What is going on, guys? Welcome back to Eat Train Prosper. Today is Brian and myself. This is episode 220, and this is the part two follow-up to episode 219. And we are talking again, chasing big goals. So last episode we were digging into CrossFit Pacific Beach that Brian and Anders had built, and I wanted to extrapolate more on because I Just felt with the time we had last week, it w it wasn't really justice from my standpoint to dive in enough and and speak about what that place had really become for so many of us and our lives and how Brian and Anders were kind of on the on the leading wave of of a lot of things that would uh be to come, which we'll dive into today. But before we get in, Brian, any updates? Yeah, we have a lot to discuss even after the gym too. Like your whole entrepreneurial journey essentially didn't even start until the gym was in its waning days. So um a lot of good stuff in this episode. And then I'll also just note that I've had a feedback from a number of different people that they really enjoyed the episode and uh want more of the the prosper side of kind of what we do. So I think that's a cool, a cool thing for the future. Um But yeah, as far as updates for me, just a reminder that we have the new Paragon cycles, the hypertrophy cycles starting on June 22nd. And we have the core challenge going on where there's going to be additional core work added to the program three days a week. and I talked a little bit more about that in last week's episode. So if you missed Chasing Big Goals part one, you can go back and check that out and learn all about the core challenge and stuff like that. Um and then Not like anyone really cares, but I was talked on the prior episode about my big party weekend. It happened, it went really well. All the friends came into town. We merged friends groups from three different spectrums of my life. And it was just really cool. It honestly could not have gone any better. So I was really happy about that. Uh and then this coming weekend, actually today after the podcast, we are heading to Steamboat Springs to celebrate my wife's birthday. and spend some time together as a family since we ditched the kids last weekend. So that is my life at the moment and I know Aaron has some big news, so uh let's talk to the people. Before uh before that I will actually say I went to Steamboat Springs in twenty fourteen, I believe, for our uh my friend Rob Hammer's wedding. And it was that Steamboat Springs trip when I was like, Yeah, I'm done with San Diego. I'm gonna move to the mountains. And that was and what's crazy is that uh to the listener, right, that was in twenty fourteen. And here we are in twenty twenty six, right? Twelve years later, I have finally made it. But I've wanted to do that since that trip. And And I don't know how you guys are going, but one of the things our friend Hammer told us is don't take the 70. Right. Yeah. Springs and I listened. I rented a car. I drove like three and a half, four hours from the Denver airport and it was incredible. I was by myself just driving and it was my first experience in those, you know, those big like Colorado mountains and driving through the small towns and stuff. And I was I was in love. I said, This is it. This is the life that I want. So I'm very excited to finally hold true on my word. Although it took me twelve years. Um but it's so cool. Yeah. Well, we'll be taking seventy two like for an hour and then ditching off onto side roads for the last two hours. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um, okay, so big update from me. Um, a little baby straker is coming in December of this year, right? Little baby boy. So my wife and Jenny and I my wife Jenny and I are very, very excited and I'm certainly ready for the next chapter uh of my life. and couldn't be more thrilled and and just pleased uh and very just grateful. for for the opportunities you know that I've continued to be provided. So that's the big news. And then a little follow up to last week as a reminder if you are looking for lab work, guys, goodlabs.com is the new best player in the space, the cheapest private third party labs in the United States. And if you use my last name, you get another 20% off already the cheapest labs. I've used them myself. I have a number of clients using them. They have just built a great new feature where I can create panels to send to my clients as opposed to making sure. That they put everything in the cart correctly, and then clients can directly share their labs with me in the interface. It's as someone who used to be as a software engineer, it's built so well. It's very, very well done. I'm so excited about it. so if you want to order some labs, buy of course go in there and have a have a look at good labs. And that's it for me. Sweet. Yeah, I am uh super excited for you to be a dad and experience all the things that I've complained about over the last six years or eight years or whatever. So you have that to look forward to. I I'm certainly looking forward to it as well. Cool. So where we pi where we left off was the the gym is open. Anders and Brian ha have made it through that first kind of year. Uh the the the sketchiest periods where they're working two jobs, working, you know, nonstop sort of thing, and and the idea has has taken hold a bit and people like myself are are learning about it. There is a reputation building around CrossFit Pacific Beach as a little bit of a differentiator because in in these years of CrossFit, it's before the sport. had really taken off of people snatching four hundred pounds and being these before the the four before the real super freak athletes showed up, it was basically just a lot of Ex-military dudes in garages and stuff, you know, it was very ragtag sort of thing. But CrossFit PB, at least in the San Diego, greater San Diego area, was the place where you they trained really hard and they were actually pretty jacked. Because one of the many criticisms of CrossFit back in the day was the CrossFit guys had no muscle, but Brian, you know, and Pitts were the two that I remember. And even Loden. Loden had a pretty good, damn good physique at that time, too. 200 pounds plus or or or close to it, right? Everyone's natural, just to be clear across the board there. And we're pretty jacked, very jacked for CrossFit. So I want to dive into what were the things or how did you guys decide to kind of differentiate with the with the training methodology? Uh, and then what ultimately ended up attracting a very, very solid core group of of dudes and many more too, as well, that wanted to train there because of the environment. Yeah, I think you have to almost go a little bit further back to to determine kind of how and why we ended up taking the structure and programming approach that we did. And so before Anders moved out to San Diego, this was like 2009, he started sending me workouts to do in the 24-hour fitness that I was working out at. And so he sent me Grace, which is 135-pound clean and jerk for 30 reps. He sent me uh Fran, which was the 2115 nine of thrusters and pull-ups. And I feel like there was one other workout too, I can't remember, but those two specifically stand out in my brain. So I remember doing these in 24 hour fitness and being like, this is pretty dope that I can get out of breath and do my cardio. Um, but it's not weight training. Like it's not, it's not what I it's not gonna get me strong and jacked. And I had this sense that despite the fact that I was dying on the floor afterwards, that it wasn't gonna get me big and jacked. So then Anders moves out to San Diego and he convinces me to start going to this CrossFit gym with him downtown, East Village, because they had open gym at the time. They were the only CrossFit gym that really offered open gym. And so I initially was a bit apprehensive. And after thinking it through, I was like, okay, you know what I'll do is I'll just go and do my bodybuilding training at East Village. I'll just use free weights and do my bodybuilding stuff. And then I'll use the MatCon as my cardio so that I don't have to go run. Cause at the time I was running, I think 20 or 30 minutes after four of my weekly workouts or something like that. And and so that was my plan. I was gonna do bodybuilding and then I was gonna do my my Metcon as my cardio. And that's exactly what I did. I literally had a section A, B, and C that was like big compound or isolation bodybuilding movements. And then we would do a Metcon and I'd get out of breath and then I wouldn't have to go run. So was great. It was big win on all aspects. Um, so when we started the gym a few months later, that was the only way that I knew. Like I I wasn't gonna conform to to doing CrossFit just because it was CrossFit. Like we were going to be big and strong, and then we were gonna do some CrossFit. and so there Anders was on board, like there was no argument. It like, yeah, of course we're gonna be big and strong. Like that's the basis of everything. and so that was the approach that we took into it, and I think. It was just so cool that that reputation resonated with people and that people didn't want to just go do cardio and Metcon and lie on the ground and then go home, but people wanted to come lift heavyweights, be part of that environment and then do the Metcon and go home. And so it kind of created like a bit of a culture around it. And that's exactly what it did. And I like I said in the last episode, I remember being intimidated because of all the because I was years removed from my my power lifting in in high school. And when you're in that style of training, it's great. When you're not and getting back into it, it's it's intimidating and and daunting, especially with a lot of the new movement patterns and stuff. So that was what initially drew me to it. And then I just loved the everything was so structured, right? And by that point I had done CrossFit for probably about a year and a half. And this was the early days where structure really wasn't a thing. I I remember multiple times going to a class and they had the hopper with the ball in the balls and the workouts. And it would just be like a random workout would pop out. And that's that's what you would do. And that's about as unstructured as it possibly could be. So it it was really cool and obviously you know, the physiques that that we were able to build while doing crossfit. Like we were pretty fucking jacked um back in those days. And it was definitely a noticeable thing. And I felt very proud to be part of that that gym and community because of the reputation. And when people found out like, you train at PB. And then people would ask like specific questions about the things that they heard about that went it went in there. So it was it was very, very Cool. Yeah, it was a great way to uh to live your twenties, man. It was a just a cool a cool town with a cool gym and a cool atmosphere. And like it just purely came out of like this I talked about on the last episode, like passion into obsession. And uh and that's where we ended up. So it's really cool that it resonated with so many people. Now, since the the episode is is all around goals, were there certain I mean, as a business owner, y you guys had to have kind of KPIs or things that you wanted to wanted to shoot for. Were there any that kind of stand out in in your mind of this was like a big goal that we accomplished that we had set and worked towards for for the business? I would say the very first one and the one that stands out the most is us getting to a point where we felt comfortable to quit our day jobs. Because we were, I mean, what we were going through, I can't even imagine in retrospect that I actually did that. Like I'm not even exaggerating when I say that I was up at 530 every morning to teach a six AM class, and then I taught class six and seven AM. Anders showed up to teach the eight a.m. and I had to go to my real job. So I was working the gym two and a half hours. Real job for eight hours, back to the gym to teach three more classes, and then clean the gym, close up, get home at ten PM, make dinner, shower, watch an hour of Sports Center, and fall asleep at midnight so that I can be up at 5 30 A.M. the next day. And we did this for eight months. So the number one goal was quit the day job so we can live a normal life and have some balance. And we knew that what we wanted to be able to do that was only$35,000 a year each. Like that is literally what we coveted at uh 26 years old or whatever it was. Was I I I want to make half of what I was making at my corporate job because once we hit that point, we knew that the momentum was good and that we were we were gonna be okay. That was that was the the promise or the the thought that we had. It took us eight months to get there. So we opened the gym in spring, late spring of uh Of 2010. And then in January of 2011, we quit our day jobs making $35,000 a year each. And uh it went so fast after that, it's almost unbelievable. Like we were within, I mean, there's so many rabbit holes we can go down here, but we had the fights with the neighbors, which was the urgent care, because they didn't like us dropping barbells when there's like six people. We shared a wall with an urgent care, which is in retrospect terrible idea. Don't start a CrossFit gym next to an urgent care. They were threatening to kick us out, and so we opened a second location as like a safety net. But then we f we fucking maximized both spaces. We literally exceeded capacity within two years of both the places. Um and so I mean the whole thing just it happened so quickly. It's uh kind of crazy to think about in retrospect. Yeah. And then I I know kind of as I mean the the I was there for those for those e expansions and stuff and it it was always really really cool um watching things grow and and then obviously when there was the the two locations and then you went back to one but one giant location which was really cool and then that had it it's the the whole string of you know that that would that's what I would consider like my peak and the the peak enjoyment was at that mega location where we went to you know regionals and all that stuff and that's when Cena sh showed up and started coming the gym, right? All these really crazy things. And then kind of for you as you know, you've spent like you know close to like two decades now, right? In the in the industry. Like when did things kind of start shifting for you where you were Falling out of love, maybe, per se, or or just starting to yearn for an evolution of sorts and and wanting to do things a little bit differently, or or in addition, right?'Cause I know we're kind of glossing over you coaching games athletes and doing being like a pioneer of of online coaching. Uh when did those feelings and stuff start to, you know, meander a little bit? Yeah, I think it was a coalescence of a number of things. in 2011 through 2014, I was like competing in CrossFit and coaching all these athletes. And in competing in CrossFit, you know, it entails training six days a week for two or three sessions a day. I mean, I was just burning out. My body was breaking down. I remember at one point. uh just getting in and out of the car, I would have to like hold my hands on my thighs to like support me because my knees were in so much pain and I would have to warm up for 20 or 30 minutes just to do my daily workout. Um so that was always, you know, kind of festering and and pushing me. And then I did that uh bodybuilding competition in 2015 and that kind of reminded me that While there is tons of problems with bodybuilding, and I did the the diet at the end very poorly, I hired the wrong coach, like a whole number of things went wrong. But in the process, it reminded me that, man, I can actually be really jacked and fit. Training like 45 minutes five or six days a week and doing a bro split. Like, what the fuck am I doing? You know? Um, so there was that. And then on top of all of that, Anders and I were starting to have some animosity and different views on the way that we wanted the gym to go. Add on to that that this huge massive palatial location that we had consolidated both of our gyms into was starting to bleed members and there was more competition opening up around us and we had this balloon rent payment that we had that we were suddenly, you know, in jeopardy of actually being able to make the same amount of money we were making just a year prior. So it was a coalescence of all of these different things. And I think over the course of a year or two, it just kinda got to a point where Anders and I realized we needed to go in a new direction and uh we can talk all about kind of going online and stuff like that along the way. But uh that's kind of I think how it all fell apart. Yeah, and and that's kind of how I remember it from from my standpoint. But let's talk more going online, right? I I know you had uh a a an unsuccessful business, which I think is is is important to actually cover in this, but let's talk about the transition. to online and what really drove that? What were some of the things that you kind of what were the the big moving pieces that got you from, hey, this is something that I want to do. There's two to three clients to where this can become a viable, you know, business for me and my family. Well yeah, so I started doing online one on one coaching in two thousand eleven. And uh within a year I had a max roster of at the time I thought was about thirty people that I could handle because I was also coaching classes and did gym stuff. So I was coaching thirty CrossFit athletes um online and Even though that number kind of oscillated and it waned a little bit toward the end of the my CrossFit tenure, um it was still like a pretty robust roster. And I still had a lot of inquiries coming in. And so skipping over the failed business that Kim and I had, which I can back check to in a second, I saw an opportunity To provide programming to all of these people that were inquiring about my services at a much, much cheaper rate. Because a lot of the people that were inquiring were being turned off when I would rent mention. At the time it was $250 a month. Like, no, that's that's too much, you know. it's crazy that now in 2026, that doesn't even feel like a huge monthly, monthly take. But but at the time it was. And so I started Evolve training systems with. The philosophy of meh meshing bodybuilding world and CrossFit, but not really in the way that I did it in the beginning when we first started in 2010, where it was bodybuilding and then Metcon. It was more of like a hybrid approach where there's like a bodybuilding section, an Olympic lifting or like skill work gymnastics section, and then a Metcon. Um And this was all done in like an online program delivery format where the workouts could be done in like 45 to 60 minutes, trying to reach general population, not really competitors. Uh, and just create a well-rounded program that could get you jacked and keep you fit in a reasonable amount of time. And I saw a hole in the market there. There was wasn't anything there except I think the only other competition I had at that point was street parking had just come out. Which was a really fast. It was like a 20-minute maybe like purely CrossFit, not even bodybuilding style focus. And then there was functional bodybuilding, which came out around the same time as me. And I think functional bodybuilding was kind of a direct competitor to what I was trying to do. Uh and they had a really cool name as well. Um, but uh, but it worked, man. It worked within uh within six months or eight months of starting Evolved. I had over 200 members. At like $30 a month. And so that at that point became a much better return on my time and investment than spending more time at the gym. I had already sold uh a bunch of my stock in the gym and I was still a partial owner and I was running classes here and there. But uh as the online business began to take off, one of my clients was Lori, who ended up being my business partner at Paragon. And she proposed that we take kind of what I was doing with Evolved with this online programming and put it into a a uh program in which she would do the nutrition coaching and the marketing and I would handle training and education. And then we would bring on a third business partner, this guy, Steve, who would do uh kind of finance and behind the the scenes stuff. And it was just it just worked. Um, it worked really well. And then when COVID hit, it worked even better. Because uh I foresaw this thing, luckily, like a week before everything shut down. And I had these dumbbell only and at home programs like ready to go by the day the world shut down. And so we got four hundred members in under a month in the first month of COVID. And it just propelled everything forward. It's kinda it's kind of weird looking back on all of this and thinking about like right time, right place for CrossFit. Right time, right place for online coaching, right time, right place for online programming uh at large for general population. So uh very lucky on my end, but that is kind of the way things played out. And I guess luck is what is it, the the bringing together of opportunity and preparation. So there you go. I guess it worked out. I like how you said that because I I think f from my standpoint, there there there was opportunities that you were able to identify, right? And and that is it's easy to say luck, but If we when we walk back through it and you're like, well, I was doing bodybuilding and I uh in strength training, let's call it strength training, like which which was really what it was. And then I wanted to just do this instead of my cardio. So you basically just put those together, which was came from your background in history, and you guys made that the approach at how you would do CrossFit, which was different at the time, but that comes from your background of how you thought things should be. And then obviously that resonated with a lot of people, and then obviously one One thing that we glossed over was you were really ahead or early in my understanding of it of going out and seeking continued education in the functional fitness space. And you would bring in, I remember, a ape Apex? Ape, what was it called? OPEX into the gym. And like that was pretty early in education stuff. So you you kinda, from my standpoint, you weren't just ever Complacent and comfortable. You're always like, okay, things are good, but what can I continue to learn or how can we try these things? And you've always just kind of kept an edge towards that. And then seeing, hey, we have this online program. People aren't maybe not gonna be able to go to a gym, let me build this new program, dumbbells only in a week, so it can become accessible. And it's really just seeing opportunities based off of how things are tr trending. And maybe it was even a little bit of fear-based, which is not necessarily a bad thing, and just making decisions early enough. And it sounds like you've kind of just done that, you know, numerous times over. And once it works two or three times, and you're like, hey, I've kind of spotted these things before, I've gone in on it, it's worked. It almost becomes you have momentum in it. Why would I not do it again? It's worked out for me the last three or four times in a row. which which I think is is really, really cool. So f from there's go ahead. Yeah, I just I think it might be important just quickly to go backtrack and reflect on the failed business because uh it could have been easy to have a failed business in the online space and then be like, this isn't this doesn't work or whatever. But essentially what happened was Kim and I started this business in 2015 called Active Traveler Network. And our idea was that like There's people all the time traveling for work and for pleasure and whatever. And maybe people want to keep up with their fitness while they're traveling. So we created like four different programs for like various equipment. Like one of them, if you want to bring rings with you, one of them if you just have dumbbells in a hotel gym. One of them if it's just body weight and you have nothing. Um, and then there was another one too. But anyway, we uh we created these different programs. You could sign up. It was five dollars a month. And our thought was like, for five dollars a month, like. Everyone would just sign up. Like you can just have this in your back pocket and you'll just have it with you anytime you travel, you know? And and that just that just didn't work out. We underpriced the market so hard and there just wasn't enough reach. and it wasn't very well professionally put together either. But I learned so much from that experience and going through, you know, filming the videos and the cues and putting all the content out there, making it accessible for people. Like I built a website from scratch. Like I never even knew I could build a website, but I followed a YouTube video and I built WordPress website for our business. Um, and all of that experience and failing at that set the stage actually for me to succeed. going with evolved. And so I think it's important when you do fail. I think this is common knowledge for a lot of people, but it's important when you do fail to not look at it as a failure or a deterrent from necessarily approaching something similar in the future, but more, you know, assessing what you can take from it and then learn from and apply to any future business that might be similar. Yeah, I I think it and one of the the most important pieces in that is there's there's failure that defeats you and then there's the failure of there's you have like a conviction in something that you are going to do and and you understand that there's going to be ups and downs along the way and when you fail With that conviction, you realize like this just wasn't the right path. So now that I've eliminated, I've eliminated one potential, and now I have less you know paths that I can go forward to with this thing. And not to shift you know too much, but when when my wife and I were starting our businesses and you know leaving our our careers and stuff, when we started telling our friends, we spoke about it very differently. And I referred to it as we are, we're gonna roll the dice and see what happens. Right. And I had said that to like three or four friends and before when we were speaking about it. And then one time privately, Jenny, you know, kind of pulled me aside and said, I'm not rolling any fucking dice. Like I'm making this happen. So if you're serious about making it happen, I suggest you should start speaking about it as such. And and that was very powerful. And I'm vividly remember that conversation because it was it was hard. It was like my girlfriend at the time like pressing me, you know. But but she was completely right because the way that I was presenting it was soft, so that if it fails, it's okay. Because the the the dice didn't land the direction that you know that I needed them to for me. Where Jenny was framing as, I'm not rolling dice, I'm doing this. There's gonna be ups, there's gonna be downs, but if I have conviction in it and figure it out, it will work. It might just take longer than I had wanted it to. And when I was able to realize my faults, because I was trying I was protecting myself because of going out into the unknown. And for anyone that knew me in those years like you did, Brian, marketing myself and starting a business and stuff like that, that is just not, you know, the person that I was. And it's still not the person that I am. I've just. Figured out a way to do it anyway, even though it still makes me terribly uncomfortable. and and I think for having big goals, you need that because you're going to have doubts and there's going to be those hard times, but but having that fire for reaching the end is absolutely compulsory. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love Jenny's approach. She basically was taking failure off the table as an option. And uh there's definitely, like you said, the conviction is significantly higher at that point. so yeah, I don't have a ton more on my situation unless you have anything else. I'm totally down to jump over to the beginning of S C. Yeah, we can. And I think the only is there any kind of d I I know you s you spoke about the the COVID was a a really defining moment for um both Paragon and Evolved of of things really picking up. And I think that was one of those those opportunities. And with SNC, you know, I'll start a little bit there. Right before COVID, things were looking pretty grim with my coaching. One of the things that we talked about, you know, before we started recording is we worked both for a while to save money, to build yourself some runway. And I had about not quite two years of doing both, of you know, allowing clients to to build and you know s uh sharpening my my skills a bit before I left my uh software job. And I'd and I'd built up a nice chunk. you know, o of cash. and I didn't touch like my four one K or anything. I I left all that. I didn't cash out out or anything. But kind of right before COVID, that runway was getting pretty small. I think I was down to about my last like twenty-six, twenty seven hundred dollars or something like that. And what was really opportune were those COVID stimulus checks because that was like sick. I have like an extra twenty five percent in my bank account. Out. and I remember being like that that the walls are closing in feeling, you know, like it's not working. I'm banging my head against the wall. And that was in like late February. I remember having a little bit of not a meltdown, but like a mini panic attack sort of thing. Um, but then that was like I said, about early March, late February. But by May, things were just growing like steadily, and then maybe by July. there I was making like three times the money I was making before, which I should add was still not a lot, but I was like comfortable paying bills a and everything uh at that point. What do you think it was about the COVID that kind of was able to elicit that change for your business? I think the the site of because people were heavily restricted on the what would you call it? The niceties and things that you could go do, right? So like you you c it's co- COVID hits, you can't go out to eat anymore. You can't go to all these social gatherings and things. So a lot of the the not the restrictions, but the problems that people have with coaching and in accomplishing their goals is I go out to social things and I I fall off my diet or where we go out partying with friends. But like when you remove all of that, a lot of the not kind of excuses, but let's use that term, excuses that people have are effectively government government mandated that you can't do them. So it was much easier for people to follow a plan because they had to or didn't have other options effectively, results happen more, and they real a lot of people really double down on During COVID, it was either I'm gonna start drinking a lot or I'm gonna get like my health and fitness in order. and that just provided a lot of opportunity for me. A lot of people signed up for coaching, and then because their options were limited uh for you know meals out social gathering stuff we saw a lot more progress faster and then people would ask what they were doing and like my business has always largely been referral word of mouth and it was just an opportunity and fortunately for me like I was already fully online I did know in-person stuff like my business was already set up completely online so while a lot of coaches were trying to like scramble to set up online like I was already done and had been So again, it was a little bit of opportunistic timing and then leveraging government-mandated shutdowns of restaurants and social things where we just removed distractions and it was able to produce better results. Did you notice that and see that at the time, or was it just kind of like, wow, look at this influx of people coming in? This is crazy. I didn't at the time because it was a lot of like, holy shit, this is working, you know, this is great. And and I remember I I felt bad saying it because I know that COVID was a really terrible time for a lot of people. But aside from the shitty part of like not being able to go to the gym and doing all these awful home workouts, like I kind of thrived. I was up super early because there was nothing else to do. Like we at the time we were still in Colombia in South America. We had this like, I don't know, man. Maybe 700, 600 square foot apartment. It was really small. So I was up early. I would, you know, we we I'd eat, I'd start work. I'd work for like 10 hours, but when you start work at 6 p.m. or 6 a.m., 10-hour day, like you're done at four. I would train for like 30 minutes, you know, in in the middle of it. And then cook dinner and I'd be and it'd be like 8 p.m. And then I would read, read a book for like an hour and a half at night and be in bed at 9 30. I was sleeping eight and a half hours per night, working 10 hours per day, and reading for an hour and a half. Like it it was they were good days. So it was just again, even myself, you remove all the options of things that you can do, you're really limited and it's able to be pretty productive because you really don't have a choice. Yeah, lockdown life suited you quite well. Oh, it c it it suited me quite well. Yeah. Um, and then to talk about the the the origins a little bit, like you said, speaking about opportunities, I knew that I had always known that software, being a software engineer, was an endgame for me. When when people would use the term, we'd have you know, I'd have like a business development coach in at the at the job I worked at and stuff, and they always talked about like career and when I saw myself moving into management and different things, and I it always just like made my skin crawl. And I'm like, man, I don't have an appropriate way to tell you this because obviously I need my job, but like I'm not gonna do this for like 30 fucking years. There's no way in hell. But I just never had, I just couldn't see the see the outcome sort of thing. So eventually we would meet with our friend Jen Ryan and we would talk about some things. And I kind of thought that I was originally gonna get into programming, uh like training programming. But then I would I had this thought, I was like, no one would come to me for programming when they have Brian and Anders. Like, why would anyone come get programming for me? They know orders of magnitude more than I do. And then I kind of saw this opportunity. Cause at the time nutrition coaching was starting, you know, this is about 2015. I had I had bought some ebooks and learned some things already. Obviously, this is me coming off the back end of my Achilles rupture where I I just had a nice opportunity to to learn because I couldn't do fuck fuck else. And I saw this gap. There was Most of the nutrition coaching on at at that time was all like female driven, women doing it, which was perfectly fine. And then for males it was almost all just bodybuilding prep. So it was as you were either like doing basic weight loss for you know unhealthy people, obese people, or bodybuilding prep from a male standpoint. And I was like, maybe I I may I think I can put myself in the middle, right? We're not where um it's for people who are active, people who who still want to have a physique and that sort of thing, but aren't necessarily wanting to get on stage. I thought there was a pretty decent gap there. Um turns out I I was correct. And at that time there wasn't a lot of males doing nutrition coaching. in that capacity. And now, you know, kind of funny enough, as we float through the different ways of life, I do contest prep and stuff. Now I actually have my first open class bodybuilder on stage this this weekend. So that's kind of come full circle from things that I didn't want to do in the beginning. But that's what was really the the origins of of Straker Nutrition company and how I got into the space. Yeah, that's really interesting. I uh I think that the the story of noticing the the gap And the the the male-led nutrition coaching is actually really insightful and astute observation. So that's cool that you're able to see that. And then also that you had the the interest in it that aligned similarly with training. Because I think it is it is like training is sexier. Like it kind of has that sense of like training is the reason you're in shape when the reality is actually like probably the opposite. I mean, they're at least they're at least like cousins or they're they're both equally important. So uh Yeah, that's cool that you're able to do that. And then what it what was the steps that you took to kind of set yourself up as an expert in that in that field? Yeah, so the I've always been big on like the education side of things and in full transparency a lot of that was because it It was out of fear because if when I was doing education, it felt like I was moving the needle forward without having to address the things that scared me, like selling sales calls, right? Talking to other human beings. So I went really, really heavy on the education side of things for really the first few years. But what That's what what I started with. And then Jenny and I would have meetings with Jen Ryan. She was effectively the first mentor that we had. And Jen had a large portion of CrossFit athletes. And that was really where my confidence had built because I had assumed, because we were really into training and CrossFit, and our nutrition at the time was decent. That I had assumed other people's nutrition that had those similar interests would also be decent. But seeing a lot of these applications that Jen had come in, I had realized that that really was not the case. So it again was just a bit of assessing the market of these are people coming in who are interested in coaching and seeing what level that they were at in terms of their understanding of nutrition in relation to having a desired, you know, sport performance outcome, physique outcome. So those were the initial things, certifications, uh a licensure through the National Association of Sports Nutrition, because in the beginning, those those numbers are sorry, not numbers, those credentials are really important, and you think those credentials are going to bring you clients. But you have to start somewhere, right? So I really, really doubled down on the education and I would literally just roll one course into the next one and doubling down on that. So I was very well informed, but very uh underperforming on the side of the business that actually moves the needle, which is being able to market your services and sell yourself. Yeah. But I mean eventually you figured all that out too and uh Results are hard to argue against. So that yeah. Yeah. Yep. So I think we covered the the building of Undefeated pretty well. And I think from from my aspect of it, I I think we covered it pretty well. Because it was really the the the equipment based and um but again identifying a market gap, right? Because I'll speak about it quickly. All the other gyms were businessmen, right? businessmen who wanted to build gyms. And and of course everyone had some interest. Uh let's call it let's call it an average lifter's interest in gym. Um but there's a difference between an average lifter's interest in, you know, build having a gym business and bodybuilders who want to build a bodybuilding gym who are able able to I again identify market gaps. I would go into some of the other gyms and I would say why the fuck did they get this equipment? This this is a horrible piece of equipment. Why is this here? And that was really frustrating, right? So we went out and just had an idea of doing it differently. And then obviously when you have a brain and an ambition like Jackson's, a lot of the other things just get effectively steamrolled through pure will and creativeness, which has really started picking up this year. for us and it I as much as it kind of pains me, it really has started since we've left, which has been really f frustrating. But it is what it is, right? And it's always just a a very simple two day flight to get back there. Yeah. retain your your piece of the pie, right? Yeah. doing work behind the scenes, right? Like I we have a I get probably too many people don't listen to this, but there's a new pretty big equipment order coming in, uh and that's being like wrapped up production right now and then hopefully we'll start shipping hopefully by before the end of the month, but definitely by July. Uh so that's like all stuff I still do behind the scenes. Yeah. Well, speaking of chasing big goals, I think the last one is uh a massive undertaking to essentially decide that you're gonna get your pro card and um all of the things that go into that. And especially coming from natural Aaron on this podcast a number of years ago. If you guys want to go back and listen to Aaron when he said he's not gonna compete, that it's not about that, that he's probably um you know, just gonna do it for the love of fitness and all that stuff. And then here he is. And not only did he compete, but he won his pro card on his first try. So um huge goal, huge success. Take us through kind of the decision-making tree on how that happened and when you realize that this is actually something that you potentially could achieve. Yeah. So the the plan for the for the longest time was I went through this final big diet as a natural. I want to build my best physique as as I possibly can as a natural. And then I'm gonna put in TRT, right? 150 milligrams per week, which which we know is not essentially now actually TRT, that's going to still be super physiological, but that's very commonly prescribed, you know, in in in m in today in at the clinics. So that was the goal, and I had always kind of had this pie in the sky goal, physique of about 210 pounds at 10% body fat. Right. That was my ultimate goal physique. I'd be over the moon happy within five or six weeks of TRT. I was there. And it was very much like wind let out of my sails. I was like, Really? That is that that's all it took was just six weeks of a very minor testosterone dose, and I'm at my goal physique, and it left me feeling very underwhelmed. And then so that's mid-Feb mid-February, mid-late February now. And I found myself kind of at at odds where I I'm not enjoying training anymore. I remember sitting in the sauna because at the time we were doing a lot of sauna, right? As part of my like diet protocol. And I remember having this really particularly hard day in the sauna where I would stand for like 22 minutes and I'm on minute like 17, 18, and I am struggling and I'm by myself. And I'm having these thoughts like, why the fuck am I even in here doing this anymore? Like, why am I still doing the sauna? I don't have a my the goal that I have doesn't necessitate a sauna. I just c accomplished the the biggest two goals that I had, and I found myself feeling like very empty. And that's when I realized that I need goals where I get very stagnant unhappy with my life, which is very unreasonable, right? But I I like striving towards things. I love the climb. I love the pursuit. My birthday's a couple days later, Jenny and I go take a trip and we're at a Starbucks, the most picturesque Starbucks in Bali, s with overlooking a a literal volcano, overlooking a volcano. And we're just like writing ideas down and Jackson had told mentioned it in the sauna a few weeks before. I think you would do well with like a bodybuilding prep. I'm only gonna say it once. So that's kind of on my mind. And I'm talking with Jenny and and I was scared. I was literally s scared of of the steroids. Cause you hear all these terrible stories and stuff. And I remember being like really actually concerned uh about them. And I was like, and we decide, she's like, I think you should do it, right? Because in 20 years you might regret that you never tried it or whatever. So we decide I'm gonna do a prep. Um We map out some dates and stuff. I talked to Jackson, okay, and we're doing this. And aside from a little hernia that happened a few months later and kind of pushed my goals back, maybe like six months, but I remember my body weight gets up, training's like fun again, I'm enjoying it, I feel motivated, and then prep starts. And one of the things that that I've learned about myself is I do really well with pressure. When I don't have pressure, I get fat and lazy and content. And one of the things There was four, you know, pro there's four there's four of us in Undefeated who are like, you know, in in the in this space, right? And it's me, Jackson, Brandon Kempter, and Jordan Madashi, right? Everyone else is like an actually active bodybuilder, right? Brandon's one of the best natural bodybuilders in the world. And Jackson said he wanted everyone to have their pro cards. And I remember like being like, You just put this fucking six hundred pound rock on my back. I I can't do this. I've never been on stage. I'm not opposed. Everyone else has been competing for years, right? And then there's me. So I felt a lot of pressure for that. And when I sat down to do it, I was fortunate that to be exposed to some really high level um pros and stuff and one of them is is John, John Castle. The the the well, she will be a figure Olympian this year. She just triple qualified for the Olympia won three shows in a row here in the United States. She operates like a literal machine. So I sat down when I was sat to prep and I said, I'm just gonna structure my prep like John. I'm just gonna pretend I'm a professional and I'm gonna do the same thing every single day. I'm gonna turn my brain off and follow instructions and I'm going to communicate With those people around me, namely Jenny. I'm going to take this incredibly seriously because I'm only going to do it once and I don't want to leave anything on the table. So there's no cheat meals, there's no free meals. We're not planning any trips during these few months. I need. Un you know, undistracted time to stack days together so that I can get this done. And I got out of my comfort zone, talked to people in person, hired opposing coach, did all these necessary things, and it seems really kind of wild looking back on it now, but it it well, I made it really simple. And I actually just put out an Instagram post about this. I made it so simple. That it would be unreasonable for me to fuck it up. Right. And I think that's a problem that people think that they're more advanced, so they need complexity. But I know for especially my own brain, you give me options, I fall the fuck apart because I hyper evaluate these options against themselves for which one might have a half percentage better. better, you know, marginal improvement. But the reality is you have to pick, go, and execute. And that's exactly what I did. It's got up at the same time, seven days per week. I did the same journal seven days per week. Right. And I just made it so routinely simple that I couldn't mess it up. I turned my brain off and I did exactly what my coach told me to do. I never pushed back and said, Oh well, do you think we should swap These rice for the I I just shut up and just did what I was told. And it and I think it made it really simple. And um obviously there's I think there's a lot of beauty in that and I think a lot of people get distracted and and they let things they let their their guard down a little bit or they let it down once and then I I refer to that as a crack in the dam. Right. When there's one crack in the dam, there's never one crack in a dam. One produces a second, produces a third. But if you can just make your mind up and say there is never going to be that first crack in the dam, you don't have to worry about six, seven, and eight. Yeah. So initially you did kind of a test show that I believe like kind of set the stage. It wasn't like a pro qualifier. And it kind of made you realize that there was potentially like actually the opportunity for you to get a pro card here. So the the way it works is you need to do a regional. And I mean, it's a it's a money thing, right? So you have to do your regional, and then once your regional requirement is checked, you can then go to a pro qualifier. Here in the States, it's a little bit different. You have a local show, depending on your placing at the local show, you can you will nationally qualify for junior nationals or one of the one of the other national shows, which are where the pro cards are uh awarded, but in the smaller Countries that don't have as big of a total network, they kind of pool them together. And I had to come do a regional in one of seven or eight countries, and then I could go do a pro qualifier pretty much anywhere in the world at one of the larger shows. and yes, it was at that First show when I saw photos and and those sorts of things of me on stage, and I obviously did well in the show. I I took second in the overall where I thought I that this okay, I look pretty decent, things are are going well. There might be I may have a shot at doing this, even though I still thought it was a long shot, but it gave me enough of a confidence to think. I'm doubling down on these efforts because it's going to get hard now. It's going to get unpleasant. But I had a a little glimpse of this is what it can be. What do you think was the hardest component of prepping? Was it the posing practice, the adherence to the nutrition, the strenuous training sessions? posing. I fucking hate posing. Hate it. Absolutely hate it. I do too. So tell me like how did you that that feels like a a huge obstacle to overcome. And uh like for me, I'm likely never going to compete uh again after that that one time that I did it. But posing was certainly the thing that was the biggest deterrent for me, even beginning to even think about doing it. So how did you like how do you turn that hate into some sort of purpose. Like how do you fake your mind out and convince it that this is the thing that you really need to spend all your time on? Aside from simply just like, I suck at this. I have to get better at it. Like how do you make it into something that you want to pursue in such a manner, you know? Here's the thing. I would like to be good at posing, right? Because posing you posing is a difference between having a B physique and an A plus physique. It's really just being able to showcase it, right? And so much, for example, even today, right? If I really was really good at posing and and after training, went and posed and took my shirt off and posted these videos and stuff on Instagram, my business would thrive a lot more. Like it leads would come in a lot more. Like there is no undenia, there is no denying that of the the positives of it. It's just it's hard for many of us. There's obviously naturals and You can learn from a YouTube video if you're gonna practice for 30 minutes in your mirror every single day, but I know I won't do that. It's asking to go get the help. But for me, taking myself back there, I didn't want to embarrass myself. I didn't want to embarrass, you know, my wife, my coach. And again, going back to what I said last episode, I've let myself down dozens of times, dozens of times. I will never let anyone else down. so I went and did this because I didn't want to embarrass those close to me, you know, because of their association with me. So that was really what drove it. Because like I have to get I have to figure this out so that I can do well enough so, you know, I I I have a good representation for the people that are gonna come watch me and and put their time into me. Yeah. You talk a lot about the accountability of kind of telling other people and making that feel real and like more significant for you. So that's cool that you found that as a tool that you can use. Yeah. But no, it it's it's certainly the posing. It and it's so foreign and strange and you would think You know, I remember I I've posted this. If you go dig on my Instagram, it's here. I remember going I remember in my first posing class. Maybe it was like the second or third one, and I finally have enough of the like routine down to put a couple positions together. And remember in the mirror seeing it, and I'm like, you know, as I'm doing it, I'm like, okay, this looks pretty okay. And then the posing coach sent me the video afterwards, and I like almost vomited. And I'm like, this looks horrible. I look absolutely horrible. Yeah. Uh maybe I'll send it to you after just so you can you can laugh. But yeah, it's and and now I'm I'm in the I didn't talk about this, but I'm in the final you know weeks of deciding if I'll compete again this year. Um and I have to go fight an opposing coach again and I'm like, oh no, we have to do it all over again. Yeah. ninety percent of the way there now. Yeah, it I mean a lot of things are are a little bit more second nature once I would start practicing. There's obviously the rear, the back pose is is my biggest weakness and the thing I want to work most on. But yeah, it's definitely not starting from scratch. But that was the that was the structure for for my biggest, you know, physical goal, which is just bite-sized chunks, daily actions, communicating to my circle that would be in in collateral damage of managing expectations, right? With wife, friends, politely declining things and and just informing people. Right. And I think that's that's one of the things that that I would say if you are similar to me, really trepidatious, nervous, you know, don't have that large personality, more introverted, you have to get your circle on your side. Because those Those that are closest to you will provide you confidence that they have in you that you don't yet have in yourself. And I know without those people, I would have never accomplished nearly any of the things that I that I've been able to. Yeah, yeah. I think it also plays to another point of I think what I've noticed about people that have success and something that has been certainly relevant for my success is the importance of network. And I know people out there uh that uh That often sometimes refuse help. They like want to be completely autonomous and figure things out on their own and, you know, have that sole responsibility. And my sense is that those people usually end up with less success than those that rely and use the people around them that actually really want to help them. Um, and so I think that that's a huge lesson is you know, expand that network as wide as you can. And uh it should, you know, if nothing else, inspire you. to to succeed in certain ways that maybe you wouldn't have otherwise. Yeah, I would say certainly in the coaching world. That was one of the things I remember when I hired my first coach, Jason Theobald, I remember having a lot of imposter syndrome because like I'm a coach now. If I'm a coach and I need to hire a coach to help me, that that means I don't know what I'm doing, right? But the reality of it is I didn't really know what I was doing. I had read a lot of textbooks and stuff. And there is for for anyone out there who might be pretty new in it, there is a large gap between what you read in the textbook, right, and then what actually works best in practice in the real coaching world. And I don't mean that that calorie deficit doesn't work, you know, and and and and and but there is a large gap. in application and learning from people who have been in the game longer than you and taking yourself to new heights is is a game changer. I mean I think back if I if I never would have hired Jackson You know, I wouldn't have a pro card, I wouldn't have all this opportunity on the back end of it all because of an ego that I wanted to to do it myself and that I knew everything. I it's it's silly. And now the most successful that I've ever been as a coach, I'm like, I'm like, you know, what what's there? Well, there's a term here chomping at the bit to hire a coach because I want new levels of success and to learn and to be exposed to more, you know, and and and and and so if you are in that. position if you have that bit of ego like please try and do your best to to put it behind you because you really don't know what you're limiting yourself to by by having that. Yeah, for sure. I guess my closing thoughts would be uh don't be scared of failure. Learn from it and uh notice what's around you, notice trends, and uh hopefully you can hit them at the right time. If you can if you can be perceptive and notice things around you and the way things are happening, there are business opportunities there. Um so yeah, and follow your passion. That would be my other one. Turn, uh, turn. passion or motivation into obsession and then it l no longer feels like a chore if you're obsessed with it. So um yeah, that one's really good too. Perfect. Wonderful wrap up, Brian. As always, guys, thank you for listening. Brian and I will back be back next week or are you gonna be in in Steamboat Springs next week? no, no. I'll be we'll be back. We should have a show next week, I think. Okay, perfect. Sounds like it. Alright guys, have a good day.