy.

It's like, I've, I've been the point where like they're on camera and that's going out to tens of hundreds of thousands of people. And if you're acting like you don't want to be there, well, maybe this isn't the job for you. You writing this down, Andrew?

Yeah. Well, I mean, you and Andy just kind of fired me this morning, right? A little bit. It happens to me every day. It doesn't matter. If you're not getting fired, you're not doing something right. That's at least how I feel. I've tried to kick him off the team,

but like he could choke me out. So I can't really kick him off. He just keeps showing back up again. Well, you usually have me choke you. Well, let's talk about that. Hey,

now that's another YouTube video. Next question. So I actually want to know right now. I know that every pitfall that you've had in terms of like, you know, what you've learned in your business has led you to where you are today. So maybe obviously you have no regrets, but if you could tell yourself something when you first started your business, like a concept or an idea that you feel like would have really resonated with

you back then, starting off, what would it be? Oh man. I guess if I would have looked back, then I would have, I would have made two changes. One, I would have created and documented 10 times more content that I already was to build even more exposure because in the beginning, I mean, beginning of social media,

I was kind of nervous about putting myself out there for one. I was afraid of carrying a camera around in front of people. That's an awkward thing to get over. It is. It is awkward. Yeah. So like I wish back then when we were actually in the trenches of building the business,

I would have documented that because that was a fun time to, to show. Yeah. But sometimes you fun time to show. But sometimes you're afraid to show your weakest points to a large audience. And then second off, I wish I would have taken time with some decisions with more insight. I mean, I'm a person that's pretty impulsive

and that's why it's great to have my brother on the team and my fiance because they kind of helped with some of that. But some of my decisions, even though I knew might have been the wrong answer, I was so impulsive I jumped to the conclusion and implementation. So I guess from the beginning, slowing it down a little bit instead of launching the business, I guess, the products, the products, for example, or jumping to the next, the next, the next, slow it down a little bit and kind of let it play out and put more insight into the market and to social media,

into, into the product in the beginning, because we paid for that years down the road. You know, that's why it took us so long to catch up. So we were only profitable at year four. I didn't start paying myself until year, year five. Wow. Yeah. So year five is when I took my first pay from the business, kept everything in it until then. Dang. So like the, the loans you took out,

you didn't start like paying, like being able to pay that back to later. loans you took out, you didn't start like paying, like being able to pay that back to later? We paid them back. Yeah. We paid all those loans back. Um, but I paid them from army money, not business money. Yeah. That's actually important. I think that it's important that people, uh, put their own money on the line, especially when they're starting out with their own business. Um, maybe if you're someone that executed business already and you, you just know how to do it, then who cares where the money comes from? You might raise money from friends or you might raise money from a bank or get a loan rather. But I do think it's important that you

shell out like the money comes from your pocket. Yeah. So that way you like, you need to, you need to feel the pain. Like you need to kind of, your ass needs to be like on the line. The more on the line it is probably the better. Yeah. I mean, you're personally invested then. You have something to lose. Yeah. Yeah.

I apologize if it's known information, but is it common for somebody in the army to start a completely different business while they're still in the army? I mean, I personally didn't know anyone else doing it in my year group at least. Now, there were some older enlisted and officers that were getting into real estate while in the military. But not many people or no one that I knew had a business on the side. And you have to get it approved by your chain of command. So I had to go to my company commander and say, hey, sir, can I sit down in-depth conversation? Can I run this

business on the side it will not interact with my primary job as an officer and it will only be done in my free time and he gave me the go-ahead i my first company commander was one of the best officers i worked with um from like a leadership management um uh, and just like good person to learn from. Damn. Well, what happened if he would have said no? Uh, so I had a plan for that. Actually, I would have had to put the business under Preston's name, my brother, and have him operate it back in Pennsylvania until I got out. There's always a loop, always a loop. Yeah. There's always something you can do. Yeah. Mark, what did you think of the MRE today?

It was actually pretty good like i had like a hamburger type thing um really weird like thrown together things it was like a hamburger there was some weird like processed cheese i squeezed out of a like a bag and i heated it up on the table by pouring water into this other plastic bag it was strange but it actually tasted good. I've never thrown a hamburger on a tortilla before, so that was pretty good. You're basically Mexican now.

I know. I can feel it. Let's do like a 10,000 calorie challenge with MREs. It'll only be probably like four or five. Really? Yeah, it wouldn't be bad. I mean, in each MRE, there's between probably 1,200 and 2,400. These bad boys are in there.

Yeah, somebody was asking, like, what's the deal with the Reese's? I'm like, hey, calm down. They came in the MRE. Yeah, there's Reese's. There's M&M's. There's, what, Skittles in there sometimes? Yeah, you said, like, special edition ones too, right? Yeah, the sour, sour tropical ones.

It had a lot of stuff in there. It had, like, snacks. Wow, so it's not, I thought it was just jerky. It had, like, one meal. Yeah, so did I. I thought it was just one meal. Yeah. So did I. I thought it was like a bar. I guess he was saying that's like kind of older, like 30, 40 years ago they did that maybe.

Yeah. I mean, back when you used to get cigarettes in your MREs. Yeah. I mean, you get, you get snacks, you get, you get dessert, you get a drink, you get sides, you get the entree. It was like lunch at high school. It was probably, it was better. Yeah.

That's what I was saying. I was saying it's better than like school lunch wow it tasted pretty good mark mixed up uh like like tang almost yeah type of like substance in a in a bag and he's having a hard time drinking it but it looked good it was hard to drink it out of the bag but it tasted good yeah one of the things everyone always wanted they have these caffeine mints that come in i forget what package is in it's like the only way to get caffeine when you're here in the field and it's like this small pack of mints that come in. I forget what package it's in. It's like the only way to get caffeine when you're here in the field. And it's like this small pack of mints. It's caffeine infused.

Those things were game changing. But yeah, we lived off of those. Everybody fighting over them. Yeah. And it had blueberry cobbler in there too. A chocolate chip cookie. Wow. The cookie was really good. It was a little crumbly, but it was delicious.

It's good to know that they feed soldiers well on the field. Like, you guys aren't eating crap. Well, that's what I was saying. I was saying like now they, you know, it's great. They have something to look forward to. Yeah. Right. Because like what the hell else is going on, you know?

After a while you get tired of eating MREs because, you know, it's the same meals over and over again. After a while, you get tired of eating MREs because it's the same meals over and over again. But sometimes they'll bring out hot food for us, and you almost want the MRE over the hot food. I remember there's memes on the internet of the food you get in the field. You walk through the line, and it's a piece of steak the size of this bottle cap right here. Oh, so depressing. Really? And it's your potatoes are the size of M&Ms.

It's four little potatoes and a piece of steak. And you're like, are you serious? I just remember walking through the lines. We won an MRE. Wow. Yeah, just so people know, we filmed a YouTube video of Mark and Nick plowing through an MRE each. And Nick was taking Mark through, like teaching him how to cook it and stuff. It was really interesting. I mean, none of us had ever seen any of that.

No, I never, I didn't know anything about it. And it was, like, just a kind of normal-sized, almost looking like lunch bag type thing that you ripped open. And there was, like, a thousand things in there somehow. Yeah. I don't know how there was so much stuff in there. It is deceiving how much is in that package. Yeah. It's good.

Yeah, and this is the fact that, like like you can heat it up by just putting, like I thought it was like all dehydrated food and you would like drop water on it and it would like expand and it's like, oh, look, there's a cheeseburger. Or like, you know, whatever. It's like that drop of water. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like they put water in a bag and then that's how they cooked their food. It was dope.

Yeah. I didn't know anything about it. Yeah. It's a really good meal prep company idea. What are some of your thoughts with your business in the future? Would you ever want to have your supplements at a GNC? Do you want them in stores? Are you going to stay e-commerce?

What's some of the plan? Yeah, so we're going to stay e-commerce because distribution is great for volume, moving volume, but massive hits on profit margins. Right. So we're in some distribution like Australia with Massive Joe's in the UK. I have distribution work and distribution in Canada right now. Are you for sale on other websites as well?

We are, yes. Within their distribution platforms, but within the US, it's just our e-commerce platform. Right. And we like that just because we hold the profit margins. Right. For the future of product development, though. So, I mean, right now we have protein, pre-workouts, amino acids, pump, thermogenics, no tropics. So we have all of the performance supplements we really want for the time being.

And we're shifting focus for R&D and product formulation moving forward to health. So we have our strong greens, which is like wheat, grass, vegetable based. Now we're launching strong reds, which is fruit type, digestive enzymes, beets based. And then moving forward, more health-based products. So just because of the success of strong greens and the more focus on health as opposed to just sports performance, with it being a larger market as well that's where our shift is going so maybe potentially getting rid of like artificial sweeteners or something like that if you're any of your products have artificial sweeteners that kind of thing um so for all more like my vitamins and minerals that are for health yeah so for all the sports nutrition we use like sucralose and sweeteners but for all the health supplements, that's all naturally

flavored and sweetened. Stevia, monk fruit. Yep. So that'll be the go-to for all the health supplements. Cool. Health line moving forward. And we're just doing a lot with more athletes coming on the team. And we're also really slow to bring athletes on the team as well, just to make sure they,

you know, same with bringing on a new hire right um and doing more content with our athletes and then moving forward with that so that's the future right now is shifting not focus but new product focus on health and then content um any trade shows or anything like that that you guys mess with you guys any have any seminars um you have any you know things where maybe the athletes all meet shows or anything like that that you guys mess with? You guys have any seminars? You have any things where maybe the athletes all meet up or anything like that? Yeah, so the past two years we've done an event at our headquarters down in Texas. That's smart. I think that's like the best way to do it.

Yeah, so the first year was like a powerlifting seminar. We had like Matt Vincent and Silent Mike and Kyle hunt all come down paul revelia um and really great turnout really good time last year we did a similar event um and then this year we didn't do anything just because the move took a lot of our time um and with it being august right now it's almost too hot to have people around so in the fall we're going to do another sort of event at the warehouse, whether that's another powerlifting seminar, something like that, bring in some instructors. But we try to do that once a year. Trade shows, we haven't done any yet. But this year we're shooting for possibly the Arnold. Nice.

Yeah. I'd imagine you've been to them before. Yeah, I've been to the Arnold the past three years. Okay. Yeah. But I've been with other companies yeah so i think that's that's on the horizon for this year there's there's a lot of pluses to it um it sounds to me like you're a little bit like myself where you're like fuck it let's just get

out in front of customers and let's communicate with them and and let's get our product in their hand and let's get as much exposure as we can. Um, but from a financial perspective, a lot of people shy away from it because of the, of the financial commitment, you know, and, and it, but in my opinion, it's like, if you can figure out a way to reach some new customers, I think it's great. You would run into a lot of new customers. Um, the athletes that you're with now would all dig it. And then also they're probably already going to the event. So you can create more content that way from a content perspective alone. Even if you,

even if you like, even if you didn't even break even on selling product from a content perspective, it would a hundred percent be worth it. So even just from that point of view, it would work. Yeah. The main reason we want to go is I learned this the past three years going to Arnold,

you go with like a brand and you're with all the athletes. It's very rare that all the athletes get together. Right. So like from, from going with the companies and I'm with the athletes and with the company, I feel even more part of that team companies and I'm with the athletes and with the company I feel even more part of that team so I'm more

I'm more like willing and I want to be a part of that team even more and post about it more and push it more so getting the team together at an event like that

is super important to us that's the main reason we want to go and even like this weekend coming up in Texas we're bringing our whole team down and we're doing like team building events

and photo shoots and media, stuff like that. So that'd be really good, especially to get to Ross and Amanda in the same room that looking together. That's going to be great content. Yeah. Yeah. It ends up being, like I said, content wise, it will be great.

We've actually, we've been to, you know, nearly every show. We've examined it every which way we've gone small we've gone big we've you know tried to go there with a thin crew like just not a lot of people we try to go with a lot of people we've we've messed around a lot of different a lot of different things uh you know going to these events over the years but it's always great to actually you know run into new customers see the old customers get a lot of feedback i mean people sometimes come to the booth and they're like nearly crying because they really love to lift. And sometimes the strong sleeves or the slingshot allowed them to bench press or squat again. And they're just super pumped and excited about it.

So from that perspective, it's always been great. But this year, we really cut back on doing a lot of those shows, and I think we're actually just going to try to pick off everybody else's athletes just by doing podcast-type stuff. Oh, nice. Probably just like some nice – we'll find a nice setup for that. Hopefully it can be actually at the Arnold. I know they have conference rooms and stuff like that. So that's what I was looking to do this year just because, like I said,

we've kind of run the gamut of doing that often, and we want to see what it looks like if we don't go right see if it hurts at all or how it helps yeah i mean we've uh we've been wanting to the past couple years but there's always something going on with like yeah others either it's moving in a new warehouse or a new spot um you'll love it i think it'll be a great experience for you guys yeah no i'm looking forward to especially getting the team together because right now like i said warehouse or a new spot. You'll love it. I think it'll be a great experience for you guys. Yeah. I'm looking forward to it, especially getting the team together because right now, like I said, the focus is

building a team, not only the internal team, but athletes as well. Right. Yeah. Cool. Where can people find you? Instagram at NickBearFitness.

And if you go on YouTube, just search NickBear. Someone's going to pop up with me, probably with my shirt off. So you can click that subscribe button there. Getting sexy. Yep. Strength is pop up with me, probably with my shirt off. So you can click that subscribe button there. Getting sexy.

Yep. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch y'all later.