Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 23 - Jarett Perelmutter

Episode Date: March 23, 2018

Jarett Perelmutter "JP" is a Mixed Martial Artist, Crossfit athlete and owner of Brick Crossfit. He and Mark discuss business and why being "rich" still motivates JP. Apologies in advance for the harsh background noise, we were hit with a rare heavy hail storm in Sacramento, Ca. ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell

What boxing thing did you catch? I saw you hitting some mitts and stuff. Maybe that was when I was at Jackson's in New Mexico. I'll put it over there. It was, yeah. Oh, yeah, I sent him a link to it. Oh, actually, this one's from Instagram. Oh, yeah, that's in LA.

Dude, that's smooth. That's a lot of work. That's decades. That's a lot of punching. And so that's decades. That's a lot of punching. And so that's, that's not, that's not you learning in a couple of weeks, man.

That's fucking, that's a lot of work. I'm glad you appreciate it. Yeah. So that's Cleveland, his brothers, Andre Berto, who was a WBC,

WBA world champion, fought Floyd, Floyd Mayweather in his last fight. Well, Floyd's his last fight, Floyd's last fight before Connor. Yeah. The 49 49 so we're good to go cool yeah how long you been uh involved in like mma and stuff like that

so i started in martial arts when i was five shit yeah was it like a karate thing back when you were a kid were you like i'm gonna mom and dad i'm gonna do karate hiya basically you know running around and like breaking everything in the house it was really my grandma who took me down to take karate lessons because i thought you say she took you down like she took you out she could have my grandma was badass it's you know funny because you know most was she taller than you here we go here we go we Here we go. We got to start them out early. Hey, you know, what was funny was in our house. If,

if there was a T like back in the day, what was that show with Bruce Willis? Like moonlight or moonlight? Yeah. I think it was called. Yeah. So I just remember my parents watched it. If,

if him and I guess Sybil Shepard was the other one. Sounds good. Okay. Yeah. So if they would be making out on TV, my grandma would lose her shit. We curse on this by be making out on TV, my grandma would lose her shit. Can we curse on this, by the way? Yeah. She would lose her shit. She'd like jump in front of the TV.

How could you let the kids watch that? That's disgusting. I can't believe it. But if a Clint Eastwood movie came on or an action movie, the more death and murder, she was all about it. She was all about it. My dad would be like, what are you doing?

Oh, Clint Eastwood never killed anybody that didn't deserve it. Let's just face it. True. So for her, she just knew I was just a wild maniac. And so she took me down to martial arts and that's. That's, that's cool. And she just knew that that was something that you were excited about. Did you see any like movies or anything?

Was there Bruce Lee or something or? Yeah. Kung Fu Theater. Nice. I was that guy on Sundays. Me and my brother would watch it. And then I always, you know, I had a big bully brother. Looked kind of like you, you know, just bigger.

Picking on you all the time. Oh yeah. You have brothers and sisters or just a brother? I have an older brother, an older sister and a younger sister. Oh, cool. But many of my issues probably stem from him, like beating on me when I was a kid, you know, like holding me down and tickling me. And now I have, like, this obsessive behavior with people touching my neck and tickling my armpits

because when I was a kid. Don't tickle his armpits. She knows. She knows. Not on the neck or the armpits. Yeah, it's interesting, you know, how you get those things from your childhood that, uh, that I'm kind of the same way. Like, uh, when it came to like any sort of like wrestling and stuff, my brothers used

to kill me all the time. Yeah. And we would practice like WWE moves on each other all the time. Did you get in any of that? Did you watch wrestling as a kid? Oh man. I, when I was a youngster, yeah, I used to love it. My grandma must not have liked that either.

No, the wrestling, the wrestling she liked because it was violent. Yeah, that she liked, but we would watch all of that, you know, and then, you know, beg our parents, you know, parents year round, just like, please take us to WrestleMania when that first came out. Oh, you were mentioning that you begged your, like, parents to bring you to Gold's Gym, right? Yeah. Because you heard that the Hulkster was going to be there, right? Yeah, yeah.

And you knew, like, Lou Ferrigno would be dangling around there or you just thought he would. So in like my early teens, when I got into. Lou Ferrigno. How great is that? Incredible Hulk. Yeah. When I got into doing, you know, what I thought was attempting to become a future world champ level bodybuilder. Right.

You showed me the photos. There's no question. There's no question. I mean, you know, December 91. world champ level bodybuilder. Right. Um, at 93 pounds. There's no, no question. There's no question. I mean, you know, December 91. No question where you were heading

if MMA didn't get in your way. Yeah. And kickboxing and everything else. Uh, yeah, I went down there. That was so cool, man.

And then, uh, you know, what's crazy is that as you get older, you like take for granted what you have available to you, or you become desensitized to it. You know? And it's like,

when I was young, it was just the most amazing thing in the world. And then he's getting older. You're like, ah, yeah, gold's gold's Venice. It's 20 minutes away.

We can go wherever we want. You probably remember a lot about that though. I mean, like when you, when things like that happened to you as a kid, you remember, you remember it like it was yesterday. You remember like the weather,

you remember the smell, you remember like everything is associated to like that particular weather, you remember the smell, you remember like everything is associated to like that particular day when you see or meet, you know, someone who's famous or even just get a glimpse of somebody that you kind of idolize, right? Oh yeah, for sure. You know, story. So one thing is I have realized that some of those memories from when I was a kid, because they were so, such a big deal to me that I feel as if in my head, I created the story that I thought it was. And then, you know, I, I'm sure you've experienced this where sometimes you go back on a childhood experience or a place or, or, or an event venue.

And you're like, oh man, I remember this place being 10 times the size or it just in my head, you know, you formulated this something that was just like more fantastical. I can create that word. And that's how some of those things, you know, in my head play out. And they're better off that way. Yeah. Did you ever meet anybody and disappointed or you were just too young and too, too fired up to really notice any flaws with some of these guys? Maybe as you got older?

As I got older, when I started to meet some of my, you know, maybe martial arts heroes, you can tend to get disappointed, you know? You realize there's some vodka in their Gatorade bottle or some shit, you're like, who the fuck's this guy? You're like, the fuck? Yeah, you're not even, you don't just have skeletons in the closet,

like you're fucking carrying them around with you. Like, God, leave that at home. Right. You know, Mr. Miyagi, he just settled down. Yeah, he's out at the strip club all night. That actually happened to me. I went to one of those martial arts super shows in Vegas. And, you know, you're out in the casinos and you're driving around or you go, you know, you're walking down the strip and you see like a strip club and you look over and some of your lifelong martial

arts heroes are all just like funneling in there. Oh shit. It's like, no. You're like, what's happening here? Yeah. You're supposed to be in bed by eight and you know, you don't even sleep laying down. Yeah. And so how long have you been involved in, in fitness?

Like when did you start lifting and stuff? So let's probably put this right there. Is that better? Yeah. And so how long you've been involved in, in fitness? Like when, when did you start lifting and stuff? So put this right there. Is that better? Yep. Sorry. It's my extremely short legs. There you go. I probably,

well, I had, I was one of those kids who had a bench in his house. That's the best. Yeah. With that, like super skinny, super skinny bar and the screw on coll collars those heavy steel screw-on

collars and the sand filled like cement bench width was really tiny and and then the handles for where the and like you could potentially miss that and like tear your rotator cuff and done blow out a bicep yeah drop the bar into your mouth oh my god that was most dangerous setup known to man just ever and so we had one of those with those gray cement filled plates. Oh yeah. Yep. That slid on there and- Grabbed them from like Sears or some shit, right?

Something. And it came with the, what was it? Like ergonomic curling bar. You know, the preacher curling bar and it came with that set. And so I would do that. Who's the guy that like made that thing up? You know what I mean? He's probably living

on an island retired with zillions of dollars We need a bar that's like periodically bent so that we can curl it better so it feels better when we curl it.

Like what a stupid fucking thing that is. Only somebody like Smokey would make that, right Andrew? Oh God. Right. Dude, weird,

you know, weird, a weird concept. Did you ever use that thing that went over your head that's exactly what i was going to bring up with the steel player that's your chest fucking arm blaster in the mirror yeah yeah the arm blaster up easy curl bar and arm blaster combo there you go oh man the arm the arm blaster deal because it kept your you know kept your arms like in alignment you know rather than that's right rather than your elbows coming really far forward to kind of curl up your arms.

Maximum pump. You get the maximum tension on the bicep. Some of that stuff is just so silly, but some of it has made kind of a comeback. A muscle isolation type work. It's really effective. I think a lot of times this stuff from bodybuilding, you know, bodybuilders have been, uh, kind of pushed to the wayside a little bit because there's, there's so many drugs in the sport. I think as people got older, they kind of recognized that and they were like, well, I don't really know if there's really much to learn from these guys.

However, uh, bodybuilding is one of the safer sports, you know, the pro guys, again, they're, they're taking a lot of shit. So they're messing with their health quite a bit, but a lot of people that I know that do Olympic lifting, powerlifting, CrossFit or bodybuilding, the bodybuilders are usually the most healthy. The bodybuilders to have less wrist issues, less shoulder problems, less lower back, um, because the movements are, uh, isolated and they're done in such a way that it kind of, it promotes you using less weight to get more of an effect from it.

Or as you say, they're probably scaling the weight down, but doing more variation and repetition. And in weightlifting and powerlifting, I mean, what are we constantly doing? We're always lifting too much weight. You know, we're always like. We're always outside of what we should be doing. And we know it. And you being a coach and somebody that owns multiple gyms now, when somebody comes to you and is like, hey, I want to do ABC, but this keeps happening to me, you can very easily spin that advice over to them. And you can very easily say, hey,

I think you're going too heavy. But how hard is it to follow that yourself? Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, we've all crossed over to the dark side a thousand times. You know, even when we swear we won't do it again after an injury. Yeah. You know, it's like we get stupid six weeks later.

So you were a professional kickboxer at one point? Yeah. Yeah. So I basically was like pro-am. So I could fight in certain countries and accept money and fight pro and then be able to still maintain amateur status fighting in the US. But spent quite a bit of time in the amateurs and fought in some really great organizations, some of which are based not too far from here. What do you love in terms of martial arts?

What's your favorite? I'm sure you have many different practices and things like that. What's your favorite thing to do? Currently jujitsu. But if I can get on a set of gloves and hit the bag, that to me, that's my yoga. That's my zen zone. I can dim the lights out, play class. Maybe a little less figuring out for you because you've been doing it for so long. Yeah, that's right. And the juiu-jitsu, you're still. Still figuring it out. I still feel like I haven't even earned the right to wear a white belt.

Jiu-jitsu seems impossible. It's one of those things where they say that you hear a lot, especially from advanced guys, the better you get at it, the harder it gets. Oh, really? Yeah. The better you get, the harder it gets. That actually makes some sense because that happens a lot in lifting you know um you get uh like analysis paralysis you know whereas when you were young and just and hungry you just kind of did stuff and it sort of came naturally to you

and people are like holy shit you're really good at this and you're like oh like i am but in jujitsu i can imagine that can be because you are continuing to increase the difficulty. I'd imagine like I've learned tiny bits of jujitsu over the years. I got to roll with Kyle Kingsbury more recently and he's like walking me through all this stuff. And I'm like, what is this going to turn into? The fuck am I doing? And next thing you know, I have been like a legitimate hold where I could actually hurt him. And I'm too dumb. I'm too inexperienced to even know that I have been anything.

And I'm like, holy shit. But I imagine as you keep, you know, as you keep going down that, that path, it probably gets harder and harder. Oh yeah. Yeah. What'd you get him in by the way? Do you remember? I have no idea.

Andrew, what did I get him in? You remember? I think it's just pretty basic, like arm bar or something. But I didn't know what we were doing. It was actually funny because I just basically jumped into a class that they had going on at the Auden Academy. So I jumped into the 10th planet, whatever the hell they call it, jujitsu class. And yeah, it was amazing. I mean, Kyle had a match like the next day.

So I was like, I don't think this is smart, Kyle. Like, I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm totally going to hurt you because I'm going to be a buffoon and not, you know, know exactly what's going on. But the first exposure I had to jujitsu was watching the first UFC, watching the first few episodes, watching the first few UFCs in general, the pay-per-views. And I was completely amazed by it. I was like, what is, I'm like, wait, wait, what's happening? Yeah. What's going on here?

This smaller guy can just grab onto this other guy and like absorb his weight and then just put him in a hole and then it's over. Like how painful could it be? What is he doing to that guy? Like the early days of hoist when he'd come in in the gi. Yeah. I'm like, I don't understand. He choked him out it be? What is he doing to that guy? Like the early days of hoist when he'd come in and the ghee. Yeah. I'm like, I don't understand.

He choked him out. How was he doing? He like, it was, you know, cause a lot of times it wasn't just a traditional choke. You know, it wasn't just like a guillotine or it wasn't just like a rear naked choke.

It wasn't just some of those things. It was like choking, choking out people with their legs and their feet and their forearms and all these different things. There's Kyle going at it right here like he's trying to have me to work on these mobility drills and i can't move to save my life i'm like trying to figure it out i'm like nope that ain't working yeah his movement's probably just spectacular right yeah kyle is uh he's somebody that's working on all these uh different movements all the time and you know do. Have you found that jujitsu really helps you with your mobility?

I've heard that quite a bit. Oh, yeah. And the more flexible you are, the better dexterity that you have, really the more you're going to excel at a faster rate than somebody with less mobility. Oh, there we go. I'm getting him in some sort of ankle lock or something. Yeah. Now he's jacking me up. You know, the hard, hard thing about a lot of these things is, you know, in, in, in lifting and in some aspects of like CrossFit and stuff, you're going to really like bear down on some stuff and you're going to really tighten up a lot. Like if you do an Olympic lift, um, or if you do

a deadlift or something like that, you're, you're, you got to get a lot of tension. You got to get a lot of air in your stomach and kind of just hold that position the whole time. But when it comes to striking or when it comes to jujitsu, these things are kind of done more in spurts. And if you don't relax, you really wear yourself out, right? Yeah. There's almost like a, a, a midpoint where you have to be like relaxed in a subtle tense state while maintaining your

breathing patterns because really it's the breath that'll take it out of you if you're not maintaining your breath oh look at that's an old school video you're digging deep on the youtubes what i really want you to notice about this video though more than anything is the white super short booty shorts way before their time. Dude. This is way before CrossFit. I want you to make note of that. Wow, man.

Yeah, those things are digging in there so hard you got to pick them out of your crotch a bunch of times. Yeah. Well, that's part of the strategy. This other guy ain't going to win. This guy is going to get slaughtered. Look at the shorts you're wearing. Yeah, how do you beat those? You know what I mean?

Yeah, you're wearing. Yeah. How do you beat those? You know what I mean? Yeah. You're wearing some white booty shorts that would make any CrossFit girl very, very jealous right now. That's right. They're a little bit long in terms of getting the cheek to hang out. Look at the ref. He doesn't give a fuck about what's going on right now. He's like, this is the fucking eighth match of the day. He's like, these guys are awful.

These guys suck. This fucking kid is wearing white short shorts. He's like, this is a fucking eighth match of the day he's like these guys are awful these guys suck this fucking kid's wearing white short shorts he's like this is disgusting why can't i be why can't i be coaching women's beach volleyball or something instead of these kids oh man that's 2000 i was a nine years ago so this is shortly after i started jujitsu uh right as i was kind of like tapering out of my competitive fight career. So the Gracie name was already huge in America by then. Did that affect you going into this match? No, I was actually really fortunate, man, because I was trading privates.

I was teaching stand-up fighting to one of Henzo's original American black belts that had a school out in Weston. He's still there. Stan Beck was my first jujitsu coach and he's still there running a great operation. And he was my coach and I was training with those guys. And prior to that, man, we were getting all of our training off of YouTube. So that was the only place we could really find it. You know, we were so busy training and stand up and just beating the shit out of each other that, you know, we'd search YouTube, find some videos and then practice.

I think there's actually one up there where I did, I had no right to do it, but you know, you don't know any better and you don't care where I did like an instructional video, uh, basically from like that position where I switched from, you know, turtle taking the guys back, um, and then choke them out. And I do a, uh, you know, a routine of movements from there. And I look back on it now and actually look at it and go, wow, that's actually not that bad. I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but that kind of makes sense. Because if you, if you, you know, if you have an understanding of like joint manipulation and body awareness, you can, you can kind of figure some stuff out.

The way that these moves are like cinched is it's crazy. The intent, the intensity, you know, how, how, how quickly it goes from, huh, it kind of seems like someone has something and then they have it. And then you're like fucking toast. Yeah. There's nothing a half second later. It's like when I asked my coach now, you know, I said, oh, you know, it goes by mess today's Brazilian guy, uh, Cobrinha, you know, I'll ask him, say, hey, Mestre, what do you do in this position?

And you're just waiting for like the most magical life altering response. Like this is exactly the steps, you know, he just looks at you and he'll be like, you just shouldn't get into that position. Because once you're there, you know, it's just good night, brother. You're screwed. So you should be thinking ahead. Is that something you have to do a lot in Jiu Jitsu? Oh, it's just, it's just good night, brother. You're screwed. So you should be thinking ahead. Is that something you have to do a lot in jujitsu? Oh yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, it's like if you're one step ahead, you're, you could potentially be four steps behind. Yeah. I gotcha. Yeah.

You know, you're, you're trying to put together the sentence at the beginning of the story. Yeah. Yeah. And you've tried, that's gotta be, I mean,

because it's physical too, that's gotta be, you know, insanely difficult. I think we, we tend to, uh, like not physical, too, that's got to be insanely difficult. I think we tend to not respect how much performance matters. There's a lot of people, and I talk about diet quite a bit and got the book out and things like that. There are a lot of people that suffer from obesity and type 2 diabetes.

We lose too many people from heart disease and things that are preventable, you know, or things that we can at least starve off for another decade or so. But the performances that we have in the gym are really crucial. We have to be able to perform at a high rate. And if your diet, if you're somebody that listens to this show quite a bit, if your diet is compromising your performance, then you're making a mistake because you got to be able to perform at a high level. And I don't mean like,

I don't mean you need to be a professional at anything. I just mean you need to be able to have good workouts. That's right. How do you fuel your workouts? Like, you know, doing kickboxing and jujitsu and running businesses and stuff. I mean, what have you found works well for you food wise? You know, I, so I follow, and not for the trend purposes, but I follow generally a gluten-free

style diet. And I do that because it just makes it easier to select the foods. It takes some of the mindfulness out of it. So I can go, okay, if it's gluten-free, I'm already kind of like halfway there. It's probably lower in sugars. It's lower in carbohydrates for the most part. Yeah. You know, unless you're eating gluten-free donuts like we were talking about last night. You know, unless you're just gobbling a dozen of those down. I think it's safe to bet, you know, that most of the time when people talk about gluten-free, they're suggesting that their choice of carbohydrates is probably coming from things like rice,

different types of potatoes. Right. You would hope that's what they're doing. Yeah, for the most part. And not just replacing everything with a gluten-free sandwich or donut. And although those things might happen, they might come into play because it is nice to have some freedom and have a snack here and there, but it's not the majority. That's right. Yeah. And you know, when it came to my nutrition, I'm generally a creature of habit.

So what I would try to do is find places where I knew I could trust the ingredients and the food I was eating. And I would just habitually visit those places on the regular. And, you know, being in L.A., you're sourced heavily with good quality places to eat if you can find them. And it was just easy for the last, you know, what, 10 years of my life to basically just be going to Whole Foods every day or now with Air One popping up. And be going in there and just hitting the salad bar, putting some clean proteins on it, eating a simple salad and being good with it. That place is crazy. It's got like, you know, weird cultured coconut yogurt.

Oh, yeah. It's like 50 bucks or something. You're like, what the hell is that? Like, you want to just buy it just to see what will happen to you. That's right. Are you all of a sudden just going to get super jacked off and slugging some of that down? That's like the running joke. You're like, oh man,

if this bee pollen is $633 and this bee pollen is $23, you got to buy the $633 one. It's got to be way better because those are from higher class bees. It's got to make you better. Where do you live in LA? In West Hollywood.

And then where are you training at? So Brick is based in west my my headquarters locations right there in west hollywood it's only a half mile away from where i live so it's super easy you don't have to commute and then i do my jujitsu at cobrinas which is on highland and wilshire yeah and that's our uh that's our super snazzy website right there tell me a little bit about brick um you knowick is a chain of gyms that you developed. What's sort of the mission of Brick? Or the goal? If I tried to give you my

Gandhi life-changing statement, it's really to try to impact the most amount of people possible with a safe, fun, and friendly environment that emphasizes good quality movement, which would then lead back into being safe, which if it's safe, it can be fun. If you're having fun and it's safe, then you're more inclined to be in a more friendly environment. Right. Are you trying to cater to a wide variety of people or are you trying to be a little

tunnel vision and cater to maybe like pro athletes or soccer moms or are you trying to channel it towards a certain type of person? Yeah, I'm going to give you a really cheesy saying or as our mutual friend Jason likes to call them JP-isms, you know, which one of my mentors used to always say, if you market specifically towards the niches, you end up in the ditches. But if you can market and attract the masseses you end up in the ditches but if you can market and attract the masses you end up in the upper classes and so the idea of my business really is to make sure that the barrier entry yeah there you go you can have that one is is to

try to lower that down let's chalk that one please yeah it is to be able to attract and to uh open the doors to as many people as possible. Like truly understand the idea of being all inclusive. Like I don't care what your gender association is these days, you know, what your sexual preference is. Those bathrooms are confusing. Yeah.

I don't know what to do in those bathrooms. I don't know which way to go. Yeah. I don't know what's going on. Religion, how much money you have. None of that matters. Right.

We just want to have a great place. People can come in. It's welcoming to all. And the most important thing that you need to bring to us is just having a really good attitude. Just be a good person. Just don't be a prick. I'll take that.

You can have mine. We'll share. I'm getting so much done here. It's so good. And so really, that is ultimately what I tried to create in the headquarters so that I could scale that out as I opened up. And then how did this come to be? So, brick in general?

Just owning a gym. I think a lot of people think it's an attractive thing to own a gym. And it can be in some ways, but it can also be very dangerous in a lot of ways. It can be very time consuming. It can be very dangerous in a lot of ways. Uh, it's very, it can be very time consuming. It can be something that drains a lot of money from you. Uh, was this something that you wanted to do for a long time? So the short, simple story is I had a chain of martial arts schools in South Florida called team martial arts centers. And as most out of cover for your cocaine distribution. Yeah, that's what you had to say.

It's going to say. So as, you know, I hit a rough patch in 2007, 8, when the market was crashing over there. And like most young guys who were making too much money without any real guidance, I had spent it on all the wrong things. And I was like over leveraged as most people in South Florida were at the time.

So when the market crashed, although my business was doing well, personally, I had just drained it in my lifestyle. So what I did was I sold them all to the individual, like my head instructors that I had for whatever I could to get whatever value I was able to and move back to LA. Because one thing my dad said to me, I had a buddy who basically blew his head off, right? He just went through everything and figured that since he had no money left, had no identity which was a sad thing because he was a really good dude and when and he was the third guy i'd known in several months that had committed suicide i was like fuck there's a real problem out here so short story long my dad said

hey man listen pack all your shit come back home start over again doesn't matter how much debt you think you're in or if you forgot to file bankruptcy get out because there is no debtor's prison because i'll never forget him saying that to me he's like there's you can't you don't go to jail for that right so get out get out or especially before you end up going to jail for being a bum right so pack up come home and so anyways what happened was i ended up going home and i'd already started getting into crossfit and i joined into a crossFit gym in LA, which is run by a guy who also did martial arts. There was an instant connection. And after being there for a few months, I just noticed there was like a hole in the market because I'd now visited, I was drinking heavy

Kool-Aid, going to every CrossFit gym I could, wearing all the t-shirts and wearing the knee sleeves. That happens a lot. People get excited. I mean, CrossFit can be really exciting. There's a lot of different movements. There's a lot of different things to try to master. And, you know, it's very challenging. And then the conditioning, I think, is, I think that level of conditioning can, I don't even know what the right word is, but it does something to your mind where you do kind of get addicted to some of that.

Right. And because you get what you think is good fast, which is really all you did was get better than how bad you were when you started. Right. You become addicted to that. And man, I saw a hole in the market and I had, you know, I had what I thought was enough business savvy behind me where I could do it and do it in a more modern way. Keeping the protocols that I had from my martial arts schools and bring something a little cleaner, a little sparklier, a little shinier to the market and not just try to bring that dungeon-y kind of warehouse feel, you know, because I kind of attribute it.

I was in the ski industry early on and the snowboard world was all about that grunge at the time, you know, in the, uh, in the early, early and mid nineties was all like, uh, Nirvana grunge, that kind of stuff. You know, nobody at that time was marketing to more like that middle to upper class style market who were actually the ones that can afford to go skiing and snowboarding. Right. And you know, that always stuck in my head. Almost like the mindset of like, uh, you know, Hey, we can still get after it in this gym and we can sweat and we can bleed and we can do all these crazy things in here. But just because we do that doesn't mean that there has to be sweat and blood and chalk all over the place all the time. The place can be clinical.

The place can look nice when it's not in use. And when it is in use, it could look like a gym, right? That's right. And that's what we wanted to bring because it didn't cost anything extra to have showers. We were going to have them anyway. So why not make them look nice? And why not have somebody come at night and clean the place and keep it shiny?

If your showers and bathrooms and stuff like that look nice, you would hope that people would be less likely to ruin them. Right. And you can develop that culture, right? You know, because I go into gyms nowadays, we're like, oh, we can't get our community to keep the place clean or we have a hard time keeping the place shiny it's like well that's a cultural issue right you like you haven't instilled that in your people where they take

oneness on your space and they love it and they want to they want to keep it polished you know yeah like here's inside of la from it's not a funny thing years and years ago that looks that looks awesome they're very well organized and you know all the plates and kettlebells and everything's all got a spot. But I think a biggest learned that from seeing maybe you do it yourself or somebody else in your gym, do it, or it's just, it's just,

they are not even thinking about it. And it could be something that's building up in you and you need to just communicate about it. You need to say, Hey, that that's not where we, we have a locker room for that, or we put this stuff over here and then it's less of a thing, you know, and I think that's a it's a tough thing as an owner or as a CEO of a company sometimes to always try to communicate that because you don't always want to you don't want to be a dick all the time.

Yeah. I mean, listen, I wasn't shy early on. I caught a lot of shit in the industry for it to let people know. Listen, I opened up brick to make money. I wanted to get rich. You shouldn't be saying that. people know, listen, I opened up brick to make money. I wanted to get rich. You shouldn't be saying that. I know, right? That's like the fucking dark hole word taking to the vortex of death in this industry.

But I wanted to open it and get rich. But I also knew that if I was going to get rich, my team under me would succeed and do well, you know, in addition, they would, they would be along with me for the ride. I wouldn't be the only one getting there. I wanted to be able to develop real careers that they could make money and maybe get into other investments and do other things in their life and really look 10, 15 years down the line and be like, wow, this was something cool that I became a part of and it was real. I went to a meeting that they had

at Rogue Fitness. Bill Henninger was nice enough to just kind of let me sit in on it. I just happened to be at Rogue and did a bunch of stuff with them for the day. And he's like, you know, they told me I was done and you could take off. And I was like, oh, kind of what's going on now? And Bill's like, oh, we have like a big, you know, meeting with everybody.

And he's like, it's really nothing like private or anything. He's like, you can stick around if you want. I'm like, I'm not missing this. Are you kidding me? Right. Listen to Bill Henninger talk, you can stick around if you want. I'm like, I'm not missing this. Are you kidding me? Right. Listen to Bill Henninger talk. You know, even if I can only hear him for five minutes, I'm going to listen to him talk.

He basically just said how a lot of the people that work there at Rogue Fitness, how they, a lot of them will start, you know, at the bottom, they might start, you know, in packaging or receiving, or they might start in customer service, or they may start in even, you know, the manufacturing side, even some welding and stuff like that. But they're going to have opportunities to work their way up. And he was given example after example of these people that moved up in the company. And he's like, I want everybody in this room to understand you can work here the rest of your life.

You don't need to search for other jobs. And I was like, holy shit. Like that is really cool. Cause there's kids in there that are probably, you know, just starting out. Maybe they're, you know, making two grand a month or I don't know what they make or what the deal is, but probably a minimum wage ish gig or maybe a little bit more. And, uh, the fact that they can stay there and the fact that they have room to continue to grow is a big deal. Yeah, that's powerful. You know, that's big.

Now look at that company. It's a giant monster. This is like six or eight years ago. Yeah, and that's, you know, kudos to a guy like Bill, you know, to create a company like that, that can create so many careers and opportunities for other people. Right. That's beautiful. And that's, when I opened Brick, I wasn't. And if he doesn't have money, he can't do any of that.

That's right. You have to make, you got to figure out a way to make money. That's right. And that's when I opened Brick, I wasn't. And if he doesn't have money, he can't do any of that. That's right. You have to make, you got to figure out a way to make money. That's right. So I wanted my team and I wanted everybody around me to know, and I didn't care. I wanted the industry to know like, this is what, listen, Brick's going to provide a great quality product, all inclusive, et cetera. But we're also going to set a standard that you can make real money with this business, which means you can continuously reinvest into your business.

And you as an owner can actually live a real life and become rich in other areas of your life, right in relationships, in health. And, you know, now when I do my consulting for some of these locations, one of the first things I begin to work on with these,

with some of these owners is that is getting them out of that poor mindset where you start talking to them about money and they, they become, they start to shy away or become uneasy. Or as you know, in, in much of this fitness industry, people start, they don't even become envious. They become jealous. And so they start hating on it. It's like, Hey man, you're hating on me because I'm doing well at something and making money. Like it's fucking America. Right. Like, I'm sorry, Kim Jong-un is not taking all my profits, man. Right.

Right. You know, that's why I'm doing this. And if it, if it, if people didn't like it, they wouldn't be paying. Well, and you run into a lot of people, especially in these communities where they have the mom and pop gym, they have 60 members, but 30 of them are on some sort of special deal. Yeah. It's crazy. The membership fee is supposed to be 150 bucks, but this guy over here pays 120.

This guy over here pays a hundred and over here pays 100 and these other 25 people pay 50 bucks and they're just factoring everybody in as if they pay full price and it's like that's not true that's not really what's happening you only have you know half your members only pay full price or whatever it might be and i'm sure you have to walk those people hey we gotta oh man i mean they're saying the steps are crazy. And then you find out that they're barely breaking even in the facility. They're working a second job or they've been at it for three or four years and they're barely pulling out 500 to 1,000 bucks a month for themselves. You're like, how have you been doing this?

You can't love this anymore. It's impossible for you to still be passionate about this business going broke. Yeah. The energy's got to, got to start to fade at some point, right? Yeah. I mean, you know, we talk about that. Like once your income and the value of what you're doing shrinks below, uh, like the amount of energy it takes to maintain that passion, it will, it will shrink too.

How long do people care about their job for? Yeah. Six months. Yeah. Six months? Yeah. A year maybe, right? Like it's hard to get people to care about their job for a long period of time. And it's because of what you just said. Yeah.

They put a lot of time into it. They're like, I don't really know what I'm going to get from all this. And then the same thing with the clients. So you got to provide a lot of value for them. Do you guys have personal training or do you guys have group training or kind of combination? Well, we do a combination. Yeah, we do a combination. It's exactly as you say though, you know, so I know that at this point in my career and where I'm at, I'm not as passionate about like individual coaching one-on-one for fitness. I'm really passionate. I get excited about coaching my coaching staff

on how to be better coaches and how to be better individual businesses on their own and how they can develop their careers and then helping my other licenses. That's what like that fucking juices me up. But I know that I'm good at hiring people who have that passion and bringing them on the team. And so I kind of, you know, I can pat myself on the back for to still be open, open-eyed and knowing how to do that. And, you know, that is still a main focus for us at Brick, even with our personal training. We tell them, you know, if you're going to be in personal training, you got to be as passionate with that client as you are on day one, as if you hope to have them three or four years from now.

And a lot of times, the reason why you look at certain trainers, why they run through their personal training book every six months is because they lose the passion of getting involved with that. They, well, they have the person warm up for 15 minutes while they're on their phone. Right. And then they have the person, you know, go through a workout that they're not that excited to take them through. They get through the workout and then they're on their phone for another 15 minutes while you cool down.

Hey, go on the bike over there. You know, it's like, yeah, it's like that was a, I just paid for that. What the fuck is that? Right. That's it. And it's so competitive now. There's so much information available on the internet that if you're not providing a high level professional product, you're going to get gobbled up and spit out.

They're going to call your bullshit fast. You know, and I have trainers. You can see them. Some of you have had to have talks with some of them where you're like, listen, you're out there doing that. You're giving them the same warmup, putting them on a rower, asking them to run around the block. You're phoning the shit in. You look to your right, the new trainers in there, iPad or laptop open with a full lesson plan, not just for the day. They probably have like the month mapped out for this individual and they have

all their vitals in there. They've taken their body compositions. They've done functional movement testing on them. They've like gone the extra mile. Yeah. Run with them. Do some of the stuff with them. Warm up with them. Cool off. Cool down with them. Show them you care. You got to remind them that you give a shit. Right. Because they're dealing with people that don't give a shit all day long. You know, and then you want to pay you a premium. And they get mad when they start looking at something else. People just think fitness is easy too. You think that you just go in and you just like work out, but there's a lot of things

to learn. You know, there's a certain way to do each exercise. That's right. You know, it's taking people through very basic movements today. Pushups. Had you guys doing some squats, some deadlifts. There's a lot of information that you can transfer and trade while somebody's doing a movement and a good coach is going to coach you.

They're going to coach you on every single rep. You go back and watch, and maybe Andrew can pull some of this up, go back and watch Mike Tyson in his heyday when he still had Kevin Rooney with him. That guy coached every combination that that guy ever threw. Oh, yeah. Even when he was already champ. Even when he was, he just sliced through everybody as a teenager. He's beating the crap out of all these, uh, heavyweights and he was just smashing people, but no combination that he ever through goes like

on top. It's, it's after every movement and you can almost see Tyson's like frustrated. He's like, fuck, like he almost feels like he can't get anything right, but they're trying to, they're trying to really have perfect movement. they're trying to have the best movement possible and it's obviously it worked well for them it provided a lot of value and he was able to knock the crap out of people right it's like you become desensitized so you allow a larger room for error like as a personal trainer you become comfortable with the client you're like okay if i give him 70 of my attention effort and effort, and energy, and instruction, he'll still assume that it's 100% of the value that he's paying for. You know, you're like, well, you're fucking doing

a disservice, right? It's like, you're talking about in the fight world. Imagine if Rooney would have done that to Tyson, he wouldn't have been who he was. But if you, if you're so passionate and care so much about it, that you bring it down to like that 99.99 percentile of perfection that you want, you will create greats, whether it be in your staff or yourself. When it comes to brick, I mean, you mentioned you want to kind of be able to branch out to the masses. What's some of the business model behind that? Because, you know, when I think of the masses, I start to think about like 24 hour fitness or California family fitness. And I think I heard recently at California family fitness, their minimum size gym is like 40,000 square feet, twice the size of the building that we're in

right now. Just a fucking massive place. So, you know, does your gym have to be big to be able to accommodate some of that? No, no, that's a good question. So really our business model runs from what I believe on the smaller end would be about 4,600 square feet if you're going to do a two-floor model. And it's probably also dependent upon the city and the area you're in because it could. That's right. You know, like if you're in New York City where I have two locations, which are larger spaces, you're going to be on a much higher liability risk factor to get those places open. My name has a lot of weight in New York. So just make sure you mentioned me next time you're over there.

That might've been the mistake I did early on. Oh yeah. You didn't mention me. Right Andy? It's big on the streets of New York. Any particular streets? Poughkeepsie. That's where I'm from.

No one cares. Nobody even knows I'm from there. I've been out here for, I've been out here forever. All right. From the mean streets of Poughkeepsie. That's where I'm from. Okay. That's where I'm from. No one cares. Nobody even knows I'm from there. I've been out here forever. All right. From the mean streets of Poughkeepsie. That's right. Yeah. So, you know, on a two-floor, so in our economics, we believe that a two-floor model is the right

place. That's the sweet spot. Right. And there's a lot of reasons for that. It did look a little bit like one of Jason's gyms that he took me into. There's a lot of reasons for that. That looked a little bit like one of Jason's gyms that he took me into. It had maybe about 1,500 square feet at the bottom, and then he had it upstairs.

Yeah, so in that particular location, absolutely. I've talked to him endlessly about that particular location. So, yes, that is more, and we agree, he and I both, on what the modern model looks like. That would very much be it. Gotcha. Where you've got like a main functional fitness training floor, if you're a CrossFit affiliate where you do your CrossFit workouts. And then a secondary floor where you can offer, you know, accessory programs.

It could be a little bit more private. People can go up there and kind of hide a little bit if they need to. Sure thing. You know? So in a two-floor model, you know, you can operate that. Like in most of mine, we offer what would be our functional fitness program, which is our CrossFit at this point. And then in a second floor, we can do our BX program,

which is like our bootcamp. So if you're familiar with any of the larger brands out there, like Orange Theory or Barry's Bootcamp, it would be our equivalent competitor. Right. But the difference is, and what we try to tell others is, if you're going to offer an accessory program,

you can't offer it as like, like it's third on the totem pole. You've got to offer it. If you're going to charge within the membership for it, it's got to have the same value means that you got to put the same emphasis on it. You got to, it's, you know, it's like, you can't just put it over there and say, oh, well, this is our bootcamp. And we only offer it one day, one, one time a day. Right. You know, and it's, you know, if you want to. That makes things kind of difficult because you have to offer multiple classes because

people have different schedules. Gyms are typically only busy in the morning and kind of late afternoon, evening. Right, prime time hours. And the gym could otherwise be dead. How do you escape some of that? Because you want to utilize every square inch of that facility that you're paying for every single minute of every single day, right? Right. So a lot of that goes back into what you're talking about, about the cities you open up in.

And that really is where your research gets into. So, you know, we were just, we were just looking into some of the numbers and modeling out some of SoulCycles business that they've been doing. And we looked at one of their locations in Los Gatos. Yeah. And we noticed that they have a very thin schedule in compared to what they have in

New York or what they may have in a bigger city. And so now you look at a company like them and you can say, well, they've got all the money in the world to do research. I guess it makes sense. I never even thought about any of this, but you have to think about this. So if you're in a bigger city, if you're in San Francisco and you're in Chicago and you're in New York City, you probably can afford a pretty good lifestyle. And maybe you don't have to be anywhere at any particular time. That's right.

So you can go train wherever the fuck you want. Right. So like in New York or L.A., we have classes that start at 6 o'clock in the morning. Like let's just take L.A., for example. Nobody works out there, by the way. You've got a class at like 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, for example. Nobody works out there, by the way. You've got a class at like six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, and 12. Then there's a short break. And at four o'clock, we start all over again until nine o'clock at night. And there are people in there every hour of the day.

It's just rocking all day long. Rocking. And New York will go early. It's like Phil's Coffee in Davis. Was it packed when you went in? There was people in there. Yeah. It's usually pretty damn packed. Yeah. And so you can find those groups that are are in those markets but you know you take soul cycle as a good example they're in los gatos they they too realize the obvious if you're in a town like los gatos you're gonna have maybe two hours in the morning that are prime you're gonna throw in a

light class in the afternoon and then you're gonna do one or two at night and i think on friday they didn't even have an evening class they've been open for a while now, you know, in terms of soul cycle, you know, several months under their belt, they're, they're in the mix and with all their marketing dollars, they still can't fill a full schedule. And so, you know, we tell owners, I don't care where you're opening. You have to know that information before you open because the numbers might not work. Right. Right. If you need to operate nine classes a day and have an average of eight people per class to break even, but you're in an area that's only going to service three class hours a day and fill them with nine people, you're broke from the beginning.

Yeah. And now it's a matter of what's your run rate in your pocket look like and how many people in your family do you borrow money from? And let's just tell them, Hey, you're never gonna get it back. And when it comes to an operation, like what you're talking about, it's not something that you can really, it is something that has to be planned out.

It sounds like, I mean, it doesn't sound like, it doesn't sound like it has a lot of wiggle room in that respect. Yeah. I mean, it's another, you know, cheesy JP-ism from my mentor, but it's, they say, proper planning promotes peak performance.

That's your P's. Proper planning promotes peak performance. And that's P's. Proper planning promotes peak performance. And that's the bottom line. We tell them with business, you're going to invest 80, 100, 500,000, a million bucks and not going to scrutinize every corner of it. And most of them don't. Why? Because they're so passionate about it. They want to put the passion blinders on because they don't want you to talk them out of what their passion is.

Like when you were a kid. Yeah. Well, and that's what people are promoting now. Don't let anybody talk you out of your dreams and follow your passion. Yeah. I mean, whatever your heart says. And by the way, my wife, who kind of always is the realist and the fun hammer sometimes, she'll just say like, hey, look, a lot of people just need to be more realistic.

Like that ain't going to like, I'm not trying to burst your bubble but that shit ain't gonna work that's right sometimes you have to kind of recognize that and then stop yourself for a second and say okay that's definitely possible i did trunch the numbers maybe i need to try something slightly different right right yeah you know what i tell it doesn't mean it's over it just means you gotta probably rethink your shit a little bit that's a hot button for me because i'm in that mix i've been in that world i was you know i've spent tens of thousands on tony robbins over the years and i've been through a lot of these guys and i've read a lot of you know a lot of coming in a little bit uh tony robbins is like a mentor yeah so i've you know i've ripped through a lot of that shit and some of these guys

have a great message but it's as you say man you know some of this stuff is ripped through a lot of that shit. And some of these guys have a great message, but it's as you say, man, you know, some of this stuff is really just a bunch of bullshit. Yeah. You know, like I make the joke, see it, believe it, achieve it. Like I was saying earlier, we're throwing the axe. Like, fuck you, see it, believe it, achieve it. You know, I've been seeing myself as some really awesome shit for a long time that I've believed and I've yet to achieve it.

Yeah. You know, and when's that going to happen? I'm not going to be able to make you tap out. You know what I mean? Like if we, you and I were rolling in jujitsu, unless I know, unless I like, I need to have a skill,

right? I can't just like get into some Zen mode and put my palms up and be like, Oh, I'm going to fuck up JP. It ain't going to happen. You're going to know how to get at everything. Even, even with my strength,

I might even feel kind of weak in comparison to people that you've grappled with because they already have the leverage and the knowledge. You don't have the knowledge. You're screwed. So I watch these guys on Instagram and I debunk their shit all the time. Like, fuck you. It's not just about like getting up and grinding. It's not about the grind.

You know, I know guys who are some of the hardest workers in the world and they're making like $27 an hour laying tar on a roof. Yeah, that's hard fucking work. That's grinding, you know? So why aren't they becoming billionaire? That's the way I look at it all the time. I'm like, I hang out at a fucking

coffee shop all day and fucking think up stupid ideas to sell to people. It ain't that bad. It's actually a lot of fun. That's a bad deal, right?

Yeah. So that's, that's kind of a hot, you know, like a hot topic for me that it gets me fired up. Well, there's just a lot of words

being thrown around. Yeah. It's easy to, it's easy to hot topic for me that it gets me fired up. Well, there's just a lot of words being thrown around. Yeah. It's easy to, it's easy to become famous for, for having really cool words or using someone else's words. Yeah. And you, and you kind of look at it and you're like, oh my God, that person, they, they did say a lot, but they didn't really say anything. Yeah. There was really nothing profound in there. They just, they're just kind of a, it's almost like just, you know, spewing out other people's, uh, information.

And I think what gets to be hard about that is sometimes you don't know somebody. So if you don't know who I am and I share something motivational and you pop on my Instagram and you read it, you might be like, who the fuck is this guy? I think he is. But if you don't know me and haven't been around me,

then maybe it comes off as, uh, being pompous or arrogant or whatever. The message could be skewed a little bit sometimes. That's right. Yeah. It's like, you know, know the message and the messenger before you start scrutinizing the shit out of it.

Right. But yeah, I tell people when people come to me, because we've done a ton of business seminars and say, oh, you know, I've got 200 grand and I want to open up a gym. You know, what's like the best words of advice you could give me? And I shit you not, I give the same speech every single time. I said, take half of that, give it back to whoever you borrowed it from.

Take the other half to Vegas. You have a better chance of making money on that than you will. I love that. That's great. And basically don't open. And they look at me like, fuck you. And I always say this to them. And in my head,

I said, if you listen to me, then I was right. You should not open up a gym. If you walk away and go, fuck that short, bald guy, he doesn't know what he's talking about. I'm going to make this work. Watch what I'm going to do. I'm going to make it happen. And then I go, that's the first step in knowing you might have what it takes to make this work. Right. Because you know as well as anybody, this shit ain't easy. You know, we have fun doing it because we have fun doing shit that's not easy. Yeah. But for the most part, you know, there's, you know, how many sleepless nights and stressful days have you had where you're like, fuck, I might be broke tomorrow. Yeah.

Or how many days have you had where you're like, fuck, I'm broke today. Yeah. If I don't pull this off tomorrow, I'm more broke. Insufficient funds. I thought that was my name i was like why does the fucking machine keep spitting that out they talking to me did they change my name i got a real email from the bank again today how do you know it's for you it said insufficient funds on yeah so i know it's for me it had to be for me yeah yeah no i've had plenty of uh plenty of days like that how do you know when something's a good idea for yourself?

Holy shit. You know, I think as I get older, I try to be more methodical about knowing what that is. And maybe that's a bad thing, right? But it can be. Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes it can be a bad thing. But I've tried to listen to the idea where you hear some of those that have done greater things than us at this, you know, at this point in their lives where they say, if you know, there's a need out there or even just a great want, like if there's a hole in a

market somewhere and you feel passionate that it's going to provide value, that's a good start as opposed to just being something that maybe you think is really cool. Yeah. You know, that's the hard part. Cause sometimes you get, if you think something, if you're like, man, like jujitsu, like it means the world to me, it changed my life. It changed my perspective. It's changed every piece of me and made me so much better. I'm going to open up these jujitsu gyms and, and you're so excited and passionate about

it. And then you kind of like five years down the road, just recognize, oh, fuck. No one really cares that much about jujitsu gyms and you're so excited and passionate about it. And then you kind of like five years down the road, just recognize, oh, fuck, no one really cares that much about jujitsu or I wasn't able to make them care that much about it. Right. And that those things can happen because it's cool for you and it's what you love. And maybe not everybody else wants to hear it or wants to be exposed to it. That's right. And so now, like in my adult phase and me and my fiance were great at doing this, where we love to get hyped up about new shit, right? Which is why it's awesome to have such a great, you know, partner and like a kick-ass teammate that can hype you up. She's way cooler than you, by the way. Yeah, she's way cooler than I am.

And way prettier too. I mean, you're all short and stuff. I am short. But have you seen me in a dress? No, I haven't. Have you seen me out of a dress? I. Neither. I have not. out of a dress. I neither. I have not. Okay. Well then fuck you for judging me. Yeah. I guess I haven't,

I guess I haven't seen everything there is to see. Yeah. No, you haven't. You haven't. I'm not standing on my two legs right now, by the way. Oh,

Hey, Hey now. Hey, I wonder how you wobble back and forth like that. That's why I'm off balance. Um, so what, one of the,

one of the fun things that we get to do is so we get really hyped up about shit, right? We'll have a crazy idea. We're like, oh my God, wait. And then she's got to hear it 24-7. She's like about ready to hang herself, right? Right. But what the cool thing is, is she'll, you know, just as I would to her, we like feed into it. We allow it to get super exciting because sometimes when you get full volcanic on it,

you can start solving some of the challenges that might actually come about, right? Because people will start questioning it. Oh, what, but what about this? And you just get so fired up. You start to solve some of the problems, but what that allows you to do is, is let it get so volcanic that if it doesn't still feel that way, a few days down the line, you start to recognize, okay, wait a minute. That was really cool. Five days ago when I was all hyped up on pre-workout and I had a great day at the gym. You know what I mean?

We just finished having sex and everything was great. And now, you know, let's go open up a chain of fucking dog hotels. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. We love puppies. Right.

And then you realize, okay, maybe that's not a budding, you know, booming market. Or you just kind of, maybe, maybe it's not necessarily like the worst idea, but maybe it's not a good fit for you at the time because you can't devote the time and energy to it. You know, if you have something at this point for you, you're probably, well, a brick is probably far enough along to where you can probably move on to some other things at this point. But especially in the beginning, you couldn't really have anything that would slow you down or, or make you get stuck. Right. You had to kind of keep, keep plowing through all the different things of brick.

And now you have how many locations? There's seven in the U S you have seven. What's the goal. So the goal for 2018 is to have four more licensed partners open up. And then I want in 2019, 10, 10 more to open up. Right. and then exponentially scale out after that but yeah i mean you hit it on the head right like if you can if you can understand where you are at in life and how that affects these great ideas or things

that you want to achieve because listen if you're if you're if you're in a if you have a quality job that gives you secure income and you have a family and kids with real responsibilities and people who rely on you to feed, you need to sit back for a minute and understand the risks that come into whatever new passionate idea comes about. But yeah, like you said,

when I opened up brick, I could run and gun hundreds of hours a week that were available to me. And it didn't matter. You know, if you're like, Oh, you're, you're overworking yourself i was like fuck you man i'm gonna make it i'll die you just go crazy on them there's no such thing yeah you know now i take this thing is overtraining there's no such thing they're like dude your eyes are pretty bloodshot man you're not you know what you're talking about man you've been sick like seven in the last seven days in a row he's yeah looking so good just you know spooning Jack 3D straight into my mouth.

I'm totally fine. Fuck you. I'm so fine, man. So is it hot in here? You know, and you know that you're in a funky spot too when you start to get injured. You know, you're doing your normal workouts, your normal routines. And like over the last couple of weeks, I mean, you know, I just put pressure on myself. There's not any extra pressure on me from anything. There's actually less pressure on me now probably than ever. Um, but you know, I'm,

I'm working on getting leaner and I'm, you know, forcing myself into some of these, uh, diet things and stuff. And, and it just causes a level of stress. You know, you got to understand that everything that you do causes a level of stress, uh, exercise causes a level of stress. You know, you got to understand that everything that you do causes a level of stress. Exercise causes a level of stress. You trying to have more discipline can cause levels of stress. That's right. You working harder, working more can cause level, you know. And so you got to figure out like, you know, how am I going to counteract some of this?

What am I going to do to recover from some of this? Am I going to, are you someone that is able to get seven, eight hours of sleep or? So you suck at that. I go in spurts, man. You know, I mean, I've had my times where I can get in bed at 10 and get up crack, you know, crack a dawn early and have a solid seven, seven and a half hours in me. And there's nights where, you know, I'm down in bed at 10, but like not falling asleep till 11, 12 o'clock and then up at two 33 o'clock. And I may as well just get up and start my day at that point.

That's the worst. Yeah. Right. You just, you just get through it. Yeah. I've noticed for myself, what cures some of that is,

uh, you know, having a habit of just waking up early. Um, I, I wake up at about four o'clock every day and just me setting that schedule. And I can be a little loose with it here and there. I can wake up at like 5.30 or something like that here and there. But even 5.30 is waking up quite a bit earlier than most. A lot of people are probably

waking up at six or seven and who knows where else people are waking up. But I think that by, by waking up early, it forces me to go to bed early. You know, it's like, and if I, if I go to, it's a weird thing, but if I go to bed at like 10, I'm going to be, I'm just, I'm not going to fall asleep. I don't know why, but I don't, I don't fall. It's just like not a good time for me to go to sleep. So if I go to sleep almost before I even recognize that I'm tired, I sleep just fine. So I'll go to sleep at eight.30, 9 o'clock, 9.30. But once it starts to be 10, I don't know, my mind starts racing and I start thinking of

other things that I want to do the next day. Right. And then that'll get you right, gets your heart rate up. Yeah. Talking with my phone and all other kinds of stupid shit. You find yourself being like a creature of habit? Yeah. I mean, yeah, I certainly can be, I can, you know, find myself just, I can make myself busy, you know, which is stupid. I, I don't, I don't need to, I just, uh, will sometimes kind of choose to, you know, and you're just kind of, uh, you, you know, you're popping on other people's Instagrams or you're responding to comments and stuff like that, which it can be important, but there's, it almost needs to be like more scheduled.

You know, it needs to be like, it needs to be part of a, part of a day. I like to, you know, knock the day out from, you know, four until about, I don't know, two or three and then kind of be done. You know, usually that's how I try to structure most days. I like to get out in front of the day and sprint out real hard and then just leave the rest of the day alone and have hardly any responsibilities other than hanging out with my kids and my wife, you know? Yeah. You know, one thing that was said to me a while back that was really like an epiphany for me and had some changing moments in the way that I behave because I would have this issue where before i go to bed write a thousand reminders right i'm gonna change the world tomorrow shit sounds like the ideas you come up with in your head right before you go to sleep

and things you're gonna do tomorrow like shit's changing i've got it figured out and then you wake up in the morning you look at your reminders on your email you're like what the fuck was i thinking god i'm an idiot yeah like if i if this guy shows up to work tomorrow brick's in trouble you know then you realize okay wait because i would get caught up in the ideas like okay i'm a creature of habit to a certain uh to a certain regard is i would get caught up like i've got to be busy right if i'm the if i'm the owner of these massive locations i've got this global brand like i should be busy busy doing busy work right and um i remember somebody somebody, you know, close to me and said, said, said,

Hey, you know, JP, it's okay. If you're training jujitsu for a couple hours a day, you get up early, you get started, you do the things.

Are you getting the key things done that need to get done to keep your, you know, ship moving forward? Like, yeah, I make sure that those get done. Right. Well,

then all these other things you're doing, you have to look at them as if they're fueling your creativity because your job is to be creative. Right. Right. Because if you're being creative and you're in this upflow, uptempo mode, you're servicing your people better, which means that they're going to be operating at a higher level and your business will run better. That's your job. Right. Your job isn't to go in there and sit behind a computer and do a thousand emails a day and write a bunch of companies and do this all kinds of stuff,

all this kind of stuff, right? Focus on your licensed partners, deliver a great product to them. Make sure your people that are, have been delegated to are delivering a great product. And that's a product on the floor in your actual gyms is a great product. And then from there you can operate optimally and more opportunities will come

about. And creativity is crucial. What if you, you know, and I think that's why I think going on a walk is fucking great. Because I think it allows you some time to think. A lot of other things that we do just, you know, even while you're walking, just by nature, if you're walking at a pretty good clip at a pretty good pace, it's kind of hard to like text or do anything on your phone. And so it's a good time to kind of unplug from that. But if you wanted to, you could listen to like a podcast.

You can listen to music. The big advantage there is a lot of times your mind will drift. You'll hear lyrics to a song or something. And next thing you know, you're thinking about something totally and completely different. And who knows, maybe that 20 minute walk

made you realize like, holy shit, how cool would it be to bring all the owners of brick all into one spot and have a big ass fucking party for them. And I can invite, you know, you know, a lot of celebrity fighters and, you know, you could just this fucking great idea can just pop into your head. But otherwise, if you didn't take that time to spend with yourself, basically, you would have never thought of that. Yeah. time to spend with yourself, basically, you would have never thought of that. Yeah. I mean, one thing, so just another thing that's really awesome that my fiance and I really love to do is just drive around.

Yeah. You know, we might, even on a Saturday, that's our day. There's not a lot of shit going on. We love to- That's when you know you're getting old, when you randomly drive around with no destination. That's it. We love to, we like, we thrive on planning. I do that with my kids sometimes.

I'm like, where are we going? I'm like, nowhere. Yeah. Like, we going to In-N-Out Burger? I'm like, fuck no. I wish, but no. we thrive on planning sometimes i'm like where are we going i'm like nowhere yeah like we're going in and out burger i'm like fuck no i wish but no we thrive on planning no plans yeah like babe what do you plan this saturday we've planned that nothing's gonna go on we're gonna do whatever we decide to do at that time right and so we'll get in the car we'd love to just wander and drive and it's like you said man even with no music playing and we banter a little bit back and forth but we'll find like we'll zone out like into the environment and it's like you said man even with no music playing and we banter a little bit back and forth but we'll find like we'll zone out like into the environment and it's some of the most

relaxing like peaceful moments and then you zone back in and it's funny she's like well what were you just thinking about you look like you tuned out like babe i just had like 90 ideas in my head you want me to walk you down the path of craziness you know some of these you'll probably jump out of the car if i explain it to you, you know, because you don't want to, some of this shit's just outrageous. You're like, you sicko. Yeah. You pervert.

You want to do what? Well, babe, I saw a tree with a robe. It was the whole thing. And you're in the car like, hey. We have a camera. Whatever. I mean, whatever. We're young at heart.

That's right. So, yeah, man. I mean, that's so, that is, that's a big deal to be able to get out and do that. Right. So it's helped me a lot. That's for sure. I think, you know, again, I think we underestimate the value of fitness.

We sometimes underestimate the value of health. And I think, you know, sometimes people hear the word fitness and it's got like, it's got some stuff bonded to it. That's not necessarily all positive. You know, I think sometimes, uh, people feel a lot of guilt. They feel a lot of remorse. Um, they have a lot of regret. They have not doing it as frequently as they should be. Uh, I know for myself in some weird way, I ended up being like, uh, uh, almost like a religious figure to some people that i communicate with because they will fucking avoid me like the plague when they're not following what they're

supposed to be following if i'm helping somebody with a diet you know and they're they lose they lose 10 pounds they lose 15 pounds things are going really good and i don't hear from them for a little bit i can almost text them back and say, you gained 10 pounds back, didn't you? You know what I mean? Right. And I'm going to have him like nailed because, you know, there are some negative things associated with fitness sometimes. What do you think can help break down the barrier for some people?

Like, you know, with your gym in particular, how do we, you know, it's a really hard thing to figure out how you take somebody who's never experienced fitness, uh, into your gym, but maybe even just somebody who's kicked it around a couple of times and maybe haven't had success at other gyms. So two things, it's one of these things is a little bit newer because something that you said yesterday, I thought was really impactful that I look forward to sharing with my team. Stealing my ideas. Stealing your shit, Just snapping photos of it.

So you said more people need to work in as opposed to work out. Yeah. Yeah. And I love that. And that is stolen. I got to give credit that is stolen from Paul Cech. If you're not familiar with Paul Cech, please look up all his stuff. He's got great free information on YouTube. Yeah. And so that's really awesome. I can't wait to share that with my team and let them, let them understand, Hey man, you're spending four hours a day working out physically, but what about spending some time? We always can tell them like, Oh, you should be reading books and doing all this kind of stuff. But how about, how about working out mentally and emotionally? So you, I mean, you've hit, hit the bag for how many years,

you know, you've hit a heavy bag for how many years? It was just forever. Like 20 something or maybe 30 years. Right. And it wasn't until you got older, until you got wiser that you started to recognize like, Oh my God, this is like, uh, this is a totally different experience from when I was a kid. Maybe when you're 15, maybe you're pissed. Right. You know, maybe you're, um, I don't know, maybe just when you're young, you know, you're

full of fucking testosterone and there's, and sometimes you have a lot of like anger, you know, so maybe just punching the fuck out of the bag and you're thinking about, uh, people that disrespected you and you're thinking about people that, uh, you just don't like.

Right. Well, I mean, it still happens today. Yeah. Well, it can. Yeah,

sure. It sure can. But as you get older, you become wiser and you are kind of like, man, this is really training my brain. This is training my older, you become wiser and you are kind of like, man, this is really training my brain. This is training my will. You know, and when coach says to, you know, do this or coach says to do that, not only am I not going to like give up, but I'm going to fucking go harder.

You know, when he gives me these challenges, I'm going to be excited for them because I want to, I want to advance. I want to get, I want to make myself better. I want to get better every day. Right. And you don't really think that way as you know, when you're, when you're younger. And so I think it's, it is a really important message because working out is kind of like gritting your teeth and clenching your fist and going as hard as you can go, which is great. But, but working a little bit more inward, you know, going back to that heavy bag. I mean, working inward by definition of what Paul check talks about is to do stuff that doesn't really elevate your heart rate too much. So he's talking about really bringing it down. He's talking about almost like meditation and things like that. But I think for most of us, any slowed

down version of fitness would probably work really well, whether it be stretching or whether it be instead of trying to jack the shit out of the bag and try to smash it. Maybe you're just working on some technique. Maybe you're working on rolling the hips and maybe you're just thinking about family. You're thinking about. That's right. You know, you think about other things. Just flowing. Yeah.

Just whatever is coming to mind. You're thinking about those things rather than, you know, going from a place of like anger or something like that. Right, because then the outcome is different. When you're coming from a place of anger in some of these other areas, you're leaving and you're feeling exhausted. You're spent. You're physically spent, emotionally feel spent. I feel like if you're talking about like where you work, if you're working in and you do it at that level, you can leave almost feeling refreshed. And you think about, you know, what do you admire?

Like, what do we admire the most, you know, out of everything that you ever see, you know, um, somebody, somebody being hotheaded and, and punching someone out, uh, occasionally, like occasionally that's kind of cool, but not really, not in the grand scheme of things. Uh, it's just not the, it's just not the right thing to do, you know, um, in most cases. Uh, but what we truly admire is when people are fucking cool, calm, and collected.

Somebody comes in here and they start yelling and screaming at you and you're like, Hey man, I'm sorry you're having a bad day, but I, I can't help you out. I ain't fighting you, you know,

or you just, you know what I mean? But if it did come down to that, then of course you got to protect yourself. You got to take care of yourself. But that, I mean, that is, that's what we honor the most, you know, when it comes to war, when it comes to, when it comes to fighting, when it comes to any of these things, when it comes to professional football, you think like Tom Brady, like he's always been the coolest under pressure. You're like, he's always been the coolest under pressure. That's what we'd love seeing the most. Now, if he unfolded and started to become a lunatic every time he threw an interception, he would have, you know, like they still had a chance in that Super Bowl.

Right. To win. And, you know, he's proven himself time and time again. And that's what you end up admiring the most. Or you see as a young child, you see your dad working his ass off every single day. And you kind of start to add up to you. It starts to mean something to you as you get older. And you see all the pressure that they're under. And then you think about it as you get older.

You're like, wow, man. He was, they were doing, my parents were doing some pretty good shit for me. That's right. When I was a kid. Yeah, man. And we, so you, you know, the second thing I was going to say when you were asking about brick is that's part of the magic that we want to deliver. So we want people to feel that in the overall experience when they walk into brick. So from the front desk staff to the coaching staff, to people that are, to even just members that have been around for a while,

is that the idea when you walk in there is that there is this level of calm, even though there's these really intense workouts going on. And from the calm comes a more comfortable environment to communicate, develop relationships, feel comfortable. Because if it was a hotheaded environment, which you could define any way, but let's just say a hotheaded, really alpha testosterone lit, really what you would think by watching CrossFit video style environment, then somebody who's not looking for that or has too much of that in their workplace, they're going to walk in and just turn around and walk out or they're not going to last long there.

They might get injured or emotionally, it's not even doing well for them. We talked about that the other day when you said you went to some classes, you and your fiance and these classes were kind of, they were like loud. Yeah. And people were, and that is to elicit a certain response. And maybe that's cool for that particular gym uh but man like you know no it's just noise in general like that just just kind of sucks you know what i mean yeah and it and it uh can expend a lot of energy from you

i think you know things that i admire in people is to watch somebody focus in and hone in on one thing and just fucking destroy it. And whenever you see it in sport, you admire it, but you know something bad's about to happen sometimes because there's too many distractions nowadays. If somebody like Bones Jones, right? Like just destroying people. Roy Jones Jr. Then he started playing like pro basketball, right? I mean, you have these guys that they're so good at one thing and they hone in, they focus and you see some, Mike Tyson, you see some true greatness going on. You're like, holy shit, this is fucking amazing. And it doesn't

matter what they do. They can be a comedian, could be Joe Rogan, right? It doesn't matter who it is. You watch them hone in and focus in on one point. And part of the thing of focusing in on one point and dominating is to be able to block out a lot of noise. And what a terrible way it is to work out when you got someone like yelling and screaming at you. Now, if you hit lifting heavy and the intensity is high, then maybe that's warranted, right? Yeah. I heard something cool once. I'm pretty sure this is how it went, but if I get it wrong, the internetets and your fans. You're already off the team.

How much worse could it get? Your internets and your fans can crush me. But so they asked Jerry Seinfeld, I believe it was, who he believes is the greatest comedian of all time. And, you know, with Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy and some of these just greats that have been out there, he said Chris Rock. And the person was interviewing was like, really, you know, not to say that Chris rocks, not an amazing comedian.

They said, Chris rock of everybody, Chris rock. And he goes, and this is what he said. He said, yes, because of all the comedians I've ever heard,

Chris rock is the only guy I've witnessed. Tell the same joke a thousand times as if it was the first and best time he's ever told that one joke. Yeah. And so it's like what you're talking about honing in, you know, a comedian could get on stage by guys, my 33rd show with the same fucking joke, tired, tired. And then they wonder why, like, they're not the Kevin Hart, the Daveave chappelle the chris rock jerry seinfeld because these guys know no no noise yeah they know the craft and they are going to hone in on to hone in on it almost as like a detriment to anything else they have going on in life right that is what's going to be you know the the most important yeah and you look at someone like steve jobs is

great at that you know he would kind of i mean he, he said time and time again, like we don't, we don't do, there's not, we don't do a lot of things very well. We do a couple of things really awesome. You know, that's, that's our focus. We're trying to hone in on, on one thing and it gets to be really hard with business. Um, and it can be really hard too, with comments and stuff that you hear, you know, Oh, brick, they should add more CrossFit or they brick should add. And you're like, I don't know what to take from who, but you do have to listen to people a little bit. So how do you take some of that in sometimes, you know,

a constructive criticism or, or a constructive assessment of your business? Yeah, man. I think the key to that is really understanding early on what the core values of the business are. And also knowing that you have- That's the word right there, value. Yeah, what your values are, right? And now you have a team, hopefully you've been a great team captain

that's created a winning team and they have fully bought into those values as well, right? And you've hired based on those values. And if you start to sway from those because you're listening to outside noise without including your team and getting a, you know, a more of a group consensus and understanding of what, because sometimes us as owners, we can lose sight, right? Because we start to think, oh, maybe I'm just getting too old minded or stonewalled in this idea. And you got to, and

they can sometimes humble you, right? Like, no, no, no, JP, remember, that is not what we do here. And you, you know, as an owner, you want to be like, no, fuck you. I tell you what we do here. And then you look at it, but wait a minute, you actually know now know better than I do. That's why I'm, I can pat myself on the back. Now I actually did well because you're doing what I need you to do, right. Which is keep me on track. It's a whole point of being a mentor and a coach. It's like I guys in here that, uh, you know, are outlifting me left and right. And people are like, man, that's got to be hard to watch. Or I'm like, oh my, are you kidding me?

Like, this makes me feel awesome. Yeah. It makes me feel amazing. Right now, you have the Open coming around, right? And so my team in LA has put together these big CrossFit Open events and all this kind of stuff. And I'm just so proud. I look at some of these things they're doing and they're bigger and grander than I ever did, you know, and, and instead of me trying to go in there and pee on their sandwich at

their picnic, it's like, you know, look at it and be like, Hey, can I just have a, can I just have a seat at the table and enjoy this, this thing that you've magically created? That's cool. And it's super cool. And to me, it really does, you know, and really answering your questions comes back to understanding your core values and making sure that you're re of your, you're readdressing them. You're sitting back down and going, wait a minute. When we, when we were super passionate and had really clear minds of what we wanted to do as a team,

this was it. These were our 10 commandments. And just because they're telling us now that we need to add a shake weight class, that can't be it. And to further to your point, we see that problem through so many professional, not just, I guess, not just in fitness, but many business owners where they start to hone in on other avenues because they think it's going to generate more revenue. because they think it's going to generate more revenue. And then you look at them and go, wait a minute, are you a functional fitness facility or a t-shirt company? Because when I walked into your gym, you have 90 different t-shirt designs and 40 of each style and size. So you have $20,000 in inventory in here and you're going broke in your business.

People always come into Brick and they're like, oh, how come you guys don't have more retail? You don't have more retail. I tell them because we're not a retail company. My product's on the floor. Right. I need to learn how to produce better of that. That's my focus.

Right. When we have time, we create a cool t-shirt here or there. We release it. Right. And I make that, uh, now as I want, you know, there's a need and a want for it. I make that analogy in seminars all the time. Like if you're spending more creative time a week on your next t-shirt design, your next flyer design, uh, then you are in your business, you're going out of business.

Yeah, you got to stick and move. You know, you got to get in and out of stuff quick. You got to. You can't accumulate, you know, you can't receive a lot of damage. And hopefully you're given some and you're getting in and out of there and you're not getting caught up or stuck anywhere. Yeah. there and you're not getting caught up or stuck anywhere. Yeah.

You know, something that, you know, here at, here at Super Training, you know, that's, that's been great is just, you know, trying to, over the last 11 years, you know, it's, it's taken some time, but creating a culture, you know, and then through Slingshot, which has been started, was started in 2010, the same thing has happened. The guys here, the guys and girls that work here at Slingshot, we don't have a lot of people. I think maybe people would think the company would be bigger, you know, but we have a staff of about 10 people and they all just, they kill it, man. I, you know, I was texting our customer service girl, um, uh, Rosemary, who you guys worked out with this morning, um, on Thanksgiving day, because we had some, we had some issues with our website and we had some issues with people are trying to order something and something jacked up was happening. Boom.

She was right on it. She was all over it. Andrew will, you know, if, if we were going to fucking podcast till midnight, he's right here with me and he doesn't, you know, on the way out, he's not like, Hey man, that fucking sucked. We were here to, you know, he, because there's a lot of good opportunity here and, and what we've been able to create, I'm truly, I'm truly proud of. And one thing I think that's really crucial for every owner and every leader and everybody who's trying, anybody who's trying to run a company, please understand this fact. And this is something I shared with my cousin recently. Her husband owns a DJ type of business. He does a lot of weddings and things of that nature, like DJs' weddings and so forth. And she just said that he works a lot.

He actually works in the business a lot. And you've heard this a million times, work outside the business and some of these things, right? But my advice was just a slightly different than that. And it was that, you know, understand that if I hire JP to work here at Slingshot and you know, I start to hire him for marketing concepts, I need to fully understand that it is fucking possible that JP, the guy that I hired that I think is right for the job, comes in with a way fucking better idea than I did. You come in with a way better idea than I have. And that I don't think enough people are willing to accept that. But why not? It's still victory.

You're still winning. Right. I still selected to team up with you. And then you came in and you had this cool hot idea. Wow. How, how can I not turn some things over to you? You know, how can I, you have to, at some point you got to turn some shit over to your team and say, Hey man, you know, what do you guys think of this? And then they, boom, they rattle something off and you're like, Oh shit, man, I didn't. Okay, man, you got one on me.

You know, you got it. Right. You got a fucking great idea. We should roll with that. Yeah. If you want them to work, if you want your team to work and act like owners at times, you have to respect their ideas as if they were an owner. Yeah. And that's hard for some people to do.

Right. Yeah. And that ego thing sometimes can get in the way. And, you know, that can come down to like like for you, that's really special to have a team like that because that can come down to either being really great at hiring the right people or being able to hire people and creating the right environment for them to be in where they've learned that this is a place that's something that they want to see it win. So even if they don't feel like they're going to be here for 30 years, right. While they're here, they want you, they want slingshot to win. Yeah.

And that's it. That's important. Like I, you know, I, that's the way you want to people to be like, I wish that on all of my team and hope that for everybody I hire, where same thing,

I understand that it's Thanksgiving, but the thing that we're all passionate about that is allowing us to enjoy this Thanksgiving is in need of our attention for just a few minutes. Right. The new car that you just bought or the new house you just invested in or whatever it is. Right. Like we're all able to, you know, if the company advances, we're all going to reap the benefits continually. For sure.

We all win. And I think, but what's important, and I'm sure it's a testament to how you behave with your team is that owners make sure they do that. Right. Right. You know, and that was something that I learned early on. I did have a mentor that was not great at that and seeing, seeing what not to do is,

Hey, Hey dude, you can't be getting, you can't be getting grossly rich and throwing it around and making it rain. And the people that are starving alongside you are the ones that are actually helping you get that. Right. Like you need to be sharing that and then there'll be an abundance.

And that gets to be a little bit tough too with employees because, you know, at some time, at some point you want people to kind of stay hungry, you know, like almost literally, you know, you want people to have a certain hunger built inside of them that if you, you know, if you start someone off at, you know, $20,000 a year and they're working, they're working, they're working and they see that almost every single time that they perform or that they perform slightly better than what was asked of them, they get rewarded for it at nearly every turn, which can sometimes be hard to keep track of. You get a lot of people flying around and working really hard. You're going to

get a shit ton out of that person and they're going to continue to build and continue to grow. And they're going to continue to have more opportunity every year. I mean, if somebody's doing their job and they're progressing, then why wouldn't you be able to give them more, especially if the company is growing? Yeah. Well, what do they say now? Like the issue is with these millennials is they, you know, they want to be told they're doing a good job for doing their job. You know, it's like, hey, you get a good job and a pat on the back when you do things that are, you know, above and beyond a little extraordinary. That's what allows you to excel.

And that's what's so great about building a good team, you know, building a strong team. And even like, you know, in terms of actual super training, you know, somebody would come in and maybe they think they're jacked. They think they're strong or whatever. And they lift with the group. And the group's like, you know, I can show me something. And you deal with that with jujitsu all the time. But it can be the same thing in the work environment where when you got people that really hustle and that really are strong at what they do, you know, when the new guy comes in and be like, show me what's up, man. What the fuck are you doing?

You know? Yeah. You know, why are you leaving at 430? Where are you going? You know, and they give each other, they do that to each other here. Where are you going? I'm going to grab lunch. No, you're not. You know, they're just giving each other shit. You know what I mean? But it's, it's created, creating that, uh, that environment that I think is, you know, really, really cool thing. Yeah. Everybody gets to hold each other

accountable. We do that joke in LA. Like somebody, you know, one of my, one of my managers will be leaving. They, they were there at 6.00 AM. right? And they'll be leaving at 6 p.m. They've already logged a 12-hour day. Like, oh, half day. That's what I do. I see them. I'm like, oh, half day today, huh? Must be nice.

Yeah. You know, meanwhile, I just strutted back in 40 minutes ago. But then everybody gets a kick out of it. It's just a reminder. You know, we're all here to hold each other accountable. And we've got a goal. What drives you? I mean, you've done a lot of cool stuff

and you have a lot of great things going on business-wise. You're a professional kickboxer. Did you do any MMA fights as well? So I did like shooto style fights. So we'd wear like the shin guards and there's some more rules. Almost like pancreas kind of thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I dabbled. I don't claim to be an MMA fighter. I don't claim to have been, you know, the world's greatest at any of that. My specialty was really striking. I had a pretty good ground awareness and that's what I did. And, you know, it's for me, that's what's really important. I mean, it says here on you, I got a little stat sheet on you and says here that you beat Henzo Gracie.

on you. I got a little stat sheet on you and it says here that you beat Henzo Gracie. No, I don't believe I ever said that. I wouldn't be dumb enough. Master Henzo, if you're listening, I love you, buddy. I actually know him and hope he doesn't hear that. I think that's true. That's not true. Oh, I don't know what we gathered up there. You maybe gathered up an incorrect fact that I beat him. Did you train with him? I did. I did.

Yeah. So Master Henzo is the guy who gave my original jujitsu coach his black belt. Oh, awesome. Who I've been able to meet. He lives in New York and I've been able to bump into him. He's been to Brick a bunch. And he's very friendly with a lot of people I know as well as my current jujitsu coach. Right. By the way, Master Henzo, if you ever get a chance, if you could ever get him on this

podcast, he'd be an amazing guest. He's a special, special guy. He's in New York mostly. New York. Okay. But he travels a bunch and he's a really special guy. That would be. So we'd try, we got to try to make that connection.

Yeah. No, that would be, that would be fantastic. Do you happen to know Bo Jackson by any chance? I don't, but I'm sure by law, you know, proximity separation, I probably know one or two people who do. What about, who else have you been working on? Oh, the rock. I know the rock a little bit, but maybe, you know, I'm better.

I'm not better than you. I am not better than you. But, you know, you asked me what, what motivates me, man. I mean, what drives me like right now? It's, it's a mix of two things. And I'm not gonna be shy to say this on microphone. Like I still want to get really rich and i'll define that one is by the old-fashioned way money stacks of money you want to make a fucking rap video i want to yeah i want to make it giant asses i'm sorry make it rain yeah right

and and there's but there's listen i can make fun of that, but for a lot of reasons, right? Because having an abundance of money allows you to do more charitable work for more people, which I enjoy doing allows you to take better care of your family. If someone in your family gets sick, as we've known somebody, you know, with, with money, you can have better care for them. And with money, you can, with money, you can just do more things for more people. Right. So let's put the money aside and you can do more awesome shit. The fundraiser that we went to the fundraiser dinner that raised over $400,000. Yeah. That's amazing. And, and, and, you know,

you know, you look at like some of those billionaires in the room and I'm like getting fired up thinking, shit, I want to be a billionaire because I want to be able to buy 30, 50, 70 thousand dollar items in an auction and get like a kick out of the fact that only am I doing good, but I bought something cool. It didn't matter how much it cost. Right.

There's a fact that I did something cool. And so, so we get that out of the way. I want to make a shit ton of money. Right. Right. And that motivates me. And I know. It does make you feel good. And it's not something that really people talk about much. You know, you can definitely get stressed out about it too much. Just like you, you could with trying to, you know, can definitely get stressed out about it too much just like you you could with uh trying to you know be too awesome at jujitsu or trying to you know be too awesome in powerlifting or whatever if there is such a thing as being too awesome i just i'm just saying you get uh so stuck on the numbers you get stuck on the black belt and the what belt you have and who you're fighting and you it can be very healthy you know but it can also be kind of unhealthy. Yeah. Where everything else in your life is on hold because you're trying to be a fucking brown belt or whatever it is.

That's right. Yeah. And so, you know, my balance is knowing that I also, you know, what motivates me is to be soon to be a great husband. Right. And then just what I've really been trying to do is become a better friend. Yeah. You know, and having a fiance who's a better human than I am, she's helped me become a better friend to my existing friends, even some that I've had for 30 years.

And then once you- Isn't that weird? It's weird. When you get older, you really start to value that more. It's more important now than I can ever remember. But it's more special now, right? And I don't know why, but it just, to me, maybe because now you realize the value of time. Yeah. Right. And so I've put a higher level of value on that and try not to waste it as much. And so, you know, the third component is like, I want to be on a mission. And because I would have all the money and have the balance in the relationship is to be able to just help as many people as possible in what I know about. And that's the fitness business.

Right. Right. Like I'm not trying to go around and, you know, cure any type of disease or, you know, if I will, I donate time to go do charity work and build homes in Haiti. But that's not my specialty. Right. Right. is help people that have taken big risk that are supporting themselves and or their families make their businesses businesses succeed so that they can get that wealth to have a better lifestyle provide better care for their family and go do more charitable work and hopefully they're good people and do good shit and i would say like do more good shit for people

yeah you seem like an og in a lot of ways you know know, with the fighting background and the CrossFit background. You were involved in combat sports before they were cool. You were involved in CrossFit before it became cool, right? And it sounds to me, also, some of the information you shared with me about, it sounded like you were a very young entrepreneur as well. And now, you know, everybody's an entrepreneur, everybody who's unemployed, you know, throws that, throws that word around. Uh, were you a natural at that? Or is that a natural, is that a thing? Like, uh, did dad have that or somebody in your past, you know, you saw someone who's really good

at sales or something, you have that kind of slickness to you, or is that something that you really developed? Yeah, it was my dad for sure, he he is your old school like so he was raised like virtually the ghettos of argentina right and so he's got that story came over and he's the american dream made it out here worked hard went to put himself through college went to the you know went to the army served during the time of vietnam like he he's done it right and he is one of the world's greatest salesmen like he's got that and from old school like new york style insurance salesman type stuff right he just sold you something you're not sure what even yeah the fuck did i just buy holy shit that guy was super nice though he was fun to hang out with

that dude's crazy yeah yeah that's my dad right and that's awesome yeah. Right. And that's awesome. Yeah. And so I picked that up in early age because I, you know, I always gravitated towards him in that way, you know, and I remember early on in my early teens, he would take me to certain meetings where I feel like now and I look back on it. People must have been like, why the fuck is your son in this meeting? Like we're having some giant ass deal meeting. It's your son doing here. having some giant ass deal meeting just sun doing here. And I was just able to be, you know, privy to that and feel it and sense it and see the importance of it and watch him talk to everybody around him. And so that helped. And he too was that way. He had a lot of business ideas and would get into things and try things and

take risk, you know, and you would ask him like, are you sure you want to do that? And he just, I, you know, you could just,

I remember just hearing him telling people like, well, if I don't fucking do it someone else will you know i'm not gonna let them get make make the money on it or hell if i don't try it i'll never know i remember uh my dad you know he did uh so my dad you know he got uh laid off from ibm uh ibm headquarters was in poughkeepsie new york and they had some just ridiculous amount of employees for a long time. Then at some point they downsized and it was like right around his like 20 year mark of him being there. He was going to be able to get a pension and everything, but they released them, you know, kind of before he could he could get any of that. But, you know, without without without any real change or without slowing down at all. He just rolled right into doing income taxes and into doing real estate. And it's some stuff I never really thought about much until,

you know, I pushed this business along and I'm, you know, people have asked me, where'd that come from? I'm like, I don't know. And then I'm like, oh, I've been around that forever, you know, figuring shit out on your own kind of thing. Problem solving, right? Yeah. For a long time, you know, my dad wasn't like, oh man, I got three kids. forever, you know, figuring shit out on your own kind of thing. Problem solving, right? Yeah, for a long time. You know, my dad wasn't like, oh, man, I got three kids. I'm going to, you know, he didn't collect unemployment and just fucking bum around. He started to work.

He started to make money. And still this day, you know, he just picked up like another 300 clients or something. Like he's still, you know, he's going to be 70 this year. Yeah, they're the real definition of grinding, not the Instagram version of grinding. No, I've never grinded out anything in my fucking life. I can say that with confidence compared to my dad or compared to my

grandfather who built his own house, built his own fucking car. Yeah. My grandpa built his own fucking car. How the fuck do you build a car? How do you do that? And I love cars. I don't know how to buy cars.

I don't even know how to use a fucking hammer, much less build a goddamn house How do you do that? And I love cars. I don't know how to buy cars. I don't even know how to use a fucking hammer, much less build a goddamn house. You know what I mean? Like, Jesus. It's like out of necessity. But I think what it comes down to, and you probably thrive on this, which is where some of your, you know, creativity is driven from is, and how you, from the story I got, how you created the slingshot is, it comes down to like problem solving. Yeah.

Some people fall, crack under that and some people thrive on it. You know, like on certain reality game shows, we would crush, not just because we'd be awesome and fucking roll around shirtless with, you know, some kick-ass MCT oil on us. BMCT. You just gotta be MCT, yeah. You know, keto. Keep it safe.

Yeah, keep it safe, you know, for the kids. But it's about problem solving. So, you know, you ask, like, I just feel like since I was a kid, that was always something I would thrive on. If I saw someone or somebody had a problem, and I don't mean like an emotional problem necessarily, but something, I would be fixated on trying to solve that. You had a lot of like businesses early on. Like, you were telling me some different stuff. What are some different things that you were exploring over the years? So one of the coolest things you probably pull this up on the internet and some,

some historicals on it was when I was a sophomore in college. So I was skiing a lot when I was at university Colorado Boulder and we'd go up to the mountain. Inline skating was really cool. Back then we'd go up to the mountain. I saw these kids running, rolling around these short skis that looked like big feet and they were called big feet from a company called Canisil. Smokey, you know kids running, rolling around in these short skis that looked like big feet. And they were called big feet from a company called Canisol. Smokey, you know about any of this stuff? These short skis?

Yeah. I had a pair. I had a junkie pair. Yeah. So that was called. He likes to ski. Oh, right on. So early on, there was no industry for it.

It was just a bunch of, it was kind of like how snowboarding took off from surfers that wanted to get on the mountain and Jake Burton and some of these guys that fired up the industry. These kids at Breckenridge, Colorado were doing this and through a longer story, I had learned how to create these and build them by hand out of LA and work with epoxies and fiberglass. How old were you? Would have been 20. Okay. Yeah. Right out of college, like from the end of high school and whatnot I would go whenever I had breaks in time, I'd drive out to this guy's place and learn how to do this stuff. And I saw a problem that I linked up with these guys. It was like, well, that shit's cool. And I

was on a mono ski. So that was really unique, which is where you face forward basically on what looks like a racing snowboard. That just sounds like death to me. Yeah. It's a wild story. I just ate shit seven times in my head yeah it's actually easier than skiing once you figure it out because you only have one edge to worry about not four people always tell me that or you have two not four always kill myself on it yeah and so they thought that was cool we kind of linked up and connected yeah so the guy on the right is actually where i think they're both actually wearing mine the one on the right is my pro model so the ones on the left i think are called the skywalker so

anyways so they were breaking them that had to be really easy to make skis right i mean what's that take a little glue and a few razor blades is it just a fucking piece of wood that you just uh sand down and yeah throw some oil on you go down the hill right so here's what's crazy so i went back to la and i manufactured a bunch of sample pairs we went up there and i was telling you the story like we broke a shit ton of them on like pair 12 of 14 like if i got to 14 my dreams were crushed shattered on pair 12 it was like we had figured it out and we just we knew we had we were on to something went back and made a bunch of them handed them out to the kids they started writing around on them and you talk about manifesting shit and just like opening up opportunity a guy who owned an uh inline skating

shop in town was a rich guy from up around here like palo alto northern california who at the time had like 20 inline skating shops and he came to me he said hey man if you can if you can fulfill an order of several thousand pairs at the time yeah there it is man that's that's yeah those are my own left i believe yeah that's them so um he said i'll buy them from you i was like well fuck i don't have a factory i don't have a manufacturing plant i've got my buddy's place so i asked my buddy if he'd make him he's like i can't make that many pairs i make these for my buddies we just smoke marijuana and do martial arts right and i was like well shit so of course i went to my dad and my dad's like if you've got an order we've got skis that's right that's cool you know it's like hey dad do you sell refrigerators are

you buying one yeah if you're buying i'm selling and man we went to uh auction furniture auctions where we bought a huge furniture press and we found a guy through a guy that welded up some hydraulic pressing and we had a bunch of aluminum molds whittled up i mean it was crazy and that's when you tell the guy that has the order be like hey you know we reformulated these skis you know this is newer designs can be way better than the older ones so it's going to take a little bit longer. So, right. So here's the story.

Here's the story. Not far from that. So the dude came out, he wanted to see the factory before he cut us the check for the order. And all I had was basically like a, like the back end. My dad took new offices where the back had a warehouse to kind of oversee his investment in his son. So I left Boulder to start this company. So if I had an order, I had a business

and my dad let me do it. So I zipped back to LA, like, you know, just left a high-end university to come back to LA and like follow his dream of making skis. And we borrowed tools from my buddy's dad's workshop who had a bunch of saws and shit and put them in the back of this room

where you could see through the garage door. And when the dude showed up in town, cause he wanted to see the shop, he's going to give us, you know, a couple hundred grand. He wants to know we can make these things. I'm just a,

I'm just like a little college kid with no idea, like bleach blonde hair or something. And he looks in the window and he's like, all right, where's the real shop? I said, I can't show that to you. That's over there.

And you know, we have proprietary information, how we make these things. This is the R and D facility. But if you look said, I can't show that to you. That's over there. And you know, we have proprietary information, how we make these things. This is the R and D facility. But if you look in, you can see the press. I can't let you in there because you'll see our technology. And he's like,

okay, okay. And we'd, you know, I don't know what I did. I probably just bullshitted him over lunch or whatever it was. And he cut the check and we were in fucking business and we fulfilled the order.

And like, from then it turned into, we ended up making this industry. We were, we had two years, we were in the X games., from then it turned into, we ended up making this industry. We were, we had two years. We were in the X games. So I went, I went,

I don't even remember what year it was like 1994 or five to meet Ron Simeo at the time, who was the, who was the founder of the X games at snow summit with a guy named Tate Tyndall. He and I, and he's out there wherever you are. Fake name alert,

right? Yeah. I don't even know if he's still alive. Tate, wherever you are, man. Tate Tindall? Sounds like a porn name. Yeah, we went out with a bunch of guys, and we rode Snow Summit in front of Ron Semyon and the Half Pipe to show what these skis could do.

And they put it in the first two X Games. We did it as an exhibition sport with me and a bunch of guys. And then it picked up a little bit. And Trace Worthington, who was announced, he announced his freestyle skiing for the Olympics. He was one of my riders. So we had a Trace Worthington pro model and it grew. And then what happened was outside of where the industries went, the bigger companies caught on to it and started manufacturing them at a much lower price and out of Europe and had more marketing dollars. And then the short ski fad kind of ended and went back to a little bit of a longer ski.

But the freestyle skiing industry blew up. And it kind of took back some of that business that was going into the snowboard world. But we were manufacturing those too. I made a lot of promo products. I made the snowboards for the Nagano Olympics for all of the media members that were in the Nagano Olympics. So it was pretty cool. This has kind of happened to you a bunch of different times. When you were even younger, you created something for a shopping cart, right? You were telling me? Oh, yeah, man.

It's devastating. You want to bring this up? Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. So I was so... How old were you? Oh, man. Like between 11 and 13. You know, I used to, after school, go right away early, you know, to karate practice. And then mom would pick me up and we'd go to the supermarket every day shopping. There's something just so cool.

Even when he told me yesterday about karate practice, I just automatically think karate kid. And I automatically think like somebody stuffing you in your locker or somebody giving you a wedgie. And you're like, I'm going to do karate. You have no idea how well I connected with that movie. I'm going to do karate. No idea how well I connected with that movie. I'm going to do karate. I'm going to come back.

I'm going to kick your ass. I'm going to fuck you up, Johnny. Yeah. So, you know, that's coming back, by the way. Oh, my God. I can't wait for that. They're like bringing it back as like a Netflix show or something. Oh, my God.

And they're bringing Johnny back and they're bringing Daniel LaRusso. And I guess Johnny's reopening Cobra Kai Dojo. What about Mr. Miyagi? He's coming back? I mean, you know If Jesus can Yeah Miyagi sure as shit can

I hope so He waxed off a lot That dude will be back Yeah, more than I do, I think Yeah, it's possible Well, I don't know We'll see So, anyways, yeah

Saw a problem Was holding on to all these coupons That mom had And needed to come up with a way, was holding on to all these coupons that mom had and needed to come up with a way that was more organized. And I thought I had the billion dollar idea which was to create a portable coupon organizer that would attach to the handle of the supermarket, the supercar.

The shopping cart. Yeah. So, somehow my dad finagled the market to lend us one. Because, you know, those things nowadays, they have like heat sensors on them and fucking stop brakes on them gps blinding gas in your face that's crazy and you know i whittled in the garage and you know just worked weeks on end and trying to sketch it up and was getting to a point where i wanted to submit this thing for a patent had a cup holder and had a bunch of shit on it that was like really awesome how are your parents i mean you said your dad helped you,

you know, get the shopping cart and stuff, like super supportive of it. Like, Oh yeah. They loved all this. Pumped that your brain was working this way. Yeah.

Yeah. And you know, listen, I wasn't a great student, but I wasn't a bad kid. So they didn't have to, they didn't have to worry about the discipline components. They might as well feed the creativity.

Not to worry about you being a prick. Yeah. I wasn't a, yeah, I wasn't a douchebag. Yeah. And man, what I thought was going to be the final stages of the billion dollar idea, you know, and I was going to my own helicopter and I was going to take that to school every day and it was going to be awesome.

Right. And probably buy the school, fire all the teachers. Like it was a whole thing that just happened in my head. Yeah. Yeah. It already happened. It already happened for sure. And I'll never forget it man i turn the tv on and i'm watching a fucking infomercial come on tv

and it's some woman selling the shit out of this foldable uh coupon organizer that attaches to a shopping cart savings with like a layout cup holder on it. And I can't remember exactly what it was this day, but I remember seeing there was a couple extra items that she had on it that I was like, how could I not think of that? Like that shit was even better than mine. And I was devastated, you know, like in my head, when I think back on it, that cart is probably still sadly sitting on the side yard of that house, like rusting away, you know, and it just never amounted, you know. Broken dreams. Yeah, just broken dreams, you know.

Somebody walks by like, hey, how did that cart get there? And they're like, oh, we'll tell you the story one day about good old JP and the cart, you know. You know, that's really cool. I mean, that's a sign that you had great parents that your mind could, you know, wander into such a, uh, you know, such an interesting place, right? Like you're not worried about, you know, where the next meal is coming from.

You're not worried about abuse. You're not worried about, you're, you're worried about something that's like fun, exciting, something that's positive. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, I see kids, these kids, shit, I see even grownups these days that are addicted to like video games and, um,

they never see daylight. Like they just don't get out of the house. And when I was a kid, I mean, I, I lived that life where I remember all your buddies showing up at seven or 8. A.m.

In the morning, knocking on your door and ready to go bike riding. And you would leave for hours on end. I mean, I even shit myself one day. We were out so long and I had a stomach ache. Shit myself on the way home. That happens to me all the time.

Yeah. That happened to me before the podcast. I shit myself right now, you know? And I was just never like sucked into that world of video games. And I mean, we had them available. We had it. You'd to be out riding your bike, shitting yourself. Yeah.

I'd rather be out. Like what I thought was doing the raddest wheelies and, and hopping, you know, ramps and doing awesome shit and stealing slurpees from the local seven 11, you know, that kind of stuff, all the fun stuff,

all the goods and stuff. Kids should be doing. What do you got going on coming up? Anything in particular heading anywhere, traveling any, do you travel much? I used to travel quite a bit you know getting to new york and boston chicago locations and checking them out a whole bunch but i've been able to try to slow that down and really just focus on the bigger picture of brick and the exponential growth and you compete in jiu-jitsu

like you just had a the tournament this weekend or something right yeah yesterday yeah yesterday so really you know that's not um mentally taxing too much. I try not to make it like the sole focus because I do have other things that I want to, you know, expend my energy on, but it, it's a night, it's a fun distraction. So youthful, fun distraction for me. I really enjoy it. I do train really hard and I take it very seriously, but right now, yeah, look at that. Look at that sexy man with the metal. But right now, yeah, look at that. Look at that sexy man with the metal. So, you know, right now the real focus outside of all the things in my personal life is to get Brick to a place where I can scale it out globally at a rapid pace. Because I know it's ready.

Cool. It's ready. And, you know, if there's anybody listening to this podcast that's interested in potentially, you know, looking at a license opportunity or has an existing functional fitness center that maybe needs some brand, you know, bump to it or looking to do something interesting. I mean, that's what I'm eager to meet those people and create those relationships. Can anyone go to Brick and work out

or is it more of a training studio? Like you have to have a coach or something like that? Oh no, it's for everybody. You can just, yeah. Anybody, anybody who wants to just have a great workout. Even me, even someone like me? Well, I mean, you know, we can discuss it. Maybe not.

Maybe off air. Maybe if I wear a helmet. I think you need to be in a helmet and a bench t-shirt. When are you getting married? Do you guys have a date yet? We do. Yeah. June 23rd.

Woo. Did I get that right, babe? Man, that sounds like pretty serious. Sounds like it's kind of like locked in and stuff. I mean, there's still an opt-out. Yeah. There's got to be something. There's got to be a in and stuff. I mean, there's still an opt out. Yeah. There's gotta be something. There's gotta be a way, man.

Anyway, man, awesome having you here on the podcast. Awesome having you here at super training gym. JP is somebody I met through our good homie, our good friend, Jason Kalipa. And I did a speaking engagement while back where JP was the host. Then you were announcing and you had the craziest, uh, uh, craziest intros I've ever heard for me,

Jason, and some of the other guys that were on the board. Where'd you come up with some of that shit? I just, it just, uh, this mind works in mysterious ways. My friend,

I think one of yours was, uh, you were the man that had slung more slingshots than a hillbilly in Alabama. See, that's what I'm talking about right there. You'll have to give us, maybe give us, if you have the, if you have it written down somewhere, give it to us and we'll share it. Oh, I do. Yeah. I'll send it to you before I leave here.

Yeah, we'll share it on the podcast. Anyway, it was great having you here. It was great meeting your fiance, Chris, and I wish you guys the best, man. It was fucking a lot of fun. Yeah, man. It was fucking a lot of fun. Yeah, man. If I could just say thank you. Thank you for having us out and hosting us and bringing us into your house. And more importantly than the podcast, like just bringing us into your heart, you know, as a friend and getting to spend quality time together and working out and just shooting the shit, man.

It's been awesome. 10-minute walks and steak. Yeah, 10-minute walks and steak. How romantic. It's so romantic. It's for real. Where are we going to go from here? I don't know. It romantic. It's so romantic. It's for real. Where are we going to go from here?

I don't know. It's just a big hug session. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. See you later.