The Sevan Podcast - #697 - Dale King

Episode Date: December 6, 2022

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Look for new value programs when you shop at Loblaws, in-store and online. Conditions may apply. See in-store for details. Bam, we're live. I started a couple minutes early today. I wanted to share something with you guys. I've been having some great conversations in my DMs. What's up, dude? Hey, your voice sounds better. Oh does okay good i i actually woke up this morning with no sore throat i um a lot of a lot of you've been questioning me like why am i defending the liver king or how come i'm not going at the liver king or whatever first of all i don't think i'm defending him but but it's really stirred up, stirred up some fun ideas in my head.

Probably my, my closest friends in the world, several of my closest friends in the world. These are people like, if my wife kicked me out of the house, I could go sleep on their couch. And I'm very fortunate to have a lot of those people. And fortunate, I don't think my wife would do that to me. They don't have any integrity. And I'm not worried about the integrity of other people for the most part. Zero. I'm worried about my own integrity. I'm only worried about my own integrity.

I don't project my integrity. I don't need other people around me to have integrity, except for very few cases. Integrity is something that I work on so that I can be free in the world. I'm only concerned about my own honesty. I'm not concerned about other people's honesty. compassionate friends in the entire world have almost no integrity. They don't even know what it is. I remember when I didn't know what it was. I would have never met Dave Castro. I wouldn't know what integrity is. I'm not worried about Dave's integrity. I'm worried about what I can learn from him so that I can have integrity so I can flow more easily in the world. I guarantee you, Dale knows a shitload of people who have zero integrity. dale knows a shitload of people who have zero integrity and you know what tool he uses that dwarfs integrity 10 out of 10 times every day of the fucking week how you pick your friends people who have compassion that's a fucking now we're talking about a real noble trait

compassion everyone What is compassion? You want to take a shot at that? Maybe. I just put you on the spot. Good fucking morning, America. There's some tools that you use to look at yourself with, and there's some you use to judge other people with. When you're walking down aisle seven and you're five foot five and you can't reach something on the top, I judge people by their height.

I see fucking Caleb walking by six two, and I and i say hey can you get me that box of soap i'm not worried about i'm not worried you got it thank you caleb uh beaver dale king oh i know i just uh there's i'm not here to i not – let me give you an example of my friend. So many of my friends are nice, and they compromise their integrity because they want to be nice. It's like the entire left where I come from. Everyone is so fucking nice, but they'll lie through their teeth to you not to hurt your feelings. And anyway, I just want – we'll talk more about that as time goes on. But there are traits that I really – I'm a huge fan of cultivating my own integrity. But I have some really dishonest friends who are my greatest friends in the world, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Why would I care if someone lied to me? And it doesn't bother me in the slightest. Why would I care if someone lied to me? Now, you can think of some circumstances. I don't want them to tell me the light is green when it's red, and I step on the gas and get fucking hit. But a lot of these tools and things we talk about, they're to work on yourself. The Bible is a beautiful book when you point it at yourself. it's fucking evil as fuck when you point it at other people you want to set men free men should feel free around you and safe not not not held to your uh judgment there's this daoist

saying trust people and they become trustworthy. I've seen it happen. Hi, Dale. I tried to get on here a few minutes early to get through my rant before you got on. Hey, man, I wish I was there from the beginning. Yeah, well, you heard most of it. Fantastic. How are you, man? Caleb? Good to see you, buddy. Good to see you, too. It's been a while. Are we operationally secured secured are we allowed to say where you're at or how's that go no we just say we're in an undisclosed location for now so different time zone gotcha hey man little one before i launch into what the hell we're getting ready into man i'm fucking proud of you and uh thanks for what you do, man. Thank you, Dale. I appreciate that. So there's this gym.

It's called CrossFit PSKC. And a bunch of people were telling me how cool it is. So I reached out to CrossFit PSKC. And I said, hey, would you like to come on my podcast? And I know Dale. And Dale goes, Sevan? I'm like, what? He goes, this is Dale. I'm like, oh, well, would you like to come on my podcast? And I know Dale. And Dale goes, uh, Savon? I'm like, what? He goes, this is Dale.

I'm like, oh. Well, that worked out. That worked out nicely. Yeah, I thought you got hacked. Fair assessment. Portsmouth, Ohio. Arguably the opioid capital of the world at some point or at least uh that was um that you know that definitely of ohio you know when you say like that's the prettiest girl in my college and someone's like you said that yesterday you're like yeah there's like 200

of them here unfortunately it's like that with cities that are like murder capitals and opioid opioid capitals. There's a handful of them that are like the tide for number one. Yeah, it's very time dependent as well. But we are definitely at one point the pill mill capital of America for sure. Did you coin that term pill mill? No, that was that was around for for a a while i think that started coming out in the late 90s i liked it i i was watching your uh i don't know if it was i watched a bunch of your interviews i don't know if it was on fox or your ted talk but when i heard that i was like oh that that has a nice ring to it the pill mill a pill mill is an illegal facility that resembles a regular

pain clinic but regular regularly prescribes painkillers without sufficient medical history oh shit i didn't even know it had a term like this physical examination diagnosis medical monitoring and documentation i when you said pill mill i just thought it was just like tongue in cheek no no it was it was definitely a real thing and um unfortunately the guy who developed that business model was here in Portsmouth in the 90s. Oh, shit. Yeah. So when you say business model, it's illegal, right? It's like saying my buddy grows weed and sells it illegally.

He developed that model. It's illegal now. At the time, it was not illegal. So, you know, we have a lot of things kind of coinciding at that period in history. Um, so, you know, we have a lot of things kind of coinciding at that period in history. Um, but you know, the Sackler family started just dumping millions of, of pain pills, oxycodones. Um, and then they really kind of got connected with physicians who, cause they have to be the pushers of their product. And the easiest way to do it is, uh, open up a pain clinic and you get people to come in and say,

Hey, does your back hurt? And you're kind of like nodding them through the process. And if they got a hundred bucks cash, they, they leave with a script full of Oxy. Wow. Wow. I'm glad I never found out about one of those places. I'm glad I never found out about one of those places. Yeah. Yeah, man. It really there's there's a couple really good pieces of media to read and watch. The first first one's called Dreamland. That's by Sam Fignonese.

And that's really kind of viewed as the. The standard when it talks about telling the story of how the opioid crisis happened in America. And Dreamland refers to Dreamland Pool, which was here in Portsmouth. It was like your quintessential small town American gathering place through the 80s and 90s. And then it closed down. And then the book kind of highlights what happened after that pool closed down and the devastation from from the opioid crisis from there on out but like a local pool where all the kids go swimming in the summer yep hey and what's the second movie uh well i think everyone's kind of more familiar with this it's on hulu um dope sick dope sick and you're you're the executive producer of a movie has that movie been finished um we just strong town what is

it small town strong small town strong yep we just got the rough cut this morning, the final cut this morning. Congrats. Thanks, man. Dude, by the way, I've got a small glimpse into what your world has been. I assume the last 20 years as far as production and documentary. Holy shit, man. That is a wild, bizarre, chaotic, insane world. But we got the final cut done and we're hoping we're hoping to submit to uh tribeca film festival within the next week or two to get in there i was concerned for you when i saw you were the executive producer because

movies are not a i don't know how to say it but this way i've written off what i've invested in and just yeah it's a it's a it's a tough road to tow for for every second counts um when i made that well we we finished filming that uh 2008 right after the games at aromas and i worked on that no exaggeration i think i may even be in conservative 12 hours a day, every day for six months, just sitting in front of my computer. It was crazy. Yep. That's, that's my buddy's life right now. He's the, he's the other exec. He's a director on it. And luckily it timed him right to where he could, he's devoting literally every waking

second to, to get it done. And this is Chase and Spencer Millsap. Yep. So it's Chase Millsap. He's a great fucking guy, man. He's a, he's got his own wild story, but he was a Naval Academy grad. It was Marine Corps officer decided Marine Corps wasn't cool enough. So he dreamt, he jumped services to become a Green Beret officer. Wow. And then married a girl that I went to high school with. Wow.

Is he born in Portsmouth? No, he's a Texas kid. Wow. Small world. Dude. And so, long story, we ended up going on Shark Tank. And he and his wife were living in Hollywood. And I went out there, and that was the first time wife were living in Hollywood. And he kind of, I went out there and that was the

first time I met him in 2016. And we became best friends ever since then. Why did you meet him when you went out there for Shark Tank? So his wife, Maile, was the girl I went to high school with. And they're like, hey, she was always like, hey, if you're ever in LA or Hollywood, come out and hang out. And so that's how we hooked up. How old are you? I'll be 42 next month. Oh, OK.

All right. Where were you? You're born in Portsmouth? Born and raised, my friend. And what's the population there? The city is around 20,000. The county is like 75,000. Wow.

So tiny county. So maybe not. Is there even a city in the county or is it all just incorporated? No, Portsmouth is the capital of the county, if you will. So there are no cities in there? There's like both. By cities, I mean, no one has their own police department. It's just all one. Like in California, we have counties and then within them, they have their own ship. But when you only have 75,000 people in the county I'm guessing you don't do that. We have the Portsmouth Police Department and then everything out in the county is the sheriffs.

Okay yeah wow 75,000 maybe pull out a little bit more Kayla I want to see like where it is like compared to like Columbus or any of the cities that I know. Oh, there's Cincinnati. Yep. Oh, and there's Columbus. What's South. What, what state is that South of there? We're right on the border of Kentucky. Okay. Wow. Okay. Yeah. I'll say you're Kentucky then. I prefer the term Appalachian american okay that's fair that's fair where are wait but where are the appalachian mountains there are they they're further east of you they're yeah they're a little oh you're at the base of them kind of okay okay yeah

like we're we're in we're considered tri-state areas so ohio kentucky west virginia how old is uh portsmouth portsmouth i want to say like 1883 it was incorporated or maybe 43 how did your parents end up there man um so my dad was born out in the sticks so my dad's my dad's 85 so he was way a little older when when I came around um was born out in this town called Stockdale which I don't know has probably eight people in it um and then my mom was was born in Menford both of these places are are in the county and uh dad served in the military for a long time my mom was a nurse um dad has a whole other uh first family out in the west coast he did like was rancher for a while has this all kinds of crazy stories but um got a divorce from his first wife and basically just kind of like gave everything and moved back home to uh to Portsmouth oh so his his his his

family how did his family do you know your grandparents ended up there how do you end up somewhere like I do I only know as far as my parents go it gets we go we go down a whole other uh hillbilly rabbit hole when we're talking like uh parent great grandparents and great grandparents do you know what ethnicity you are uh hillbilly man i have no fucking idea where where uh where the blood comes from yeah okay it's it's interesting because the people in the south there's a lot of french people down there right i mean like louisiana and whatnot that's those are you know french colonists that came over, right? Ohio doesn't have something like that.

Like Portsmouth isn't just all people from Denmark. No, no. It's a good mix of everybody. And I'm guessing that when your dad was a kid, there were 1,000 people who lived there in dirt roads. Probably actually when he was growing up, so we're talking 50s now the population was significantly higher oh because of like some sort of an industry that was there so now we're talking like the heyday of like steel mill coal plants shoe factories the whole deal so i'd say it was um significantly higher than it is now uh ohio initially colonized by french fur traders

ohio became a british colony possession following the french and indian war in 1754 the end of the american revolution britain seceded control of the territory to the newly formed uh united states and incorporated okay interesting and um how many do you know how many stoplights you have in your town is it one of those towns where you know? No, we've got several stoplights. Several? No Chipotle, but we got several. You don't have to brag, dude. I'm just asking simple questions.

You don't have to get all puffy-chested on me. We'll eat some chicken out of the Sheetz gas station. You know what I'm saying? Oh, yes. Nice. Yes. Hey, Dale, do you know who Travis Bajan is? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So he lives in west virginia and the first time i went out there oh okay wow okay so it is developed yep and that's a river there oh no no that's just that is a river that's the ohio river wow okay so so i was making a movie in i don't know 2003 or 4 called pulling john about professional arm wrestling and i went out there travis is one arm wrestling. And I went out there, Travis is one of the characters and I went out there and I had never seen anything like that at the point. And he's like, Hey,

let's go out to dinner. And we took our families out to dinner and we went to sheets and they had, it was a gas station and they had little, like two or three little tables in there. And like, we just like ordered hot dogs or some shit or chicken. Like you said, it was crazy.

It's fine. It's not a gas station restaurants to gas station with tables with tables inside it i was like wow this is some ghetto shit delicious yeah and then we traveled 30 miles to a waffle house to go real big so nuts it's a different world man yeah it is such a different world so so you're born there and what do you, and what do you do there as a kid? Do you have siblings? I have an older sister. Yeah, she's three years older than me.

And so you're born there in a pretty normal childhood? Yeah, dude, it was great. Childhood revolved around sports, hanging out with friends, just like your typical small-town America. Riding bikes, staying up, staying out at night riding bikes by where the bikes were at in the yard um just a really good really cool small town vibe everybody knows each other everybody has each other's back cool drink a lot of kool-aid tang that's right yeah some sunny d you know i mean yeah save money and dilute the orange juice times six oh yeah every

kid on the block can have some and then at some point you decided to go into the uh u.s military yep so i graduated in 99 from high school and uh was fortunate enough i applied and got a army rotc scholarship uh so i went up to columbus to the big city i went to school a small school called capital university and uh so i knew in 99 like that's the route i wanted to take was to go be in the military and then um 9-11 happened my i think it was my junior year yeah my junior year and uh so we all uh, wasn't pretending more like we were, we were going to go get after it when we all graduated. Tell me what ROTC is.

Uh, reserve officer training core. So it's like, so, uh, Caleb can chime in too, but there's, there's a couple of paths to become an officer in the military. Um, I think everybody's familiar with the Academy. The second way is ROTC. So basically if you get a scholarship, whatever branch of the military will pay for your school. And like,

you're kind of like a part-time ish. You're learning leadership basically while you're in, in college. And then you'll fulfill your active duty service obligation upon graduation. And then the third way is to go to officer candidate school and earn your commission that way. Because I would see those guys around campus when I was in school, the ROTC guys, they always stuck together.

They dressed different. I can't remember, and they had their own little building. This was at UC Santa Barbara. Yep, yep. So basically when you see those kids on campus, those are kids who are doing four years of college and then immediately they're going into the military. Yes. What specific branch or all the different branches? All branches have ROTC and then it's really kind of up to that kid to determine which branch he wants to go into.

But yeah, the day you graduate college, you commission as an officer the same day. And why did you choose that path was it um because your dad was in the military i'd say that has a lot to do with it um and i just really i you know was indoctrinated by chuck norris and rambo movies growing up and you know i'd always look at all my dad's old military shit. And to me, that was just like the way, um, that's what I wanted to do. You weren't scared. No, man. Uh, no, I was like more, more excited.

Like this is, this is, this is to me, like we come from a family of, of service. I had a lot of, uh, uncles that served in World War II, Vietnam. And so I just never wanted to sit around and not have a story to tell when I got older, I guess. Interesting. I obviously grew up in California. I think I was always afraid. You know, when you turn 18, all of us have to register for the draft. So I went down to the post office, even though there was no chance of me getting going. But I think I was terrified. Like, oh, shit, what if I have to do that?

Isn't it interesting that and it was definitely how I was raised culturally in California. I don't think I was alone like that. Not that there weren't, you know, guys that weren't pussies, but I think there were a lot of us that were just like scared. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like it's like one of those things. Some some people go in the military because it's a last resort. Some people feel called to do it, man. Like, yeah, I watched my dad grow up and he never once. Actually, I told him I was going to enlist when i was like 15 or 16 and he why are you laughing caleb because i told my parents the same thing my dad just got shit up right yeah exactly so my my dad was an enlisted guy uh for for 14 years and he did uh

he did a tour to vietnam and uh he was like no no, you're not enlisting. I don't care what you think you're going to do, but you're not going to enlist. And I had even like gone to the recruiters and I was going to be a Marine probably because that's like, they had the coolest shit at the time. Yeah. Their commercials were cool as shit. I definitely liked their commercials. You got a sword dude. Come on. Yeah. Like fucking killing a dragon. How do you not want to do that yeah and so i i you know you get a whole swag bag full of shit uh when you leave and i put like the marine corps

bumper sticker on my dad's car wow um which was which my dad was in the army and uh he loved that and uh the next day I look back and that sure shit that son of a bitch was like wiped right off of there and he's like I don't know what you're doing but you're definitely not going to enlist he's like if you want to go in like you're going to go in as an officer which meant nothing to

me I had no different I had no idea what conceptually what the difference was but right I've heard I've had it explained to me a hundred times and I still don't know I just like everyone's like I went as an officer i went in and listen i'm like yeah you you went in and that's it that's all i know you went to disney i don't care if you got the season pass or fucking bought your shit into it uh okay so so you go in there and and how and how and so immediately when you like you said 9-11 happened so immediately even though – like you said, 9-11 happened.

So immediately, even though you're not in yet, you know that, oh, shit, the anthill has been shaken, and dudes are now leaving overseas to do shit. You're not going into a training camp. You're going into a path to a deployment, right? Yes. And obviously everyone then – that's like predominantly what happened to people. And tell me about that. Tell me about, so what year do you go in and how quickly are you trained to deploy?

So to summer of 03, I was committed, I was in the army now. And then you, depending on what you do within the branch that you're doing, you're going to go to like a school to learn more about that functional area of the military, essentially. So I went to military intelligence officer basic course down in Arizona. And then at that point, you're like getting your first assignment.

So when you're done with your course, it's like, OK, what unit are you going to be a part of? assignments so when you're done with your course it's like okay what unit are you going to be a part of and i was honestly like just trying to get on the next unit going out um and there came a really you were you were hungry to deploy yeah yeah i i didn't want to miss it you know because uh it was like because now you depending on generationally when you enter the army, it's like, okay, now we got a war going on. This is why we joined. And you sure as fuck don't want to miss it. You don't want to miss that plane going out.

So you're doing whatever you can to figure out who's going where. Yeah, Caleb told me, if I recall, sorry if I'm misrepresenting you, Caleb. Caleb, when he said he was going, I'm like, why are you doing that? He's like, because I applied to leave. I'm like, are you you, Caleb. Caleb, when he said he was going, I'm like, why are you doing that? He's like, because I applied to leave. I'm like, are you fucking serious? I asked for it, yeah.

Yeah. One of the things is, it's like, you don't, I mean, at least for me, it's like, if you went in, like, you don't want to be all the way to, like, the five-yard line and not try to score. You know what I mean? Dave explained it to me like this too i'm paraphrasing and sorry dave but i i remember one time he had to come home for something i can't remember what and he was pissed and i go dude what's the problem and he goes dude i'm it's like being a firefighter trained to put out fires and all of a sudden you find out there's never going

to be another fucking fire it's like i trained for this i need to get back over there and he hated the fact that he felt like he was letting his friends down yeah that's a huge part of it um like actually once you get assigned to your unit and now you train with these guys and and if they're going and you don't go man like that's like for whatever reason now some guys will scam like they'll find ways not to deploy uh there's there's goes out there like that but if that's what you want man like you're you're doing everything you can to to get over there um so there was a cool opportunity um that um so i was an intel guy and they were like 10 special forces group had an opportunity for an intel officer to join, to join their unit. So I was like, fuck, that's what I want to do.

Like, put me, put me on that. And so I showed up there, showed up there in late 2003, four, something like that. And by I was on, we were going to Iraq in November of 04. Wow. by I was on, we were going to Iraq in November of 04. Wow. And, and this, um, this 10 special forces group that, what is that? And is that's a good group to go with you? There's other paths and you intelligence guy could have been put somewhere that's ass and this, you're like, Oh, this, these are going to go with. Intel guys like a combat support guy. So basically that means, um,

our specialty can go to any unit, right, and assist them in their intelligence operations. Are you the little green guy with the radio on the back that I had? I had all those army. You're the one with the. I mean, if that's the best analogy we got, that would. We'll start there. We'll start there. We'll start there for sure.

would uh that'll start there we'll start there we'll start there for sure um and intel guys straight out of school had not been allowed to go to um special forces groups since vietnam so i was like fuck sign me up let's roll and they're literally and basically what that means is when you say special forces for people who don't know i think what he's saying is special forces are the guys who get their hands dirty and so like you could have been put with a unit who's like hey watch that watch that car park and you could have been there for three years doing dick yeah special forces are being they're like out there doing shit you're like oh these guys are going to be active that's why you're excited yes that's and it yes 100 okay um and they're literally so everybody kind of throws the term special forces around as if like that's Navy SEALs and they're, they're special operations, right? They're special operations.

Okay. Special operations. And like SEALs are a part of a special operations unit. United States Army Special Forces is actually Green Berets, what they're, what they're known as. I apologize. No, no, no, no. It's been explained to me. special forces is actually green berets what they're okay what they're known as i apologize a lot it's been explained to me no no no you're not true no no need to apologize and you have like rangers and then like uh the pj the pararescue guys in the air force but they all they all work together but essentially depending on what mission you want you're going to choose the right tool. Right. So Green Berets are known for taking a small team, deploying to a foreign country somewhere, and then developing living training alongside a foreign country element to develop their forces to be capable to fight whatever the enemy is. And you did that. Your first deployment was in iraq yep mosul and uh and how long were you there uh seven months and what was that like

fucking wild um actually you had a guy on a couple weeks ago and he had talked about um the suicide bomber walking into the chow hall yes yes i was there at that time who who was that i forget his affiliate name i reached out to him afterwards uh fuck forget his name caleb's on it caleb's caleb is actually my special intelligence during the day he helps people with their venereal diseases on this job. You know what? Actually, that's a decent analogy for what Caleb's doing. Finding out more information to present to people to action targets is essentially what Intel guys do. Was it Andy Schneider?

I think it was Andy Schneider. I forget the name of his place but anyways so i would need to see a blue cord process oh yes it wasn't him there was a couple guys before him sorry sorry okay god he's he's watching right now being like fuck what a douche hey listen i can't even remember my kids names i look at him i'm like which one are you yeah he didn't even know what my gym's name was so i know yeah there you go yeah fucking crazy i heard greg talk about you so much too before i met you like for years i heard him talk about you it was it was so weird that's fucking that's wild in of itself man um but so yeah i'm listening to your show and then i'm like oh fuck like i was right across the airfield um when that happened and that actually it'll be the anniversary like i think december 21st or something so they did it

right around christmas time um yeah shit i was right yeah so yeah so this photo so these are the guys uh that one of those guys you no no no no. So that one of the guys is like my boss and the other, like the officer in charge, the other one was the non-commissioned officer in charge. But, um, so we had like a little chapel at our small little outpost. And then after that, man, like we had to like pull security, uh, in the chapel just to make sure nothing went down. uh in the chapel just to make sure nothing went down um and that to me like that photo just represents um the guys i worked with man like just good fucking people who were just salt of the earth and oh to be there during that time that's how you dress right there. Yeah. At that. So that's late. Oh, four. That's before like other iterations of the BCUs or BDUs.

But yeah, man. And what did you do? Tell me, can you give me an example of what you would do there? Would you guys, I'm reading, I'm reading this book.

Craig Harrison wrote called the longest shot. I'm actually listening to it now. Okay. He, he, he, he was, he's from the united

kingdom and he did fucking everything and then i had roger sparks on here and he did everything too you know what i mean like some days you're just sitting around with your thumb in your ass garden some something that's pointless and the next day they're just like okay 40 of you just drive around here and it's like basically they're sending you out to run over IEDs. You know what I mean? I mean, you're supposed to be looking for them, but it seems like there's so much bad shit happening that it's like, dude, like. Well, so a good mission example during that deployment, the first ever Iraqi elections were in January of 2005. And like Al-Qaeda, all the foreign fighters, their purpose at that time was to get people not to go and go vote. Right. So they had a complete campaign of like psychological fear and psychological operations that we're going to like cut your head off.

We're going to kill your family if you show up to vote. boat um and so what our teams did leading up to that point um was go out with iraqi special forces so we had a job part of our units their job was to train and develop our iraqi special operations forces we had other teams like once those guys were ready they would advise and assist on missions with them because then the goal was like we don't want to fucking be there forever so we've got to train and develop those guys to take over security for their own country um so we would be like our op tempo leading up to the iraqi elections was insane because we wanted to take all the bad guys off the street prior to that so people could go to the polls and and vote in their elections so they you that's what you did you you you you would get intel and then you and

the group would go out and collect bad guys and throw them in jail yeah so so specifically within like our section there's there's all kinds of ways to find out information right so like the the one that's like most well-known is human intelligence. So you're developing sources on the ground through different methods, whether it's like POW interrogations or you have high level access and placement

through other means. So we're developing human intelligence. So we're getting guys on the ground to tell us who the bad guys are. There's also stuff like signals intelligence, um, to find out to fix and locate where bad guys are doing. So we take all this pipeline of information coming in and try to make the most sense of that and then feed it to the teams so they can, um, put their spin on it and action targets. You, I'm, you i'm this is going to sound extremely racist and it probably is but i'm okay with it um i'm struggling with the term training iraqi

special forces i just don't believe that there were ever any iraqi special forces well that's there weren't until we were there you were guys were actually able to make them competent enough to call them that i mean isn't there like some sort of like competency competency level that you that we associate with the term special forces yes and so that's it so that's a great point so well thank you thank you dale my favorite part of the podcast put that. This kind of leads into what would happen with me down the road, right? So you can take anyone. So do you judge an affiliate by how well their athletes move? No.

Okay. Well, some people do, right? So you as a coach. I judge them by if they can keep the doors open. I'm a lowest common denominator guy. Right. So but we're taking people off the street who have no experience with human movement. And it's a reflection of the coach on how well you get them to move. OK, so it's the same thing if we reverse plan it. When you're looking at a Green Beret unit or a special forces unit,

we're taking 18-year-old kids off the street with zero experience. We're running them through our own design pipeline of selection and assessment. And that's just like getting your dick kicked in for fucking months on end. If they survive that, then we're training them on the advanced skills on how to action targets and all that stuff yeah i believe you bruce if if i i bet you there's a lot of kids there when there's and especially there's there's not a lot of avenues for success for them so they have a place where they can be with friends get food place to sleep right get away from their uncle that's molesting them i mean fuck there's and if you actually like you know of course we would go on to withdraw and of course

fucking uh isis would go back and try to take over iraq but if you actually look at it the fucking people who stopped that from happening were the iraqi special forces awesome that had 10 years or whatever years of training underneath the united states special forces on what right looks like so that when we are no longer involved there they have the competency to take over their country did you see personally see some pretty amazing transformations uh not i was kind of like off to the side um second deployment was a little different but i mean you're just fucking these to see what these guys can turn into is pretty pretty it's insane like it's a ragtag group and then a year later they they move as a team and

they're dangerous yep like if you look up uh Iraqi counterterrorism force ICTF uh I don't know what they're called now but I mean back in the day in the like 05 to 12 they were they were moving on targets i want have any of those guys written books see that that's the this is this is the the internal struggle with uh with green berets and special forces uh they're known as the quiet professionals right very rarely um even even that's that code is even taught to the iraqis i i i can't it should be i i'm not for sure but yeah i mean iraqis do they're not it's our guys aren't really the ones going to write the books on that now i will say this uh a great example is uh horse soldiers like the horse horse horse soldiers. So they were like, um,

fifth special forces group was like the first team in Afghanistan. Um, and what they, they actually wrote into paddle on fucking horses, uh, with their Afghan counterparts. And that's like the classic quintessential special forces mission. Um,

that gets talked about a lot. Have you read that i read it and then it's more well known now because uh it was made into a movie not too long ago because chris hemsworth picked it up yeah if you want to read i'm telling you this book if you want to listen to an audiobook maybe it's not your cup of tea since you were over there but this craig harrison book is fucking nuts and it starts with him as a little kid and just shows his path into the military yeah dude i'll check that out it is at the audio book is absolutely unreal it is so good it's so well read it's um yeah it's it's uh it's it's fantastic so many layers of like lessons learned it definitely makes you i mean he's basically the typical you know story horror like but basically i had roger sparks on i don't know if you know who that is but

basically the same thing the home life was just absolute fucking shit yeah and it's like i'm out of here and all of a sudden you're in you're you're in the military yeah it's like, I'm out of here. And all of a sudden you're in the military. Yeah, it's kind of my dad's story. His home life was shit and he's like, I'm out. Yeah, he's like, he couldn't wait to get the fuck out of there. So you go there and how many years are you in the military? Dude, I was under a year. So it was like commission, go to basic course, get your unit, get on a fucking plane.

It's time to go. No, how many years were you in? Oh, just four. Just four years, yeah. And you deployed both to Afghanistan and Iraq? No, just double-tapped Iraq. So went to Iraq the first time for seven months. Then you come home for seven months, and you go again for seven months. And that cycle continues.

And why did you get out? Because i could see the writing on the wall uh i was like you were gonna be killed or go crazy no it was just uh if i wanted to stay married any longer than that um it was time it was kind of time to to get out and i just had to make a hard removal um because like if you still kind of stay stay in like guard or reserves or something like you're kind of one foot in one foot out um but I I just knew it was it was time for me to to move on and what year did you get out uh 2007 and had you found CrossFit at that point before then so i've found i've found crossfit probably the last four months of being in can you tell me that story oh dude so there was a group of captain we were i was a captain by this point and uh our unit was redeploying again

so we we were all getting out and so we're like we're kind of like in the operations it's called s3 so we're in the s3 shop helping train develop training scenarios for our guys before they would go on and uh this guy's like hey dude you gotta check this website out because i always like to lift they always like to run and we would never meet in the middle. And then finally he was like, Hey, there's this workout. I think we should, we should go try it out one day. I was like, yeah, Dan, let's, let's go do it. And it was filthy 50 and this was in Fort Carson, Colorado,

up in the, up in the mountains. And I was fucking wrecked I mean you've been trained what was your you and you had been training prior to that yeah I was I mean basically like uh just lifting really I mean like just just standard lifting kind of stuff and uh they're like yeah you just do 50 of these things you do it really And half the shit, I didn't even know what it was. Right. And. Back extensions. Yeah, right.

Ball ball. And so we watched videos. At that point, you had to download the MPEG to your computer to watch the video. And 40 fucking minutes, man. I was just dry heaving 40 minutes. And I was like, this is the fucking coolest thing in the world. Like, where has this been my whole life? And that was kind of my first taste into CrossFit.

And you just stayed with it. Yeah. So I stayed with it. And then like, I think the next workout was like Lynn. Um, so I was like, now I was trying to get a little bit revenge cause I lifted and these guys never lifted. so that's and that's why i was like oh so you don't it's not one thing it's everything and that's really what got me into it um did were you addicted to the website you knew that it posted every day at five o'clock you'd go see the picture hope there's a picture maybe you'd get lucky and there'd be a video like you were like dude i i was comments i was bit and hooked immediately um and then so it's time to get out and we started at the same time

i i found it and like i heard about it in 2000, summer of 2006. And then, or maybe it was before then, I can't remember. But I was kind of tentative, right? I was like, what is this shit? And then by 2007, I was on the website every morning. Yeah. Or every day at 5 p.m. Like literally waiting by my computer, 458, 49, like refreshing.

Yep. As soon as you go up, you call your friend. Dude, did you see the workout i mean it was crazy right yeah that's when websites were really big yeah people don't really surf the web the way we used to no like there wasn't you had to go to the website there was no other channel of information that you're getting it's like what's the workout of the day and then then you like you went back through the archives yes then you went on the message board yes and then you were like trying to learn how to make your own shit yes i don't have kettlebells what am i gonna do

what do i sub for ghd and you're just like trying like yeah yeah and it was like you uh if you actually saw a rower in real life in 2007 it was like this mystical thing that appeared. Um, but yeah, I mean, so I was getting out and, um, it was fortunate enough to come back home and I knew I still love CrossFit. Did you have kids at this time? No, uh-uh. No. But how did you meet your wife? Sorry. And when? No, no. We actually met in high school. met in high school yeah and then we we dated on and off through college and um wow okay yeah so and then uh we got like a justice of the caleb will appreciate this we got a justice of the peace marriage uh before my first deployment so i was like hey if i get fucking blown up, at least you get $400,000 out of this deal. Oh, smart. That's right.

More money, man. Yeah. Didn't get blown up and came home. Then we got married in the real church, if you will. But, yeah, so came back home. Started working for the Department of Energy. and i was fucking still had to do crossfit right so i went on and now it was like there were actual places you could do crossfit right not a lot maybe 300 in the country but there was actually one near portsmouth no so i

to 2007 i look up the map and there's this place in columbus called rogue fitness uh-huh i've heard of it and uh i was in there like hey we do free saturday workouts so i'm like well i guess i know what i'm gonna do on saturdays so in columbus is like an hour and a half away. So drove up there, just kind of fucking showed up Saturday morning, 2007. And there was this like skinny dude who said he was from the Air Force. And he was just coaching these classes. And it was the first. Was Katie around then? Was Katie in those classes?

Katie was not. I'd have to go back and look. But either they had not met yet or they were just dating i think not even at this point um so and just this is the first time i ever saw like a set of rings in an actual gym and really just fell in love with crossfit now i actually could see it in real life um and more so like fell in love with kettlebells, like really just took a, went off the deep end as wanting to learn more and more about kettlebells. What do you think you liked about them? I liked the movement or the portability or the,

the, the, you could have one piece of equipment the rest of your life and you could be super fit. Yeah. And then you could could and then there was like then i went down a rabbit holes of like kettlebell sport versus like hard style and pavel and rkc and blah blah blah blah and uh wasn't kelly moore a big kettlebell person kelly moore yeah do you remember her from the message board she was oh yeah yes she was 120 pounds or 105 pounds i'm gonna do murph with a 40 pound vest and beat all the guys like what the fuck is going on here yeah and two it's like practical like i i can't out i can't afford to outfit an entire gym but i mean i can buy three or four kettlebells and be good to go

and so how long do you do that commute for for on saturdays a long time uh i mean it wasn't i wouldn't go like every saturday but when i was available i'd go up there and that's your wife uh no she was she was working at the time so just go up there and then um so i'd have to travel a lot for work. And then the closest airport was Columbus. So I got to know Bill. And this was like when Bill was just gym owner, Bill. And I didn't know shit. I didn't know.

I knew I love CrossFit, but I know I sucked at fucking everything. So I would text Bill and like ask him to do some personal training as I was leaving or coming out of the airport just to show me how to deadlift, show me how to clean, show me how to do stuff with kettlebells, and that's how I learned CrossFit, man. Dude, I don't know if people listening know how crazy that is, but that's like texting Jeff Bezos and asking him how you should open up a 7-Eleven or texting fucking Elon and trying to get some engineering tips to think of where Bill is now.

I don't think you can overstate his well-deserved success. Oh, his his well-deserved success. I mean, he he and and rightfully so. I ripped off every single piece of information I learned from him. Yeah. To include like the first Saturday class I ever went. He took a picture and then he put it on his blog. And I was like, to me, that was the coolest fucking thing that had ever happened to me in the CrossFit space. I was like, oh, there's a picture of me on a blog somewhere.

And then I always remembered how that felt. As I recall, Daniel, to even call the first Rogue a gym was a stretch. It definitely wasn't a business. The first affiliate was like every affiliate. was just yeah it's just a fucking box there was nothing fancy about it as i recall oh no it was no i just thought it was cool because there were some rowers and i saw rings hanging down from the rafters for the first time in real life yeah that's pretty advanced that he had rowers yeah and then so as i would travel up there you know i got to know him and then he he kind of was like you can't get crossfit equipment anywhere like unless it was like high

end olympic level right like a set of rings is like 800 bucks right what yeah he's like i'm going to get my nba he was like finishing the Air Force, and he's getting my MBA. And I found a dude who – I didn't know that. Bill went and got his MBA? Yeah, from Michigan. Wow. Yeah.

And so he goes, I found a dude who can weld. And so he like shows me these metal rings, and he goes, I have another friend in a small town in ohio who uh who can do who like does the seamstress kind of so that person did the straps wow and he's like we're selling rings and we're selling rings now that was the first thing i bought i bought that was the very first thing i bought rings yep i was like man that's fucking epic and so i just always would watch them from afar and talk to them a couple times a year and then it was like then it started becoming rogue fitness like now you got a web like you got a website and shit he had a website

you could go buy shit um and i just thought man i was like that entrepreneurial thing was now it was tangible like i knew somebody that did that before it's like you if you knew somebody that owned a business it was uh it was like saying you knew somebody in the nba like oh that must be nice like how does anybody ever even actually do shit like that? And this whole time you still work for the Department of Energy? Yep. So I worked. I was working for the Department of Energy from 2007 to 2015. Okay.

And then what happens next? I don't want to miss anything and skip too much of the timeline, but do you open a gym next? Is that when you start thinking this is too far to travel? I need my own gym or. So I, so Bill got to the point to where he was selling kettlebells. And so I buy a bunch of kettlebells and I belong to a gym here in town. There was only like one gym here at the time. Was it a CrossFit gym?

No, it was just a normal gym. Right. But I would carry in my kettlebells every day to the gym. And it was doing like CrossFit workouts with kettlebells. And they're like, dude, what the fuck are you doing here? Like somebody's going to get hurt. What are you doing this for? What are you training for?

I would always hear that at the park. Nothing. Yeah. So you get like weird looks. What are you training for? And finally I was just like, Hey, do you guys care? Like can I just leave these kettlebells here and people can use them? Like I don't give a shit. Like they're like, no, that's, it's a liability issue. Like we're not allowed for you to do that.

And I was like, man, what the fuck? They're kind of like – Zombie talk, just on autopilot, zombie talk. They're kind of like, we don't really like you being here is kind of the vibe that I was getting. Then I was showing some of their trainers what I was doing. Then sure as shit, you'd see people start doing wall balls and stuff like that. Anyways. Oh, wall balls were stuff like that anyways oh wall

balls were a big no-no do you know oh yeah you can't throw something in the gym or insurance for throwing objects or you're scuffing up the wall yeah there's still some gyms like some base gyms that have a sign that says no wall balls here yeah you're gonna scuff the walls or something and so finally a lady comes up to me and she's like, Hey, I don't know what the fuck you're doing. Um, but it seems really cool.

I am opening up a new gym in town. And would you like to teach people how to use kettlebells? And I was like, fuck, I'd fucking be honored. Had you taken Martone's, uh, Jeff Martone?

No, no, not. And I was like, well well i guess i better like get serious about this if i'm gonna actually teach people so then i took jeff martone's course like the next month where did you take it down lexington kentucky you know um uh you know allison right allison nyc yeah yeah oh i met her at the i met her at the je Martone's Kettlebell Cert at the original CrossFit Santa Cruz gym. That's how we met.

Oh, dude. Yes. He's an awesome dude. Jeff is fucking great, man. Yeah, he's a special human being. The way he delivers information, his personality, his humor. And he worked for the department of energy too. Yep. Yep. He helped. Yep. Yeah. He was, uh,

he helped train, uh, the couriers, I believe. The couriers meaning people who move stuff around. Yep. Yeah. That's if anyone ever gets a chance to meet or talk to that guy, that guy, that that's you're, you're very lucky. Yes. And so, yeah. So I watched all those videos did the whole thing and uh got certified went back up the bill this is like one of my favorite memories of bill um so we're talking 2009 now so i was going to start these classes in 2010 and uh it was a black friday sale so i drove up to rogue and it was bill alone working in rogue fitness which doesn't this wasn't even rogue fitness then it was like a it was a warehouse adjacent to his gym i remember and in the back

was the broken down deuce yeah yeah and uh. And because I was going to buy 10. There was a basketball hoop in there for Haley, Haley, for Katie to shoot. It was kind of fucked up, but she could make all the trick shots like rafters and shit. I remember. And Bill was like there and he just like seemed to be like literally buried by all the equipment trying to get the orders done. He was just like, I'm never going to let people have Black Friday off again. It was him, dude. It was him in there getting dirty, getting shit done because customers made an order and he was going to get it out. January 2010, I started teaching people how to use kettlebells at this 24-hour fitness gym.

And eight months later, we'd outgrown the space and opened up my own spot in August of 2010. That's when you opened your gym? Yep. And there's this distinction you talk about, which I thought was fantastic. The distinction you talk about, which I thought was fantastic, the difference between basically one of the things that I actually had heard spoken about but never as poignantly as I've heard you, that guys are in the military. Even Don Falla talks about it, the current CEO of CrossFit. You come back from the military and you're an eminently capable human being and man, and yet you don't even fucking know what skill you have that transfers, even though you can fucking do it all. And you're like, what the fuck am I going to do with my life? And so when you have that, the implications are that – I wrote down some of the words you used. Feel free to jump in and take over.

No, for me, guys get out and like, I just literally watched a fucking country have their first free and fair elections in history. Yep. And played, played a very small minor role and good connectivity and purpose in society

that's the words i grabbed from you then you come back and i mean you you're so connected and you have such purpose and then you come back and you're like okay who needs like you don't you don't right away see the transfer right it's like someone who's like the greatest apple picker in the world and they move you to an apricot orchard. It's so obvious your skills are going to transfer, but, but you don't cause all you see is apples. Yep. And you're lost. Like you're, you're, you're lost and, and you begin to feel isolated. Right. And once you start feeling isolated, that's when bad things can really, really start to happen.

What do you mean isolated? Can you explain that to me a little better? So you're like, you're saying like, you're, you're not with your team. You're not with your unit. Um, you move back home to, uh, or in your around people who have zero shared experiences, you, so you have nothing to talk about. You have nothing to relate to. They're all complaining about what you think are extremely minor problems in life and you're just kind of like the fuck was all this for and so you begin to you begin to like withdraw from relationships and from people and that's when like isolation starts to set in and when i isolation leads to desolation and i've seen a lot of bad things happen to bad people when they no longer feel a part of something.

Bad things happen to good people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. That's okay. That's okay. Bad things happen to bad people too. I just wanted to make sure I got. And so, so you come back, did you experience any of that yourself? And so you come back. Did you experience any of that yourself? Yeah, man.

It wasn't like very dramatic, but it was just like I had watched. So I got out in 07. So I got out the height of all this stuff going down. And more people could name every member of the Kardashian family than they could anyone that had died in service uh and i was like do you is anybody aware that there is a war going on and people are over there um and i just i want to add this to this let's say it's let's say they're equally as important let's say they're equally as important knowing the kardashians names and and and knowing the guys who died fighting for your right to sit down and watch the kardashians and eat ice cream

let's say let's just for it's still even at that level you have to assimilate to that society where you don't know any of the fucking characters but we we know that that's not equal like no one's turning on the kardashians and before they turn on their tv they look to the east and say thank you u.s military right giving me the safety to sit here yep and that's why you do it that's why and that's that's why you do it you know um but you know there are like transition assistance programs out there but no one can ever really prepare you for what life is going to be like when you,

when you're out there. And I had a great fucking job, like by all rights, like everything was, was looking good for me. But then even at work, man, I was like,

now I was a government fucking employee. And I was just like, I can't do this. Like I, I, why, why isn't that a easy, isn't that a cush job? What's the dude? I was a, I was a do this. Why? Isn't that a cush job?

Dude, I was a GS-14 at like age 30. What's that? What's GS-14? Damn. Just a lot of responsibility? Well, you had a good salary. Okay. You had a good salary. My boss, I was like telecommuting before telecommuting was a thing.

Meaning life was good. You could stay at home. I could, yes. Underwear with just a shirt on during meetings. As long as I did my shit, my boss was cool. But my shit was devoid of purpose. And then I'd watch people like 20 years older than me. And I could hear them before I saw them. And what I mean by that is I'd hear the shuffling of the feet down the hallway.

Like hunched over, staring at the floor, just shuffling the feet down the hallway to get their cup of coffee. And I was like, I, this is not the path. I can't, I will fucking be a miserable, miserable person if I do this. And luckily, as I was really starting to have these feelings, the gym came into my life. And now I had something to completely obsess about and to feel a part of something and to train people and to see their transformation and to just bring life back to, to an area. Did people around you notice that you changed? Like as you got purpose in your life did your wife and your and your friends see yeah they should be happy happy they they and got you know god bless her because she's put up with me for for everything um dude i would go this i'm so

fucking embarrassing to say this but like before the gym i'd be like get home from work i'd still work out i'd go home get a workout in and fucking play xbox i would fucking play xbox and i hated myself i was like what are you fucking doing as a man you're like late 20s you're going getting home from work from a job you fucking hate to go play a fucking kid's computer game. Like, this is your life. You just insulted fucking 30 million people. But it's true. But it's true. Sorry.

It's fucking true. It's you will all every one single one of you will wish you got those years back when in the future. And yeah, I mean, so started the gym and. Oh, Sean says the problem is you should have played PlayStation. There you go. Bingo. Well, well played, Sean. OK, so so and then that changed that changed right away when you opened the gym.

Yeah, man. Yeah. Now I had a unit. Now I had a purpose. Now I had something that I was completely, utterly devoted, obsessed, and committed to. And did you find a good location in portsmouth i don't know if there is a good location in portsmouth um but so a guy that was taking the old classes he was like hey my friend has this warehouse and it's dirty disgusting and he just stores his old cars into it um we're out we had like a 500 square foot room that we were doing stuff out of. He's like, I think if you approach him and ask him to to rent it, he'll he'd be willing to do it. And I was like, no, not doing it. I'm not going to open up a gym. I don't have money. This is Portsmouth, Ohio, where the economically most depressed and unhealthiest county in the state no one can even afford this

shit to begin with and then started looking into it it was like okay well this is gonna cost a seed and it grew it's like this is probably gonna cost me eight grand to start which was more than that but i was like okay eight grand and then it became your L1 at that point. I had not taken my L1 yet. We opened up as a non-affiliate just because I didn't know if this shit was going to last. But I had the Martone cert. So I figured, like, if anybody asks, I'll show them that piece of paper. And it was like, OK, eight grand. What's the worst thing that can happen? No one comes. Then I was like, well, I'll have equipment for a sweet home gym for the rest of my life. And I've been kicked out of every place in town so far.

So that was the route I was having to go take. So that was the ultimate decision. And so you opened the place and people came. We had a built-in following from being at the other place. Yeah. And we opened on a Saturday, and 20 people showed up. Wow. And have been coming ever since then. And how much was the membership back then?

This tells you what a fucking genius businessman I am. So you're going to love this, especially being in Santa Cruz. So I talked to the lady. I said, she wanted $600 a month for rent. I was like, no fucking way because I don't even know. No one's going to be here for that.

I said, give me six months at $300 a month. If people are still coming after six months, then I'd say I can afford the $600 a month. We started with $300 a month. And if people are still coming after six months, then I'd say like, I can afford the $600 a month. So we started with $300 a month rent and I was still working. So I, I was like, basically, all right, if you come to the gym, it's $5 a workout. Okay. And that's what I, that's what I charged. And that was in 2010. 2010. Yeah. And where would people put the money?

They would, they would like give it to me. They would put it on the fucking, on the desk. Like it was such a fucking shit. There was no register. There wasn't even, it wasn't,

you weren't even organized, organized enough to have a glass jar. No, no. It was just like, just like $5 bills just coming in. Yep. And then I just,

some asshole would give you a 50 and change. And then i got smart enough to the point to where i was like okay i'm gonna offer 10 classes for whatever and then i was like so we'd on the whiteboard we'd have your name and then you just mark out the class oh oh awesome awesome so i'm fucking done are you still in that location no dude we uh we three years later we moved to our current location now wow crazy okay um and um so when do you finally take your l1 2011 i believe okay do you remember who you took it with uh actually it was um ben bergeron and his wife were on staff then that's heather yep it was at it was at rogue fitness and i believe yeah how i took the l1 because, you know, when you host the L1, you get five free slots. I think it's two now, but go on.

So Bill was like, hey, we got an extra slot if you want to come up here and take an L1. So that's how I got my L1. When Bill said that to you, when was the last time you had talked to him prior to that? I don't know. Probably several months before that or something. Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that interesting? when was the last time you would talk to him prior to that uh i don't know probably several months before that or something yeah yeah isn't that interesting dude yeah that's everyone stop listening for a minute i want to ask dale something go to the bathroom or something is bill quirky guy i think he i, he's a, I,

I've all great people are fucking weird as shit. Um, the bill, I, the, when I've chatted with him in the more recent past, um, he doesn't seem like maybe I took like 10 years to get to know him,

but I, I always view him as a very quirky type, like a very, he's very quiet. I always remember him a bit yes man a few words bill's quiet he doesn't want any limelight he doesn't want any attention yeah no attention right if he finds out we talked about him he's gonna hate it now he doesn't even care what we said he just doesn't fucking want his name said he uh he just i i really i'm struggling to find the correct words that that fit him you know

um he's just figured out a way to i mean become a powerhouse juggernaut in the industry and doesn't give a shit about any sort of accolades attention or anything for it but it seems like he could do it with anything if he would have got into like fabric he'd have the largest fucking fabric business in the world he's he's extremely intelligent extremely maybe that's what it is that i'm picking off of him just smart as shit and i think yeah i think i think uh and he's got and he's got fucking katie who's savage and he's like so the things I remember like from a business sense early on. They got the brawn and the brain.

Yeah. And he's, and like he does things the right way. That's a great compliment. He does things the right way. And like he won't fucking, like I think you were talking about integrity earlier on like yeah he'll call you on your bullshit like he won't he won't let shit slide yeah he has a very high expectation for excellence yeah um and some people don't meet it yeah i heard he's he's he's uh i've heard that and and and the little bit that i've worked with him and katie i've gotten that too

just most recently when we were at the rogue invitvitational, when we said, hey, can we get some media there? She said, sure, but I only have one request of you. Follow the rules. And then like two weeks later, I sent her a text. I'm like, hey, this doesn't seem right. We should be allowed to do this. She goes, I had fucking one request from you. And that's it. That's all she texted me. she goes i had fucking one request from you and that's it that's all she takes me back i'm like all right yeah sorry and so and then he like throughout i mean we're talking over good people but good people but but if you're a pussy you won't be able to hang yeah like yes and so we're talking like oh in the relationship history over 10 12 years and it's really not like he he'll just be called you to me out of the blue. That means that like you were in his brain

because he's thoughtful. They're thoughtful people. And he'll like say shit to me. He'll just drop little nuggets. So he was like, how's the gym going? And so PSKC stands for Portsmouth Spartan Kettlebell Club. Okay. Portsmouth Spartans is like the name of the original NFL team that was here before they got sold to the Detroit lions. Yeah. I had no idea. And then kettlebell club obviously makes sense. And so we started and we were growing and he was just like,

why don't you like do more barbell stuff? And I was like, Oh, well, I can't afford barbells. Basically was what I was saying. And he was like, you're going to, basically his point was you're going to get pigeonholed down and just be in a kettlebell gym. And you're going to end up losing a lot of potential because you don't offer anything else. I was like, oh, I fucking never thought about that. And he'll just, like, say little shit like that that really gets you to think and helps you out along the way. And that was a catalyst for you to start introducing barbells.

Yeah. So we started introducing barbells and then we'd been around for a year now. And then we, we became a full-time affiliate because we can actually afford the fee at this point. And, and then we just fucking took off, man. Like, and then the next point in the juncture was a building became available, the building where we're at right now. And it was just like, ooh, now I'm going to go from renting to buying something. And of course, I was super reluctant. I was like, there's no way I'm going to buy that building because now if it folds, I can't just walk away.

I actually have a piece of property along with me. Are you still at the Department of Defense now? I'm still at the Department of Energy. Yeah, I'm still at the Department of Energy. So this is like 2013. And then, so this is the value of like having smart people around you who will like tell you you're a dumbass. And I talked to one of my buddies and I go, man, I don't know if I want to do this. And he was like, I'll tell you what, if you don't buy that building, I'll buy it.

And then you can pay me rent. And I was like, fuck you. I'm going to buy the. I'm going to buy the building. And how much was it? the building and um how much was it so 2013 this guy was uh basically had a bunch of back taxes and he was looking to offload property but long story short it's about a 4500 square foot building and the purchase price was 70 000 yeah yeah you can get a front lawn put in in california for that much hey that's cool and you painted that yeah man yeah god damn that's awesome dude yeah how fun that's what it

looks like today that's it man there she is today god that's so yummy how fun and you got that open lot next to you uh yeah there is an open lot next to us just to the right you could do shit outside yeah barbecue workout yep and then we actually built yeah so during covid we actually built a like a thousand square foot pavilion onto the front parking lot um put a rig out there and so now we have like an outdoor space and indoor space too and when when did your um paths cross with the, the, the, the whole opioid thing, the thing with helping people and embracing that community and started making your own kettlebells?

So 2017 we, I opened up another, another business called Doc Spartan with a lady who was, who's a member at the gym. We went on Shark Tank, got a deal, came back home. Around 2018, a friend of mine was a member at the gym. He was also an executive of the Counseling Center. The Counseling Center is the area's largest nonprofit behavioral health and addiction treatment center. So he was like, hey, man, CrossFit has been extremely fundamental in my own recovery coming here. We got to figure out a way that you guys do classes at our place.

And I was like, well, fuck, let's do it. Like, no brainer. Let's let's make this thing happen. And before that I had zero experience with anyone in addiction. And quite honestly, man, I used to call them all shit bags. Cause where we're at, like they, they, they walk a lot, um, back and forth from our gym. And I would just like look at them and be like,

you guys are the fucking problem that you're the reason this town is suffering is because of you. And just have like a really sour taste in my mouth. And then. That's when you're all integrity and no compassion. Yep. Great. Yeah.

Well, it's, it's easy for me. I'm not compassion yep great yeah well it's it's easy for me i'm not judging you for it it's fair no no especially if you have kids it's the fucking truth and um but when i was thinking all that at no point had i ever offered to help right um then we started doing classes in like the fall of 2018 and got to know guys and learn about them, have conversations with them, um, learn about their struggles. And the first guy that went through our, like our little pilot group, he came up to me and he was like, Hey man, uh, I really appreciate what you guys have done but i'm done with uh with treatment and i'm moving on and i was like sweet so i'm thinking this guy's got his shit together he's got a job lined up got somewhere to go and so i go hey uh well where are you going he goes well i'm checking myself into the homeless shelter tomorrow and i was like you're doing

fucking what and i was like i don't even believe there's one of those in portsmouth i do so i go i don't even know where the fucking homeless shelter is here he goes man if i if i he's a young kid he's like if i go back home i'm just gonna relapse and i got nothing else to do and it wasn't saying it like he was just i asked a question he told me so i looked at the other coach at the time i was like tomorrow 9 a.m come to the gym i'll give you a fucking mop and a broom and you can stay there all day and work out as much as you want we'll we'll figure this out until you get a better setup his name's andrew and andrew's uh, he's a coach for me.

I saw him on the Kelly Clarkson show that you were on. Fucking beast, man. Yeah. What a handsome dude. He's a beast. Beautiful daughter. Crazy. Yeah. And so he's the first one that really opened my eyes. He looks like a model now. He does, dude. He's, he's a good looking, he's a good looking cat.

He's a good looking cat's a good looking cat he's a good looking cat um and so not either of those guys no definitely not that's that's my buddy um he uh and he's the first one that really opened my eyes to like the problem of what they're going through how he got on drugs and the whole thing um and so after that not him either he's a little further i appreciate those you'll get it yeah yeah you'll see him he's you'll you'll know when you see him he it looks like uh they both look so handsome this guy looks like luke more like this guy looks more like i don't know like a luke rockholder this guy looks like luke more like this guy looks a little more like i don't know like a luke rockholder this guy looks like an actor he looks like a hollywood actor he looks like a g.i. joe yeah yeah there he is yeah that's him so that's him and his daughter and uh yeah i mean that whole so his transformation gave you an education yeah 100 100%. And did you ever feel anything physical through that experience? I hate to use this word because I don't even know what heart is, but like your heart open up?

That's a way to put it. It's almost like you're willing to establish a connection with somebody you would never connect to before. And you're willing to learn. You're willing to have those skills, especially being in the military. Like, like it's like, and especially with men, probably. Yep. Like you're really, you're able to connect with men. Yep. Yes. A hundred percent. Wow. This takes us us back to you found a place to use your skills there yes and that's that's and that's why i said earlier on i always thought well fuck if we could take 18 year old iraqi kids off the fucking street and eventually through enough time

and training and mentorship teach them to be high level we can do the same fucking thing here and it finally became full circle what happens when how many of these people how many um uh i don't know what you call them former drug addicts drug addicts have come through your gym since 2017 oh uh i mean more than 100 yeah yeah yeah yeah we so the way we have it is our we have it or we have so that's sorry sorry before you go so that just started the catalyst i don't mean makes you jump ahead so you did one and then and then there was a second one yep did he tell someone? Andrew? Yeah, so Andrew, so the key component of this is you have to have employment opportunities, right? So we eventually had – I started a dog shelter for fucking homeless people.

I tried that. I did that. I let like 50 homeless people throughout all my college years stay in my backyard. It doesn't work. No, no. You just gave them a place to bring their Dremel tools and their stolen shit and do meth and steal your own shit. Okay. Yep. So they have to have a purpose, right?

Or else you're just another homeless shelter. be a government program either because they're they're not going to be paid for anything they know that they just show up collect a check it's it's irregardless of their performance and effort and i don't mean to be a dick but this is 100 truth the people whose job it is to help you need you to be homeless i'm just saying i'm just saying hey it's like a prison guard i need you to i need some of you to go out and rob some shit and come in here make sure i keep my job yep um so we were able to employ andrew like part-time at doc spartan and doc spartan's at the gym so it's like one in the same place and tell me what that is. Tell me what Doc Spartan is. So, um,

You had Doc Spartan before Andrew? Yep. Okay. So let's go back. Sorry. Let's go back to that story. Are you good for time? Bro, I got all fucking day. Okay. And if you have to pee, let me know. We'll stop the show. I'm good so far. Fuck Caleb. Caleb cannot

piss. He's got cannot. OK, so to so just some dates to get people make sure everyone's up to speed. So 2007, you come home from the military to Portsmouth, Ohio, 2000. You had found CrossFit in your last four months in the military in 2000. Then then you would go up to Columbus, and that's how you met Bill Henninger. You'd go up to Rogue on Saturdays occasionally to do a workout and a real affiliate. And then in 2000, and then you were working for the Department of Energy. And then 2010, what happened? Is that when you opened the gym?

2010 is when I opened up the gym in the warehouse. Okay. Yep. Okay. And then 2017 is when you met Andrew. That was your first person who came in, who went through that transformation through that program. But we're going to go back.

You started another small business within your company called Doc Spartan. Yeah. So within the gym, we created Doc Spartan in 2015. 2015 is the same year I quit working for the government. Okay. So now I'm unleashed uh burned i burned the boats and now i'm like doing the entrepreneurial thing full time and what is doc spartan can you take us to that website caleb were you just there sorry

i think i put a link in the notes um so doc spartan we we handcraft and manufacture our own skincare and grooming products. Soap. We got first aid ointment, soap, scrubs, the whole thing. What's first aid ointment? So it's what Caleb's actually holding up. Well done, product placement, Caleb. Very nice. So I was also, prior to that, i was doing some work with adaptive athletes um in helping train and

coach them and and get to different competitions stuff anyways so what happens is like if if you take a a upper extremity adaptive athlete where their limb fits into their prosthetic and you're doing pull-ups and all this stuff like get prur pruned out of their ashes oh where the prosthetic rubs against the body yep okay and then kind of in parallel there was this girl at my gym and she would just have like a little stand of homemade lotions and creams that she was doing and she would kind of sell them to the female members in the gym and then i said hey you think you could come up with like a first aid ointment? Um, because people rip their hands in the gym or bust their shins. And she's like, yeah, I think we could try it. So she came up with like some prototypes and stuff

and we handed them out to everybody in the gym. And we just said, Hey, try this out, see if it works. And we got like really, uh, amazing feedback. And so we got like really uh amazing feedback and so we just like literally in my kitchen table like structured out we'll be 50 50 partners and we'll just kind of sell this to the people at the gym and it'd be a cool little side hustle to have that was yeah that was uh 2015 by 2016, we were asked to go on shark tank and film an episode. You were asked. Yeah. They reached out to us for that. Oh,

isn't that funny? I would have thought it's people clamoring to get on the show. There is, there's like thousands of people that, that try to apply, but in parallel, they have producers, um,

that are out seeking different companies. Okay. That's the show where you stand up in front of a bunch of rich people and you're like hey if you give us some money and help us give us some of your know-how you can have a piece of our company that's exactly it and so 2017 we aired um and just really kind of launched the company. Um, lot. I mean, it was insane after, after we aired on shark tank. It was. Yeah. So give you a frame of reference. You got to understand too. It's like, we, I never, we never wanted this to be a thing. Like it was just something that we're going to do on the side. And then more and more people

would see it on social media and they'd be like, hey, how can I buy this? And I was like, fuck, I don't know. And then so. Ask Bill. So then I, you know, research how to open up a Shopify store. And so then I started doing that. And then our goal was like, hey, let's just try to make one sale a day. Like that would be cool.

just try to make one sale a day. Like that would be cool. And so the year and a half we were open as a company before going on a shark tank, we had done like 2000 orders, uh, online. The five days after airing on shark tank, we did 4,000 orders within five days.

Yeah. Yeah, dude. It was, they tell you, Hey, brace yourself, pump up your inventory. Cause shit's going to get wild, shit. Yeah. Yeah, dude. It was. Did they tell you, hey, brace yourself, pump up your inventory because shit's going to get wild? Dude, yeah. Well, yes and no. A lot of this stuff, you're just out there to figure it out on your own.

So you better be fucking smart at what you're doing. Or not necessarily. Were you able to fulfill those orders? Yes. And the reason. See, this is what a lot of people, like, this is like inside baseball, right? So we went, we filmed an episode in June of 16. And we knew we got a deal, obviously, at that time.

Our episode didn't air until February of 17. Okay. So we got it. Seven months, eight months later. Seven, eight month gap in there. We make everything ourselves like we don't use we don't outsource we don't have a co-packer we manufacture everything ourselves in hand so then it's like well how much do we need to make i couldn't even tell you how to even guesstimate that right and then contractually they're not obligated to tell

you they give you two weeks heads up when you're going to air okay so so you're just out there like how do you even get a thousand of those cans so so you need money for that right is the short answer so now and i and by virtue of me working for the Department of Energy as long as I could, every bit of profit I just reinvested back into the gym. And so I've never gone into debt for anything. Oh, Bill loves that. Did Bill ever talk to you about that? No, not specifically about that, but i'm just fucking too scared i hate smart healthy fear i hate having to owe anyone anything um so anyways so it's like well let's

just put a target out there that we're gonna need two thousand of these and you start calculating like uh you're gonna need like40,000 worth of inventory. Wow. And it's just like, okay, well, where do we get that? And so now I'm having to go in debt, the biggest amount of debt I've ever had to go in at this point in my life, all on a prayer that this thing airs and it goes over well. And then we have to hire somebody to make all this stuff in between it.

So there's a lot of, a lot of risk, a lot of uncertainty. What do you mean? Like make this, cook the soap or make the soap or mold, whatever those grenades are. Yeah. Someone has to do that. Somebody has to build each one of those. Yep. And so fortunately, man, it worked out. So we were able to get 4,000 orders and fulfill them all within five days. Wow. And literally as it's airing, are you seeing the orders? Oh, my God, dude.

I remember trying to watch the analytics on Shopify as it was airing and trying to pay attention to what they were saying. And I looked up and at one point there was like 13,000 people on the website at one time. I was like, I never crashed. No, it didn't. And because, so I started reaching out to other companies who had gone on and it was just like, Hey, can you help me? What, what can we do? What can we expect? And a lot of that's just like the lessons you learn by learning a CrossFit gym. Like everything successful I learned either from the military or fucking up a CrossFit gym for the first five years of its existence.

And so that – what was your partner's name again? The lady's name? Renee Wallace. Renee Wallace. And so that company's still going strong yeah we're kicking it man we're kicking it we're actually trying to dig out from holiday sales right now god that is so awesome i'm so excited for you and then they did a recap i saw i saw the the the link to the recap they did a recap recently talking about your success yep yeah and so when you're looking at this from a brand marketing standpoint it's just like how can we take advantage of this show

as much as possible right um we got obviously we got a deal that's step one step two is like they sent a home package so they sent afterwards they sent people down here to film us live so we got an extra two minutes of footage there yeah um and the episode turned out to be really good and then we got the follow-on episode was renee ever like hey i don't want any of your drug addict buddies working at our company no so she wasn't like hey you're getting too squirrely you're getting too risky for me so here's why yeah renee at the time she was addicted to crack close close um she was dating the guy who worked at the counseling center that set this whole thing up what the fuck yeah she was dating the guy hey there's only six people who live in portsmouth it's really not that it's not

i need to speak to the mayor yes here i am i need to speak to the garbage man yes i'm here that's that's not a far-off representation in this so also uh she's real big into yoga, so she teaches yoga to clients. Wow. Yeah. That's me. Yeah. You own your gym outright? Yep.

So I'm 100%. And yet you're a partner in the business. Yep. Yeah, that could be a whole episode. Is it challenging having a partner? It is. It is. yeah that could be a whole episode is it challenging having a partner it is it is but i think for us like we have well-defined roles into into what we're doing um and like she she does all the like she takes care of the employees she insures

bills are paid she insures she does all the shit that i hate to do and she likes to do that um and then i'm just kind of there to help push sales and marketing and um i know that you mill guys have a very blunt way of can have a blunt way of communication and that can rub some people wrong um yes especially like regular people like i you know like us berkeley folk um but but it's highly effective and it allows things to move very quickly was there an entry period for her in dealing with you she so the good thing about Renee is she had been a member of my gym pretty much since like year one uh-huh so she knew who I am she she knows she knew what she was getting herself into. Um, and, um, but you're right.

Like I'll say some shit and I'll say some shit just fucking that I think I is no big deal. And then I'll look up and I'll see tears and I'm like, okay, well that's not what I gotta, I gotta, I gotta walk it back. And I go, you just have to learn, you have to learn how to communicate the most effective manner with the audience that you have i will say this too if you have some of these people in your life you have to work on that shit too uh my first year uh working at crossfit with all the middle guys was fucking tough yeah but at the end of the day, the truth is, is it was me. It wasn't them. It was all me.

It's a dude. And I mean, I, as a 22 year old dude going to 10th group and it wasn't a tab guy. So like, I wasn't a special forces guy. I was a support guy for them. Yeah. And I know how they talk about you guys. Yeah. Right.

And I was like like at every point in my life i had been like the top dog until then right whether it's sports or just support i heard dave used to tell me that he's like you're in the media team you just support just fucking just spit on me and i was like it i fucking felt uh i don't even know, like, that I just went into work every day and I was like, I have to prove that I'm worthy enough to fucking be here. And that was my, that was my attitude. And it took, it took a while. Like, you're going to get beat. I mean, not physically, like, you're going to get like, you're going to get beat on.

There we go. There's a 10th grouper. God, I love this show. You're going gonna get beat on there we go there's a 10th gripper um god i love this show you're gonna get beat on you're gonna get abused you're gonna get you're gonna go see if you can take it um and then like once you prove your worth man like you're you're part of the club like you're fucking you're you're the dude someone dm me the other day they go why were you like uh you know fucking with hill there's a guy andrew hiller who's in the youtube space now and he and he came on pretty strong about a year ago and in the beginning i would fuck with them like just like on my show just

shit about him a little bit and they're like and now you guys are buddies they're like why'd you do that i go hazing process bro yeah or shit that's how i test them they're faint it's like just you know like what you know and see how he reacts just like nothing you know but and fucking he he was a stud yeah man he's a he's a good guy to play the game now we're buddies yeah he's a good dude but yeah so everyone needs a little good hazing once in a while yeah i mean like you have to you just and that was the lesson it was just like all right dude you gotta fucking prove your worth like it's a moonshot that you got here and like those guys were like my fucking heroes like i was like oh shit now i'm the i'm deploying with them so

we better get this better get this shit together So you got good people in your life. Oh, my God. I have been blessed with amazing people, opportunities. Just like the last time I was at Greg's. How did you meet Greg before you go there? I know. Wasn't that crazy? We're at a party with all those people. We're just hanging out with rodney mullen and shit that was fucking nuts i looked around recently by the way

i looked around i was just like having a conversation with myself i'm like what in the fuck are you doing here like what what role head ai guy from google's there and shit yeah that shit was crazy i I was just like, so then, so going back to like proving my worth, I was like, you know what? I'm going to make sure this fucking fire doesn't go out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just going to keep putting wood in the fire.

Look at Russell Berger was there. Yeah, dude. William Briggs, Roger Kimball. Hey, so how did you meet Greg? So, so just to finish off, so the company's up and running it's its own fucking show yep it's a beast we yeah down the road here talking about how to start a business maybe doc spartan is cruising it's doing great um so we're 2017 we air on shark tank now we need like more people to work so then that's when we offered andrew the

job um and then he had it like we had another opportunity so we hired another guy um and just he went from cleaning the floors to working at doc spartan yep and then after he started working at doc spartan for a little while then he got his level one and then he started working at Doc Spartan for a little while, then he got his level one. And then he started doing coaching. Now he's fucking coaching classes that he used to be a client of. Wow. And he's coaching classes at my gym as well. So when you say coaching classes, he was a client of, meaning he has a class with addicts in recovery. Yep.

Wow, that's dope. Do they love him? Andrew is like like i don't think he even understands how much people look up to him yeah you know i mean just from my own from the guys on my own crew and just like people in recovery in general around the town um it must be weird to see people go from just shells of themselves with no self-esteem to just like from just shells of themselves with no self-esteem to just like fucking believing in themselves. Dude.

What a trippy transformation, but what a fucking great life. Oh yeah. Look at this. Look at these slides guys. This is a crazy Instagram post. This one's nuts. Yeah.

Look at him. He might end up in movies. He's a stud dude. Back on drugs again. Well, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah go to the beginning yeah this this is just not oh yeah that dude's a savage too look at this guy this guy turned into brad pitt so yeah let me stop you right there so this is ricky ricky is one of my favorite fucking people in the world um he was our second full-time employee through doc spartan after this process and it was actually i think two years ago to the date almost anyways we cut we write him his

first check give it to him he goes back he comes back to the conference room he pulls the fucking check out of his pocket like looks at like this folds it back, looks at Renee and I and go, I just want to say thanks. Because for the first time in my life, I can buy my kid a Christmas present. I was like, I still get choked up about it today. And I was like, this guy just like. That's fucking what I get. Like, that's the people I want want to be around that's the people i want to spend time with that's like i feel fucking so blessed and fulfilled that these people are in my life anyway sorry yeah go to the next yeah yeah

this is another like this is Sarah man fuck she's so amazing and is she does she work at the gym or at Doc Spartan she runs the

the packaging and grinding place we'll talk about here in a minute okay god pill billy she's a she's a crossfit coach at a satellite facility yeah she look in that picture too now she just looks like a like a mom that drives a minivan that does crossfit

like she just looks like your regular crossfit mom look at her yeah man and then there's andrew and now they have each other you know oh yeah and then there's Andrew. And now they have each other, you know? Oh yeah. Now they have each other. That is so awesome. Holy cow.

Shared, shared experience, shared suffering kind of thing. It's family. You're going to find in the military. You started making kettlebells there too. No, no, no. So how that that so i'll tell you that story 2020 couldn't buy shit um like you couldn't even get shit from rogue at that time oh because of the the covid restrictions

right okay so there was a guy at my gym. He was head of sales for a local foundry here. So foundry is just like a company that pours iron into different parts and pieces. Right. So if you actually think about a 45 pound iron plate, like that's a great example of what a foundry does. And then there was like a GQ article that said the great kettlebell shortage of 2020 and i just happened to read that online and so i asked the guy at the foundry i said hey could you guys make kettlebells here like is that something that you could do he's like yeah man like we've wanted to get in that business for a long time but it's just never been able to to figure like talk to the right person so so i'm like well i i emailed bill

and i say hey would you guys ever be interested in seeing if we could make kettlebells in porsche with ohio and he's like fuck, fuck yeah, let's do it. And so I sent an email to the guy, Osco, Osco is the name of the foundry, and Bill. And within a month or two, they were making kettlebells here in Portsmouth, Ohio. Oh shit.

Yeah, dude. Are they still making them there? Fuck yeah. So if you go on Rogue's website, you can see the ones that are made in Ohio. I i think i saw did i see a little documentary on that or something like a little video on that there's there's been some news clips probably but so here i go i go from like getting this is like how far is that place from where you're standing right now where they're making kettlebells half mile half mile up the street and they just basically like they're they get big chunks of metal melt them down and pour them into a mold

i mean i'm oversimplifying no that's really so matt and send them up to columbus and then imagine uh railroad ties like old railroad uh tracks yeah they'll take those and melt them down. There you go. Those are made in Portsmouth, Ohio. I can't believe how nice those look. They are made in Portsmouth. I'm going to say it three times. Those are made in my hometown.

Now this is where I get off. I start going down with my revenge. I got fucking kicked out of a gym in 2009 for bringing kettlebells in and like 11 years later they're making kettlebells in porcelain ohio crazy who who owns that company does bill own that company that's that's road so they're rogue kettlebells and he's uh obviously Rogue doesn't have their own foundry. I wouldn't say obviously.

That's true. So they reached out. Even if you go down to the description, Caleb, it'll tell you they're made here in Osco. It's all the way at the bottom. That video showing how, oh, it is there. Cast by video showing of how oh it is there cast by osco industries there it is yep go down a little bit more let me look at those pictures caleb there might even be like a little video there yeah we'll just have a video of it and it's a fucking awesome video yeah his film guys are dope yeah so they're they're the smaller ones from like 44 and under are here in portsmouth and

the bigger ones are up in michigan hey um are you following what's happening to travis bajan's son no i've heard you talk about it but i i don't know much other than that it's fucking nuts dude it is really like he he's on the path to becoming like a household name for fucking throwing a football around. I mean, he's just all time college football touchdown passing record. This fucking kid broke. No shit. All time. Yeah, he's like the greatest.

And coaches are saying he's like the greatest quarterback they've ever seen. It's nuts. And he's division two. That's legit. And he's a CrossFitter, a hardcore CrossFitter. That's awesome. Yeah. And a lover of Rogue. I'm a hardcore CrossFitter. That's awesome. Yeah. And a lover of Rogue.

I'm trying to get him set up with Bill and Katie. Like, dude, have the Tyson Bajent shirt or some shit. Like, fuck. Hook him up. Yeah, I mean. Oh, shit. And he's such a good kid. That's awesome.

Yeah, he reminds me so much of Rich Froning. He reminds me so much of Rich Froning. Damn. Just in that demeanor. Okay, well, congratulations. That's awesome. So you not only changed, you started your gym, started one business, started another business with Rene Wallace, and then helped this other guy.

Are you part owner of that? No. So you jumpstart that business for that guy? So, yeah. And just solely I was like let's fucking make these things in porcelain ohio had no employee any of your former addicts nope nothing i just fucking needs to if there's a need like let's i want this shit done in my hometown right yeah and so he starts are you gonna run for mayor no i don't want to do any of that mess. So this is like a key example of like, so then my other buddies were like, well, hey, did you ask for like a percentage?

Did you get commission on that deal? I'm like, no, dumbass. Like, that's not how that's not why you do it. Well, they start getting up and running. They start getting up and running. Osco comes back to me and they're like, hey, man, we have to package these kettlebells. Like we're meaning like each kettlebell gets two boxes, styrofoam, ship ready. Door to door. And I was like, OK, well, they're like, we're a poor iron, man. Like, we're not a packaging company.

But would you like to open up a packaging company and do it for us? And I was like, well, fuck yeah. I can do that. You scratch my back, I scratch your back. So having, like, so now I got to go find a building. Now I got to go find employees. Now I got to go find all this. Do you know how many people would have fucked that up, Dale?

Do you know how many people would have been jealous and wanted a piece of that fucking kettlebell company and jumped the gun too soon? And instead you waited for it to boomerang and come back to you? I'm telling you, so many people would have fucked that up. To me- You know why? Because they think the world's out to get them. They don't understand how the mechanisms of the world work to me it was about having it done in my hometown

that was it sure right was it um very selfish of you so then i was like well fuck i guess uh but now so we had two years of experience getting people jobs at doc spartan so here's how it works i i only coach one class a week but i have some we do 25 classes a week for the counseling center at their place which is fucking nuts that's five classes a day um so we get to see people basically we get to recruit they have a gym there they have a gym there yeah they have a gym there? Yeah. Yeah, okay. They have their own CrossFit gym inside their facility. So we – I will cherry pick the hardest workers that need jobs. Once a job becomes available, I'll then ask them if they're looking for employment. When we're – then we started getting full at Doc Spartan, meaning we had no other jobs.

And then so this packaging company became available and it's called it's called spartan solutions group and sarah runs that company i mean from fucking i have limited i just provide direction she's there every day ensuring shit gets done shit gets made and shit gets out so she had she runs her own crew three to four people and and how and sarah was the one we saw a picture of that was a former addict that went through the program and when you say you pick these people from the hardest you mean like the people at the gym that's at the rehab facility they're there five days a week and whether they know it or not they're not only working out getting fit finding a group of people

but they're also applying for a job but they don't know it but they don't know it yeah that's crazy we're always assessing and recruiting out of there um and there it is again who do you want i don't give a fuck about your fran time i need to see you come five days a week and try your hardest and then that's how i know you're the best plumber that ever existed yep yep are the best violinist or whatever yeah yeah man and then you just have to what what employers get fucked up on is you need to provide mentorship to your employees just because they work for you that in a normal scenario. Yes. But for these guys, like we just say, Hey, your recovery comes first. And when we say be here at 9am, be here at 9am. And if you're ever unaccounted for more than one time,

we have to let you go. Everything else. How many people have you had to let go? Through the packaging company? It's I'd say it's like 50%. 50%. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's hard fucking say it's like 50 50 yeah yeah because it's hard fucking work man dude yeah yeah it's hard fucking work but they but are those 50 relapse no they just could either find other jobs they could okay i'm cool with that i'm not cool with the relapses did did you see the video we did with do you know know Schindeldecker? You do know him. Matt is a good fucking friend of mine.

What a freak. Man. There's some parallels here, right? Yeah, we talk frequently. Yeah. Matt, I hold Matt in very, very high regard. Me too. You talk about me, i'm fortunate enough to meet

these people and good opportunities like at any point i can call craig howard i can call matt i can call like guys who i look at and respect as like mentors to figure my own shit out and that's where a lot of it is just being successful it's just being able to call on the right people so so you start this other company called spartan solutions yep and they somehow how far is that from where you're standing right now 800 meters down the road okay so in this loop in this um city center there's the place that makes the kettlebells, and then there's the place where – do you take the cardboard to them? No, so – The kettlebells go there, and they package up and mail out of there? Actually, the way it works is raw castings come out of OSCO.

Those raw castings are the kettlebells. Those raw kettlebells then need to be finished, meaning they need to be grinded down to ensure there's no rough patches on them. That's done at another facility. Then from there, the machined kettlebells go to the paint shop. They get coated. Then once they're coated, they come to us and they get packaged for final delivery. And is that all in all those steps are in Portsmouth? There's a couple that are done outside of Portsmouth, but Southern Ohio for sure. God, that is so cool.

And that's what people don't understand is like, we talk supply chain, like that's what it takes to get shit done in America. Right. There's a lot of moving pieces and parts and that's what Rogue is great at. Does this, Spartan Solutions, have they also taken on the role of packaging the Doc Spartan stuff like the deodorants? No, we have our own guys, our own guys that do that. But what we did,

so here's like a great example of how success breeds more success. So I opened up a company, success so i open up a company it's completely ran by people in recovery also known as addicts right so sarah runs the show and so she's she's doing all the direct interface with osco osco i'd say is like easily maybe a couple hundred million dollar company oh it is yeah i mean they're doing shit all over the place um and sarah's the one doing the direct interface and because of her credibility and trust and reputation that she's developed osco came back to us and was like hey we're making thousands of these small parts we we don't have the capacity to finish them in the company. Would you guys mind taking on this work?

So now we have like a full on other line of business to where we're like grinding these small cast iron parts by the thousands and getting it done for their clients. So give me an example of what another part would be like something that's made for cars. And then they would be like, hey, we need these finished finished by this day and they send them over to you and she gets them done and sends them back yep it's wow dude it's always nuts and i'm telling you like i have zero fucking experience with that zero because now so a gym do do how often do you get to get so is your day just filled with going to your different teams pretty much and finding out what they need from you yeah so the good part is uh the gym and doc spartan are co-located so it's one building um spartan solutions warehouse is like two blocks down the street so sarah can always come here if something's popping or i always

try to stop by there as much as i can um but it's you never know what the fuck's gonna happen on a uh on a given given basis with everything going on god uh um so how long has sarah been doing it since 2020 does she know how to like if an employee's does she know how to talk to employees So how long has Sarah been doing it? Since 2020. Does she know how to like – if an employee – does she know how to talk to employees? Like that shit's hard. That shit could take five years or ten years to figure that shit out. You know what I mean? Like to do straight talk with someone.

So – Dale, this is the third time you came in late. It's only five minutes, but I have no tolerance for it, and I'm tired of you fucking parking your car over there where it says no. And you're not representing our company well just in the area i saw you smoking out front three cigarettes on the ground come on man like can she do that shit she she can that shit's scary she can well here's the thing dude that's those are easy problems like that those are easy problems so um we have a guy she has a guy who works for her. His, his name's Rooster and, uh, fuck man. Rooster's gone through some, some tough shit in his day. And, um, he's finally progressed to the

point to where he now has his own apartment. Well, because he like kind of went under, uh, significant care, he's on his own. Some shit got dropped off, like doctor's appointments and in this case, like antipsychotic meds. So he was like three or four weeks without taking his antipsychotic meds. And so now she has to take on the role of like talking to his physician to ensure that it gets the right script gets to the pharmacy. And so he doesn't fucking kill himself or anything worse, you know, like that's the shit that she's dealing with to ensure he's taken care of. Oh, my goodness and that's what i'm trying to like express to people

because otherwise what happens if we don't do that he falls he relapses he's homeless in a week at best if not fucking dead right right yeah i mean because the shit that that's on the streets now will just kill you. Do you have any friends die in Portsmouth? Yes. To try to take this full, full circle. The guy who's set this all up. So the executive, his name's Billy,

the executive for the counseling center. He was their lawyer. So he was their chief legal counsel, my fucking best friend well he relapsed um he relapsed 12 months ago uh halloween of last year and uh fucking died oh my god so the guy not uncommon for these, by the way. This isn't the first time I've heard that someone who runs.

I just heard this story actually very recently where this person runs like seven recovery homes and they relapsed. Yeah. This was his vision, his idea to get the CrossFit thing stood up to then breach into community partnerships with employers. It was his idea. Why did he relapse? Well, basically, he got fired from the counseling center probably because I couldn't pinpoint it. but he got fired and it was his fault. And so it goes back to he had no identity now. He was a part of a unit. Self-esteem fell, turned it back to whatever drugs he was doing.

And he started to isolate. What drug did he, what killed him? He, coroner's report it was uh fentanyl poisoning with cocaine so he was doing cocaine and it was laced with fentanyl and uh killed him killed him and does it come from china so in opinion, what's happening is all the, all the substrates are chemically made in China. They're shipped over to Mexico. The cartels put them together and then they come across the border. Cause if you look,

if you look like this is what people don't understand. Like if you look at a packet of sugar, right? Like that size of what we're dealing with, that amount of sugar that's in there if that was fentanyl that can kill 2 000 people that's that's the my new minuscule microscopic amount that can kill people like that's what you're dealing with does it ever drive you do you ever look at like like this footage like i'm sure you've seen it the footage of the border and it's just like thousands of people coming over every day and no one's stopping them and

they're actually being helped over the border and they're coming in and you know no one's vaccinated no one's wearing masks no one like it's just a fucking free-for-all at the border meanwhile our country is force injecting our kids it's it's like making people wear masks shutting down small businesses do you ever just want to just i i how do you deal with this big picture how do you process what the fuck we're seeing well it's worse than that so uh and that there's people at their top that are allowing this that are what's their basic basically they're all codependence the whole co the whole covid pandemic was a codependent for bad lifestyle choices codependency well here's

what happened with uh people in recovery when you get fucking shut down you have no access to treatment did you have to shut your gym down so we we shut our gym down in the height of it ohio was actually pretty common sense i why do you have to follow rules in the height of it. Ohio was actually pretty common sense. Why do you have to follow rules in Dukes of Hazzard land? I mean, you really are on BFE, aren't you? I'll tell you what ended up happening was we shut down because honestly, like no one knew what the fuck was happening, right? So you didn't want to exacerbate the problem. Well, then it was like six weeks, five weeks into it.

It was just like, this makes no fucking sense. Like we're doing worse by not allowing people here. So I was basically like, fuck it. We're going to open up. And it just kind of did it like tongue in cheek. Like we're not having workouts. We're having meetings. If you, if,

if you're a member and you want to come here and have a meeting, we'll do it. And sure as shit, man, like day one that I kind of put it out there that we were going to do it. There's a poor lady from the health department. She just came in here and she was like, well, I bet you know why I'm here. And I just tried to play it like super like, Oh no, what's going on? Well, I bet you know why I'm here.

And I just tried to play it like super like, oh, no, what's going on? Want to join? So she goes, we just can't let you. And here's how we fucked up. We fucked up by telling people you should have told them not park in the fucking parking lot. Like that's how we fucked it up. Got to park down the road. Yeah.

Come on, guys. Like this is not your first like illegal. Like hang over your girlfriend's house. So anyway, she goes, we can't let you, can't let you open up. And I was like, well, what can you let us do? I tried to, like, throw it back on her. Yeah, I like that. And she's like, well, how about this? How about we let you guys work out in the parking lot?

Oh. And I was like, oh, fuck. Like, that's common. Like, that's a compromise. That's a common sense compromise. We were the only county in Ohio that had outdoor workout permission for a month before the governor lifted the restriction. so every gym inside of the county got to tell their members they could work out outside because it was like a it was a local authority kind of thing yeah and then i'll do you one better so that lady comes in here she lets us do it like two days later i get a call from a columbus number

and it was like from the state capitol and i was like oh fuck here we go and uh this lady's like hey we want you to be on the governor's committee to reopen gyms oh wow i was like i was like what are you do you know like what you're she's like yeah we want you to be on the committee to reopen gyms um because we want like you basically she's like we want you to represent smaller gyms who aren't like globo gyms it won't happen so we tried to try to push for common sense rules of like that little gym shouldn't have to follow that big gyms do kind of thing. So, yeah. And did you take the role? Yeah. Fuck yeah. I took the role. And that's why like we were only shut down for two months, I believe. And then when gyms were allowed to be open, like it was basically like just clean your shit when you come in,

clean your shit when you leave. That was the only rules. Speaking of, um, of, of of roles the the affiliate you were uh let me get the right word right i'm sure you don't even know what the word is changed so many fucking i can tell you what it is now you were the affiliate leader job at crossfit field team representative and i know that they've worded it um and and I'm sorry for ambushing you with this. I know that they worded it that they weren't renewing your contracts, but basically that's a friendly way of saying

16 people were just fired a few days ago from CrossFit Inc. And they were the field team representatives for the United States of America. Yeah, I mean, yes, we started off, it was Dave's idea for this role during his brief tenure years as CEO. And do you know who his task was starting that program?

Who Dave tasks was starting the program. As far as I know, Danielle, she's the one that reached out to us. No, you're talking to him. Yeah. And it was, and I put Matt Bischel and Tyson Oldroyd in charge of it. Okay. Tyson is for, I know. Yeah. Great dude. Great Oldroyd in charge of it. Okay. You know who Tyson is? I know. I fucking love Tyson. Yeah. Yeah. Great dude.

Great. They're both great guys. Anyway. Okay. I don't think Danielle had, I'm trying to think, I'm trying to think when Danielle came in. I think when we started, I don't remember. I don't, I think it went from Tyson and Matt.

Then it got transferred to Jimmy Letchford. And I think Danielle took it over after the company was sold. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. That's what I'm saying. But yeah, so there are no – we were affiliate reps, and then we became CrossFit ambassadors was the term after the games.

And then, yeah, they just told us yesterday that they're not renewing the contract. Not yesterday, like three days yeah no they told us last week sorry last week but very recently yeah yeah okay and and why did they do do do you have any idea why were you doing a shitty job were you like out driving around in the um using the crossfit gas card and filling up your card why were all you guys let go i'm not above doing that but uh i i just honestly think they're wanting to go a different direction with it. Maybe do something different. Honestly, from a business standpoint, this is my opinion, it really makes no sense for us to be there when they hired four to six reps four to six reps to be like the full-time job

we were always part-time right and i think i saw a post gary gains made a post that showed like this other team that was simultaneously working alongside your team did any of those dudes get fired no so so that's the new team you guys were replaced with a smaller team yes that's the new team. You guys were replaced with a smaller team. Yes. That's under Austin and not under Danielle. Right. But we were at the games. We all got, um, we were all under Austin at the game. Okay. So they transfer you all under Austin, but then the ones that were eventually let go were all the ones who had originally worked with Danielle.

It's no, it's super like, it's super convoluted. Some of the original reps got jobs as the full-time reps oh okay that makes sense so that's why it's not that cut and dry no no yeah it's it's not cut and dry at all uh either way a shit ton of 16 people got let go is what i heard i don't know if it's 16 i i think it's less than that it's it's whatever whoever the ambassadors were that um didn't become the full-time reps part of me thinks that they should just ditch all those dudes everyone and invest that money into making media like like that affiliate commercial i made that cost uh uh 87 cents to make yeah and that was what i mean and so like you could make a video every

single day for for the affiliates instead of having affiliate reps and if i was an affiliate i'd want that like i'd get rid of all those dudes i save the money yeah i could i could see that case i can see that or just get rid of one dude who just makes a lot of money and keep all the others you could do it any way you want well i think yeah you know what i mean like you you can keep 10 of the fucking grunts and get rid of the top dog or get rid of the 10 grunts i don't give a fuck yeah i think that money to actually um do stuff that spreads the message every single day that's what i do yeah i mean i think there's a big improvement for media production and content. It's just as far as frequency, for sure. I do think affiliate owners like to have somebody

they can talk to that kind of straddles that line of HQ slash I'm your bro affiliate owner. I think there's value in that as well. I think there's value in like, when I said these young guys, because I'm old as as fuck but if you're a relatively new affiliate owner um there's big time value in finding a mentor like somebody to tell you i don't think that mentor should work at crossfit inc though that's a good point yeah here's the thing i hear i hear what you're saying i just think that the truth is like if you're, I can hold your hand and you'll feel better.

But if I leave you and go pick food for you, you'll feel worse, but there's more chance you'll be successful and survive because I'm not picking food for you. And so I would use that metaphor to say, get rid of all those people, start making media, and people's feelings might be hurt, but the truth is, in the long run, it'll be better for them. You know, the company used to be described for many years, Greg would tell us, we are a media team. We're a media company. We're a media company. We're a media company.

And we had four primary teams. We had media, games, training, and affiliates. Now there is no media. Truly, there is no media department. There's basically just like a fucking copy machine and a couple cameras i mean just to be completely honest and it's called it's called a marketing team and so they outsource everything and it's just the whole thing has changed i i'm having trouble on reconciling it in my own head because they

fucking need a media team they will not be successful doing outside marketing for CrossFit Inc. They will not. These are the – and I want to propose one more thing to you while I'm on my high horse. I love it. There's water called Perrier, and it's a fucking French brand or whatever the fuck it is, and that's why we like it. There's Evian, and I don't know where that water comes from, but that's why we like it. And there's Gucci, and it's from Italy, and that's why we like it. Those evian and i don't know where that water comes from but that's why we like it and there's gucci and it's from italy and that's why we like it those brands aren't

trying to be like other like if i found out that that was a fucking um icelandic brand i would fucking gucci i would like it less and the in the in the furry jackets they make in iceland i love those i don't need to them to be inclusive of people fucking in india i don't want if i find out they're manufacturing those in india i'm bummed crossfit it's a fucking american brand it is a fucking american brand embrace it the hero wads are all gonna be american military guys it's okay yeah and we shouldn't apologize no and people should love it if you're fucking in the ecuadorian army you don't get a fucking hero wad because half your fucking army works for the fucking cartel and it's not american brand start your own shit start cartel fit because that shit

would be cool too but they're gonna fuck this thing up if they don't fucking start getting back to their base. Like, look, you found like this whole story on accident. I didn't like script this out in my head. This whole story is about a mill guy with a successful fucking affiliate who was looking for something in CrossFit saved his life. It's the full circle. If you're in the United States military, you want to go to the United States military. You should be in CrossFit if you want to be the best soldier possible because currently it's the best thing for gpp known on the planet and then afterwards when you get out if you need a community and a place to heal and a place to be around good people and a place to stay fit and stay out of trouble come back to crossfit and then maybe if

you know if you're capable you'll start a crossfit gym that turns into a kettlebell manufacturing company turns in cardboard and it's like it's so obvious what the story is this is a fucking american company this america is is um chinese is an ethnicity armenian is an ethnicity these countries are also their own ethnicities that's not what's going on here in america america is a is a way of life it's a mindset it's a philosophy it's an ideal yeah it's perfectly okay for crossfit inc to be american and it will still flourish all over the world anyway that's how i feel i'm open you pushing back on it too if you're like no so well that's a little extreme and no hey listen you'll never get pushed back on me no you can from promoting from promoting american idealism across the fucking country

um or across the world we across the fucking country. Across the world. Yeah, across the world. I would never expect Gucci to be like, fuck you. I would never want Gucci to be like, oh, we're going to make bags in Compton to help people. I prefer you just keep doing it in Milan so I can be like, look at my shit. Yeah. To me, and this is solely opinion of Dale King, CrossFit needs to be a brand worth fucking following. To inspire guys and women out there who want to change and do good in their neighborhoods.

And to do that, you have to be willing to sharpen your blade to cut through bullshit to inspire those people who want to who want to who want to raise that fucking flag and do good and i mean i'm unapologetically loyal and faithful to greg for what he's given me and when i signed paperwork to be an affiliate, I expected nothing from CrossFit other than to use the name. Can you tell me how you met him? So we met on a Zoom during COVID. Oh, I'm sure I was on that call too.

You were. Wow. You were. You were. And then how did you take the i mean he was he was sitting down with 20 or 30 affiliates every day how did you then because now you guys are friends yeah he talks about you now he talks about you like you're a friend which is fucking wild to begin with but uh um yeah how did how did that happen what happened to the next level did he call you after or you called him or so the very the very first zoom this is what was been recounted to me afterwards

is uh there was me and another guy named josh honeycutt that were on the same zoom together and josh incredible guy josh is from detroit incredible guy and one of my fucking good friends it was also just laid off yeah and uh he greg was like i don't know what i'm gonna do with the rest of these meetings but i know i want to um have follow-on meetings with josh and dale and so then we did another zoom call where he was just basically like uh i want to hear more about your guys's stories it's really what it was like and then he gave uh he gave me his phone number during that zoom call and then dude like it was three i mean the month later the whole sale went down um so i had his number and i was like fuck man like this guy's gonna jump off a fucking bridge

like i don't i'm concerned about his well-being oh greg's you're concerned because he lost his baby yeah yeah so i just yeah this is what i was thinking you know so i just started hammering texting him i was like hey man you okay how can i help like what's going on? And we just always, always reach out to him. And then this is a great Greg story. So November of 21, yeah, last year, November 21, Greg reaches out and he's like, Hey, I'm going to, I'm going to be in Columbus. I'm going to visit an affiliate. Would you want to come up? And I was like, fuck yeah, I'm coming up. it uh would you want to come up and i was like fuck yeah i'm coming up so he flies his private jet and then no he not not me because he thought i just live right next door you know and so they're going down flying from wherever and then he has the jet rerouted to detroit at the last minute to pick up josh Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome.

I talked to Josh once in a while too. I don't know if I just forgot that story or dude. And so you got to understand too, like, so Josh and I are we're HQ employees at this point. This is, this is November. Like Greg. Yeah. It's a little sketchy. You can lose your job seem to hang out with greg hanging out with the big bad racist so and uh josh josh and i were both there but we didn't tell each other that we were going to be there

because i didn't want to tell anybody you know i was like fuck if they yeah yeah yeah i get scared for the employees like when they show up to like one of his talks and shit. I'm like, oh, fuck. Yeah. Should I crop you out of this photo? So then they show up, and Josh gets out of the fucking SUV. He's like, motherfucker, what are you doing here? And so we, and that's how Josh and I are. I don't think it's like that anymore, though.

No, it's not. Like, under the Don regime and with Dave back, it's like, it's all good, right? Yeah. I don't feel that way at all whatsoever. Yeah. I think, I think that's been squashed. Yeah. And so met Greg in real life face to face, uh, then, and then he was always, you know, he had had me come out a couple of times and the whole thing. So yeah,

I've been to a couple of parties in San Francisco. Yeah. Which is nuts, man. Like wild. Can you believe that those you can't those things happen with that like by the way when i say parties these are like um this isn't like uh like a party like people are handing out molly and like we're meeting this is like stanford phd mds speaking to the the group former heads of state fucking smart people coming out to talk about science

what is science it's nuts people ask me like what goes on like what are you doing I'm just like I can't even give you an adequate description of the brain power that is involved in that room um and like what i'm doing there to begin with but yeah dude it's i'm excited to see

where you know what takes shape and what and where it goes from here but if anyone wants to dig into one of the most fascinating men ever who was at this party his his name is Roger Gimbel. Gimbel or Kimball? Kimball. Is it a skateboard dude or? No, no, no. This is the guy who's like he's – this is probably the greatest living art critic alive today.

Oh, yeah. And he looks like an art critic. Yeah, but part scientist, part philosopher. I mean, this Roger, he's at the new – Roger Kimball. God, why do I always want to call him Kimball? Maybe because cameras use Gimbals. Yeah. I started reading one of this guy's books. This guy is fascinating. looks this guy is fascinating and when you dig into this guy's wiki page greg has befriended this guy and this guy was at the uh at the event also are you going to the event in february yeah i'm planning to yeah oh that's awesome we get to hang out again yeah at this point i'm just like let me know i'll be i'll be there so basically instead basically, what happened is when Greg sold the company, you reached out to him to make sure he was okay because you knew how traumatic this must have been for him.

Something that he's invested his entire life into for 20 years or 30 years, and then he had to sell it. Yeah. That's really empathetic of you. That's really because it was hard as shit for him. And yet, I bet you very few it was hard as shit for him. And yet I bet you very few people thought to reach out to him. Well, I just was projecting how I would feel. Yeah. I mean, like if fucking every all my identity and everything was I sold and was gone and it wasn't under the best circumstances and fucking people were turning their back on me left and right.

It would hit me to my core, you know? It's crazy how people turn their back on people over stuff that, like, it's so sad. Even to this day, I read comments, and it's stuff, like, no one ever says specifically what's wrong. Everyone's just always, like, I don't want to know Dale King is a nice guy. I'll decide if he's a nice guy. Tell me about the time you saw him pull over his car and help a bird across the street that was injured. And then I'll tell you whether he was a nice guy or not. And no one ever says anything about him. If you were to talk about the specifics of who Greg Glassman is, you'd think he's the fucking savior. But instead, people just say – the people who are negative towards him, they can't say anything specific.

It so bums me out. Yeah. It so bums me out how – it's lazy. It's so lazy. What's your problem with him? What happened? He slapped your mom? Like what did he do?

Right. I don't know, man. That, that whole. Not, not, he's not nice to my mom. I'll decide if he's nice to your mom or not. Tell me what he fucking did. Right. Because you don't know.

Man, and, and I. He's rich. He's really rich now. He's, he's really, really he's he's really really uh and he's very happy yeah happiest i've ever seen him most relaxed i've ever seen him yeah and then just like you know on a random sunday we're strolling through his fucking olive tree orchard yeah that was wild for me um yeah but i was just like i he created the thing that has given me joy happiness and fulfillment in my life yeah me too and i'll never fucking forget that and to me it's that simple i don I don't, I don't see,

I don't get the other side of it, but. Why do you still stay a CrossFit affiliate? Because I'm loyal to the brand and I'm loyal to what Greg created. Yeah. And I just, I have, and honestly I have a real fucking problem with people who don't do that. Meaning people who own a CrossFit gym, but they don't pay their affiliate fees. Yeah. Yeah. And I just don't understand that.

I don't see how – and I guess you can really tell a lot about somebody if they do that. It's like it's not – it shouldn't be a money thing. It's like two, three members that will take care of that for the course of the year. It's where the integrity piece comes in, right? Like integrity, I would use it synonymously with uh honesty but like just be honest like or you could call your gym i stole crossfit but other than that you're basically using the methodology and you're not paying your membership fee yeah and and explain to me how that don't see this is what i'm saying like

fuck it i had a real issue with trying to get people to come back to crossfit who who wanted to resign their affiliation okay it's like was that one of your jobs when you were the to call the the gyms that had left it wasn't a job per se but it was just like you know if it was something that needed to be done in order to to save affiliates and the part of me was just like if they don't want to fucking raise the flag we don't want them it's that simple well that's what greg would have said for sure greg's like i'm not begging anyone to come back fuck you well and that's and that's a terrible fucking business decision you know i mean what what is just to say fuck you i'm not gonna beg you to come back right which but i'll tell you what you'll be a hell of maybe it adds brand value but maybe it

adds brand value no but what i'm saying is like on paper if you're now a private equity company that owns the new thing you got to go and get everybody because it's going to help pay the bills You got to go and get everybody because it's going to help pay the bills. But this thing is so unique and so weird. We can't try to go get everybody. Because we have like the weak buffalo need to be culled from the herd every now and then in order for the herd to be stronger. And you can only find out who's going to ride with you when when you're at your absolute worst sometimes um and and hey another interesting thing too is there's two like like you're looking to see what you can give back to your community and there's other people who are seeing what they

can take from their community and so those people like why would you beg those people who are takers to stay yeah yeah well and so craig you know i don't want to throw craig howard under the bus but craig and i talk about throws himself under the bus enough let's do it craig and i talk about this a lot it's like um there's some members you don't want in your gym and you should never like when they leave you should understand that it's a part of their journey and you don't want in your gym. And you should never, like when they leave, you should understand that it's a part of their journey. And you don't want them back because they're going to bring the total energy down. Right. They poison the well.

Yeah, by virtue of them being there. Right. And so let's not cater to them. You want the member when they walk in there and someone's peed on the toilet seat, wipe it with the at best they wipe it with the toilet paper at worst they don't do any or in the middle ground they don't do anything and at worst they come out and they yell across the gym there's pee on the toilet seat always at this gym doesn't anyone clean this bathroom right and you're like dude yeah yeah yeah and we can't like we that's what i'm saying i guess like i wish we were very focused on what we're doing and who we want to attract

because like and i'll get on my high horse now it's like we're fucking wasting time there's 107 000 people that die a year from fucking drug overdose in the u.s in the u.s per year it's the number one leading cause of death in age 18 to 45 oh my god is it mostly dudes too i i couldn't tell you the sex breakdown. Damn. But it's the fucking number one leading cause of death in age 18 to 45. We also happen to have a very fucking great answer to that fucking problem in crossfit and we need and we need more affiliates who want to take on that mission i want to go help and get fucking paid for it because that's how they'll sustainably do it 2009 to 2019 drug over death rates for males 35 to 44 increased 25 percent oh god that's not even the big it's probably skyrocketed since then matt uh drug overdose

deaths among males age 15 years and over were highest for those ages god it's 100 like last last stats were 107 000 people a year so we're right that's when people are in their strongest that's your strongest age 18 to 45 is when you're just a savage now like let let me unveil some more conspiratorial theory theory where we where we get fentanyl from our friends in china and where in like it's killing the military age male bracket we're rotting from inside oh did you see when i had dale saran on yes and basically yeah the u.s military is fucking it's it's taking a blow yep they're they're like short 14 or 1500 fucking pilots in that age group like in the number one killer the age group is now drug overdose

basically on every front this hurts our well basically our military readiness this is a national security issue it isn't it's not it's no obviously it's a health care issue right but it's it's becoming a national security issue right if we don't have if we don't have a country to have a national health issue and we better secure it before yeah fuck there's a hierarchy a sequence of events that have to happen in the right priority for everything to exist right yeah and so like is it scary do you get scared thinking about it i don't i really i i will go down and spend some time and i just have to pull myself out of that rabbit hole to realize i can do what i can do and i i'm not it's not a matter of like and this is one thing greg told me uh it's like you don't really give a shit about

trying to save 50 000 people just make an impact for five right well he used to say that to all the affiliates like when he would hey we are not gonna save everyone we're not even gonna save mostly everyone we're only gonna save the ones that come to be saved to get on the lifeboat right yeah and i think like so now if we take uh there's 107 000 people die in a year of drug overdose storm of fucking annihilation that could be fixed with community and CrossFit. Yeah. And closing our border.

Yeah. By the way, that's what makes us a country people for anyone who thinks it's smart that we're not a country within it. Like why don't we just abandon the whole idea of being a country? I 100% agree. Obviously, the border is a joke, but we have to take care of what's inside our border as well. Right, right, right, of course.

Yeah, and that's the – because it's real easy. It's a real political thing to say secure the border. I agree. Oh, I don't mean it like that either. I just mean to stop the drugs from coming in yeah a hundred percent yeah i'm not i'm truly not worried about the people by the way i'm worried about what the people are bringing the shit that comes with them yeah i love immigrants fuck i love cheap labor my dad came here and was cheap labor for many years for

people my whole family came over here as immigrants. I was cheap labor. I used to work 425 an hour. Wasn't even an immigrant. Everyone should work for cheap at some point in your life. Do your part. Take your internship. Yeah. No, man.

But I don't know. I don't even know where I was going with that, but it's just frustrating. It's the business you're in now. You're in the business of saving people's lives now, specifically focused on addiction. And I think we could just. Well, it's not even the business in the area. It's a byproduct of what you do. You help people.

And so those are people who get helped. And then they turn around and help other people. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? How do you get paid for it when you say you get paid for it? Like if I'm an affiliate and I'm listening to this and I'm like, oh, I want to do what he's doing. Here's exactly what you do. Within your town, there has to be a counseling or addiction treatment center somewhere or close by.

So what you do is you go immediately reach out to the executives on that squad. Even better is hopefully one of those employees works out at your gym. even better is hopefully one of those employees works out at your gym right if not do the reach out and say hey CrossFit can be an incredible force multiplier for somebody's recovery I would love to show you how we do that and then you just give a month free membership to all the executives on the squad you get them. You get them to see the magic for their first hand. You don't charge them anything because you can never explain the value of CrossFit without experiencing it.

And you need the decision makers on board that are going to be the ones that approve this down the road. Right, right. So you give them a free month membership and you just say it's completely trial. If you guys don't think it'll work and if you don't like it, you didn't pay for it and I'm not out anything other than my time. Once they fall in love with it because they inevitably will,

you then say, hey, I would love to do CrossFit classes for your clients in your facility. There's two ways we can do that. We can do it at your facility if you have a gym. If not, we can give you off class hours for you to bring your folks here, and I'll charge you a flat rate of X, whatever that is, and we'll start with one class a day, five days a week, and we'll let it grow from there. How many people are in rehab at any one time in the United States?

Oh, shit, man. Can I just add on that? How many gyms are there in the United States, CrossFit gyms? 3,000? 4,000? I don't know. 2,500? 2,500? Caleb's peeping to see how many people are in rehab. You can't just ask Google to see how many people are in rehab you can't just ask google that how

many people are in rehab and here's and here's why it's like so um insurance pays for treatment right so even uh if like here like no one can afford private insurance so they're they're on medicaid so their services are being reimbursed by Medicaid. And so why can't a CrossFit class, one hour of a CrossFit class, be the same thing? people in rehab, um, affiliate map. Let me see the CrossFit affiliate map just to get it, just a rough idea of, uh, okay. 4,000, 5,000. It looks like there's probably like about 5,000 affiliates in the United States, let's say. And if every one of those affiliates has a hundred people uh what is that that's 50,000 that's 500,000 i mean there's 500,000 active uh gym members in the united states who go to cross the gyms and there's 3.7 million people in rehab fucking a hey did you see that number two? $42 billion spent on rehab?

Oh. Like, we could fix all of it for $2 billion. You could keep the other $40 billion. If you put all those people in a cross-in. Well, like, so then, yeah, so here's what you even do. It's so frustrating to see it. So here's what you even do. That's where I guess is where I'm coming at. Every affiliate, and I guess that's the issue, is like as an affiliate owner, don't fucking wait on HQ to do anything. You go do it. Right.

30,000 residential treatment centers in the U.S. at 100 beds is 3 million beds. I know. It's fucking nuts. When you start doing that. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Go on. Don't wait for anyone. No one's okay sorry go on don't wait for anyone no one's coming to save you don't yeah exactly no one's coming to save you your gym you're in possession of the most an incredibly powerful weapon to combat this you just have to understand how to operate that weapon and point it in the right direction

uh this is a quote from you. Well, it's not a direct quote. I'm paraphrasing. You said in your TED Talk, nobody is coming to help you, but you do have the power to change people from taxpaying liability to taxpaying asset. And then you go on to say that small business is the backbone of America. And once you find how to make a, america and once you find how to make a once making a profit um aligns with your purpose you'll be off to the races it can you explain that line to me right aligning aligning profit and purpose so it's so if you look at like a venn diagram right yeah? Yeah. So if all I get three circles, yeah. So if all I give a shit about is money, it's this circle, right? There'll be certain decisions I will make that will, that will help me make the most money. That may not be the best overall decision. If on this

circle over here is my purpose, what gives me fulfillment, what gives me satisfaction, what lets me know when I'm on my deathbed that I will have lived a good life. So when, where those circles overlap, that's where I want to focus on. Right. And so you can't, it can't be all about the money but you in order so this is the greatest thing i've ever lived by in order to do good for others you must do well for yourself yeah yeah and that's it yeah one of my friends told me spend 90 of your time working on yourself and

then 10 giving to others but working on yourself like we already established is not playing xbox 100 right maybe playstation just not xbox um but so so here's an example of that right so at the packaging company if all i gave a shit about was them working 80 hours and not allowing for flexible work schedule for the recovery to come first, to go work out, to do this, to go do that on a, on a profit sheet, that's going to be a liability, but it makes me feel better that I'm going to play a role in their life that five years from now, they're going to be like, because of that place,

I was able to get helped out. Right. That's where finding the sweet spot of purpose and profit align. But we – go ahead. Sorry. Would you say you stumbled on your purpose on accident? Oh, fucking 100%. I am the definition of an accidental entrepreneur. There's no way I would have planned this out.

We hired people that weren't in recovery beforehand, and it was great. We were making money, blah, blah, blah. But this is the purpose. This gives me fulfillment. I see people like I'm around people who are grateful to be here playing a small role in helping them out. Um, I feel good, man. It makes me feel good. Sorry. When I come away from a mic, you can barely hear me. Sorry. No, you're good.

Um, can you hear me? Okay. Now, Damien, sorry. Uh, I, yeah. And feeling good is important. So you're getting stimulated in every way because your company is growing, which is always exciting. It's kind of like this podcast. It's like every day there's something new. You know what I mean? It's like, holy shit. And then you're also stimulated because you're helping people. And then also you can put food on your table

and i tell you what i would at this point i'd probably be an ses a senior executive service within the department of energy making i don't know 175k a year um which would put a lot more money in my bank accounts than i have now but i'd be a fucking miserable person right right and probably spend less time with your kids oh 100 percent yeah it's nuts but we we as affiliate owners all have this opportunity if we want and it's not for everyone i mean because it's fucking hard it is what opportunity oh to have all of those things to have income stimulus and fulfillment yep yeah and and granted sometimes the stimulus comes in really hard challenges like it's not all just hunky dory but it's like hey we're out of cardboard and like there's no

cardboard within a thousand miles here what are we going, we're out of cardboard, and there's no cardboard within 1,000 miles of here. What are we going to do? And shit gets weird. There's a great documentary on Netflix that came out. It's called Stuts. It's about like a— Oh, someone else was just talking about this. The Shadow.

You were talking about it, Caleb? Yeah, I brought it up a couple times. So I think everybody should go watch this movie. And in it, he talks about the three aspects of reality. The three aspects of reality are, one, there will always be pain. Two, there will always be uncertainty. Three, there will always be constant work. No matter what you do in life, you cannot escape those three tenants of reality,

pain, uncertainty, and work, constant work. So you have a very finite time on this earth. So you might as well make your life's work pointed in that direction. What's that stand for? Stuts.

It's the name. Yeah. That's the movie you? Stuts. It's the name. Yeah. That's the movie you told Caleb where Jonah Hill's getting like his fucking brain worked on by the shrink. Yep. Yeah. When Jonah Hill's interviewing his therapist. Oh,

that's the one with the shadow body. Yeah. Shadow. Yeah. Yeah. That was another great point. Listen, nobody better talk to my shadow

i can hate that shit i told the story i told this story where i was at the beach caleb explained to me what your shadow person is and i was trying to understand it and it reminded i told him a story about how i took my shirt off at the beach and someone's like oh you have a dad body i'm like this motherfucker talks straight to my shadow don't talk to my shadow he doesn't want to be seen he's like bill henniger but yeah man like so this hit me like it's like that's the answer no matter what what i do or where i'm at in life i will always have to deal with that. Pain, uncertainty and constant work.

No matter if you have $5 million in your bank account or $5. Yeah. You cannot, you cannot escape that. And then I thought about that a little bit more. It's like, and of course the answer is always going to be CrossFit, but what teaches you how to deal with pain?

A very hard fucking workout. Right. So you can't if you cannot escape pain, you better be trained in pain. Right. And how to deal with it. Right. Uncertainty. The charter of CrossFit is dealing with the unknown and unknowable.

Right. So no matter what comes out of the hopper you will always feel confident that you have the ability to deal with it right and then constant work i mean that's what cross there's no homeostasis you're either getting better or worse that's it yeah there's no homeostasis yeah so what better method or avenue to deal with those three aspects of reality other than crossword yeah well thank you this is good thank you brother yeah what a what a what a cool life you have i thank you yeah it's awesome it's no fucking caleb but you know i mean it's It's awesome.

It's no fucking Caleb, but you know what I mean? It's equity. It's great. Yeah. I always tell Caleb part of an equity program. Every, every day is the same. Everything's a slam. You ate the, he was telling me how basically it doesn't matter how good the food is or how bad it is.

You eat the same seven things every week. I'm like, Oh my God. Don't repeat. This dude has a list of shit he wants to eat when he gets home. I've been there. What's wrong with you, Dale? You're going to have to send him to this portsmouth after this? Hey, man.

You'll have a prime spot here, bud, anytime you want. Anyone ever sleep in the gym? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like you've had some people like shit's getting crazy? No, not that. Not. Yeah. Like you've had some people like like shit's getting crazy. Like, no, not that. Not that. More from they'll ask me what the code is.

They don't have to drive home on a Saturday night. Oh, OK. OK. Hey, what is the deal with all the addicts around? So like when you have parties, is there alcohol there or no? That's a great question, man. We actually just had our Christmas staff party on Saturday. And it's something that we're always very cognizant of. Yeah. And before everybody started working here, like I've got a kegerator and there's always, you know, beer in the fridge. Yeah. And I was like, oh, shit. What's the protocol here? So I just asked my buddy and he was like, hey, man, as long as you're just not smoking crack in front of me like i can

i can handle you right it is but that shit is all a slippery slope for sure you know a younger savant i would have told the people fuck you suck it up but now the 50 year old me like like imagine if your kid was an addict and he was recovered you wouldn't want him working at a place where fucking everyone's sitting around throwing back beers yeah and and then we so when we you know i i love a good beer so what we decided is just like we went to an axe throwing place yeah and uh it was like byob and everybody had a great time for like an hour and a half and then they just kind of know like okay it's those of us who are haven't hit recovery yet right and that's in the but you know we talk about it and uh that's because that's the only way you can deal with it so because the last thing like we don't want to make anybody feel uncomfortable

i mean that's the bottom line based around their addiction right we'll make you feel uncomfortable working out and talking some shit to you based around your addiction we would try to make it smooth for you yeah for sure uh i'll i guess i'll see you in february looking forward to it man yeah i'll wait to it thanks for your time i know this went really long today dude fucking thank you for having me on brother yeah anytime any anytime caleb my friend i just did this to see Caleb for three hours. That's all. Did you send him that sweatshirt? Yeah.

Well, he bought it. Oh, awesome. I had to. It was, it's a dope hoodie. The rehab gym has all their shit branded like Coors.

They sent me a bunch of the doc smart and stuff too so i've been passing around to like everybody i work with and they just use it up it's it's awesome good thank you brother they really appreciated it so thank you for sending all that out before we go i'm gonna oh there it is there it is paper street coffee their cold brew paper street coffee very nice oh um how are you with, can people reach out to you if they want to know more? I would love that. Okay. It's easy to find. Dale King on Instagram, DM them. Just type into Google Dale King Instagram CrossFit. king instagram crossfit yeah and especially for affiliate owners if you like we're putting together like a seminar series teaching affiliate owners how to work with behavioral health centers

um just reach out to me i'll send you the manual and you can take a look at it and if you ever want to come down here in portsmouth and see it firsthand we'd love to have you awesome brother thank you oh gabe's gonna cry all right love you guys bye ciao thank you i want to know about all his products what what is it what what's what's the ointment he makes do i need ointment i don't think i need ointment it's it's like this um it's almost so it's like a deodorant stick but it's like i have it's almost so it's like a deodorant stick but it's like i have all my limbs i don't have any prosthetics where would i put that i use it for like my blisters like when i get like when i have tears on my hands and stuff

i'll like pop it and then i'll cover it in the ointment or like when my hands get really dry because my hands have been getting really dry lately yeah my knuckles crack sometimes yeah yeah yeah i use it any anything that's dry or apparently you can use it on like tattoos and stuff after you've gotten them like instead of using aquaphor you can just use just take the stick and lather it on there and supposed to keep it protected and moist and shit what's it feel like is it like vaseline uh not as viscous it's kind of like it's it's kind of more like a lotion i feel like it smells really good it eventually rubs in would you put it on your lips as chapstick you probably could but you haven't it's for chafing i don't know if i can't i can't remember if i've ever chafed in my life i'm not sure i even know what chafing is i guess sometimes you can use it on rips cuts scrapes scars burns rashes tattoos and more

yeah works really well he has a bunch of other stuff too he's got like ball powder and mustache ball powder all powder yeah it's like baking powder it's like a baby powder yeah sunscreen too did you hear that what was it i hear someone crying it's probably re breaks my heart all right uh fuck that flew by he's so easy to talk to he's such a nice guy do you like having the middle guys on are you like fuck i talked to you no it's really cool. Okay. I like talking to him. I met him at Mac and Syndicate when he was doing that affiliate stuff. Yeah. And he was just automatically so nice to me. We just sat next to each other.

I had no idea who he was. And like immediately he's like, hi, my name is Dale. Excuse me. I was like, holy shit. He's a really nice guy. Hey, when he shows up at Greg's house house for these parties everyone loves him like there's all these fucking high profile high powered fuckers around and everyone he people gravitate to him he's so personable yeah and he's just he's just so nice um tomorrow we have on this guy andy

holmes and he might be the leading expert in the world. I think he's been doing it longer than anyone alive has been doing it, his company, testing supplements. So Andrew's going to be on with us. So we can just ask him anything we want. It's going to be great. He'll explain to us the whole process, how shit gets tainted, what the solutions are. But we can ask anything. I may even open up the phone lines if you guys have any questions. So we'll find out.

He'll be able to tell us if these athletes are full of of shit does that stuff really happen it's going to be a dope show uh i'm i'm really excited he is not right uh what's he called safe sport is that what it's called safe sport uh i think maybe you're right let me see i forget i need to do a little more research on him but we had normally we don't have calls with people before they come on but with this guy we did there's so little uh safe and it's two companies right safe sport and yeah oh maybe i have an email let me look real quick now you got me curious informed sport that's what it is informed sport okay informed choices informed sport

yeah yeah this is gonna be cool that is gonna be exciting we test you trust they have that we test you trust.com that's the same company that tested that one athlete's supplements and then she likes to cross it or something didn't she or like is that the one where they her name wasn't on it and her athlete number wasn't on it and her sex was wrong but they still fucking like no it's yours is it that one at australia do you remember that one i do remember that one but i don't think it that one at Australia? Do you remember that one? I do remember that one, but I don't think it was her. I think this one, I think the one I'm thinking of,

she got caught with like tainted supplements and she's like, I don't take that. And then she got everything tested that she was taking by this informed sport company. And then they showed that it was like that her supplements were tainted. And she's, she sued CrossFitfit i don't know she sued him i shouldn't say that but i think she like tried to appeal what was going on god i'm so glad i don't have to worry about that that must do i need ointment yeah that that's i do i need ointment i don't know if i need ointment i don't think i need ointment you guys ever watching the show and you're like

so i need some ointment just let me know you probably use it on your hair maybe no my hair my hair produces its own ointment looking a little dry today oh there it is sorry show's over bye see you guys later Spiegel thank you see you guys tomorrow bye