Jason Khalipa - Train Hard. Live Free.

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[00:02:13] That's podcastcollective.io. All right, we are live. Jason Kallipa, welcome to the future of fitness, my friend. Thanks for having me. We're ready to rock and roll. It's going to be a good show.

[00:02:30] We're going to talk about all kinds of business, family, fitness, whatever you want to get into. I'm ready. Yeah, man. I love it. I love the wide open attitude. And I was telling you

[00:02:38] prior to recording that obviously I come from a CrossFit background. In the world of CrossFit, you're a big deal, right? You're one of the true, true OGs. And I was laughing because I'm like,

[00:02:51] Jason, I met you on such a fanboy. I'm like, Jason, I met you years and years ago when you came by my affiliate, you're about to go into the 2009 games. Which you won, by the way, it was in that

[00:03:00] the year that you won. I won 2008 and I took fifth in 2009. Okay. So we were the champ, right? Basically, I was a current champ. Yeah. And I was ready. I was getting ready,

[00:03:10] actually, to do my pilgrimage to the games and go watch Back in Aramis. And just one day, man, you rolled up and you pulled into our gym. And we were just this fledging little 800 square foot

[00:03:19] CrossFit gym. I was like, I grabbed my partner like, Traver, dude, I think Jason Klape had just pulled out to our gym. He's like, no. I'm like, yeah, I got this. Let me handle this. I went out

[00:03:29] and I was like, hey, how's it going? Playing it cool. And yeah, we know who you are. We know who you are, Jason. He was like, you asked if you could train and then

[00:03:37] you're a deloading, you're a coach and assistant that you had a weight belt and you asked if we had a weight belt. We didn't. And then you're like, sorry guys, I got to go down the street where they

[00:03:46] have a weight belt. And we're like, no, this is our opportunity to train and hang out with Jason Klape. And like, I think I got mad at my intern for not having a weight belt after that. But

[00:03:55] that was our moment, man. You probably don't remember, but I do. Dude, it's so funny. I visited a lot of gyms. I can't remember that particular instance. You know, I did have a coach at the time and I was one of those guys who was a big believer

[00:04:07] at SLM today that if you're going to utilize a coach, you may be willing to listen. And I'd imagine at that time, if this was the information I was given to me, that's what I was going to do.

[00:04:16] And yeah, that's a funny story though. I've definitely had the privilege of dropping in on many, many gyms and it's always a cool experience. Yeah. Yeah, I bet. And I think the affiliates really appreciate it. I mean,

[00:04:30] there's one thing I'm sure we'll touch on it during this interview that CrossFit proved outright is that community is so incredibly powerful. Right? Yeah. It's not just from the end results for the clients, but the business owner,

[00:04:45] like how powerful it is. It's a big deal and we saw it firsthand in the early days of CrossFit. You're like, this is really differentiating and it really helped grow the brand. For sure. For sure. Saw some amazing growth in CrossFit for a long time.

[00:05:00] Just like anything, right? Ebs and flows. Industries ebb and flow. And I think that CrossFit definitely showed the value of a community, a coach and a clock. Really, I think that they just changed the game. Yeah. There's so many things I've been

[00:05:16] racking my brain about to talk to you about now that I finally got you on the podcast, Jason. But I think really your story is probably one of the most interesting things. And there's

[00:05:25] probably a lot of people who are listening to this or in the industry who aren't CrossFit junkies like I am. But maybe we can just start with that, man. Maybe tell us a little about

[00:05:33] who you are as an individual, as an athlete, as a business person, as a family man. How it all started, how you kind of took an opportunity early on in CrossFit and really

[00:05:42] ran with it. Yeah. I'd love to hear more about that. Yeah. I mean, I was introduced to CrossFit when I was 18. I was working at the friend desk at traditional health club. I was doing sales

[00:05:52] after that. So I was working at the friend desk then in college I was doing sales. I knew I wanted to open up a gym. I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur at a really young age.

[00:06:00] When I had graduated from college, I won the CrossFit Games based that same week and decided to open up a gym. I was opening up a gym anyways, but I ended up opening a gym, graduate from

[00:06:11] college and winning the CrossFit Games all that summer. From there just stemmed a whole different career. I ended up opening multiple locations. I ended up traveling the world teaching seminars at CrossFit. I ended up competing professionally for about a decade.

[00:06:24] I ended up evolving. So we owned and operated brick and mortar gyms. That at the time was like the thing. Then as that grew, we ended up signing some really big corporate wellness deals.

[00:06:35] That ended up getting us global presence. So we went from three brick and mortars to 20. Meanwhile, I was trying to compete and I had one child that kind of evolved and grew. And then long story short, pre-COVID, you're looking at a lot of corporate wellness

[00:06:52] accounts with Lucas Films and Western Digital and our brick and mortar. I think at the time we had six that we owned and operated, then COVID hit. A lot of things changed in our business.

[00:07:01] Prior to COVID actually, we also had a digital presence. We had a B2B model where essentially what happened is we had like 30 of our own locations from Cabo Mexico to Singapore, Thailand, China. We started saying, how do we keep guardrails on the experience? How do

[00:07:15] we keep consistency like Starbucks? If you have a better or worse barista, you'll have a better experience, but you should get the same frappuccino at one place that you do somewhere else. And if someone goes into one of our gyms, each of us similar experience,

[00:07:27] you do somewhere else. You're going to have a better or worse coach and you should let them thrive. However, we should be creating guardrails to keep them on track. And so we created the NCFit Collective, which was our session plan, programming and daily videos that we used

[00:07:39] for our own gyms. We then said, hey, let's sell this to gym owners. So that created a third revenue stream. So we had three revenue streams at a time, our own brick and mortar

[00:07:47] locations. We had corporate wellness locations that we did it own, we operated. And then we had the digital stream, which we call the NCFit Collective, which we still have today. COVID hits, things evolve, long and short of it is, we've now consolidated down. We did roll out a

[00:08:01] license program, which we learned a lot through. But as it sits today, we own and operate two brick and mortar from the area. We also have corporate wellness with Lucas Films. And we

[00:08:11] do have the NCFit Collective. We also have a new arm of the business that is for end users, which will be underneath the train hard brand umbrella. So NCFit is for gym owners, coaches,

[00:08:22] and brick and mortar members, which are thriving here in the Bay Area and our corporate wellness. And then train hard would be our new end user digital programs that allow us to kind of fulfill

[00:08:33] things that are important to me. So for example, as a dad, as a husband, as a, you know, I've been practicing jiu-jitsu for seven years. I love it. I want to compete in the tactical games. These are things that are outside the NCFit umbrella. So NCFit is going

[00:08:46] to be hard set on improving coaching owners, et cetera, which is something that I'm all about. I've been doing it for 20 years, but I'm also interested in jiu-jitsu and leveling up dads and giving resources and tools for people who want to be in their garage training hard.

[00:08:59] And that's where that brand comes into play. So that's kind of like an overall synopsis. Obviously, you know, I have two children and yeah, I've been married to my high school sweetheart and that's about it. That's awesome. A couple things that I'd like to touch on there,

[00:09:11] Jason, in your story. What when you decided to do NCFit and kind of the brand, like what made that gym experience, that gym brand unique? Like what were your differentiators when you started that?

[00:09:23] Because there's a sea of CrossFit, right? Yeah. So when we first opened up your CrossFit Santa Clara this is in 2008. And then as we evolved, we said, hey, we want to have one brand that

[00:09:33] could span across all of our locations. We rebranded a NorCal CrossFit. So, you know, if you want to do CrossFit in Northern California, you're going to come to one of our locations here

[00:09:42] in the Bay Area. Let's just say. Then over time we started providing more than just CrossFit. We started providing a variety of different programs and we also started recognizing at the time that the industry had a lot of varying degrees. You had some CrossFit gyms were thriving,

[00:09:56] some that were not very professional, some that were just opened up as hobbies. And what it was doing was it was it was hurting the value of the brand of CrossFit. So we said, hey,

[00:10:05] we need to be in control of our own destiny. So we branded NCFit to be more indicative of what we were doing, which in my opinion at the time was just top tier CrossFit. I mean, it was just

[00:10:15] top tier programming, top tier facilities, top tier coaching. And we wanted to, you know, tell people who we were and not who we weren't by the outside brand on the wall. We learned a lot from that experience. And, you know, I think in business, you know,

[00:10:31] anybody listening, it's like this journey of entrepreneurship is not a vertical line. It's not a linear progression. You know, you have ups, you have downs, you have evolution. And as an

[00:10:42] entrepreneur, I'm not in the line of business like my dad. My dad is an engineer for the city of San Jose. He knows that he's going to get paid X-Mad Dollars and he's going to work there

[00:10:51] for X-Made of Years. He's going to get X-Pension. That's just what he signed up for. What I signed up for was to have the fruit of my labor come as almost like commission. Like the

[00:11:01] harder I work, the better we do. But with that comes ebbs and flows like things like code. So that's been a big realization for me through business. Yeah. I use that in LGL at the time. It's not a linear. It's usually got a couple

[00:11:12] squiggly marks in there. It's got, you know, some backwards trends. It's got forwards. But hopefully if you look, if you back out, right? And you look at the overall trend, it is going up. And it's entrepreneurship. Yeah, it's not for everybody. And I think that's

[00:11:25] another thing is like the glorification of entrepreneurship over the past decade. Right? Like when you look at being an entrepreneur, there's obviously the glory of the wins. But there's a lot of darkness that goes on. Right? A lot of doubting,

[00:11:39] a lot of really hard, you know, mental voices, like voices in your head. So what have you seen as far as entrepreneurship, not just the glory and all that, but what do you think are the true challenges for entrepreneurs? I mean, you feel like you're

[00:11:51] on an island a lot. You feel like you're on an island because not many people have the same perspective that you have and you're responsible for people in their living, you're responsible for the product, you're responsible for the brand, you're responsible for a lot.

[00:12:03] But something I remind myself of is like, I chose this life. I chose this life at a very young age. And I started 15 at the friend desk. By the time I was 18, I was doing sales.

[00:12:12] And I knew, I knew when I started getting commission checks or they were big while I was in college at the same time, I knew that I always wanted to be in control of my own

[00:12:20] destiny. But with that comes a lot of responsibility, a lot of hardship, a lot of headache, a lot of reflection on where are we going? And but that's what I chose, you know, and that's what I remind

[00:12:29] myself of. You know, I remind myself every day that when things get tough, like no one forced me to be an entrepreneur, no one forced me to open up a business. I chose to do that.

[00:12:38] I could have gone in many different paths. And once you have that perspective, it really, it helps you understand the folks on what's in your control and creating a great network around you that could help you not feel like you're alone on that journey,

[00:12:50] even though sometimes you do feel that way. Yeah. What about moments, Jason, where you when fear creeps in as an entrepreneur? Right? It happens like when you're like, oh man, did I just screw up? Like what happens when maybe that's just my head? What happens if

[00:13:04] the roof literally caves in on my gym? Like what happens if, you know, someone gets injury, a face of lawsuit? Like what do you do in those moments where fear starts to creep in? How do you manage that? I mean, using COVID as a great example. It's like,

[00:13:18] I was never fearful of a worldwide pandemic to come and shut down our business. And then there all of a sudden it, I mean, dude, we got nailed so hard. I mean, we're talking seven

[00:13:27] figure revenue drops. And I never saw that coming. So it puts things in perspective. Like if you're going to fear things, fear what's in your control. If it's outside of your control, don't worry about it because you don't even know, right? Like,

[00:13:39] and that's what I remind myself of. Like, yeah, are those thoughts normal? Of course. But like it's outside of my control and I need to not allow that to take up brain space because

[00:13:48] it's taking me away from folks on things that are in my control that could help me alleviate some of those problems, right? Making sure that we get that building inspected for example, right? Or whatever. Focusing on that. And COVID is a great example for any entrepreneur

[00:14:01] who's worried about things like, dude, has anybody ever signed a lease ever and thoughts themselves? Hmm, I wonder if a worldwide pandemic is going to shut down my business for a year. No,

[00:14:12] right? When you're signing a lease, you think, hey, can I make these payments? Can I do this? Can I do that? Whatever. And so having fear of things that are outside your control,

[00:14:21] I think it's just, it's not guiding you towards where you want to be. So you need to find a way mentally to alleviate that from your life. Yeah. Yeah, that's, it's really keen insights because that's the thing I've always found with entrepreneurship

[00:14:32] is you are lonely at the top, right? Because ultimately no one, unless you have a 50-50 partner or equal partners in some say, no one has the risk that you've inputted into this endeavor,

[00:14:45] right? Other people could just walk away. They could just walk away. They could get another job. That's what employees do. Or even if you're your top tier executives at a company, they could just move on. But you have all the risk. Like you've inputted everything from not just

[00:14:57] monetarily, but your time, your reputation and all of those things. Yeah. I mean, it is what it is. Like if you're an entrepreneur, you're listening to this and you're saying, oh my gosh, it's like, well dude, you're in the wrong business. Like you chose to do this. So

[00:15:09] I can't complain because if I complain, then I should take what's in my control and do something about it. Because if I'm an entrepreneur and I'm really worried about those things, then maybe I'm in the wrong business to your point. Been glorified for the last decade.

[00:15:22] Entrepreneurship is not easy and it's not for everybody. There's plenty of people that could be a phenomenal number two at a company far happier, make more money. Then like take for example, a number five at Facebook, who's probably uniquely talented at something. Let's just say

[00:15:37] if it's a argument finance really good at finance. They'd be a terrible CEO potentially, potentially, but they don't need to be a great CEO. Like that's not the only path for them. Their path was to become the absolute best of whatever they're doing. Now they're making

[00:15:50] a ton of money and they're probably more satisfied if they try to put a square thing around the whole and become a CEO or whatever. Yeah, it's interesting. And I want to

[00:15:58] go back again, one more thing because I think this is really a meaty topic for a lot of people, especially pre-pandemic for I guess just going to say independent gym owners. Corporate wellness

[00:16:08] was something that everyone wanted to get into. It was like it could really set your business apart if you got a corporate wellness account. Right? And everyone was going for it. People were kind of approaching it, I think in many of the wrong ways, just trying to be

[00:16:23] just fitness, right? But you have to be much more within a company. And I'm curious when you saw success with corporate wellness back in those days and still to this day, what were the qualities that you think made your corporate wellness stand apart? What do

[00:16:36] you think got you the early success? Well, I've been creating relationships. I've been putting in your dues. I mean, I can remember early on, one downside of corporate wellness is that it detracts you from your current break and mortar. So at one point we had a lot of

[00:16:49] different corporate wellness going on, a ton with tons of companies. We had GoPro, we had Twitter, I mean, we had a ton of them. And what I realized the hard way was that some

[00:16:59] of these were taking our team away from our break and mortar and dividing our resources. And if we had just been more focused on our break and mortar, maybe they could have thrived more in running class at this one location. So I think it was partly like learning,

[00:17:12] getting my reps in, I would take kettlebells at 5 a.m. to his first company was called C.H. Reynolds. I would go there three days a week and we started building it up. I started learning about corporate wellness. I started learning, learning, learning. And then I created

[00:17:25] a relationship with a gentleman by Western Digital and just changed the game. We signed a when we ended up servicing them globally for 10 years. But what it came down to was relationships and adding value, relationships and adding value, driving more value for

[00:17:38] the organization than your cost of the organization because for them it's pretty black and white, right? It's like, are you fostering relationships and getting our employees more healthy to save on costs of health insurance, etc. And are you increasing

[00:17:52] our productivity? If you could show that we're all in. And so that was the big learning lesson back in the day and still today, right? I think we're running a top tier fitness center for

[00:18:02] Lucas Films and that's something that we're really proud of when we want to continue to dive deeper into it. Where do you think if people are approaching business owners or going after corporate wellness, where do you think some of the biggest mistakes are laid?

[00:18:14] Well, I mean, I think the biggest thing would be, you know, what are you uniquely good at? So let's just say you're a brick and mortar operator. You have a single site and you have 5,000 square

[00:18:21] feet and you have 100 members and it's doing 20 grand in revenue and you're not profitable. That is not the time to go and look for corporate wellness. That is the time to say, hey, I have thousands of extra feet of space. I have classes that could accommodate more.

[00:18:36] I need to focus and get more people in this gym. On the flip side, if you have 5,000 square feet, you have 500 active daily members. You're generating $100,000 a month and you have 20% profit margins. Okay, now we're talking. All right, you've maybe even hit capacity here or close.

[00:18:53] What, how else can you generate more revenue or create more profitability for your company? Well, you could open up another location, you could expand digitally or maybe you could expand through corporate wellness and that could be a great time to go explore that. But before

[00:19:05] that, maybe not that example, but before that time, don't get distracted on thinking corporate wellness is going to generate more revenue for you when your brick and mortar is not doing well because what happens is, you know, a lot of times I saw with the restaurant recently

[00:19:16] nearby, they were just killing it with this restaurant. And so they took on another one right next door or a couple doors down and all of a sudden you take this one that was doing well

[00:19:25] and you do two. It's twice as hard but now they're both suffering because the team is being dispersed and you can't just focus and you would have been better off just having one and optimizing it before you try to take on more.

[00:19:38] Yeah, yeah, it's great advice. Excuse me. And one of the things I've been noticing over, you know, as I was doing my research for this interview, Jason, is that your content, kind of your branding has been shifting a little bit more like last time I checked in,

[00:19:53] it was really about entrepreneurship and business and a lot of those things. And I started to see, you know, I think it's intentional and you can maybe decide I've seen this across a couple other, you know what I would call influencers in our

[00:20:04] space. Although I don't like that term, but you're starting to go more into like leaning into your personal brand going more towards like fitness and health and kind of going back to maybe what your roots were, you know, many years ago. I'm just putting

[00:20:15] words in your mouth. But am I noticing that correctly? And what's kind of the thought pattern and process behind that? Yeah, I mean, I think I talk about the things that I'm passionate at the time and I think it's okay to have that change over time.

[00:20:28] And frankly, it's been something I've struggled with. If I'm being, you know, really open about it, I've struggled deeply about when let's just say my heart is pulling me towards something that I really care about. For example, Jiu-Jitsu. But all of a

[00:20:41] sudden my mind is telling me, Hey, you got to make sure you're still talking to gym owners and you got to do this, you got to do that. It's like, dude, the person I was

[00:20:48] when I opened the gym at 21 is not the same person I am today at 37 with two kids. It's just not. And over time I've evolved, my content should evolve with it and my content should evolve with things that I deeply care about and people pick up on.

[00:21:03] It's not to say that I don't care about gym owners and coaches anymore. Absolutely not. I love them. I do. I want to see the industry thrive. But what I also really care about right now is sharing with the community what I'm about, what I'm doing with my

[00:21:14] fitness currently and helping dads level up because we don't get a second shot at this. So my passion for supporting the ecosystem of gym owners is still there through NCFit, but it also is evolving over here at the train hard brand

[00:21:26] to help dads. And yeah, man, I got 12 year old and nine year old and like, that's just where I'm at. That's NC. You're right to have seen that in the content because what I was about for many, many years was business of fitness. And I had a podcast

[00:21:39] and I would just always talk about business and I loved it, loved it. And it's not to say if I'm on a podcast like this, like, dude, I'm down to talk about business for sure. But if this conversation shifted towards parenting jujitsu and combat, like I'm

[00:21:52] fired up on that too. So I guess to your point, it's like, I want to speak on the things that at the time resonate with me. And what's really resonated with me right now is that there's

[00:22:01] a large demographic of dads in particular that need to level up. They need to get off the couch. They need to go do something and then you'd be there for their kids. And I want to speak to

[00:22:09] them organically because that's what I care about. Yeah. Well, let's expand on that. I want to talk about what you're passionate about. I mean, dude, the thing about it is I'm passionate about entrepreneurship. I mean,

[00:22:19] yeah, I own a business. But these are things that pull up my strings because I see it, you know, I see it as a dad. Like I get home and it's like my son's like, let's go do this. Let's go do that.

[00:22:29] And if you don't have the fitness to back that up, like how can you show up? Right? You can only say no so many times before they're not going to ask anymore. And that's what I want to get

[00:22:37] into is like, how did you start to notice it? I mean, out of your personal experiences as a dad, no n equals one, I'm sure you have access to, you know, seeing a lot of other dads

[00:22:46] within your gyms, within your programs online, within your entrepreneurial groups, like all the things that you're intertwined with. But how did that noticing and that concern and then eventually, you know, what you're doing now, which is, you know, going out there to make a difference?

[00:23:00] Like how did you start to see this problem? And how did that grow with you? I mean, I think it's evolved over time, right? You know, obviously I've had kids for a long

[00:23:08] time. And I was striving to be the fittest on earth, winning the cross the games as a goal. And then over time, my goals have shifted as an individual. My goals went from I want to be

[00:23:17] the fittest on earth and train in the garage or the gym either one to now it's like, dude, how does that show up in real life? How am I as a husband and dad? And how well am I protecting and providing?

[00:23:29] Those are things I think about all the time. So I train so I can protect and provide. That's why I do it. I do it because I want to be able to provide experiences. I want to be able to,

[00:23:38] I'm an entrepreneur, because I want to be able to provide for my family. Like that's important to me, but I want to be able to go provide experiences. If the kids want to go do

[00:23:44] something, I should never be physically limited to do so. When we talk about train hard, live free, it's to never have fitness inhibit the things I want or need to do. It should never even be a

[00:23:53] factor and providing my children with that, with that benefit is key for me also be able to protect. Right? That's why I spend tremendous amounts of time doing combatives, jujitsu, Muay Thai and also firearms training because those are important for me as well. But as

[00:24:08] but in addition to just those sides, it's can I run? Can I jump? Can I climb? Can I sprint? And as a dad, if I'm not doing those things and my fitness is called upon, if my fitness is called

[00:24:20] upon, I better be doing those things because if you don't like shame on you. You know, that's kind of my take on it. Yeah. Hey, what are the, what do you think are would you say are the

[00:24:29] pillars of train hard? Like is it, you know, is there some fun down? I mean, obviously, like your training has evolved quite a bit training from, you know, becoming and sustaining the level of a CrossFit Games champion. Right? That's a lot of training, I would imagine.

[00:24:41] You know, if you've been an athlete your whole life, I know that. But now it's shifting into this kind of different purpose, right? With what you have now, what are the pillars that

[00:24:49] you have and how have they changed? Well, I think it's like, it's, it's training hard is this idea like hard is relative to the individual, but everybody knows what training hard is. You there train hard or you don't like if you're, if you're walking on the elliptical,

[00:25:01] if that's hard for you, great. But for most people, most of the time, that's not training hard. So training hard is with intention, training hard is, is community minded, right? So finding a network, particularly of guys who want to get after it with you, those are important

[00:25:15] pillars, right? Like community connection, like we talked about originally and earlier on with CrossFit in particular with dads who feel like they're on an island sometimes just like an entrepreneur does and exposing themselves to new skills. I think that's really important.

[00:25:30] I think that as we get older, we get more set in our ways and you might just do the same thing, just run. And if you just run like it's better than nothing. But you know,

[00:25:38] when I think about it is like how am I showing up best as a dad? It's, it's accumulating of a wide variety of skills so I could be there if I needed to be there and then also teaching that to my

[00:25:49] children, which is a whole another layer of things, right? Like, like self-defense, fitness, those are characteristics like brushing your teeth, it just has to be done in our house. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. And is it, how's it been received so far? I mean, I feel like

[00:26:04] the audience that you're talking to and I'm not a father, so I'm not square in there. But you know, I am 47 now and I am trying to constantly train hard. I'm trying to learn new skills constantly, right? That's just the joy of it, I think. But how are,

[00:26:16] yeah, how's it being received? How are you building like this, I guess this tribe? I mean, do the tribes coming in strong? And it's coming in strong because I think they're picking up on the fact that like I'm authentic with the message. And so our newsletter,

[00:26:28] it's called Never Zero. Essentially, the idea is like an object in motion stays in motion. And as soon as you, as soon as you stop momentum, it's very difficult to start back up again. And so

[00:26:37] that's a weekly newsletter that goes out. And it's been powerful, man, that the responses, I mean, a lot of them is from dads, right? 90% are men, but a lot of them are dads.

[00:26:46] And, you know, even for you, right? You don't have to have kids to feel like you want to at some level provide for your wife or yourself. You want to be a provider whether

[00:26:57] that's food, finance, whatever. And you also want to be able to protect yourself and you're, in your case, your wife, right? Like those are important characteristics. And if you don't have

[00:27:06] the fitness to get up off the toilet, how could you possibly provide? How could you or how could you possibly protect? That's for damn sure. And how can you provide cool experiences to your significant other? If you can't go do anything? So it's resonating deeply because

[00:27:19] it's things that I think about as a dad. And I'm just being authentic about it. And other people are picking up on that as well. Well, I think there is now more than ever. I believe there's a huge market for authenticity.

[00:27:29] I think people are scared to speak out maybe about what they believe. You know, it's kind of it can be a little nasty out there nowadays. And some of the stuff you're saying like could be some people may find it toxic masculinity.

[00:27:45] Thank you. Yeah, that's what I was kind of getting into is like, you know, protection, training hard, doing it for men. I love it. I think there's more of it. I think there's a lot

[00:27:54] of men out there and this isn't what the normal content of this podcast that are suffering quietly because they feel like I can't speak out. I can't be the person that I feel I should be

[00:28:05] for many reasons. So I saw you had a podcast about toxic masculinity. So tell me about it. Like what is your take on that particular? Am I making that up or is that something that

[00:28:12] you're saying? No, I mean, yeah, Matt Boudreau and I did a great podcast on that if you want to go back and listen to is actually episode one of the Jason Cleep podcast. I have like 400

[00:28:20] other episodes that have just evolved from business of fitness to amortelity to where I'm at in my life today. And cool. You know, I think this concept it's like a pendulum and it swung, you know,

[00:28:30] back in the day, it's like, it was okay to be a guy. Just got then all of a sudden like this pendulum like swung. It's like, dude, you can't you can't talk about doing hard things.

[00:28:38] You can't talk about like wanting to protect yourself. Like you can't talk about it. Otherwise you're toxic. It's like, dude, no, like I find that to be very unfortunate as a society because I think we're it's we're we're supporting being weak. And that's not what I'm talking about.

[00:28:51] If you if you choose not to do things like rock and roll man, do you but if if if you want to show up the best you can and you're not fit enough to say yes when your kid keeps asking you to

[00:29:01] go do something like I have a problem with that like I am not going to be that guy. And I think what I'm looking for and what I want to encourage other dads to think about is like

[00:29:11] imagine back in high school, the biggest bully you ever faced. Imagine the guys who show up and you're just like, dude, what's up with that guy? Oftentimes are the most insecure people in the

[00:29:20] room. And I think that the best way that we could teach self-confidence is to expose our children to hard things and to develop skills for them so they could walk in a room like my son.

[00:29:31] The goal is to be the toughest, most independent, most skilled individual in the room in a variety of different things, but also the most compassionate, the most loving, the most caring individual in the room. That's my goal and that's my goal for myself too.

[00:29:43] My goal for myself is to be so skilled and so talented and be just a jack of all trades, a renaissance man for lack of a better term, that I could have the comfort to know that

[00:29:51] I have those skills and can be loving and caring at the same time. I don't think that they're they're mutually exclusive. And I think that idea is foolish right? Like that's just my take on it man. And that's it. That's all I got.

[00:30:05] Well, I don't think the word toxic and masculinity has to be combined. It can just be masculinity. Right? That's just what it is. I mean, I know like, I don't I'll speak for my wife because I'm

[00:30:15] 99% sure I'm correct. Like she likes it when I go out and I go hunting. She likes it when I put venison in the freezer. She likes when I do things that are competitive, right? Like all that stuff.

[00:30:27] Like it's it's not because you know, she feels, I don't know, like some kind of insecurity. She's a badass in her own right, but she appreciates that stuff. So I feel like people

[00:30:36] don't talk about that much anymore. Dude, I agree. And like when we talk about masculinity too, I think there's this like the stigma around what it means to me. It's like just allowing,

[00:30:44] you know, a guy to to express themselves the way they want to. And if there's a guy out there who chooses to express it in a different way, like go for it. Like but for me, it's training

[00:30:54] hard is getting after it. It's being physically fit. It's representing the dadbot 2.0, which is like a dadbot should be a jacked individual who's capable. Like that's just my opinion. Like our assumption should be that dad should be fit and capable. There might be

[00:31:09] exceptions, but the fact that we assume that the dadbot is one that's a little bit overweight, a little bit out of shape, whatever, that's unfortunate, right? 100 years ago, that wouldn't have been the case. But all of a sudden it's like it's almost like it's just applying it now.

[00:31:23] And I find that the long term issues about are going to be big. You're going to get a, you know, I mean, if you look at it, I mean, you know, I mean, some people would even

[00:31:31] call it a national defense issue is the fact that just many of our youth are obese and incapable. And that's an issue. And we got, we got to be okay talking about that in a very

[00:31:43] constructive manner. Like I'm not trying to shame people. I'm just saying like in a constructive manner, we need our children to be exposed to hard things because life will come and it will kick them in the stomach and they need to learn how to overcome that and move

[00:31:58] forward. Well, and to your point, I've had people on this podcast recently, we've talked about programs at the DoD, the H2F, I think is what it is. But the state of childhood obesity is actually

[00:32:09] now referred to as a national security risk. We just don't have enough capable able-bodied youth to serve the military. And that's very, and now, so now we have the government's attention, right? Like, okay, that we get into national security now, like the public health and

[00:32:27] especially youth, that becomes a big deal. And I think you're right, like that happens also much, you know, when there are complete households or even some land incomplete households, it comes from the father, right? I mean, there's a lot of that comes from that. That's a huge

[00:32:40] place to start. And it's the grassroots of the issue. So yeah, I commend you for touching on it. I think it's a big deal. Yeah, I think the big deal too. And it's like, the thing that is,

[00:32:49] you know, I was doing a men's club rock the other day. And, you know, a woman reached out and said, hey, can I join the next one? And I think, you know, I think that we should have

[00:32:58] family rucks. I think we should bring your kids, that we should do spouses or significant others who were, but I also think there's a time where you just get a bunch of dads together and you

[00:33:04] go ruck. And I think it's because, you know, a lot of times I find that women in particular, they find connection through a variety of different things, at least I've found this

[00:33:11] at the kids school. And, you know, they find like a network of friends, but a lot of times the dads, I find that they're just, they're wrapped up with work. And they're missing

[00:33:21] connection. I think that we need to do a better job of finding ways to do that. And so the train hard brain is going to be really focused on that, whereas NC Fizz and me focus on Jim Hunter's

[00:33:29] coaches and Brick and Mortar members, we're going to be just pursuing excellence there. But also on the other side, we want to be able to help out that audience that I could deeply

[00:33:36] care about. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's great, man. And I see it all the time too. I mean, it's it's it's if you're paying attention, it's pretty clear that men do kind of lack connection.

[00:33:45] There's a lot of isolation. There's a lot of especially over the last three years, people working from home, how what that's done to any sense of maybe community they even found

[00:33:53] at work, grown to their GM. So it's been it's it's a thing undoubtedly. Yeah. Jason, I want to get into just because this is the future of the fitness podcast. But yeah, when you look at the industry,

[00:34:03] you know, over the last, you know, in your 20 or two decades of involvement in it, oh, we've seen so much change, man. You know, last four years have, you know, you felt it obviously a lot of people who are in the brick and mortar space,

[00:34:15] we don't need to rehash all of that. But when you look forward, you know, over the next five years, like what are some of the evolutions that you're kind of foreseeing as an entrepreneur within the

[00:34:24] industry from like a macro level? You know, there's about a buzzwords that come into this. Maybe you can talk about the cross between it because you know that really well too. But yeah, what do you what are you forecasting for for the foreseeable future about major

[00:34:37] shifts in our industry? I mean, it's a good question. I think that what happened is you had the old school mentality of the conventional gym, which is where I started. And that was low complexity, low cost, big brick and mortar, then CrossFit comes in high cost, high complexity,

[00:34:51] smaller brick and mortar, then I think you got the orange series at 45s and others that kind of hit the middle market a little less complex, a little nicer locations, kind of like hit this

[00:35:01] like middle ground, and they did a phenomenal job. I think the future will be, I think I think you're going to see consolidation. I think you're going to see consolidation, particularly in the CrossFit space, you're going to see quite a few gyms that started off as hobbyist

[00:35:15] gyms that are going to be sold or consolidated. And actually it's going to be a better thing than industry because let's just say in your area of five CrossFit gyms, three of them approach

[00:35:23] as a hobby, two of them approach as a business. If the three that are hobby go out of business, it'll only help those members consolidate under the two, those coaches consolidate under

[00:35:32] the two, those ownership maybe even get partners with the other two. And I think it'll level up the overall ecosystem of what people think about CrossFit and it'll help put more money in the coach's pocket. The biggest problem we have right now is that owners aren't getting paid,

[00:35:46] so coaches aren't getting paid. And so then the product from the floor is going to be one where it's just like a volunteer process. And what does that do for long-term longevity of the brand of CrossFit? So I do think consolidation is needed in the CrossFit

[00:35:59] space. I think consolidation might even occur, I think mainly the CrossFit space I'll speak on. So where I think the future of it holds is I think that these higher price point more PT

[00:36:11] along so essentially you get two sessions a month that are private with a coach and then the rest of the time you have access to group coaching I think will be a model that gets

[00:36:20] more pop. I think there's a model where it's like 500 bucks a month, you have an individual coach who holds you accountable for twice a month in addition to get access to classes.

[00:36:29] And I also think a ship you're going to see in the industry is in particular on CrossFit, you'll probably see more gyms start to discuss nutrition which they hadn't in the past.

[00:36:37] And I'm only speaking for us what we do when someone comes in now is we don't have our prices online and we do a console and we start asking questions. And we start off discussing

[00:36:47] that like hey if someone really wants to get results we have a 90-day program that starts off with nutrition and it's nutrition and fitness combined and it prices you out at like

[00:36:56] let's just say 500 bucks a month. But then as you're going through the binder and you're talking to someone like hey look we have this accountability program with this fitness program, with this accountability program with this fitness program or if you don't want the accountability program

[00:37:09] we just have fitness. But what it does is it prices you at like 500, 400 and then our membership is 226 or 250 or whatnot a month. So I think there's a world where it'll actually be better for the CrossFit industry if A it consolidates and B we start thinking about it

[00:37:25] more holistically where we identify a way to incorporate nutrition because it will not only get our average client value up, it'll also help people get better results which I think will tell more friends but I think will be better for the overall uses.

[00:37:36] Who do you think? I love that by the way it's a nice almost like getting into the world of like small group training but it's not it's got like group you know what I mean it's kind

[00:37:45] of like that hybrid-ish model where it's not just the typical PT versus you know group you have something in the middle. Who do you think would drive that consolidation and do you and

[00:37:53] do you think it's like big brands? Do you think it's like a you know a lifetime? Do you think it's like you know the local chain you know local CrossFit gym that's doing really well and

[00:38:02] has great systems? Like where do you think that consolidation is going to go? I think CrossFit HQ is going to have to step in at some point and support the consolidation.

[00:38:10] Basically I think what they're going to have to do is make it harder to be an affiliate and create more guard runs. That's what I think is going to happen. If I was them that's what I would do.

[00:38:19] If I was CrossFit HQ tomorrow I would increase affiliation fees like $5,000 and I would take or $10,000 and I would take those $10,000 and I say hey 70% of it is allocated directly towards coaching education for you so it's really not it's more of a credit. So it's

[00:38:34] $10,000 here's your annual license fee and what it'll do is it'll weed out the people that are treating it like a hobby or who don't see value in the brand at CrossFit and then the $7,000 let's just say goes directly towards leveling up coaches. So now all of a sudden

[00:38:47] it's a wham bam right? You're getting more coaches into the system that are getting improved level one, level two, level three whatever and you're also consolidating the amount of people that

[00:38:57] are using the brand just to hog them. Yeah yeah it's it's a true I mean one of the things that you talked about in the very beginning in this podcast was like having the quality control as you scale and I think that's something that has been drastically missing

[00:39:08] in the CrossFit space is the consumer doesn't know the difference between an affiliate and a franchise right? They don't know. 100% So they walk from one to the other and they're like

[00:39:15] that one over there was great right? I had a great experience and then I went to this other one in XYZ city and it was like this is awful just a terrible experience. Yeah and that's you

[00:39:24] know CrossMind, you take a step back to take 10 steps forward for the long run. Yeah yeah interesting you know what I like to talk about technology a lot too Jason on this show sure you know maybe with your training maybe technology across the health and fitness space

[00:39:39] things that maybe have caught your eye is there any piece of technology that you find to be kind of exciting and interesting in our space? I mean obviously you know like if you don't bring up

[00:39:47] AI I don't know like you live underneath a rock right like AI you know I think used effectively is a great tool obviously I'm scared about it from so many levels right but I think AI plays its role especially like in newsletters helping to create emails

[00:40:04] on transcribing podcasts all that kind of stuff there is value in AI for those things I am not at a point yet where I feel super comfortable utilizing it the way that I think

[00:40:14] it could be but it's something that's on my radar. I also think that utilizing technology better to create in-person meetups is something that we want to focus on like so we have our

[00:40:25] brick and mortar and the connections are huge. I want to grow an online audience and I want to then bring them together and I think that street parking has done a great job of that with Miranda where she's an online community but does meetups because that's truly where

[00:40:39] relationships are fostered this whole idea you could just be on zoom the whole time it's fine it's fine to connect with people digitally but when you get in person that's where it really counts. Yeah yeah it's uh that's been a theme I've talked about in the past

[00:40:51] too is like well how do we drive how do we use technology to actually drive more human connection like authentic human connection like how do we do that and that sounds like a

[00:40:59] pretty good way and AI is gosh it comes off it comes up in every podcast that I think I do now with it on panels and moderate panels moderate panels about it but people haven't seen it yet

[00:41:09] I don't have you seen this Jason but it's the AI dilemma it's the same people who did the social dilemma. Oh no I haven't seen that but I've listened to quite a few podcasts on AI and it's

[00:41:18] frightening. It is and I think what people you know I'm like if you don't reserve a certain amount of hesitancy and fear for what AI could be I mean one of the quotes in there

[00:41:27] I'm going to try to freestyle this but 50% of AI researchers believe there's a 10% or greater chance that our inability to control AI will cause human extinction so like let me rephrase that again

[00:41:40] so 50% of all AI experts think there's a 10% more or more chance that we that AI will be the end of us and when people say you know they're super positive about they're super excited like it's nothing but good's gonna happen it's like if you're not have one eye

[00:41:55] on the potential downside of this then you're you're just not paying attention. Yeah and the downside is big right so it's like when someone was creating you know when they were creating the

[00:42:04] internet basically right here in my backyard on you know I'm sure that many people spoke up about potential downside right from the black market to the black web or dark web or whatnot I'm sure and there's definitely some downsides to the internet of course I mean there's downsides

[00:42:18] to social media I mean think about if people really knew the detrimental effects that it would have on the youth would people still have pushed social media and I think the answer is yes

[00:42:26] I think they would have but I think if we had talked about it earlier on maybe it would have helped with some issues maybe I think with AI the part that's scary is like do people are trying

[00:42:34] to come to the table and explain the downsides but the downsides are not like moderate they're like they're giant you know so that's that's the part that gets pretty interesting in in and and it's worth noting if you're especially if you're an entrepreneur if you're in a space

[00:42:49] just at least educating yourself enough on it because five years from now I think things are going to be completely different especially if you're a coder like if you're a software engineer

[00:42:57] and you don't you're not you know you're not paying attention AI I think that's a big big issue or a writer yeah yeah anything I mean it's going to be crazy I mean five years from now

[00:43:05] people may just have like you know AI versions of Eric interviewing Jason and it could sound really similar scarily right I mean that's that's one of the biggest things I'm gonna

[00:43:14] have to get too much this is like the why if like kicks me in the knee during dinner parties right like stop talking about Eric freaking everybody out but you know it's true like you know we may not

[00:43:23] know the difference in five years between what's who's you know if it's Joe Biden talking right or Joe Biden's AI and that's that's a frightening thing and I think I don't think that's really crossed people's minds anyway I don't want to get too much into that as we

[00:43:36] kind of wrap this thing up Jason one of the last questions I always like to ask people in the spirit of collaboration is as an industry what do you need help with what can we help

[00:43:43] you with I just I need people to sign up for a newsletter I need dads in particular I need I need men to sign up for a newsletter if you're a woman listening you should definitely

[00:43:53] sign up as well it's just that the content is going to be geared towards me towards what I'm thinking about towards what I'm sharing so if you're bought in on that let's go but that join

[00:44:04] the newsletter and if you join the never newsletter it's a weekly newsletter it'll keep you up to date with what's going on I think that podcasts are phenomenal obviously I have my own podcast I think Instagram is great but I think the newsletter and podcasts in particular

[00:44:18] long form I think just allows you to get to engage better get to know somebody better I think Instagram is more like you know I look at Instagram is like the top of the funnel it's

[00:44:26] like a click not clickbait I am who I am on there right but you can't get as deep on there as you can in a podcast or on a newsletter so yeah I mean how could you help I mean I think

[00:44:37] listening to my podcast if you that resonates with you it's completely different than what we're talking about today on you know obviously like the future of fitness is a different conversation what I'm having talking to I'm talking to Rich Froning about being a dad I'm not talking about

[00:44:50] his gyms and that's just what's important to me right now and and the newsletter yeah awesome and what is the name of the podcast Jason Cleve podcast that's it so easy it's gone through

[00:44:59] and that and you know to kind of bring it back to entrepreneurship it's like please the podcast started off with business of fitness and all I talked about was a business fitness

[00:45:06] so if you go on the Jason Cleve podcast you go to episode one or five or ten 99% of it is going to be business and coaching period because that's all I want to talk about that's all I cared about

[00:45:15] and then as it flowed right we I think we started adding some Amara mentality episodes which is like a mindset that I incorporated then as it flowed it's like dude do you know what man

[00:45:24] I want to talk about other stuff than business so we switched over to Jason Cleve and that's where it's been or actually was effort over everything for a while and even with that it

[00:45:33] it was too much the Jason Cleve podcast allows me to talk about things that I care about whether it's business family fitness and that's what I do yeah that's awesome and it gets you know you've

[00:45:42] earned the right to have it when you have a strong personal brand right and I think when you get to that point when you can just really start to leverage that brand a little bit more

[00:45:51] to talk about whatever you want tech or whatever you you find important things that maybe resonate with a larger audience I think that's a really cool evolution in someone like yours career

[00:46:01] so I think it's great I mean I look forward to listening to it and I would love to hear Rich Froning talk about you know his family life and his training and all those things I think it's

[00:46:09] a really nice topic so it releases tomorrow so on the Jason Cleve podcast I don't know when this is going up it'll probably already be up by then but tomorrow it goes out I think it's a

[00:46:17] great episode I release on Mondays everything called a couple clip a short format what's on my mind and the newsletter is it right on well Jason we're uh and I guess if you one or two

[00:46:27] places that you like to drive traffic to where would you like people to go to I mean if you're on Instagram go to Jason Cleve that'd be great okay and if maybe if you want to put in

[00:46:35] the show now the newsletter but all those links are through instagram so if you go on instagram you go to link tree there's a ton of different links on there and if you're a gym owner if

[00:46:42] you're a coach right check out the NC Fit Collect it obviously we haven't talked about that that much but I believe we're putting out the world's best session plans and programming for gym

[00:46:49] owners and it's the exact same ones we use in our gym so check those out too awesome man well Jason I appreciate first of all you spend the time with me on a busy Wednesday morning I'm sure

[00:46:58] but what you've done for the industry what you don't for CrossFit you know like I said I've been in the industry uh the CrossFit stays for a long time and I've just got to see your kind of

[00:47:06] evolution go from athlete the entrepreneur to whatever it is now sky's the limit right so appreciate everything you've done and uh yeah I really like the fact that we got to spend some time together this morning so ladies and gentlemen Jason Khalifa thank you hey wait don't

[00:47:19] leave yet this is your host Eric Malzone and I hope you enjoyed this episode of future of Menace if you did I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things it takes under five minutes and it

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[00:47:53] want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible lastly if you'd like to learn more get in touch with me simply go to the future of fitness.co you can subscribe to

[00:48:04] our newsletter there or you can simply get in touch with me as I'd love to hear from our listeners so thank you so much this is Eric Malzone and this is the future of fitness have a great day