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If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer and Justin Andrews. Oh, man. Where are we going? You guys are on your in not on your in for a treat right now. So sit back, grab a glass of wine, maybe some shrooms, maybe some LSD, something nice, you know, like, like make an experience out of this one or you could just relax and have a glass of water. We interviewed Mike, we're not promoting that. Sorry, Mike, Bledsoe, who awesome guy. He's a host of a couple podcasts. Barbell Shrugged is one of them. We didn't really talk about fitness. The Bledsoe shows another one. He's a very interesting person. It's funny when we meet someone very intelligent dude, very intelligent. And when we meet someone who's in fitness, we're always a little bit like, okay, how's this going to go? We're going to talk about, you know, we just come out to squats and deadlifts and whatever. This episode went crazy. Well, there was a lot of let's talk about first, there was a lot of posturing for the first hour to two hours because what was so great was he had the same feeling coming in to meet us, right? So it's like, you know, we get it's almost like being put on a blind date, right? Yeah. You know, the art, our people called his people, his people send them over to our people. He sees three really handsome, smart guys. Right. You come in, we can be very intimidating. We're wearing halter tops. Yeah. So we're trying to show ourselves off. He came in and he was kind of feeling us out. You could tell we were doing the same thing. We were all feeling each other out. Yeah. A lot of feeling going on.  That led to more feeling. We were, we're like buddies, dude. Yeah. Instantly. Like once, once we, yeah, once we all got on, like started talking to everybody kind of like, it was one of those moments where you look at each other like, dude, we just become best friends. Yeah.  We had a great time. There might have been some alcohol involved, but it was a great conversation the whole time. It was a long episode. We talked a lot about a lot of great things. Well, we did. We dive into some things that of course, and I know it's going, so if you're somebody who doesn't like talking about, and that's why I made the joke about the LSD and the mushrooms, things like that. We talked about Ayahuasca experiences. We talked about the rave right now with micro dosing and things like that. We got, we had a very open discussion. Just let it go wherever we want to talk business though. We did talk Yeah. No, that probably the most beneficial stuff as far as that's really is definitely the business talking. If you were, if you're looking for a major health and fitness podcast episode, like this probably isn't one of those, but for sure entertaining, I thought it was great. I got a lot of great information from him via business. This guy's been doing podcasting for quite some time. They're very, very successful at what they do. And he was very open and honest about their business and the pivot that they had to make. And, you know, so I love getting to talk to somebody like that who will share all that information. So those of you that are entrepreneurs will enjoy this episode. Yeah. And you can check out his podcast, the blood. So show that's the blood. So spelled the B L E D S O E. You can find him on Instagram at Mike underscore blood. So and you can go to the website, which is www dot the blood. So show.com.  So Mike, you and your, you and your partner, you're, you're kind of like the more, are you more the business guy? Do you, are you like there?  Do you guys have that, do you guys have that sort of dynamic? We definitely have a different skill sets and personalities that allow us to compliment each other really well. Yeah. I don't know if anyone's more of a business guy. I don't know how you define business. Well, okay. So before you guys got together, were you all serial serial entrepreneurs, or was one of you an entrepreneur and the other guy came from the business world? Like, how did that? Oh, we were all, we all knew nothing. And we, we were in 2007, I opened up a gym with one of them. So I have a few business partners. And one of my business partners, we opened a gym together in 2007. And I just don't think he knew any better and he wanted to help out. He's like, it's fun. It's a gym. And I, well, in the first year and a half, I think he was on deployment most of the time. And so I ended up running the place by myself. I would not have identified as a business guy when I owned a business initially. And over time, I've just realized my role in the business. And where I think a lot of people who don't like, you know, business and quotations, that's because they associate it with what they teach businesses in college. And so good point. Yeah.  Yeah. And so, like, everybody has their role in the company.  No, of course. No, you said something interesting that how everybody knows the role I find because I've worked with I've had partners in the past. I've had teams in the past. And the most effective teams and partnerships I've ever had were was where everybody had, you know, strong ego, but at the same time, everybody knew their place and what they were good with and good at. And it wasn't this competing, like, no, I have to do that too. And it's like, okay, you're better at that. You do this. And you guys found that. Yeah, yeah. We definitely understand that and it's evolved over time. And we've realized strengths that we didn't know we had and things like that and really allowing the other person to grow into their stuff and and, you know, them letting me grow into my stuff. And I was talking about just being everything is being business because I don't oh man said said let everyone know we smoke weed before this. Sure. So yeah. You can out us on this. Our audience doesn't know we smoke weed. Are you kidding me? I may have lost track of what I was saying. Well, that's why I was well, this reminds me of the transition that I went through like because I was I was in, you know, I was I was leading teams when I was 22 years old, right? So I remember thinking like I could like carry the club like I would go into a club and I would turn a club around by myself. I could hit the revenue and I'd be like and I always figure out one or two motherfuckers would get on board with me and we would smash this goal and we go on.  And and that's what we do well is we all agree on the goal. And so I think most people that feel like there's somebody in the business that isn't a business person. It's not that they're not a business person. It's just they're not working for the same reason. Right. They don't have the same goal. They don't have the same goal. They want something else to happen and they they're not telling you that's actually a very smart way to put it and that makes a perfect sense because in the past when I've worked with people who didn't have the same goals me. I'm just like well this fucker's lazy or yeah, you know, but in reality they just they just wanted different things. Yeah, totally idea. Yeah, nobody's lazy. Everybody if somebody appears to be lazy, they're just doing the wrong thing. Yeah. What is your opinion of the current state of the fitness industry? That's a loaded question, but I think we're transitioning. I think there is a transition in how the marketing is being done. How? So up to this point, most marketing has been basically the way the language works is you point out how they're that person's not good enough and then say, hey, I got this thing that'll make you good enough. And so I mean that's that's just how marketing has worked in the past. We all know a negative you know, an avoidance is twice as motivating as you know, trying to pull somebody along. And I think that consumers, especially in United States and people that have just been connected internet long enough have become more more sophisticated buyers. And so I think that the market's gonna have to move more towards making the consumer, the client, whatever the hero of their own journey in the brand who's selling them something has to set themselves up as the mentor to that hero. And I think that the way most businesses are being run right now, the brand sets them all themselves up as the hero and then it leaves the potential customer to just be a spectator. You create with with what you're talking about you create a fan base or a consumer base that is very very loyal and strong when they believe that they're a part of it's that whole garage band. Well, we also have the ability to do that that we weren't able to do that 10 years ago. Now we have the ability to where we could be connecting to people on seven different platforms live and I mean, it's can be and then instantaneously given to you like the ability to reach out and touch somebody on this volume now is crazy. We're talking about this a little bit before the show, which is authenticity. And so what the fitness market has not had up to this point is authenticity 100 right? That's that's like the base of broad truth and this is why every fitness brand has such a short lifespan and you know the supplement companies have really high turnover in regard to branding because none of them are authentic in nature. I won't say none of them most of them the big brands the ones that are doing the most volume aren't that authentic in nature. It's a lot of flash a lot of promises and the product is bullshit mostly sub par.   It's got heavy metals or whatever. Here's this protein powder that's spiking their protein to make it seem like there's more grams of product.  It has to. Nobody knows who's running the like the average person consuming a certain protein probably doesn't know who even owns the company or there's no message that comes with it. It's just they hire fitness models and they hire bodybuilders and sponsor athletes that are unrealistic. And so I think that what's going to be happening and what is actually already happening and do a lot of what we're doing right now in social media is there's a lot of people getting very real and transparent and the typical magazine you see on the rack at the store is getting way less attention and that person who's got a really nice solid message that really wants to help people is going to start outshining. And again, you know, doing the flashy and authentic thing, you can get big real quick. We're going to come down real quick. We're always going to battle that and they don't. Booty short shots.  I did like compete. I like meditated for two hours. I came out of it. This is the best piece of advice. I got that two hours meditation. 29 likes. And then some chick post a booty shot. It's like 50,000. Yeah. And then she tells people to eat, you know, a supplement. Yeah, 50 right over time. Over time, that's going to play out and then her bio is like proverbs to that makes me want to just burn the house down. Man, what you're saying, I think I could probably speak for us is I know I don't I couldn't agree more in terms of what fitness needs to do now in terms of connecting to the consumer, the realism, the authentic authenticity. Yeah. Do you think because you're very heavily involved in the kind of quote unquote early days of CrossFit, do you think that was one of the pieces of the recipe that made CrossFit succeed so well in the early days? Was that connection and authenticity? Yeah. Well, I think it was the first people to make the claims they were making and they were the first ones to define fitness and then, which was huge.  I think that's what got him going. What was it that you asked that was helpful? Yeah. We talked about the authenticity, the connection, the knowing. Oh, I think people stay for, you know, and so you got to like, I think about CrossFit and the CrossFit because it's a community of separate things. And you say that CrossFit community, you don't hear that about other things. Each gym has its own community. And so yeah, I think people show up because they're curious or they really are out of shape and fat or whatever and they want to get in shape. And then once they get there, you know, most people want to lose weight because they want to be able to connect with other human beings and they feel like they can't connect because they're not attractive. So then they have to go to a gym, which is highly intimidating, and then they walk in and they just want to be accepted. And they walk in and they realize that they're accepted without having to lose all the weight. And so I think they stay for the community.  And you see, what's going through your head at that point, you're like, I see huge opportunity for myself. Or do you battle with that, you know, as you know, knowing that kind of knowing that like, dude, maybe half these people maybe shouldn't be doing this. I wouldn't even say I recognize as an opportunity. It was just like, I thought I could help. And then I remember my weightlifting coach was he would ask me things like, you know, do you really like I really don't think going into Cross. It's a good idea. Everyone's doing it so badly. And I'm like, yeah, of course. I mean, that's like a perfect up, you know, or I don't know if I use word opportunity, but I was like, that's why they they're gonna be doing it anyway. We should be there to help them out. So when you look at CrossFit now, how is it different than what it was when you first got into it? I mean, it's about bigger, obviously. Oh yeah, it's changed. It's it's matured. It's gone through some growing pains. It's been interesting to watch. What were some of the biggest growing pains that you saw? I say the one that's happening now, there's a new the CrossFit market is moving into a new phase. So the phase it was in was it's okay to be dirty. It's okay to be grungy and this and that and it's hitting mainstream enough to where that's not good any good enough. Interesting. And so it's moving into a what I'm calling a it's a professional phase. So it's it's not been a professional industry up to this point. In fact, I mean, if you rewind a decade, everyone, including myself at the time, were prided ourselves on not being professional.   And so now what you have is and you have it's gone mainstream. So there's more average Joe is showing up. So the big opportunity right now is for gym owners to step it up and you know, keep it clean, have professional environment and a professional coaches coaching. And it just needs to be professionalized. And that's beginning to happen. That's the latest like phase. How are they now? How are they exerting that influence because it's a it's not like a franchise in the sense that they're not that's that's I was gonna say that's got to be a problem, right? Because you've got some clubs that are you know that operate so differently. I do think it's problematic for the CrossFit brand for sure. So it's greater opportunities for the owner. If you're a business owner, it's you have way more freedom to do what you want and your culture. This is this is where you know CrossFit has stayed out of the business side of the house, which has created a huge opportunity for someone like myself to come in and help out and help professionalize things. I have a sense that they may have regretted that they didn't have more like business systems give people but I'm not sure that I don't know if they regret would be the right word, but I think they saw see the opportunity now that that could have been a thing but it's kind of come in past because they just let it go so easy. And there's always been concerns of of whether there should be some type of quality control and and that's been a conversation amongst all the gym owners and because there's not been any quality control, I think there's been more innovation in the market as a whole. But the brand as a whole is pro is not as shiny as one thing. That's a great point. Yeah, with you on was your your take on on doing overhead snatch and kind of like tell tell tell like your average person coming in like what are your thoughts on teaching that move on performing that move or programming that move? Yeah, so with something like a snatch, most people don't need to be doing it their first like even two or three months of doing CrossFit a lot of times, maybe not ever, you know, and that's a very complicated movement and it's you need to be athletic in order to do it, which means that your muscles need to fire in order, which most people's don't in the right order. And you have to have the requisite amount of mobility to get in the positions for that. Both ways a lot of mobility happening nowadays in CrossFit. There's way more mobility now way more people that are that sounds like a growing pain there. I think because there's a period that was that was the first thing I noticed that was when Kelly start came along. He that was that was another that was a big shift in the market because that was a spur that was a spur in the heel. Have you ever hung out with Kelly? Have you talked to him? Okay, so I've always I've only seen his interviews is he I kind of feel like he's he kind of reminds me kind of like talking to you about CrossFit. It's not like you guys you guys see the business opportunity of it. You like there's a lot of things you like about it. But you also what you see too is how much things need to get better and change like is he like that off air? Is that what is how do you feel like what's his view on CrossFit all now I know it's made him a huge name because he's totally he's the mobility guy when it comes to CrossFit, right? When I talk to him, all he talks about is the changes he wants to make. Yeah, that's it. Like so I don't really I don't we don't sit and talk about or we have not sat and talked about CrossFit or the state of the market so much as it is just like for Kelly, you know, it's like I just want to get people at standing desk instead of sitting desks. He already got the CrossFit thing going. It's like that's not even what he's thinking about now. He's already he's already he's going mainstream like he already did you're better. Yeah, CrossFit got their they got their mobility fix on and he's already done his job. Now there's a million other people doing the same exact thing. There's no reason for him to stay there. It's time to grow and move on to the next thing. So if I talk to him, it's just it's like what's he working on now? Yeah, it's cool. Interesting. Well, let's change directions a little bit and talk about your podcast barbell shrug. What was the why'd you start it? What made you start that and what was your passion behind that? I always want to do radio when I was a kid. Really? Yeah, I would listen to Ray was your favorite shows. Please say Howard Stern. My God. Just everything that was on. I did things like watch C-Span as a kid too. I was weird. No, but I just listened to whatever AM radio is on. My dad played a lot of AM radio at work. I worked with him and then and then I just liked the radio DJs that played music too. I'm just like this is the coolest thing ever. I never pursued it at all. And I was listening to Rob Wolf's podcast for a while. And I was like, Oh, this is this seems cool. It's a cool channel like whatever. And then I thought about podcasting. I didn't do it. And then it was recommended that I listen to Joe Rogan. And when I listened to Joe Rogan, it hit me.  I was like, I can do that. Because at that point, I was listening to Rob Wolfson. Rob was like super content rich. And it was just like super nerdy. I was like, I was like, that doesn't look like fun at all. But once I but I love listening to it, of course. And then when I heard the Joe Rogan podcast, I was like, Oh, okay, I could do this. It's on. So I just went out. He had that same effect on us. Yeah. Yeah. So it was just like a no. And I recognize I look at the, I went across the gym at the time and I looked at the CrossFit Market. I was just like, nobody's actually talking about strength and conditioning.  And, and there's only a couple podcasts that the CrossFit marketing listened to at that time. And I was just like, it was Rob Wolf and maybe one other that people would listen to that were in our market. And I was like, man, there's this huge gap. Like, let's just go out there and start talking about strength and conditioning, you know, talking about CrossFit from a strength and conditioning perspective. And sure enough, well, that's smart because that community is we've talked about this all time with CrossFit and their marketing and their community. It's brilliant. And it's like you get in that market and they just adopt it. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. If you get if there's definitely a tipping point that you can just watch happen once enough, CrossFit has adopted one thing. It's a thing. Yeah. So, and it's still fairly small. Oh, geez. Yes. Drink number two. Where's my dog? Yeah, what's up dog? I'm like, fancy, fancy over here. Yeah. I lost track of where I was at. Yes. About, about their podcast and about how the community adopts it and Oh yeah. You can just watch the tipping points happen.  And I think a lot of people that work in CrossFit think that CrossFit's big.  Like, yeah, like there's way, dude, it wasn't even that long ago when I was watching them in parking lots, dude, like events and parking lots. Yeah. Now they've grown tremendously. Well, the fitness industry. I think signing with Reebok was the huge, like, yeah, I think that helped the, I think it was just on its way up anyway. Well, yeah, no, it was all right. And it's transformed the market. Like, nobody, nobody was deadlifting and squatting before CrossFit. Right. I wonder, I wonder if like the functional bodybuilding thing would have ended up being a thing had CrossFit not come around.  I'll tell you because CrossFit made the functional fitness. We could argue over what parts of it are functional, which ones aren't, but you could say that they made functional fitness. They made functional fitness a common thing in the fitness industry, whereas it was not a conversation for it. It's sort of made a spectrum now. I know the guys who were doing functional fitness before CrossFit. Yeah, nobody heard them talking except for like the nerds and there's few and there's few things in the fitness industry as polarizing. Like CrossFit is extremely, extremely polarizing. I mean, there's things we've talked about in the past that we as now we've come from the corporate. We talked about this earlier, the corporate fitness world, right? We managed big box gyms for 24 fitness and, you know, I grand opened a few of them and very, very different. When I looked at CrossFit, and I was a trainer for a long time and so we're Adam and Justin. And when we looked at CrossFit, we saw it as this business. And I had witnessed other businesses explode in a similar way. They didn't have staying power. CrossFit seems to have staying power, but like curves, for example, remember, remember? Curves exploded out of, I remember people saying that about CrossFit, like, oh, it's just a trend. I was like, not a trend. I mean, it is, but it'll peak and then it'll teeter off for a while, but it'll stay. Well, I'll tell you the thing that I saw because I have, I have a really good friend who owned a CrossFit gym and I very respected trainer. He's very, very good at what he does. And I've seen his programming and seeing how he runs this facility and does a great job. And I've seen other CrossFit gyms and I see people out there doing their, you know, their wad and they're doing Olympic lifts. And it's just, I'm looking at him like, who is teaching these people? How are these people possibly doing this? And as a business owner, I saw this discrepancy between one to another. And I understand that's, that was kind of how the model is almost designed, right? To allow the, the best to, to succeed in the worst will fail. But I saw that and I was like, okay, this is going to cause, this can cause some big problems and it even caused a lot of problems in our industry. When, when we would see stuff like that and be like, oh my God, did you see the, you know, people doing cleans out there in a circuit and they're throwing the weight everywhere and what's going on?  Oh yeah, huge. Yeah, I mean, it was the most common thing. I just kind of like shrug my shoulders and move on.   I was, I was super critical in the beginning. Like I, I don't know. I'm just more positive person overall now, but like the weed, man, it definitely helps. It definitely helps. Justin will give you a shoulder massage. Yeah, I got you. I got you. That'll be a different thing. Yeah. But so, you know, when you, when you saw that coming from your background and you saw people like that, you're like, cool, I'm just going to do my thing and just well, how much did you push back at first? I mean, how much were you? Um, you know, I, I would, I would even go as far as say, I would got angry when I saw people not doing it. Well, and then I think that subsided once I realized how bad of a coach I was in the beginning. Like there was a point. You were really like self-reflective like going through that like more so than like super critical of like all these other people like, how can I change this? Not going to change within to influence them. It took me a while to get there. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty.  Coming in like, I'm like, wow, dude. Yeah, that's, that's powerful. But you know, I would say the gap in which I do something and the gap and the point in which I'm able to observe it as a third party has gotten very short. Yeah. What's helped that? Besides age and just overall wisdom and running into brick walls enough times you go, Hey, you know what? It probably would be better if I climb. Well, you know, it used to be a brick wall runner for sure. Well, sometimes, sometimes there's a, there's a moment, you know, sometimes there's not one moment, but there's like a, where you can remember and be like, Oh, I remember. Okay. That was a moment. I had a bag of mushrooms. Here we go. Yeah. That was it. Wow. I, I, um, what happened? How old were you described? How old were you experience? It was four years ago. Okay. Wow. Not that long ago. I was always interested in and being that, but I wasn't accessing it. Oh, and then I went to a conference and where we did some empathy exercises.  Empathy exercises.  That one. Yeah. And, and, uh, what the thing is, is I probably did myself. I'm being good at things like and still do and I'm good at business and I go to this business conference and there's this one piece. There's a seven day conference. There's one afternoon that I was not good at and it was the empathy piece. You know, I was like, Oh, come on, please. But then I was like, I recognize I'm not good at this. Anyways, so a week goes by and I realized, I remember Tim Ferriss saying something about eating mushrooms and helping him on Joe Rogan's podcast about, about like, Oh yeah, you know, sometimes solve problems there. I'm like, I think I've got a problem to solve. It worked. But that was fast forward. It worked. That was, yeah. I mean, that was, I did it right. I did it with a good intention and, and, and. Did you take a heroic dose? It was, I didn't know I was, but yeah, I wouldn't say it was an ultra heroic dose, but it was more than most people like to take.  So probably around three grams.  Yeah, I traveled. Yeah. Yeah, I really, the entire universe collapsed inside of me.  I had some ego dissolution. Now, were you scared while this was happening? Was this a good case? Let me ask you this, because I've talked to lots of people who've had transformative experiences like this, some through meditation, most through psychedelics. When you're in this moment, is this, I hear one or two stories from people, either while it's happening, I'm growing or it was terrifying and the growth happened after. I've experienced both. Okay. That particular day was, I think I was in such awe and I'm a bit of a thrill seeker. So this is the other thing that I found with people and who do these things regularly is the people who are thrill seekers can get deeper because they're not afraid. They get deeper quicker. Well, the fear is exhilarating. So I find, I personally am a bit of a thrill seeker. So it's not, so I recognize in the moment that it's growth and yet it's still terrifying. And so you weren't afraid to let go basically? Yeah. I think I learned to let go lesson before that most people that I witnessed with their first time, letting go is the first lesson that has to be learned. But for me, I think I learned that lesson when I was in the Navy. So you were primed. Yeah.  My intention is I'm gonna eat these shrooms and I'm gonna learn. I was thinking about that. That was what was on my mind. But I went in there, I was like, I'm gonna, I've got like, I brought my book business notebook. I did choose the right music, though. I found an artist I had seen at the conference did some album art for this album. And I was like, Oh, just listen to that. It happened to be a very psychedelic album. So it's perfect. Random rap. And who I've watched at Burning Man several times now.  I can't wait to get into that. We will. So you're in this, you get the shrooms, you go in there and what happens? So I'm laying on my back in the park. And I'm just having the best time ever.  And I close my eyes and I'm laying there. I've just got like tears running down my face. What I'm just so happy. Oh, tears of joy.  And when I see look at the sky, it completely goes fractal. So it's like yeah.  And it's out and everything goes away. It falls. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, it falls. The entire world falls inside of me. And so I realized that the everything that I am perceiving outside of me is within me. And I was just I had this very deep realization.  And so that was cool realization. That was worth crying tears of joy over. And I just had a great time for like half an hour for that and then these people people are getting I'm a mistake number two. I'm at a dog park and wait a minute. Wait a minute. You wait. You wait a psychedelic. You wait a psychedelic dose of mushrooms.    Oh my God. It could be horrible. Everyone on Kujo or what? Not a lot of thought process. What is it? I got your notebook. I got my I got my bag of mushrooms. I like dogs. We'll be around for us later.  Was it my business partner says I my order is ready fire aim. But so I'm watching. No, it's a big dog park. It's got like three legs. It's it's not like a dog park you have in LA. There's a small cage. So we go. So I'm hanging out on top of this hill and all these people are getting off work and they're bringing the dogs to the dog park. And they're fiddling with their phones. They're texting their phone calls and they're playing with their dogs. And I can tell that the dog I can read the body language of the dog right now and the dogs are frustrated. Their owners aren't giving them their full attention.   I've been in a cage or I've been in the backyard for eight hours, nine hours, 10 hours.  I can tell that dogs can tell. And I'm on strip. I'm on top of the dog. So this reminds me of like, hey, dog, you see the size of that chicken.  Little movie trivia for you right there. What is that from? That's young guns. Oh, that's right. Take peyote, right? Right at the peyote. So I'm up there getting angry at these owner.  Pay attention to your dog. And then it hits me.  Oh, I see. And then I go, Oh, I do the same thing to my wife. I do the same thing to my mom. I do the same thing to my clients. I never give them my full attention.  So I wrap up the journey. I go home. In fact, at this point, my wife and I were on the verge of a, we probably, yeah, we were on the path of getting divorced for sure. And I got home and I decided to give her my full attention and just ask her how our day was. And about 30 seconds into this interaction, she just starts crying.  And the reason she started crying is because it was the first time I'd actually listened to her. Shit. And we'd been married for years at this point. And I hadn't been listening. She, I don't think she's crazy that she felt it that quick, right? Yeah. I made that change. And then instantly like, yeah, I don't think that she'd ever been listened to. Wow. And so the, so she didn't even know what she wasn't, she didn't know what she didn't know. And I didn't know what I didn't know. And so I gave her my, what she could feel was the fact that I gave her my full attention. When someone actually engages and gives you their full attention for a long period of time, you can feel that. That's different. Most people don't get to experience that. Well, especially now, like trip out on, that's what trips me out is this is something we're talking in our mid late thirties that we're talking about this, like putting these connecting these dots.  Oh, I know.  I think it's going to go. I think there's going to be a split. And so like real extreme, extreme. I feel like you're in my brain. Yeah, there's going to be a split. And the reason there's going to split is it's already happening. So there are those of us that use iPhones and computers to as a tool to leverage to make the world a better place. And then there are people who are just pure consumers. And these people already exist. They have a big screen in their living room. And every time they get home, they just sit and watch TV. They constantly check social media to see if someone liked the picture, you know, whatever. And so there are people who are just pure consumers. And there are people who are who see it as a tool. They have that objective, the objectivity about themselves as a tool like this body. And then they if you can see that, then you can actually see that the phone and the computer are just simply tools for interacting and connecting with others. But so I think that there's going to be a bit of there's going to be like almost like a plugged in type of scenario where people can put on virtual reality. And there's just going to be leader tribe leaders in there. And I think there's just going to be tribes that form that aren't going to be geographically confined. And yeah, I think some people are going to be putting stuff out and building their own little cultures. And I remember the first I remember the first time that I realized that. And we were all aware that we're at my, my girl's family's place, right? And it was like, everyone's drinking and eating and having a good time and all the families kind of socialized up real great, great time with family, right? And I'm just sitting there kind of soaking it up and observing everything. And the two younger ones, my niece and nephew, who are like in their early 20s, you know, we're like taking pictures and Snapchat and bullshit, whatever like that. And I saw one of them run over and was so concerned about what she looked like in the picture that he snapped across the room and was like threatening like to throw his phone away if he posted it on his like that it was like here we are with all this family and all this love and all this connections happening this and that.  Right? Well, it does matter. I don't know. I mean, it just amplifies, right? So if you're like, if we're in a situation and someone doesn't like somebody in the room, then people can like play it off. But in an electronic environment or technological environment, everything's amplified. Yeah. So it's easier for people to tell people they don't like each other or whatever. Well, there's also being anonymous with that. Well, the problem is with is identifying with that. It's okay to have it and to see all that, right? The same thing, the same thing happens in the world we're sitting in now. So it's like, it's just bigger. It's just it's the same thing, but it's easier to see because it's amplified. Yeah, I think it's the same behavior. It's typical, right? Typical of humans. We take a tool that's very powerful and you see it go can go in two different directions. It's like any powerful tool that mankind has developed. The internet and social media and technology can be and are and have been shown to be incredible tools of connection actually making people more connect. I mean, social media, you in reality, you can connect with people that you haven't seen, family members you would never talk to. If emergencies happen, people can find each other. Ideas can spread. But at the same time, you can also use this tool to disconnect in ways that are more powerful than we ever have before. You can disappear into it.  So it's just these very, very powerful tools that can be utilized in different ways. Like anything mankind creates, it goes in both directions. But I wanted to ask you about with your experience with your mushrooms and you come home and you're talking to your wife and you pay attention to her for the first time in years and she cries, did you at that moment find empathy for yourself for having done that for that long, for having not paying attention? What did you beat yourself up over it? I had empathy for myself in that case. I've never actually considered it. I never identified that as having happened and I didn't beat myself up over it. I mean, that's been a continual lesson over time is I normally when I realize I don't beat myself up for the things that I have deep realizations over and like, okay, I've compassion for myself because I just didn't know any better. I think I used to not have compassion for myself and I still struggle with it here and there when it takes me a long time to learn something. When I see how I could have learned it the first time, so one of the things I've been working on is increasing my sensitivity and that so the more sensitive I am, the more I can, it's like a the louder the canary and the coal mine can be for me. And so what ends up happening is less time goes by before I make the correction. And every once in a while, I recognize I'm just blown away how long it took me to have and that's usually what I get upset about myself over is the rate at which I grow. You want to grow faster? Yeah. And I in recently I've become much more compassionate and kind of myself in that regard as well because that's that's actually a piece of the growth is having that that compassion for so the irony is the people who are most concerned about the speed at which they grow tend to be fast growers and also don't realize that their concern over the speed of their growth is impeding growth. I think so. It's a very interesting conundrum. Well, it's it's the love your ideas but don't marry them, right? It's like have a passion for have a passion for things, see that, but then also don't be be have that ability to detach yourself and have perspective. Yeah, like that's I just had a conversation with my friend, Daniel Schmackenberger about this recently. And we were talking about the way the conversation going was being versus becoming and we live in a Western culture where becoming is the predominant thing that we hold that as the more important thing is who am I becoming? You know, or whatever. And then and then, you know, the people who are like, I mean, I'm just happy being and we call those hippies. Spacold. But like, hey, man. And the key is as we see these things as competing ideals of being and they and they don't have to be and you don't want to meet in the middle because I've tried that. And it didn't work. Not real well. And what I ended up doing is just kind of swinging real hard from one side to the next. So the old pendulum swing. Yeah, the old pendulum swing. So now is can you see what is what is it that that that flow that is seeing your present person as perfection and simultaneously seeing a vision of yourself and the future that's different and being able to hold both of those simultaneously is if you can do that, I think the rate of growth can be phenomenal.  And I found that people in that situation when they have one of the reasons why they have trouble being like you're saying is because they feel like being means you're content and you're settling like, okay, I'm happy. I don't need to grow anymore or I want to grow. So I don't want to be what I'm at now. I want to be over here. And that's why they become competitive with each other. That's why they can't coexist in that person's mind. Is that was was that the case for you? Or did you find a different way to? Yeah, I found that when I was trying to be on the being side more, I was less effective. I didn't push his horn. And then I would it's like I was going through seasons or phases where I was bouncing between the two. And I think I bounced between the two long enough to get a big picture of what that looks like. And then I think it was necessary to bounce between the two. I don't think there was I guess I had to do that. I can't speak for anyone but my own experience. But yeah, I think I had to go through that phase where I would get frustrated with being too far on either side before being able to reconcile them as a whole. How did you do that? How do you reconcile them now? Oh, you have to go to the fifth dimension. Take us to the fifth dimension, bro. Please take us to the fifth dimension. No, no, not really. There's a there's a really good YouTube video. Oh, what's it called? It's a if you just YouTube 2D versus 3D cartoon. And basically what it talks about is we're viewing the world from a two dimensional perspective. A lot of times and that is, you know, if there's a cylinder passing through a two dimensional world, it just looks like it did. It's just like a dot, right?   And so you could have two different two dimensional beings seeing the same exact item and one calling it a rectangle and one calling it a circle. Do you know what I'm saying? I do know you're saying there's there's another video that's very similar where it has this two dimensional creature. And when a three dimensional creature moves through it, they just see these, they just see it completely different because they can't even perceive it.  And it's an example of paradox. And that is being able to just hold two things that seem opposite, but they're not and hold them both completely through my mind right now. That's cool. So anytime I, I consider being able to hold paradoxes and and you can hold, there's so many different things to hold that in. There's not just one paradox there. It's almost infinite. And if you can get in the habit of being chasing that, you know, yeah, there's, there's, yeah, you got to be in a state of mind. It's being in a state of mind where you can hold both is what it is. It's not, I don't think there's like a way I can even explain it or, or anything like that. I got there through lots of meditation and some plant medicine. So what are the plant medicine? Oh, geez. It's like an intervention. Actually, it's not on that. No, on that note, actually, I know you're, did you finish stealing fire? Are you going through it right now? I'm halfway through it right now. Okay. So I started listening to it on the way here. Okay. So I'm not sure if you're, you're there yet or not. I know they get into the hedonic calendar. And I got to talk to Jamie Willer a little bit about this. And what I told him as I, the more people that I interacted with that had these psychedelic experiences, you know, I feel like a lot of them, I mean, almost all of them, it's mind-altering life changing that gives them this whole new perspective on life. But then I would say there's a 50-50 of the, a group of them, at least half of them are chasing that all the time. Yep. That is where they, where they almost lose perspective on, on themselves. Not grounded. Yeah. Right. Not, but they, but they act like they're overly grounded in comparison to the rest of the world because they're chasing these experiences that nobody else can have. And the hedonic calendar, you'll see when you get into stealing fire at the end, he talks about they actually have become their tribe. They've created a calendar to help people so that that doesn't happen.  I'm running that back again. I want to know more. No, I intuitively did the right thing. Yeah, I looked back on it and I've shared this with people who have much more experience than I do in these things. And they're sometimes, well, I'll say they're usually impressed with the level of intuition I practice with it, whereas a lot of people want to do it all the time after that. I took, after my first major experience, I think it was three months before I did it again. There's a process that you want to go through after having a major psychedelic event called integration, where you make, you create positive frames around the experience you just had, and then you figure out how it applies to as many aspects of your life as possible. And then you got to live them. And you intentionally make the changes. And so the first time I had that experience, it took me months to feel like I had a full harvest. I think that people who end up overdoing it, they put too much importance on the medicine and not enough responsibility on themselves for the change that's happening. And so I can hear it in people's language a lot of times. That's what gives it away to me. When you start, I hear the Mother Earth talk a lot. And like when you, when you start hearing, she shows me, yeah, that you start hearing this very religious. And it was, I grew up in a home that was like hardcore religious. So I remember, remember, and we went a lot of similarities. And so that's what immediately we kind of draw back. And we are very skeptical of the process. Yeah, there's, there's phases that people go through a lot of times. That's for sure. And so, yeah, for me personally, I like to take responsibility for my own experience. And I like to think of the plants and things like that as tools. And if I get the message, I, I may reference source, but I'm not, I don't, I don't, yeah, I don't praise the plants too much. This is, you know, I say they allow me to have access to something else for sure. And everything's connected and everything's one system. And, and it's interesting. But so I think focusing on a plant and giving it all the praises is kind of strange. When you should just be like praising this experience, right?  This is what we're having right now.     It's nothing. Yeah. Yeah, that's why I think we live in the matrix. Yeah, man. Are you with me on that? Yeah, I think it's a probability, a high probability that we're in simulation right now. That's 100% what I was thinking. Yeah, especially if you, if you factor in the age of the university fuckers. He agrees with me. Yeah, but what robot is dreaming about me right now?  Some hot one. Okay, that's okay. Why are robots dreaming about us? Are your partners, how like-minded are all you guys and what, what, what are your strengths or differences? We talked a little bit about that.  If you were to kind of like in a nutshell, explain your partners and explain yourself. How would you describe, describe them? So, I'm the loudmouth. No, I, I'm like a very outside the company type of person I like doing or what we're doing right now outside facing. I like taking care of a lot of that. My partner, Doug, he actually helps. He helps, he helped me for a long time. I make sure that what I was doing wasn't, I have to really sell him on ideas. And he's really caused me to become very clear about how I communicate the vision. And so he really supports me in that and making sure it happens. He's really good with inside the company and making sure that everybody's getting along. He's the harmony. So I'm like loud and want the truth. He, and I'll destroy everything to get it. And he keeps the wheels on the bus long enough to get there. And so, and then he's also very systems oriented. And he likes to be able to build things one time and have them run and all that kind of stuff. And then I have another partner Rob. He is kind of like our chief business officer. So he takes care of everything in the background. He makes sure, you know, taxes are paid and accounting is done, you know, all the stuff that I don't even want to think about. And so he, he manages all that. And he's very happy doing it. Everyone's very happy in the roles. And then I have two other partners. One is Marcus. He is just a sales machine.  So I like for doing anything business development wise, I like to include him in anything. I'll get the feeling about something. And then he'll be able to like really like dial it in and figure out if it's in brand alignment. He's also a huge on customer experience. He's super dialed into thinking about what the person even desires before they even end up on our website or hear the show. Like if they see an ad, what's that experience like all the way to maybe they're not even a customer anymore three years later? What's their cut? What's what are they feeling about us now? Yeah. So he's been together as partners from the beginning till so me and the first two guys have been so me and my business partner Rob, who's our chief business officer, we opened the gym and I was seven together. Then Doug came in and last year, a year after that, so in 2009. And then and then we've teamed up with Marcus. And that's the guy that's just like just customer experience sales. And then another guy JD in the last two years. And JD is he has built a lot of our basically all the technology side of things. And then he's also been instrumental in making our new business coaching for gym owners possible. So he's really dry. Like JD has stepped in the last two years and really driven a lot of things. He's a decade older than the rest of us. And so he has more experience. And so does he like it when you say that a decade older?  I know silverhead. He's too big. He's too busy making the machine work. And we get along really well. How many legs does this business have? What do you guys because you have the podcast which we're familiar with and that's how we knew about you. You just mentioned business coaching tools. You have the software we talked about you've got you've got what are what are we're all the legs of your of your business. So we have training programs and coaching programs for athletes. We have some digital information products educational products just for anyone who wants to learn anything about anything fitness related. Not everything but that was kind of like the beginning and we still that still happens. And then over time we put a lot more emphasis on helping gym owners specifically because we look at the crossfit market and we see where things can be done a lot better.  Do what you're good at. Yeah, just coaching. And so we are building what we're building is we want to make the gym owner's life super easy and profitable. And we know if we do that then we'll transform the market. And so we're putting a lot of focus over there. So we have the inbound marketing automation software. So if a gym owner gets that they get a website and all the marketing stuff they need. And then we're launching our business coaching. So if somebody is opening a gym or they already have a gym open then you know we have a system with coaching that gets them to be a profitable gym. And we build it around their own culture and stuff like that. That's what's cool about our business coaching is not a one size fits all. We've really built it very principle based so we can help out people in the way that's going to be meaningful for them. And without I've seen so many business programs that would just rip the soul out of a business in order to like install a bunch of systems and fitness with a lot of people don't realize we experienced this with one of the larger organizations we worked with where they went through a transition where they had a bunch of bean counters come in. It's kind of like what happened in the American auto industry where the passion, the soul was ripped out and it was all about these numbers. I love the bean counters. They just can't make all the decisions. That's right. And exactly. And but that's what happened and it decimated or destroyed, you know, something that we had, you know, grown, grown with and people. A lot of people don't realize that fitness is it's different than under the businesses, right?   You're not leaving with a product, right? It's service based. It's a service based business. And so I mean, it's the same thing.  Actually, you know, it's the same thing. Yeah. In a lot of ways. This way you either leave with losing 15 pounds or break your back or something. That's for sure. But it is a different industry.  But you know, and people are it's a it's a really vulnerable thing working with a coach and really going after if someone's actually going after their goals and working with a coach, it can be a very vulnerable experience. And that is one thing that makes it much different. And anyone who's been a personal trainer before knows that they end up practically being a therapist as well. And so it and it's a special time. It really is. You need to be like you need to be ready to help. I mean, I don't know if you need to do anything, but you know, I think it's good if a coach does have the capacity to hold that space for a client to work through issues that is actually related to them being able to reach their goals that may not look like it's connected when it really is. Oh, someone comes in and says, I need to lose 30 pounds. I've been overweight for, you know, 20 years. It's not 20 pounds. You're 15 pounds. You need to lose it's all kinds of emotional and, you know, crazy stuff. And you learn this as a trainer, the first month, you're a personal trainer. When you look back, because we do this a lot on our show, we talk about, you know, paradigm shattering moments for us as trainers, how we evolved and like going back going, Oh my God, I remember I used to teach people. Do you remember moments like that?  You know, what are some of those moments that you that you remember where it really changed you as you know, who you were as a fit. I mean, the fact that you even talk that you spoke that quick to the psychology of a client, because anybody I feel that's been doing this for a long time that's really successful and good at realizes that that's like everything really. And all the other things are like minor details. I think it was just a running joke. I don't remember. I don't remember when I had the first bit. I always knew there was like a therapy side of it, but I never took it serious. I didn't take it seriously for a long time. And then because I came from a school of thought that it was just work harder.  Right. And that's how I coached and that's 100% and and I think having the mushroom experience actually changed all that. So that that actually helped me actually connect with my clients. Wow. At that point. So that did you did you tell your clients by the way when you got to them where you like, Hey, I eat mushrooms and I'm going to train you different now. So I like Super Mario Brothers. Oh, by the way, no, I just started, you know, did they notice it was like, I just I started here. I ate the mushrooms.  I did not do that. This is the most transformative work out. I'm having so much fun. We're done for three hours.  No, I do recognize. I mean, I definitely became much more patient and became again listening and just being more compassionate and empathetic at that point. It was not until I hired myself a business coach that I that I connected all the dots and I probably haven't connected all the dots yet. Anyway, but that was the next level of understanding in regard to what coaching was. I was working with a business coach and seeing the power of him just planning some seeds here and there and asking really good questions that I developed as a as a human being. And I recognized that so much of the work I did with him and then just some some other work I did that had nothing to do with physical training made me a much more capable athlete. And and once I discovered those things, I realized that we've really relegated the coaching to three buckets, especially in the CrossFit space. I don't know if this is, I mean, this is definitely amongst most personal trainers. We go movement, program design and nutrition. And if you want to be a better coach, you got to learn more about one of those three things. And I've come to find out that nobody's teaching coaching. And so the the there's so many techniques and methods to get people to realize for themselves what is actually holding them back from reaching their goals. There's so many cool techniques out there and that don't involve mushrooms.  It used to dominate that used to dominate my my coaching bandwidth was how can I build the perfect program that's going to get this person, whatever, let's get their nutrition dialed in.   Send me some videos. I want to see like, you're moving really well. And and I'm only working with like two people. So so much more effort on just like what's holding you back. Let's have a conversation. All of a sudden you start asking like character questions. That's the behavioral type stuff. And if an athlete doesn't know that, then I'm not going to work with them. Like if they're going to think that that's not important, they have to be ready for it. They have to be ready for it. They have to like they have to be at that point themselves, which means there's hardly any. Yeah.  And I'll ask them, well, you know, tell me what you're eating now. And then they'll tell me and I say, well, how does that make you feel?  Just tell me what to do. Write it down, man. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's a big difference between those people. Huge difference. But I think as a trainer, you realize the only, the ones that make the meaningful, long lasting changes are the ones that understand that how do you make, how does that make you feel type questions and not that just tell me what to do.  And so Mike, Mike, if you have, if you have, do you have this mentality, right? And totally, I think very similar to us. What, what's your thought or what goes through your head when you see like a, a culture like IIFYM hit like social media by storm? Like what goes through your head when you see that? I feel like you're trying to be political right now. Don't be political. Yeah, come on. Let it out. First response. Yeah, exactly. The old teacher, 25 year old. Give me the 25 year old version. Look it all deep. It makes me, it makes me pretty mad. And what it has, it doesn't make me mad anymore. Because I realized that everyone is just doing the best they can do with what they're given right now. And, and there was a time where I followed now.  No, no, no, no. I can see it in your face. But if food quality always mattered to me, I see what you're saying. And so, but there was a time where I was so narrow minded about a thing that I'm sure outsiders were looking at me and going, all right. And so, you know, I think it's good for me to say that I completely disagree with that philosophy so that people will listen. But I don't have, I don't want to like, like demo anybody for it because in five years, they may be saying, Hey, you know what, I've grown a lot since then. And it's not the thing that I recommend now. And yeah, I was just being, you know, I didn't, I just didn't know, but I was, and maybe that helped somebody. Maybe if it fits your macros type thing, you know, somebody's tried everything. And all of a sudden, that's the one thing that clicked.  And then they go and, and then, you know, they end up finding something that's a little bit more sustainable and healthy and all that kind of stuff.  So this is what has, this is what gives you patience with the, the people out there that are prescribing it or sharing it, but I'm at like the whole movement. It's okay for you to, I didn't know as a movement. Yeah. Well, it's how much or do you get into like the whole like physique, bodybuilder aesthetic world? I mean, actually, I don't think I really live in any kind of world. Like, I don't, I don't, I don't really pay attention to what anyone's doing. Yeah, that's why then. And the only reason why I know because I was in it, that's why if I wasn't in it, I wouldn't be paying attention either. I didn't realize how much of a problem it was until I got into the, into the actual arena and started competing. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's complete disregard for, you know, artificial sweeteners and this embrace of doing artificial sweeteners and saying, ah, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I'm like, I think it might matter. So we should probably pay attention. Let's wait a little while. There's a lot of stuff. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff coming on gut health right now. And I've watched people do some gut health things where they couldn't lose this weight or they didn't have the physique they wanted or whatever. And all of a sudden they focused on better gut health and stopped worrying about counting how many carbs they got. And all of a sudden they got just lean right out. Or you got it.   Dammit. Unfucking believable. And then we've talked about this before, but the studies on mice where they do the fecal transplants from the the skin mass to the, the skinny mouse for fat mouse personality and everything.  And, you know, so there was a, there was another article that came out just the other day that I was looking at that was suggesting that we might, it might be help. It might help us be more youthful if we were to eat the fecal matter of younger humans. It's all possible. It was like you first. Don't throw away that baby dapper girl. You first brought right behind you. Look at Doug.   So there's, there's a few ways vampire. There's a few ways to consume poop. Oh my God. This is a clip right here. Normally you got to pay for this. The best healthy way to do it is just to straight up eat it. Now, if you're not, if you're not quite ready for that, then, you know, you would encapsulate it and then swallow it. They do a whole cleaning process.  How do you clean shit? They're just cleaning dirt for this. Like, oh, that's clean dirt.  Is that possible? It's like an oxymoron. Well, you run, you clean water by running it. How do you manage those birds? That's what you want to know. So like, and then, and then you can also do the, the fecal enema or not enema. It would be a fecal transplant. Yeah. And so those are like the three ways to consume fecal matter that would be beneficial from what I understand you would want to do both the transplant and probably take the pills if you want. I just want to, I just want to, you got to come from both. We got to make sure with either cautionary note here to the audience.   Yeah, some people, I'm my pump said it. I'm going to do it. I got my rib eye. I got my turn. We're going to eat this together. Yeah. Honey, did you finish in the bathroom? Can you put that in a tube? I need to put it on my butt. Yeah, I know. I don't think you want to eat an extra Tabasco or something. Help me out here. So your view is considering your view on artificial supple sweetener, excuse me, is pretty negative. Like you're opposed to them for the most part. You must be opposed to most protein powders, bars, those kinds of supplements, meal replacements. Yeah, I know it depends. So there are certain brands out there that that they would meet the standard and most would not. Yeah. So I mean, I was driving today and I just if I've got a rule now that if it's not up to a certain standard, I just fast. God, that's right. What would you fast regularly? Yeah, maybe once a month. Is that a thing in the cross foot world? I know paleo was a thing in the cross foot world, but it's fasting. It's not. No, I don't think so. It will be now. Oh, yeah. Everybody start fasting at the moment. Looking at you'll snatch 20 more pounds if you fast one week of the month. Eventually, if you keep working, science, hashtag science. Oh, yeah, I like making those claims. And then people will be like, that's just bro science.   Yeah. Well, you need to have sarcasm alerts.  You obviously have a passion for fitness and health. What are you really into now in that realm? What are you studying right now? What's perking your? What's making your nipples stand out to lady? Yeah. Yeah. I've been doing a lot of I've been looking more into what's actually happening with the fascia and the guys are the human garage or doing a really great thing with this. I'm talking thinking about you just listen to that episode, by the way.   Yeah, I'll find that later. I've learned my lesson now. Like are you familiar with El Della? Have you learned it? We're actually talking to them we had them in our facility running a certification.  Really? Oh yeah. Yeah, you're looking forward to it. So talk about this fascia being another mind or storing memory. So if you can think about your thing about your brain is the CPU potentially the processor and then the actual memory is stored in the body. So you have to think that your entire being is involved in expressing the human experience. And I think there's been way too much emphasis put on the brain. I was thinking this before I met these guys over at the human garage and then this guy dove into it. I was like, got it. And what first brought my attention to it was I wasn't thinking fascia specifically I was thinking human body. He's the one that brought the attention of memories being stored in the fascia specifically. I was thinking it was just stored somewhere in the body gut and other things but come to find out the gut like this part of your body has the most fascial density. And so it's not the actual materials in the gut but it's the fascia that holds it. And what brought my attention to this originally was was it three years ago? Yeah, three years ago I go to Peru and I'm drinking ayahuasca. And so another great story I can feel it. Well this is why plant medicines are good for me specifically because I get insights about myself that are ridiculous. And so I drink the brew and you know we're going through the ceremony and I go into my childhood and I find moments in my childhood where I was where I had experienced emotional trauma. And it was obvious to me when I went back to these moments I was like oh this is an unresolved emotional trauma. And all of a sudden I would feel a knot in my stomach and I would feel it move all the way up to my mouth and then I would purge and nothing would come out but I would throw up into a bucket.  He's throwing away the energy or whatever he's like a symbol. Yeah yeah. No it's real Justin. I'm just saying. For our listeners in case. But you have to use you have to use a rubber made bucket. I didn't want to be magic involved. This is science. You know I again just like you like I don't know what I don't know like all that talk I'm open to hear more about it all the time. It's interesting to me because I think there's way more to it than what we can measure. And so what I experienced many times in a single evening and then happened again on other nights but I could feel this emotional trauma store and then be released and then it was gone forever. And I noticed that my posture changed and I could physically move more freely. Wow that's a trip. And I my hips used to bother me so much they stopped bothering me and a lot of why I felt release was down in the pit of my stomach and would come all the way up. But see is it hard to believe? Can you guys pick out?  What does her emotion look like? You can't tell me there isn't some truth. Just holding that posture. I honestly don't think that you and there's power postures. We know this changing your posture changes. Your hero comes you can't tell me now. Maybe the language is wrong. Maybe we say memory and as we understand memory with these neural synapses and connections. Maybe it's not the same thing because in the language isn't explaining it right but makes perfect sense. What you're saying we see it every single day. Nobody can nobody can dispute that. Well, I don't think all memories are stored in the fashion. I just think that a lot are and so another thing that got me thinking about this. I was reading Joe to spend his work and he's talking about thoughts are the language of the brain and feelings are the language of the body. The explanation around the emotional trauma resides in your mind. The and it's created by the mind. The feeling is created by the body. So if you were say four years old and you experienced something that was very traumatic. By the way, between the ages of zero and seven, everything is true. You have no analytical capability. That part of your brain is just not developed enough yet. That's we know that children at that age, their brain waves are in alpha theta, which means that that's the most impractical. That's where you go when you meditate. So you can change your mind more easily, which means that they're just highly impressionable. Extremely neuroplastic plasticity in a child's brain is just totally incredible, but they accept everything is true, which means that if they have this feeling and then it's coupled with something that happened, they then extrapolate that to everything. So if someone's parents were yelling at each other about money when they're four years old, and they think the four-year-old doesn't know what's going on, the four-year-old is just associated that really bad negative feeling with money. And so that's why you end up with a lot of people who can't figure out we see an entrepreneurship. They can't get through that barrier. They know what to do. They got the tools. Everything's available to them, but they just won't do it because they have this really negative emotion. Every time the thought about money comes up, it triggers this negative emotion in their body. And so I think through many different techniques, and one of the techniques is going to the human garage, and they actually use manual therapy to move that stuff out, and they'll be working on people, and people will start crying on the table. Oh, wow. Memories will come up and you'll have to surrender into them. Talk to massage therapists who've been doing massage therapy for Ask Your Girl. Yeah, of course. This is all the stuff that she loves to sit around and talk about all day. Yeah, because massage therapists will tell you when they're working on someone that they'll have people who will cry, or giggle, or laugh, or feel irritable, or... Katrina will touch me when I come home, and she'll instantly be able to tell the type of people... If you're horny or not? No, if the type of people that I've been around, she'll be able to feel that in me right away from just putting her hands on me. Start questioning me, who was I around? You can't screw around, man. Right away, if I've been around anybody that has caused me to be negative at all, or stressed, or... I mean, just the slightest bit. It's not like she does that all the time. We've been together for six years. I can count on one hand how many times she's been like, whoa, who are you around today? What if she's just a Jedi? What if she's just saying that?  Like you tell your kid, like I know what you did today, and they're like, is there anything you want to tell me? Shit, he knows! When I hear stuff like this, here's... I'll give you an example. Okay, acupuncture. Let's use that as an example. When you hear people who explain acupuncture from a Chinese medicine perspective, they use terminology like Qi, the body's energy and flow, and there's energy that's blocked, and we need to let it flow through this blocked area. And so we use these points with the needles.  What is Qi? You can't see it. You can't test it. It doesn't exist. But now we know, and in fact, insurance companies cover acupuncture for pain relief. Now, I just think they're just using different languages. I think Western medicine uses a particular language. And because the language of Chinese medicine doesn't jive with it, they just automatically throw it out. And when you say things, or people say things like memories are stored in the body, I don't think they develop the right language to explain it. I agree 100% with that sentiment. But I think the language is different. I think there's an interesting communication between the mind and not just the brain, the mind. And I think the mind encompasses the body and the brain. I think it's very different than just the brain. For sure. You mean outside the body? Yes. And not only is it a different language, but it's an older language for them from the Eastern. And so I think it's actually not only is it a different perspective, but it's more simplified. And so where we like to create these really elaborate stories so we can understand what's happening, they long ago said, you know, we don't have to understand it for to be useful. And I think that we, one of the lessons I've learned this past year is my, my desire to understand things has kept me from knowing a lot. And so I think our entire culture suffers. Bro, it is, it is they're all tools and the Western way of understanding things is an extremely effective tool.  For sure, but you can't screw a screw, you know, screw into the wall with it, right? It's not the right. I've tried.  I mean, I tell you what, what I love to see is I love it when ancient methodologies or explanations become not even confirmed, just it starts to jive with other philosophies that seem to counter it and I'll give you an example happening so much. I'll give you an example. Say what you have a bunch. You think about I'm saying it so much. I want to hear what you're saying. So I'll give you a great example, right? Yeah, we've heard about in some of these philosophies of the, the, the third eye, right? The third eye, the third eye is located in the middle of your head, pinecone in the middle of your head, right? It is literally in be so. So people point to it in the middle of forehead, but in reality what they talk about literally in the middle of your brain, right?     It is likely responsible for dreams. Yeah.  They just use different language and you see that a lot. Now you're starting to see that more and more. They say there's a lot. There's a lot this release when you die too. Yes, it's a massive dose. Yes. Have you ever smoked DMT? I've never tried DMT. We'll see if I do in the future. Did you bring some? Part two of this podcast will be done. He's the guy like if I'm going to do something like that, that's who I want to be with because I'd be like, no, no, relax. He'd be like, I feel like he'd be able to talk me right now. You know, saying that he's like, don't worry. I've been here a hundred times. Yeah, I feel like you're going to see a wizard, right? I got to go left. Do you guys have a right? Do you have personal wizard yet? Wait, I'm wizards. This sounds awesome. I have I don't work and I find one pubes. Now calls me the wizard every once in a while. Well, okay, he's the he's no, but yeah, you are. He's the wizard of the wizard of the Tang. So he's got a big row. Definitely calm that. Yeah, it's the mustache. He just grew that too. Believe it or not, it looks beautiful. Thank you. It's a look. Trying to start a trend here. We'll see what happens. It's Phil so far. It's me. It is very. So what's this wizard? Who's your wizard? Daniel Raphael. You weren't joking. This is great. Yeah. So what's a wizard? What is that? What do you mean? How do you classify this? All right. So can they summon lightning bolts? No. Can you? Okay, not that kind of wizard. I don't know. I mean maybe some crazy shit's happened. Let's see up. So abracadabra. That's associated with magic, right? Okay, I think I do something to be right here. Here we go. I'm going to take another drink. So you know what abracadabra means? No. Okay, so it's an Aramaic word that means that with my words I create or with my words I influence. So it's an actual word. Yeah, and so it's like Timbuk to it's an actual place. Yeah. So like I just associated with magic, right? So abracadabra. You make something different.  Abracadabra. I had no idea you were speaking. I always say by the boom by the being, but that's different. No great history to that. I'm sorry. I'm stealing all this content from my good friend Mark England who's amazing. And he's he actually he has this whole explanation behind it that I'm stealing right now. And he would love that I'm doing it. And so the so that's magic and then magic is is I guess what's the definition of that I forget. Anyways, it's one of those things where it's like you just put your attention on something and and then it's going to you know you make it some type of change or whatever. So so I can look it up. Again, I smoked another joint. So here we are. Welcome to my room. So what Daniel does is he helps me remember things differently. Gives you a different perspective on all things. Changes your memory filter. Yeah. So what we do is through conversation. He's got really he's gotten really smooth with it. He used to be like a a much more formal process with getting chairs and look at each other right from like me to you. And now it's one of those things where you can just be hanging on the couch.  I'm like, yeah, man, let's go ahead and do it. And and then he just starts asking me questions. I start answering. And then next day I know we're digging into some part of my life that has been hidden. And then we reframe how I see the whole situation and create positive feelings around it. And then I start making different choices automatically after that. So I become like a slightly different person. So the that is very wizardly. Yeah, the memory doesn't change my perspective like you were just saying. Yeah, that was really well said. And so he does that and he does a little bit of breath work, but he's he's he works some magic for sure. So yeah, I just call him my he's my wizard. And he's I think he charges people like five grand a day to do that kind of stuff. Now, do you? Wow. Don't you feel like and I helped him develop some of the business. So my nice nice trade there. Yeah, he has a lot of work right where we're out right now. Hollywood. Yeah. Oh really? Yeah. Do you not do not provide the same thing and return to him? I feel like someone with your perspective and self awareness. I feel like you could almost turn it back. You could be somebody else's wizard right because really that all that person is is giving you someone you respect enough their intelligence level. Let them inside to give you a different perspective on on things that you may think one way and help you open your mind. Right. So do you feel like you could do the same thing? Yeah, I have done it for him. Okay. And the way I did it for him last time was he hadn't come stay at my house for a few days. And he just got I just had him move and do the things that somebody who is really crushing and going after just put him in that environment where like we work, we move, we do the things that that moves the ball forward. And so he he didn't really have as much experience on the business side of the house. And I think just him being there and me having conversations with him at meals and him witnessing what work looked like for me. I think was it was exactly what we planned and he got a massive benefit out of it. So so that was like the last thing. But we always come up, you know, I have several friends where we just come up with there's many wizards where we are constantly like a clan of it really is named Gandalf. But it is.  It's like this fight. But when so like there's a I have a group of friends and we basically just accept each other for where we want to be. And then we help facilitate the growth for the other, wherever we see the opportunity. So it could be in the middle of a party and just we'd be dancing or she would just say something to the other person that would that we know would just trigger them in that moment. And so yeah, it's like a lot of there's a lot of pushing around going on, you know, and we all know we're doing it for each other. So one might that's got to be tough. That's a lot of processing. Well, what one might constant, you know, if you were constant, you're reading and you're read, you read already rises Superman and now you're into stealing fire. I didn't read that. This is okay. So I've been sleeping with the book under my pillow. Because that's a lot of what group flow is like.  Yeah, a group boxer and we're just always getting together as much as possible. See, I think people get so scared when you when we give it names. I know, and we're all laughing and I know you said wizard and it doesn't really matter, right? It doesn't. Yeah, that's that's just the name that you've given somebody who has allowed you to get this deeper perspective of yourself. Yeah, we call it that because everyone's trained, right? Like, no, it's not like people are trying to help each other out that aren't trained.  Everyone's you're on the next level. Yeah, they've been through like several life coaching type certifications, and they've studied therapies and they've studied like everyone's been to like, you know, 30 retreats where they just get completely broken down emotionally and bring it back.  Yeah, everybody and it's cool because everyone's willing to accept the criticism and everyone's gotten really good at delivering it and everyone's gotten really good at receiving it. I was going to say that's the tough part. Yeah, because it's a lot of when you're in a group of people like that. I've been in a few groups with a few groups of people where you're in that kind of an environment and it's both awesome and it's both.   Yeah, I mean I don't hang out with them all the time. I'd be exhausting. I'm sure we all have a lot of alone time and I think I think everybody has a in our group has a pretty good balance of of me, you know me time group time and then also time where we're we're investing and taking action on on what we're learning and so it's like just a cycle. That's how I see it anyway. What are you working on right now for yourself? What's the big challenge I don't know if I would say there is any challenges. Well, what would you say that you recently worked through then? That one's easier to spot. You know what? Actually, you know what? You know what? Some people might be thinking, oh, you don't have a challenge. Actually, finding the challenge is like 80%, 90% of the challenge. That's the self-awareness piece. You don't know it until you're in it. Once I'm aware of it, it's days right. So it's it's not a yeah. So like I'm waiting. Oh, I do feel like so. The last thing that I learned on a new level. I think this would be really helpful for your audience is I became way less competitive and much more collaborative. And so these are things that very cool. Interesting. Explain that a little bit. What do you mean by competitive versus collaborative of this? We talk about this. Yeah, so I think so competition can be healthier, not healthy and so on and so forth. And when it's unhealthy, it gets in the way of collaboration. So I, I personally have been pretty good. I noticed a few months ago that I was being competitive even with people on my own team in some ways. And then I was, I had a lot of pride and I was holding onto quite a few things.  It really was hard for my body to let it go. And what I noticed was there were remnants of pride. There were, there were habits that were built from pride, which I had shed, but the habits still existed. And so I had to just consciously go and change some of those habits around, around competition and always being need to be being seen as the best. What if you, now that you've gone through that and you're more collaborative, how much, how different are things? Everything's so much easier, easier, less stress, less stress and more flow.  Like everything, not just myself, but in the company too. So everything is just snapping together and it's, I'm having a really good time. Now to get to the bottom of that, did you have to dig real deep and find a look at it? I got sick for two weeks. I was gonna say, did you get, get into inner, yeah, tell me, tell me. What do you mean you got sick? So I, I had the real, I was at this conference, I was in Pasadena actually, I was at Archangel Academy and I was at, is basically a business mastermind two days. And on the middle of the second day, I got hit with like a lot of anger. And I noticed that there were, there was like multiple factors that like hit me, like in a five minute period, like no one of these things would have impacted me. But it was like, it was like, it was like a five car pile up, you know, and it was just like, and I just got plowed and I just, the rest of the day I couldn't learn. I am, and it's like, I was just angry.  I can't, I can't figure out why I'm angry, why am I angry, why am I angry? And then I realized that I was experiencing some, I don't know if jealousy would be the right word, but something along those lines, a little bit of jealousy and in business. And like looking at other people in your, in your field doing things in your team. No, it was outside the company. But yeah, it was like being, you know, just being in a room full of highly successful business. Like I should be doing better than that guy. Should be doing better than that guy. That was a part of it. Yeah, that was a part of it. There was also, yeah, it's multi-layered because there were things that weren't happening at the conference simultaneously with some other people.  And I hadn't gotten triggered like that in a long time. I was like really, I remember getting so angry at me like this, I haven't felt like this in years. I was like, what is going on?   And by the time I get home, I'm just exhausted, three hour drive, I get home just exhausted. And only that I hit traffic at every corner. It was more than three hours, like five.  And I was sick for about eight hours when I realized that I had done it to myself. And I was like, I totally just went nuts and just drove myself under the ground. And I was like legit sick, like running a fever, all that kind of stuff. So then, but then I realized I ran myself on the ground and then it took me two weeks before I could like, just train again. It hit me hard. And it caused me to slow down and get some reflection on what was going on for me. The really interesting thing is at that time, I was signed up to go to a 10 day Vipassana retreat and just silent meditation. I was supposed to be on that retreat, but I didn't make it off the wait list. In fact, there was something strange happen because I somehow got removed from it. Like other people that were behind me got in. I'm like something, something's fishy is up. So I think I was supposed to have that experience that I would not have gotten at the retreat.  I would have gotten something in meditation. Very interesting perspective. So I'm sitting at home sick, getting in your own Vipassana. Yeah, exactly. I'm just laying in bed. I don't I don't on a TV. I don't do any so I'm not going to like veg out when I'm sick and just watch TV. I don't do that. I just sit in it. That sounds twisted. Just Christ. Oh my god. I watched 16 and pregnant. I'm convinced. My girl makes fun of me. I'm convinced I'm going to get something out of it. So I just like sit there. Me too. Me too.  I'm gonna get something out of this for sure. I promise this season. I promise. I don't know. I think it has something to do with I feel like shit and I want to see somebody else that I feel sorry for. I'm like, oh man. So you're laying there forced Vipassana. What do you see? Oh yeah. I just I just had flashbacks for days of moments when I my attempts of being competitive hurt collaboration that would have moved things forward and a lot of aspects of my life, not just business, but they definitely showed up in business showed up in personal relationships. It was I I recognize how I do this. Yeah, so one of the things I recognize that I do is I am very, very flirty with women. And so I like to show up at parties with more than one. And I and I like I like to like make a show of it a little bit. And so I recognize that. Yeah, I enjoy that. But the part of it, it's all about competition. And I don't think it's all about competition. I think that there's a lot of what initiated that behavior was competition was showing other guys. I got the girl. Hey, man. I don't just have one. Like they're hanging out with me. They're coming home. Yeah, Mike, have you connected yet? How far back that stems from what's caused that behavior to now? Have you gone that far back like to think what happened somewhere in your impressionable ages that has driven that personality to come out of you? Right? Oh, yeah. I mean, it was it was just trace it back to a lot of that had to do with not man.  I was one of the less wealthy kids in my friends group growing up. And so one of the things that I experienced was driving the shittiest car out of all my friends. Like they all had like new SUVs. And I had like, yeah, the shitty car. And I'm actually really appreciative of that at that time. But at that time, I felt like I couldn't get I didn't want to like go on dates in my shitty car when my friends had really good cars. And the separator was money. And so and and so like in business, I think what I was dealing with was there was the feeling would never go away no matter how much money I made or how many girls that I was hanging out with and being seen with that would make it that would be be enough. It would never be enough. You were treating the symptom and not the cause. Yeah. So I kind of I went back and got right with my relationship with money and with women both. And so I've gotten gotten right with that in that regard. I mean, there's always more work to be done. Like understatement. Yeah, I mean, I tried to step back to just not feeling like girls like me and it being tied to you know my status.  Of course. Sure. Hey, why are you banging in four chicks over there? You know, this is all pure. Hello. It's not competition. I'm just enjoying this is where collaboration comes in. Not competition. It's the team. That's right. No, I think I'm just a naturally flirty guy. Well, I think I think this is the hard part. I knew to ask you that because, you know, I totally identify with that for sure. Very, very similar. Very, very similar upbringing. Very, very similar going through that. I remember going through to my twenties when so I was the poor kid out of all my friends.  So I remember a good part of my twenties. I spent on my friends and the trips and picking up the tabs like all the feed this ego, you know what I'm saying? And meanwhile that I, you know, after, but I feel like there's a part, right? The empathetic part that you have to have on yourself is that you have to realize that part of you had to kind of go through that though, right? Because if you can't, if you can't have compassion for yourself, you can't learn from it, right? Yeah. Because I do believe on the same, and I'm sure you would agree with this, that a lot of that is also what drove you, right? For sure. Right? Initially drove you. It's, it's, it's what got me where I am and it's what's exactly holding me back from moving forward. Absolutely. Yeah. And how do you, and how do you change something that's gotten you so far? That is the challenge, right? Like it's gotten me this far. Right. Yeah. Because, because something that's worked for a long time, that's a lot of repetition. That's, that's grease the groove right down in your brain saying this is a good idea. And not only that, we've done it so many times, we identify with it as something that I do. This is me. This is part of who I am. Yeah.   I'm just going to ask you. Give me another one. Give me another one that you've that you had to, you know. Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. I know there's more. Look at me.  I you know what? You know what? I, for me personally, I noticed the more I do that, the more I do it. In other words, like the first time was very difficult, took forever.  This is never going to stop, but this is also great. Yeah. Yeah. It's dope.  But for me, like there's not exactly where I was going to go, right? We're going to go that direction is, you know, that to me is such so amazing is to have someone finally in my life where I can come home and I can, I can play that checks and balances and be open to that. I feel like every day is growth. Yeah. You know, and that's, that's huge. And I think when I, when I evaluate clients and their relationships and some of that, that is one of the hardest barriers I have to break through psychologically with them is that they also don't have, they may be ready. Like that's already hard enough, right?   One of the side effects of one of the biggest side effects of major transformation, right? Obstacle, one of the big side effects of major transformations is breakups and divorce. It's a fact. I'm talking about all major transformations, weight loss, personal, whatever. It's a very difficult, but if both people transform together, that is you. That is one of the most strengthening things you could possibly do. You're talking, that's what my wife and I have done. We've been together for, we've been married seven years and yeah, like a lot of the transformation was not simultaneous, but it's definitely been, we've been helping facilitate each other's growth as a sign of a really good relationship. Well, you can see that, that, that trace it back to that one day where you had that, that monitor, right? For sure. Well, I would love to hear some, and I've talked a little bit on our podcast about this, that once I felt like I really tapped into this and realized this, now Katrina and I both, we make, we make a conscious effort to, to fuel it, you know, and to promote that growth. Have you, have you found things that, that you guys do to, to do that? Oh yeah, we, we like to go, there's a, there's a couple different relationship coaches we really like and they put on retreats.  Write that down. Nevermind. Actually, if anyone wants to know more about these retreats, these aren't, these retreats, they're put on my, my friends, Brian and Jennifer, go to EvolvingLove.us, you will see their website. Evolving Love, Brian and Jennifer, theirs is not for the faint of heart. So you're, you're, you're gonna like break down at some point. Oh wow. Like probably, like I, I got completely emotionally wasted by the end of the weekend. I had to take breaks. In fact, I, most retreats where there's that kind of work being done, I go deep really fast and then like, I can't make it. I always have to take some time away. It seems too deep, too fast. It's happened. Yeah. So we went to, last year, I'll just tell you the two most impactful things for relationship. Last year we did that retreat with Brian and Jennifer and game changer. Then we did something called circling, which is put on by the integral center out of Boulder. And circling is a relational meditation is the best way to put it. And there's just a way of communicating and opening up and teaching. You learn to be present with another individual and you practice all weekend.  Like you get, you get into relational meditation. I'm, I'm talking 10 minutes and I was broken down, balling. Wow. Like crazy. And because I, I got to this place and the people who facilitate these, there's like five people on one and they're circling one person and you're learning as you're doing it, you're a participant in the circling process. So there's a rotation and, and the facilitator is guiding the conversation and everyone's just reflecting back to you what they're feeling from you and, and thinking, you know, the thoughts that are coming to them, like very like no filter, no filter, no filter. I'm sharing. What are you doing?  I don't think you're sharing very well. And just like, but it's just, you're getting hammered. And I remember for 10 minutes, I was like, I'm cool. I'm cool. And all of a sudden I, what was I working on at the time?  And so that I had this story in my, from my past, like, when I was like, I think a lot of men probably have this, that after being in a relationship with a woman for a certain amount of time, I always get frustrated. And when they ask for things.  And so, you know, I treat my mom that way. You know, any woman I'm in a long-term relationship with, I end up treating like they're a burden. And not overtly, it's just, it's a subtle energy that just like just ruins everything. Well, what's the, what's the childhood thing that stemmed then? I mean, it was just the way I was raised. Yeah. So it was, it was an, it was an underlying thing that probably just came from my dad, my mom and dad's parents. And it's just one of the things that are cultural. It's something that just runs some, some things are passed down for so long. It's not like, it's not like a traumatic event happening in your life. Just the way things are done. And there's, when they, when they, you know, you may hear about people healing things from their ancestry, that would be an example of healing something from your ancestry that is, was passed down, but there wasn't a single woman stays in the kitchen. She doesn't leave the, exactly. Just, just how things are, right? And so yeah. So I, I was brought up that way, you know, and it wasn't big overt at all. I, I grew up in a very happy home and, but I, but I recognized that was the case. So I had to go back and heal that. And that happened during that session is I had all these flashbacks. I, I saw the exact moment actually, not that you say it now, I'm like having a flashback now. It's why I gotta ask. I mean, yeah, sometimes the memory is just streamed. But I remember, I remember there was a point when I was about 15 where my mom asked me, started asking me for advice, which I didn't feel was appropriate. Like about, you know, where it very made it feel like I was an adult. You know, it's like, she was no longer racing me. And the things that she was running by me was really stressed me out. And so that's when I started seeing, so when women asked me for advice, when I'm in a long-term relationship with them, giving women advice got to be a burden. And so we have a very similar story. And, and so it was really making my relationship very strained. And once I recognized that that was, and I just had this whole breakdown process and it happened during a relational meditation exercise. And, and that was great for us.  My wife was in the circle with me. And I was like, is it okay for my wife to be in the circle? Like, they were like, she's a bit biased. They were like, they were like, I don't know, what do you think? And I was like, I was like, well, I might not open up and be vulnerable. If she's present, I'm less likely to.  Because if I can't be open and vulnerable with her, what's the point?  Keep her in the group. And having her there just, that's what made it what it was. It wouldn't have come through had she not been there. So that particular workshop was not for couples, but it was just about how to more authentically relate with other people. And so, you know, it's technically a relationship workshop, just not a romantic relationship workshop. So we did both of those last year, which and Ashley had her own, you know, revelations from each experience. And that's been incredible for us. Oh, the thing we did before that, in the years before, one of the most transformative things for our relationship has been Burning Man. So going to Burning Man has been How many times have you been I've been twice. She's been three times. That's awesome. Okay, you do these retreats. What about something like on a simpler and I'll give you an example, like for me, one of the things that I had to work through was I have such a hard time shutting the work mode and the brain off because of that driven crazy side, right? That when I walk through the door, I can like be aligned to my computer or straight to working more until such the point that I could walk right past my girl, especially after you've been in six years in a relationship, you know, for sure. And so I actually literally have to like do this like, you know, breathing technique before I go in the door to like just get refocused on being present and not literally, you know, still working in my head. And when I walk in the door, actively go over to her kiss her and ask her right up right away, because if I don't do it right away, and I don't do that, then easily it's a wrap, you know, and you know, and she's what's great about her is she knows how to just kind of give me the give me that went that window and latitude to kind of let me go in and figure it out for myself without checking me, you know, but I know that that's something I have to put in practice. Do you have things like that that you've had to put in practice? We do a date night every week. Okay. Not negotiable. So before bed. And are you are you true to that because a lot of people say that and then they're like, Yeah, we try. But that's like, no, no, no, it happens. And if it gets moved, it's like a real reason it got moved. And we make up for it.  Yeah, right. I've done the same with my wife. Yeah. And so we also ask each other what we were grateful for that day. And, you know, and then we also and then sometimes it gets into it depends on how tired we are. And then a lot of times we'll ask, you know, what did you do today that you want to be praised for or acknowledged for? Oh, that's a great question. Yeah, I can think of a lot of things I did. Honey, you got a minute, you got a pin. That's right. I got a bless rough. It's funny you asked that printed. Here we go. It's an alphabetical order. You've been keeping track for 20 years. No, those are, those are great, great questions. Yeah. And I just, I just, I love, okay, I love when people talk about awareness, talk about these things they do. But then I also think that a lot of people talk like this and then they don't put in the practices. And I think that like, you know, Katrina and I are, I believe very, very subtle people and I read a lot in this field and I love this stuff now. But I've even realized that, you know, when you've got habits, especially that have been formed since childhood that are these insecurities or things that we're struggling with. And it's always work, right? It's never, it's never done, right? Is that there's, there's things that you'll move out of the phase eventually. So work in that particular area can be done. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no, you're right. You're right. But it's something that you actively have to be conscious of though, right? It's not something that you can just say, Oh, I fixed that, then it'll never, it'll never resurface or it'll never show itself again. Well, you can move those types of things into unconscious competence. Yes. So like, I, I, there are definitely things that, that I thought might be recurring, but that I've completely wiped and it's, it's, it's like it was never there. Yeah. So what, what do, which ones come to mind that are more challenging?  Which ones were like, connect those dots and so many aspects of your life.  And now it's my automatic behavior.  Oh, wait. Oh, I can see this differently because that's where, like that's conscious competence. And then the unconscious confidence is just automatic automatic. So that can happen with your mind. You just have to put, but you have to conscious. You have to consciously be competent in many, many different ways with that same lesson. And don't you wouldn't you say personal responsibility or letting go is the first lesson, right? Personal responsibility is the second lesson. And so like learning to apply personal responsibility to every aspect of your life. That takes a while. That's a while before you start. Stop blaming other people for your country. It's accountability. Well, I'll tell you what, I had this experience with, you know, my own body image issues.  And once I really realized that it was rooted in these insecurities, it didn't become unconscious competence until I applied it towards the bad things I was doing to my body towards my obsession with supplements towards how I treated myself with my workouts towards the way I ate to the clothes I wore.  It couldn't be baggy because then I looked small and I had to apply it to so many different things. And now it's becoming, it's not there yet, but it's becoming much more automatic. So I can completely relate to what you're saying. It makes perfect sense. Yeah. I think there's always new levels too. And I was speaking about the personal responsibility thing. There's the personal responsibility I have to take for my relationship with my wife. And then I have to, my personal responsibility with my job at work. And then if my job, if that role changes, then it's like, I have to learn it all over again with the new role. It's an interesting situation until it does become that automatic behavior. Yeah. Do you guys make this, is this a part of your training with your business? Do you and your partners do this kind of stuff together? Does it kind of work together? Are they as open to it as you are? It's not a formal thing. It's just, it's actually baked into our culture. So it's just kind of how we do business. So especially with, yeah, Doug, Rob, yeah, all the owners are very big into helping each other out and like pushing the other people. And yeah, it's not a formal like process, but it's just how we interact. Now, is everybody fully, I know you're not. So is everybody else completely engaged in just barbell structure? Does everybody also have other projects that they have their hands into? No, everybody's 100%. Everyone is. Yeah. I feel like people in fitness who are truly passionate about wellness and the term wellness now gets misused, I think, or at least people interpret it as this kind of hippie, you know, herbal herbs and meditate and, you know, fitness means this over here and performance means these over here and they've got it all separated. Yeah, but wellness really encompasses just overall everything right just being well. And I think what I found is people that truly are passionate about it end up where you're at now where we're going right now. Whereas you start to look at all wellness whereas first it becomes wellness with your fitness, with your exercise, right? And examine that and you break that down and then you hit this new level and then it's all of a sudden it's now with nutrition and it goes, it evolves from macros and calories to whole foods and then it evolves from needing to eat to build muscle, but then eating to just feel good and be well. And then it moves past that and to eventually get to this point where you're involved with developing just yourself as a person. It's all connected, but it's funny because it takes you down. It's the same road. Yeah, everyone starts at a different point and then starts coming to the same conclusions. Takes a while. That's all. Some people stay off on the truth. Let's be honest, not everybody gets to the destination, bro. Is there even a destination? That might just be, you know, the next life, you know. Is there even a destination? I guess is the question. Well, yeah, we could argue that there is not there isn't. It's technically a journey for everybody and everybody's as individual, but there are some truths that I think that you, that we start to find out the deeper you dive into all this, you know, and that's the reason why, you know, go, you know, rewinding back probably an hour ago in this podcast when I asked you about just your thoughts of IIFYM because I knew where you would take it, where you would go. You know, to me, it's elements. I'm not predictable. Yeah, it's not that you're predictable at all. We're very like-minded. You know, that's, well, I think when you, you've got, when you've got people searching for, you know, looking at the journey the right way or at least looking at the journey and examining it, you start to come to similar conclusions. I think is typically what happens, even though people come from different walks of life, you came from CrossFit. I couldn't have come from a different, more different area of fitness, but we're, but a lot of the conclusions you're, you've come to are the same ones that I might have come with it too. Yeah, the one I've been really embedding in my mind as a, as a truth right now is that we are not nouns. We are verbs.  And time has to stop to measure something. And so, but a verb is an action. It's a process. And if we think about ourselves as a verb versus a noun, I think we'd be much more comfortable with, with moving forward. I think they would should call it tasty. They would should call Webster. That's my verb. I'll tell you what, I think on a literal, on a literal level, that makes sense. Absolutely. On a literal level, you're never, you're never, you're never staying the same, right? But on a, on a spiritual level, it makes perfect sense. And on a scientific level, even beyond that, I mean, we're, we're bacteria. We turn over what every five years were completely different. What do you think about it? Even, even if you go beyond that, you're, you're like on a cellular level like every three I'm burning up, but even like in a bad way. I'm getting old way too quick, even deeper.  I mean, literally you are popping in and out of existence at all times, you know, at a quantum level. So to say that you're a verb is much more accurate, I would say then than a noun. I've had enough weed. Where did you get? Where nothing? Where did you get that from? Where did you hear that first? Do you remember? He made it up. He invented it. It was a conversation. I think my friend, Danish Mike Burger, dropped that one on me. Maybe. Man, I can't keep up with who. I don't expect you to. I thought maybe yeah. I'll take credit for almost nothing when someone asks. Where'd you get that somebody? Somebody. I got to learn that. Sal's the opposite. Yeah, I just came up with that car. I had that idea before it was invented. I don't know how many times I've sat down with friends and gotten in a really deep conversation. And then when we both come out or like, whose idea was that? Who cares? And then I was like, well, it wasn't mine. It wasn't mine. It was ours. Okay, cool. Well, that's the relief. That's the funny joke with mind pump is that we tease Sal.  No one really uses a fucking.  Who said that? You know, who came up with it? That happens a lot, a lot, a lot.  And we'll spend like three days like disconnected. We put ourselves in a total flow state and just come out with programs. Yeah, we come up here to evaluate the business or create. And then we, yeah, you guys do that. Yeah, we do retreats and yeah, how often do you guys do that? Now we're really good about it in the beginning and then we, we were not as good at it as I would like to have been in 2016 and we had one this year that was really good and we're going to do a second one this year in August. So we'll get two in two big ones where there's 20 or 30 people there and and then the the executive team will meet up like every three months. So you get you guys started 2012. What was your most difficult year? 2016. Why? That's when we made the most radical change. Yeah, that was the we decided to pivot the entire business essentially and move away from taking the emphasis off a training programs and putting them more into the gym owner. Hmm. Yeah. In hindsight, was that was that a right decision or was it too soon to tell? No, it was the it was the best decision ever. Awesome. Yeah, awesome. Yeah, it was what was so challenging about making that decision? I mean, obviously looking back at like now you're saying it like that was best decision ever.  Very, very. What was hard about it? Yeah, there's some people that were with the company that aren't with the company anymore. There was there was a Now, what do you think caused that? Mike, do you think it's because they were so stuck on doing it this way? They were happy with the money they were making? What was it that kept them stuck there? So the rest of you want to take 100% responsibility for it? It would be because I didn't I think I could have been clearer with painting a vision of the future of where we were going. I could have been much more clear. I mean, I was doing the best I could have done. So I have compassion for myself in that regard. And I recognize that the thing that I could have done differently was paint a better vision of the future and check in with everybody to make sure that that's where we were all going. And instead, I I began making decisions without communicating the vision. And one of the things I learned last year is to make the vision as specific as possible and overcommunicate it. Like, I should be tired of saying it. People should be tired of hearing it and which they won't. Or your fire. That's right. So those were the pieces and a lot of that I had to mature through. I had to go through that process to see the power of communicating vision and having a specific vision. So it really helped me grow a lot in that regard.  And it was hard on, you know, because it costs so much money. It was a strain on all my relationships. So most of my relationships are business. And then especially since money was your thing, that was your exactly. Well, it's funny how after I cleared that up, all of a sudden, everything got really nice, clear, ironic, right? Yeah, how fucking, you know, it's so funny. You learn these lessons over and over again. I've learned my lessons and you guys have learned yours.   Well, this is why I've been on a on a on a path of becoming more sensitive because because if I could sense the lesson sooner, it'd be a lot less painful. I could I could change and it would be less disruptive to everyone around you know I got it makes me think of that something here. I wonder if the motivation to be more sensitive is as important as wanting to be sensitive. In other words, you know right now I want to be more sensitive because I don't want to feel as much pain, but maybe that's another roadblock. Well, it's not about feeling less pain. It's about growing faster. So if I'm going down the road and I'm balancing from side to side, it's going to take me a lot longer to get there. But if I can sense that I'm getting off center, you know, and a split second, I'll get to my destination a lot faster. Keeps the line straighter. That's right. Yeah. The Dow, there's still left and right, but out aging the middle way. So looking ahead, looking ahead, what's what's in the future for you and where do you think the direction of your company? Oh, yeah. So barbell shrugged. We're going to but I'll just talk about by the end of 2018. By the end of 2018, we're ramping up our media team building something we've never built before. And it's going to be epic. We're going to create some next level shows for barbell business doing the same thing for that show. And we are putting all of our effort into the box owner. And we are going to dominate the market in that regard. And that if people are box owners and they're not working with us, it just doesn't make any sense. Why would you open a box and not work with us? Now, we talked a little bit about this off air. What do you see when you look at, you know, gym boxes right now? And I think we can agree there's a lot of stuff going wrong and there's a lot of help that's needed. What's the biggest mistake? Yeah. Well, the biggest mistake I would say is people open up the gym for the right reason. They want to help people. They want to build a community. They love CrossFit. They all all their stuff. And then once they get in it, the business side of the house and not having money stresses them so out so much that they become bad coaches.  And so what they do is they end up, you know, learning some business tactics and they start getting some tactics for pumping up their membership all the while retention is going down.  And so what happens is a lot of people, if they don't get out of the business, a lot of them overcompensate and they step so far out of the business that sucks the culture out and the soul out of the gym.  Anyway, so what we're doing is we're helping box owners build a system for their business that revolves around them as a person and as a cult while we we want to scale up what they have while maintaining the culture that already exists. And then also removing the strip culture. Oh, it's very close. We want to help you.  Are you only pun intended? Are you, are you only specializing in CrossFit facilities? Are you doing regular gyms too? So our coaching programs are open to small gyms. They don't have to be a CrossFit affiliate, but they can be a box. My software right now, that software only works with CrossFit boxes, right? Gotcha. And we'll be opening up to other boxes that run similar models in the middle of summer. What's, I've always wanted to know, I have buddies that do CrossFit. And we've talked a little bit about numbers, but I think you're a much better guy to talk to about this. What are normal, what's, what's really good numbers as far as being an owner that you can make running CrossFit CrossFit facility? And then what are shitty numbers? And then what's the average? So some of it depends on what part of the country you're in, of course. So, you know, well, I don't know, average size box, you know, good area. Well, here's the thing is the way that the way the structure is in the community works in CrossFit 100, you need to be able to make your money off 150 members. Okay. So some people can pull it off and they have a more sophisticated leadership style in their organization. But then that takes a whole, that's just, that's a whole another click. Most GM owners don't want to even be at. And so 150 members, Dunbar's number, are you guys familiar? So it's a, as a human being, I can only maintain 150 close relationships. Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Beyond that, you know, I start forgetting people's names. It seems to be a limit of the human mind. Right. And so, um, yeah, 150. It's funny because it ends up being that way. A lot of small churches are the same way. Speaking of cults. So the, uh, the, uh, take it in full circle.  But that was bad right there. No. So 150. So they just got it. So I asked Jim owners a lot of times like how much money you want to make? All right, divide that by 150. There you go. That's how much all I got to do is charge $10,000 a month. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, and I had to get to that point in the business to, I was like, I don't want to be in this business if I can't make what I can, what I can make. And I realized and I had to bump my prices to be the most expensive person in town. So I think, I think a gym that's doing well on average is probably doing 40 to 50,000. Uh, that's gross. Yeah. A month. And then, you know, I think there's some, I think the average is probably doing like the average gem that it's the owner's full-time job is probably doing between 15 and 20.  So it's kind of hard, you know, they might be doing like 1000 a month or 8,000 a month. They're just paying the bills. They're not paying the owners at all. The ones that are actually I would say that would make up the majority. So like with any business, fitness is one of those things. It's like a, it's like you got to be there, man. You have to be there and you got to be in it and love it. At least in the physical sense that the gym, well, it sounds like it means a little bit. I see and I know some cross with gyms that do over a million a year. Wow. And those gyms, the numbers you have to be cranking out to do that, lots of personal training happening. So they're not running the group class model. So it's a mix. That's a much higher dollar per unit. They're doing some class model and they're doing personal training and they're really pumping that. And so the thing is a lot of gym owners don't want it. They want to do the group class model only. In which case, we just, we just go, look, you'll never, you'll never break half a million a year.  It's just, it's not impossible. It's not impossible. Highly unlikely. Like that's a hustle. It will, it reminds me of like the group X model that way. You want to ignore the whole personal training side and connecting the people and helping fixing each one individually. And it's just, let's bust these classes in and out. That's kind of like that model. I feel like when you yeah, what CrossFit has, has done is gotten coaches to be able to manage more than one athlete at a time effectively. So some coaches just have more capacity than others. So most coaches can handle one maybe, but there's definitely, but if you look at the staff who cross the level one staff and you see them coach, so those really great coaches, you can give them 12 to 15 people and they can coach highly effectively. Do you know how many boxes there are in the U.S. Col CrossFit, I think around 10,000 Christ that many. I did not know that now are they growing as it flattened out. So the growth has slowed the U.S. and really ramped up internationally. Yeah, very interesting. It's still growing. It's just not growing at the rate it was. Well, it's it's finally getting a little competitive because I remember a guy. I remember there was only five, you know, and then I remember literally now where it seems like there's one on every corner. Yeah, it's it's rare to be able to find, especially in big cities like we live in, three miles apart from the next one. I mean literally they're not they're not just competitive with each other.  And that's going to be the competition for the CrossFit. So I was part of the first OTF in the Bay Area and my buddy owns like 17 of them and kind of called on called on me to help them start it up and stuff. And I was like, Yeah, yeah, you know, I'll do that. Sounds cool. I'm interested in it. I saw the business model. That's what I was what I saw was they did and you know, Barry's Boot Camp or there's quite a few, there's several different franchises that are similar to this. But where I saw that CrossFit was kind of lacking on the business side and the organization and like, and then they scaled back so it's a lot safer. There's no Olympic lifts going on inside there. Right. Right. So I was like, Oh, this is smart with this. They're going to ride. They're really riding the CrossFit wave.  They started getting into price wars with each other.  Oh my God. When I was selling memberships in early 2000s, you know an all club membership of 24 fitness was like $45 a month. Now you can get them for 20. It's crazy how cheap it's got well because they started just price for each other. I've seen a gym selling for $10 a month. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So parts of the country. We send parts of the country. It's like 10. We had a year where we went. It was $49 a year.   You got to laugh when you see that right? It's so crazy. You know what though? From a marketing, you got to respect it. It's so brilliant. What they're doing, right? They're just it's definitely so dirty. It definitely highlights where it highlights where most people are at. Yeah. He's like, all right. This is what most people think is acceptable. You know what? It's growing, bro. Interesting. Well, be at a very fast rate right now. I don't know what to think about that. I'm going to have to process that. I was just going to say being sensitive and empathetic. When you think of planet fitness, that's got to be a challenge.  I really care about the fitness and wellness for, you know, 70 for people. But yeah, when you see planet fitness, it's God man. It's like they feed into it so much, but I mean there. I'm sure they're doing some good for a lot of people too, but boy, does it make me want to I want to go in there. There's just all different levels, you know, alarms.  You know, we can't take the whole thing at once. Unless you got a loop. Excellent analogy. Yeah. Planet, planet fitness is the, the loop, you know. Well, I just think, I think it's, I think they're, they know, they know that. Okay. First of all, if every member showed up at a 24 fitness or golds or lifetime. They go out of business.  They would be shut down for sure because you can't even fit that many people in there. So the models are already, we're counting on you not showing up, which no one tells you that right? We sell you on how you want to come in, but in reality, we don't really want you to show up. Please don't come back because if you all did, if like, if they, if we did our jobs really well and you all came all the time, we would be fucked. We wouldn't have a place large enough for all that and they feed into that right past the fire code. They feed into that. They feed into that mentality in contrast, small boxes, because you've seen this growth, you know, recently, but it's probably been now. We've probably seen this over the last 10 years. Even it's it went from the huge big box competition to the price wars to now you get these shitty gyms. People pay for, don't use small boxes, open up, charge more money and they need you to use the gym. That's their model.  So it's a completely different model, but it's more successful. Built on relationships. Yes. It's built on relationships. Yes. You're seeing more yoga studios. You're seeing more, you know, all the fitness, you know, small box type facilities for sure. And I couldn't be more happy. Yeah, like it's exciting because