Jason Khalipa

Interview With Jason Khalipa

TSOG – Ep574 – The School of Greatness with Lewis Howes

Lewis Howes:                      This is episode number 574 with Crossfit Games World Champion, Jason Khalipa.

Welcome to The School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur and each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now, let the class begin.

Alexander Graham Bell said to, “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.” Welcome to today’s episode. We’ve got the legendary Jason Khalipa in the house, who is the owner of NCFit, fitness company specialising in community based functional fitness, and NCFit has six commercial locations and fourteen additional corporate sites worldwide.

Jason also competed professionaly in the sport of Crossfit for eight years, winning the the World Championships in 2008, naming him the fittest man alive, and named to team USA three times and also placing in the top five, five more times at the Crossfit Games. No small feat to accomplish.

He also married his high-school sweetheart, Ashley, and the couple has two children, Ava and Kaden. In January 2016, Jason retired from competing in Crossfit, when his daughter Ava was diagnosed with leukaemia at the age of four. And in this interview we talk about a number of different things, from his athletic career to what it was like when his daughter was diagnosed with leukaemia, to how he builds his fitness empire.

And we really talk about how to build a life and business with your partner, starting from nothing. When they both had nothing. How do you build the relationship, and also, how do you build a business in that relationship.

Also, why it’s important to check in daily on how you performed in all areas of your life, why it’s important to get comfortable being uncomfortable. I know when I did Crossfit, it was pretty much every single day, it was miserable, and how uncomfortable it was competing , working out and training.

Also, how to best support someone going through a tough challenge. When someone in your life is going through some type of extreme adversity, how do you connect to them? How do you relate to them? How do you show up for them? We talked about that.

And the difference between earned and perceived confidence. Some people tell you, “Fake it ’till you make it,” but that’s not really earned, is it? So we talk about the difference and how to get that earned confidence. Super excited about this one!

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Alright, without further ado, let’s bring him on. The one, the only, Jason Khalipa.

Welcome everyone to The School of Greatness. We have the legendary Crossfit Champion, Jason Khalipa, in the house. My man, how are you doing?

Jason Khalipa:    Good, good, good! It’s good to see you. Thank you for having me on.

Lewis Howes:                       Yeah, we just met thirty minutes ago for the first time, but I’ve known who you are for a decade, now. Eight years since the Crossfit Games, when I first got into it, I heard about it through Graham Holmberg, a mutual friend of ours who you’ve competed with many times. Not sure how well you know him, but you guys have competed a lot against each other.

So, I’ve always seen you on TV with the Games, or at the Games and you’ve been in the top five, what, how many times in the top five of the Games?

Jason Khalipa:    Honestly, six…?

Lewis Howes:                       You lose count after a certain amount of times, right? You won it in 2008, you also have a number of Crossfit gyms worldwide, you have thousands of members and you also have married your high school sweetheart, is that right?

Jason Khalipa:    That’s right! We met when we were freshmen in high school. Funny story about that: So I get to high school and I meet this girl, well, my wife, and her name’s Ashley. To me, we hit it off, right? And so I’m like, “Ah, man! Her dad’s Miran, my dad’s Miran, so she’s half Persian, I’m half Persian. Oh man, this is perfect!” So I go home, I’m like, “Hey, I met the woman of my dreams, I’m going to marry her.”

Lewis Howes:                       As a freshman?

Jason Khalipa:    As a freshman. And so I… Long story short, we get together, we start dating, right? Life’s good, and then two weeks later she dumps me, and I thought the world was going to end, and she told me the reason why she dumped me was because I was “too nice”. So, we became friends for the next year. We go together the beginning of sophomore year and we’ve been together ever since.

So, I’ve officially been with her longer than I’ve not been with her, because I’m thirty-two and I got with her at fifteen.

Lewis Howes:                       Isn’t this interesting though, that a woman tells you, “You’re too nice, I’m going to break up with you.”? And some guys might say to themselves, “Okay, in order to be in a relationship with the girl of my dreams, I need to be mean, or I need to treat her poorly, or I need to be this other person.”

Jason Khalipa:    Yeah, I think what it was for her… and again, you’re freshman, you’re just learning… I think I was putting on a front. I was overly nice. Not just chivalrous, but over the top nice and I think, for her, she wanted to be a little bit more…

Lewis Howes:                       Relaxed.

Jason Khalipa:    Or play a little bit of hard-to-get. Don’t make it so easy all the time. But again, we were fourteen, we had no idea. Nowadays life’s a lot different. But, she’s awesome!

Lewis Howes:                       What’s that like, marrying your high school sweetheart and then going into being a Crossfit athlete, to building a business, all these things that you guys have been doing together from nothing, it sounds like, to building everything you’ve built?

Jason Khalipa:    It’s been an awesome ride with a great partner. She’s never been one to hold me back from what we want to try and accomplish. And she’s always tried to keep me grounded on all the different things in life. We have two children. One of them was diagnosed with leukaemia not too long ago. And so, she’s been my partner through everything, and so, early on…

Actually, I’ll give you a story about her that summarises her really well. So, we met in high school. We ended up going to college, she went to Santa Clara University, I went to a junior college for two years, we met back up at Santa Clara University and graduated together, but during that time we were still together, it was all good, and we actually were living together.

And we lived at this place called Santana Row in San Jose, and I knew she was the one for me when during the summer I did this thing called a Wii Hustle, and so what I found was… Well, not during the summer, before Christmastime. So I was trying to buy a Wii, a Nintendo Wii, and I looked online, and I looked in all the stores and they were always sold-out, sold-out, sold-out and I was like, “What the hell’s going on?”

And so I come to find out, I go on Craigslist and they’re selling for a premium of like, 50%, 100% whatever, and I’m like, “Wow! These things are really going big!” So, what I would do is, I would call Best Buy, I’d find out when they’re getting a shipment, I’d go sit in line at like, 4/5am and I’d go buy one or two, and then I’d go sell it on Craigslist and make a profit, right? Well, then she started partnering with me. So her and I, we lived in Santana Row, there’s a Best Buy in the same shopping centre. We would just wake up early, go there, stand in line, we each were able to buy one and then after that we started hiring people to wait in line with us, because you were only allowed to buy one at a time.

And I knew, when she was dedicated to a grind, like, she would wake up at four, five in the morning instead of going out partying in college. I was like, “This girl’s got some aspirations!” And she took that money, she said, “Jason, I don’t need you to tell me what to do with this money. This is my money.” And she went downstairs and bought some shoes from wherever she bought them from and that’s her decision.

Lewis Howes:                       Now, does she help you with your business as well now? Or is she supportive in the whole Crossfit gyms and everything else, or is she doing something else?

Jason Khalipa:    Yeah, so when we got married in 2009, and she worked with me at the business. I opened the gym in 2008. She worked with me in the business from 2008/2009, helped out in a lot of different things. In 2011 we had our daughter, so when she got pregnant, she kind of stopped helping in the business side, and so she just, for the while she’s been a mom.

With Ava getting sick now, she’s been extremely dedicated to philanthropic work, which we were talking about earlier, and so she host’s this annual event called Ava’s kitchen and so that’s her calling now. So, she hasn’t had to work for a lot of years, because she’s been working in the home, which is a very challenging job to a lady who’s out there. It’s non-stop.

And so, for Ava’s Kitchen, that’s what she’s really dedicated to from a business side.

Lewis Howes:                       I’m curious. What do you think it’s harder to run: A successful marriage/family life, that’s fulfilled and happy and obviously with everything that happens, or making it to the podium of the Crossfit Games? What’s harder?

Jason Khalipa:    Well, I’ll tell you, in both situations there’s a lot of things you can’t control, and so understanding what you can control and what you can’t control, is really important. On the podium, I can’t control what my competitor is going to do, but I can control how much work I put in. It puts me in the best position to be on the podium, right? I don’t know what the event’s going to be like, and it is what it is.

In relationships, it is kind of the same thing. You don’t necessarily know the unforseen circumstance that may come up, where your daughter may get leukaemia, or certain things come up in life, right? But I think, what you can do, as a couple or as a family, is have good communication to put you in the best position to take on those challenges.

So, my wife and I have very good conversations, especially after Ava got sick, it became even deeper that we would have these date nights all the time. We are super blessed to have family around, so they watch our children. But, I think, by us taking an active approach to trying to talk through problems before they become bigger issues, just being aware that our relationship is number one, because if it isn’t, it’ll ruin the kids’ relationship too. So, we really try to make our relationship first.

And so understanding what’s in our control is just having good talks, having date nights. Like, in the hospital, for example, we were there for about two months, maybe longer, and once things maybe calmed down a little bit, we would take an active approach to, at night, each night, go out, grab a drink, wine, marguerita, depending on how the day went and then come back to the hospital room, and that was our way to kind of go out and have adult conversations so we could not let anything fester.

Lewis Howes:                       Right. Wow. Interesting. What is more challenging for you then, successful relationship, family life, or building a successful business.

Jason Khalipa:    You know, I’ve been fortunate that I found a really good wife, and our kids are awesome, so I’ve been really blessed that I’ve found the right woman. I know that for a number of reasons, but primarily because after our daughter got sick, the way she responded to it was just inspiring, right? You never know how someone’s going to react to a negative situation when you meet them when you’re fourteen. And so, the way she responded to it was incredible, so I was very lucky.

Now, on the business side, I’ve been lucky too. We have been able to hire some really great people who have been able to do some amazing things and have allowed me to go off and do some other things. And I think, in both situations, it’s just having an honest conversation with yourself on what are you good at, what are you not good at, and identifying people to come in and help support other areas.

Just like you building your team, you know, you have skills in specific areas, networking and different things, whereas other guys… Like, for example, I’m not very good at finance. A couple of years ago, I was tripping! The only way I knew our business was making money, was if our bank account was increasing dollars on a monthly reoccurring basis, right? And, I mean, it wasn’t a small business and we’re talking a lot of revenue.

And I just realised one day, I’m like, “This is not a good way to run a business,” and so I hired a CFO, a good friend of mine, and did our thing.

Lewis Howes:                       There you go. Different stress.

Jason Khalipa:    Different stress, so, I mean, what’s harder? Business, competing, or family? They’re all the same in a sense. They all have their challenges and their benefits. I think it’s just, taking a step back sometimes and reflecting on how well you’re doing at each facet is really important, you know? At night, what I try to do, is I try to reflect, like, “How did I do today at being a husband, maintaining my fitness, or competing, per se, and then growing the business?”

And if, at night, I’m like, “Hey, here I am in L.A., you know meeting Lewis, and I didn’t spend as much time with my children, tomorrow let’s try to spend a little bit more time with the kids, because today I was in L.A., right?” You’re just balancing it out.

Lewis Howes:                       What would you say is the biggest lesson you’ve learned about yourself since you daughter going through this challenge she’s facing?

Jason Khalipa:    That’s a really good question. I would say that I learned a lot about myself in terms of where my commitments lie, right? That, I gave up competing, I focussed on the family.

Lewis Howes:                       Once that happened, you heard the news about your daughter, you gave up, you stopped competing then, right?

Jason Khalipa:    Yeah, so I competed as an individual for seven years, and then as the business grew and the family grew, because we have two children, I made the decision to go team. So, we went team, and then in 2015/2016 she was diagnosed and it was an easy decision. Easiest decision I’ve ever made in my entire life. It was just like, “Dude, I’m not going to go spend four hours a day training, and then go… I’m not going to do this.”

And so, the thing I learned about myself is, it taught me that I was able to man up, be about my family, be about something more important than myself, and that makes me feel like I did the right thing, which I would never have done anything different, but it feels good to know that I did it.

Lewis Howes:                       Would you have made that decision if it was 2009/2010 when you were just getting started and the same thing happened? I mean, you have eight years of, like, “Okay, I’ve done it all.”

Jason Khalipa:    Yeah, that’s a tough one to say, but I would say, yeah, probably.

Lewis Howes:                       Could you have done both?

Jason Khalipa:    I don’t know if you could have done both. You know, when you’re competing, your head has to be in it and if your head’s not in it, you’re not going to perform well. And you’ve got to have a strong internal why of why you’re doing it, and for me, for years I had a strong reason to do it, I was motivated, but once your daughter gets so sick that it’s a life and death situation, there’s nothing more important.

At that moment in time, everything else just goes into this, you get this moment of clarity, where it’s just, like, you know, I became a subject expert in leukaemia, specifically A.L.L., because that’s all I cared about, and if I was out thinking about walking on my hands at the Crossfit Games, instead of thinking about, what is the best treatment plan for my daughter, then shame on me. And so, that taught me a lot about that.

But, you know, her treatment plan has really taught me a lot about family, and a lot about commitment and this whole idea that, you know, growing up, my mom and dad, they’re still together, it’s great. And my mother-in-law and my father-in-law they’re separated, but they have a great relationship together. And just watching the family support, every day at the hospital, just raised the bar for what I want to do in the future with our family.

It’s made me more connected to our family. It’s made us want to get together more often, and those are blessings that I would never, I mean, I would want to give up this experience, but the fact that this experience occurred, there’s a lot of good things that happened.

Lewis Howes:                       Of course. What’s the best thing that’s happened?

Jason Khalipa:    I would say, just learning more about my wife, learning how much of a bad-ass she is, which I already knew. Finding out who your true friends, your family are and I’d say that the most important thing that I’ve found is just, kind of this concept of just being easy about stuff and just realising that, at the end of the day, it’s not that big of a deal. That whatever you have going on, it’s not that big of a deal, because we’ve seen so much worse. I’ve seen so much worse.

Lewis Howes:                       It’s not life or death.

Jason Khalipa:    No. I mean, when you spend as much time in the hospital as I have, when you’ve seen kids just… It’s so sad, it’s so sad that, let’s just say I have an issue that comes up. I need to take a step back and just reflect. Every time an issue comes up, it’s like, “Hey, look, we’re not in the hospital, life’s good. This isn’t, on a scale of one to ten, it’s not a ten.”

And so that’s what it’s taught me, is that, there’s always someone out there who’s going through a major struggle, and it also teaches me, too, to be more compassionate towards other people. You never know what they have going on. You see someone freaking out, but you don’t know their background. You don’t know what’s going on in their life, right? They might have just left… whoever knows?

So, I became a different person. Became more compassionate, became more, I get teary-eyed every blue moon, now. Before I was just stone cold, you know, but so those are the kind of things that happen.

Lewis Howes:                       Tell me about the mindset of being a top competitor, and a champion. What does it take to reach the top, whether it’s the Crossfit Games, for you, or anything, but to get there? And then maintain being in the top five for many years? Because just staying on the podium is really challenging in itself, consistently, let alone what Froning did, you know, he’s a machine, but just getting there and staying there. What do you think about every single day when you’re in that mentality.

Jason Khalipa:    Well, I think, for me, and everybody should relate to this, is that you’ve to to have a strong internal reason why you’re doing whatever you’re doing. And I think sometimes people have this thing of like, “Hey, I want to go do the Crossfit Games,” as an example, or whatever your goal may be. But they don’t have something deeper to fall back on.

Lewis Howes:                       What was your reasoning?

Jason Khalipa:    For me, it was that I loved to train, and I still today. Like, this morning, before I got on a plane to come here, early. I train in my garage, and then I just got done training before I came here. Not because I have to, but because I feel better. I feel good, I get energised. And so, I have and “addiction” to training, which, hey, you know what, there’s probably worse things, right?

What is was, was it wasn’t so much that I was training to compete, I was training because I loved it, and competition was just a way for me to express that and just see how I stacked up against other people. It was also an opportunity for me to kind of like, give myself a little check and see, like, “Hey, you going to step up to the plate? You going to get uncomfortable? You going to push yourself to go against comfort?”

And that’s one of the reasons why I competed in a Jujitsu competition, maybe a year ago, and that’s one of the reasons why I did it. I just told myself, I never want to get into this set-up where I’m comfortable with everything I’m doing. Whether it be business, family, or competing. And so, the Crossfit Games were a really cool way for me to just really get comfortable with uncomfortable.

And little did I know how much that would play a factor towards Ava’s diagnosis and how all these challenging times in my life, where I’ve passed out on a run before, I’ve had all these…

Lewis Howes:                       You passed out on a run?

Jason Khalipa:    Oh, yeah. So, you know, in 2009 I just passed out, literally just passed out.

Lewis Howes:                       Was this on The Hill?

Jason Khalipa:    Yeah, oh yeah. That was a nasty hill.

Lewis Howes:                       Middle of the run, you just pass out.

Jason Khalipa:    Yeah, I took last place. Yeah, I got back up and I finished the event. But that was also some of the rewarding times. It’s only through these moments of discomfort, it’s only through these moments of just, like, really tough, that it’s your time to kind of like check i and say, “Hey, am I going to make it through this, or am I going to just go ahead and give up?”

Like with you and football, I’m sure there’s been times when it’s been a challenging situation, you push through it and then later on you reflect, and it’s like, “Man, my back was against the wall, I went out there, we won the game,” or whatever happened. Same thing happened in the Crossfit Games.

I’ve had a lot of challenging situations, had a lot of great situations, but when you look back on them and you reflect, you’re like, “Man! That was cool to see that I was able to establish a deeper internal reason to do this and push through.” And all the social media followers and money in the world won’t get you to that point, right? You’ve got to have something really deep inside your heart to compete. In whatever you’re doing, and I really believe that.

I get e-mails every day from people who want to compete in something or do something. The first thing I ask them is, you know, “Is this a good time in your life to do this? Are you qualified to do it? Are you…” etc, etc. But also, like, “Do you have a strong reason?”

Because when you’re ten reps away from finishing the event and someone over there has a similar fitness as you, but has a strong deep “why”, you know, they believe that God has given them a talent, for example, like Froning, for example, or another reason, they’re going to be able to push harder, if you don’t have something.

Lewis Howes:                       Right. You’ve got to have some kind of internal belief. Reasoning why. How do you think being a top competitor has supported you, in business or hurt you in business? And, have the things you learned from sports or Crossfit helped you to build your business the way you have?

Jason Khalipa:    Yeah, I mean, I look at business as a sport as well, and once I stopped competing in Crossfit, I really, and I’ve always looked at the business side as kind of a sport, right? Where you never know where your competitor’s going to be, but they’re always coming at you. Someone’s trying to take you down, because if you’re industry leading, there’s someone coming after you.

And so it’s kind of cool, because you always have to be on your toes, right? It’s kind of like this competition of business and so I think the competition of Crossfit really helped the business with notoriety and things of that nature, added credibility. But what it really did, was, I’m a firm believer that if you’re able to wake up early in the morning, go in the gym, push yourself, you’re probably going to do great things throughout the duration of your day.

I think that fitness is a great core lift for that, and I think anybody who isn’t doing at least something, whether it be a ten minute walk or whatever is missing out on something, because of how good you feel and how it just creates this mindset for the rest of the day, just go crush it. And so, that’s what it really helped me do.

Lewis Howes:                       Sure. What would you say is the best thing that people can do to support someone when they’re going through a hard time? When someone’s daughter has leukaemia, when they’re going through some sickness or some challenge or a business is failing and it’s going bankrupt. What do you think has worked for you when people have come to you and supported you? Was there something they said? Was there something they did? Was there something they didn’t say that really like, allowed you to rise up in that time of challenge?

Jason Khalipa:    What someone could do, I mean, it’s a really good question. Just seeing someone’s support is, I think, all that really matters. And genuine support, not for any desire of any other outcome, right? Like, I have mentors who support me because they see, what I think they see, is they see a passion and a hustle in me that inspires them to be on that train with me, and I think that’s what gets me excited.

These guys aren’t looking for anything to get out of it. They’re just literally inspired by my inspiration, and same thing like in the hospital, it’s a little bit different, obviously, but that’s more of like, family, close friends, just being there and present. I said this before when I was talking to Rich Froning, is that one of the things I’ll remember for the rest of my life, is that after my daughter got sick we were in the hospital for a while, and we went home for a couple of days and then we went back for a while.

We were in the ICU for a while, and it wasn’t good. But every single day my father-in-law was there, like, every single day. But he wouldn’t even day he’s there, right? And this is kind of cool, when you talk about these moments or these mentors or whatever. He didn’t say anything. He just acted. And a lot of people want to talk, and they don’t really want to do anything. In his case there was no talk.

Lewis Howes:                       He just showed up and didn’t have to say anything.

Jason Khalipa:    He just showed up at 6am, every day. I would just walk out, not shaved and just feeling like crap, you know? ‘Cause we were sleeping on these, whatever they are in the hospital room, and I would just walk out and be like, “Well, good morning, Jeff!” And he’d be like, “What do you need from me?” And I’d just be like, “A coffee would be great!” And for him, he’s the kind of guy that, he felt like the way that he contributed was from a monetary, like food, stuff like that, that was his type of…

Lewis Howes:                       Acts of service or action.

Jason Khalipa:    Yeah, that’s kind of like in the Persian culture too. Like, give foods, yeah, so he’d do that. And those are, I think, the memorable people for me. Whether it’s in business, family, fitness, it’s when someone’s contributing to you without any desire of anything back, but doing it because they truly care about you and what you have going on for any reason.

Lewis Howes:                       It’s cool, man, it’s very cool. What surprises you about what the human body is capable of doing? You’ve seen some extreme things in the Crossfit world, just watching it on TV, or being at the games, I’m just like, “I don’t know how you guys do this,” sometimes, and how people are able to push themselves so far.

I look at Crossfit Games as an extreme physical challenge, maybe compared to running 150 miles in the desert, or something like that. It’s another type of challenge, it’s totally different, where breaking the body down, but what has surprised you about what is possible for our bodies?

Jason Khalipa:    Yeah, I mean, for sure. The Crossfit Games, just as you noted, is one expression of this Crossfit thing. And I think, what happens sometimes is, there’s a misunderstanding between the Games and the everyday person. My mom comes in our gyms, and we have gyms globally, where we have people coming in at all ages, all skill levels and they can all participate in this group style class.

Now, the Crossfit Games as an expression, is crazy. I remember when I first got into it. I won the Crossfit Games doing this 155 squat clean thruster workout, and basically what that is, is you take the bar from the floor, you put it to your shoulders, you then do a squat down, you stand up and you press over your head.

Lewis Howes:                       155 pounds. How many reps?

Jason Khalipa:    Yeah. Thirty. For time. And at the time, this blew people’s mind, so meaning, later on they called it what was called a squat clean and jerk. So they would squat, clean it, go down in a squat, stand up, reset and then jerk it up, and at the time, 155lb was unheard of for thirty reps, now that workout, I did it recently at 225lb in roughly the same time. And it just shows how the body has progressed.

Lewis Howes:                       And that’s like a warm-up for a lot of people now.

Jason Khalipa:    Oh, it’s crazy, right? And so, what’s really cool to see is how people thought that you can’t be good at running and lifting and they’re kind of breaking down some of these historical, some of these myths that you can have someone who could run a mid-5-minute-mile, and also back-squat close to 500lb.

When I finished competing, I ran a 5:40 mile and my back-squat was 470lb. And so, it’s kind of cool to see how you could be kind of fast in a mile, and that’s not world class, by any means.

Lewis Howes:                       But that’s a sixteen-hundred, not fifteen-hundred. That’s fast.

Jason Khalipa:    Yeah. And so, what Crossfit has shown, is that it’s not trying to be really great at anything, it’s trying to be good at everything, and what you’re finding is that these guys are just doing incredible feats of strength and conditioning, which is really cool to watch the human body.

Lewis Howes:                       It’s like the decathlon of fitness. I was a decathlete in college, so I was never the best at one thing. There were a couple of events that I was really good at, you know, and then the other events I was solid at. But I put together a performance over all ten events, that was solid.

Jason Khalipa:    That’s right. Same thing at the Crossfit Games. You can’t have any zero’s, you don’t need that many wins, you’ve kind of got to stay consistent across all of them and you can do well. And the athletes that we’re seeing today are just…

Lewis Howes:                       Freaks.

Jason Khalipa:    Yeah, and what they are, they’re full-time.

Lewis Howes:                       Who’s the guy who won…?

Jason Khalipa:    Matt Frasier.

Lewis Howes:                       Matt Frasier. He’s, like, a mutant.

Jason Khalipa:    He’s a super cool guy. I actually was just with him in Cookville, Tenessee.

Lewis Howes:                       He seems like a documentary of all the Crossfit stuff. He’s just seemed like a chill, hard-working…

Jason Khalipa:    Yeah, he’s been Olympic weightlifting in his basement, since he was ten years old, so…

Lewis Howes:                       So his technique is probably just legit.

Jason Khalipa:    Yeah, so people don’t get it and that’s why I get these calls, it’s like, “Hey, I want to get into the Crossfit Games.” It’s like, “Okay, how long have you been training for?”

“Oh, a month.” Or they go, “Oh, this year.” Well guys, it’s like, hang on, let’s take a step back for a second. It takes a long time to develop these skills, and I think whether it’s in business or in fitness or whatever you want to get into, you know, there’s something in between, the difference between earned confidence, and just perceived confidence.

You know, handball, like, I was looking into it, I was like, “I’ve never really heard of this form of handball,” right? And I was like, “I can have this perceived confidence all I like until I go out there and play with you, but I haven’t earned anything, so when I get out there, it’s all fake.” Right?

And it’s the same thing goes into building a business or fitness, is you’ve got to kind of have this earned confidence, from years of dedication and training, vs, just this idea that you can slap yourself in the face a few times, get pumped up and think you’re going to go do something.

Lewis Howes:                       How good is Matt compared to you now? Could you go compete with him? Or is it a whole different level?

Jason Khalipa:    Yeah, so I was just with him and Froning two weeks ago.

Lewis Howes:                       You were training together.

Jason Khalipa:    Yeah.

Lewis Howes:                       And how was that like?

Jason Khalipa:    Oh, it was cool. We’re all on different stages. Like, I’m kind of like…

Lewis Howes:                       The old, retired guy?

Jason Khalipa:    Yeah! Let’s put it this way, I can still hold my own and keep moving, but I’m surely not going to be dominating situations.

Lewis Howes:                       Do you think you can make the Games still? As in, if you trained nine months this year?

Jason Khalipa:    If I train… I don’t know, I mean, it’s hard to say. I’m apprehensive on ever saying that kind of thing, because, unless you do it, you can’t really say it. I remember people saying, like, “Oh yeah, I could have got a better time if I had been in this region.” It’s like, “Well, you weren’t at that region and you didn’t get a better time, so…” I think, for me, the reality is, if I really dedicate myself, I think I could perform well, but that’s not something that I’m really desiring to do. I want to go out there and perhaps to the opening and compete and have fun, but even past that, it’s not on my list of priorities right now, because there’s other things that I’m passionate about.

Lewis Howes:                       I’m just saying, hypothetically. If you said, “I’m all in, family’s good, everything’s good here, like, I decided to take one more year,” could you do it?

Jason Khalipa:    I think, if I really dedicated myself, I could qualify. Now, how well would I perform at the Games? I’m not quite sure. My body’s been through a lot of beat-ups. Now, the regionals are different than the Games because it’s not as much volume, but I think I could. But who knows?

Lewis Howes:                       Who knows? You might sprain an ankle or something like that. Yeah, interesting. So this Matt Frasier guy, is he just a whole other level then, or could you compete with him if you were at the top of your game right now?

Jason Khalipa:    He’s pretty dominant.

Lewis Howes:                       He’s like, no-one even comes close, right?

Jason Khalipa:    Not right now. I mean, I have a lot of friends at these Games, so I’m careful with the way I talk, but at the end of the day, so, you know, in ’13 and ’14, so I took second in ’13, Froning took first; I took third in ’14, Frasier took second, Froning took first.

Lewis Howes:                       How far apart were you from Froning on both those years?

Jason Khalipa:    I was close on ’13, not as close on ’14, but after that, Froning retired and went team, so Froning had some dominating performances, but he would always kind of come up on the final day. And he was just known as, he would do well, do well, do well and then final day just kind of like really solidify, right? He was never so far out front that he was unreachable, but towards the end of it, until the last day.

Now, Frasier, on the other hand, he, for the last two years has really established a win before even the final day of competition.

Lewis Howes:                       Like, on the first day he’s already so far that you’re like, “Oh man,” it gets in people’s minds where you’re like, “I have to perform so much better tomorrow to try to just stay in the same pace, and then I’ve…” so it’s almost mentally knocked people out, by dominating the first day.

Jason Khalipa:    And he’s really good. But he dedicates himself, I mean, he’s full time committed. That’s it. And him and I were just talking the other day and back to the whole priorities and shifts, and he’s like, “I’m not interested in having children, or having anything else in my life, until I’m finished competing, because this is my sole focus. I eat, sleep, breathe training.” That’s it. Cool. Like, I got to give you credit for having that kind of mental clarity. That’s the type of focus you want to have on it, and he’s doing really well.

Lewis Howes:                       What’s your thoughts on athletes in general who dedicate their life to something, their sport, and then injury, retirement and transition happens? What is the biggest challenge for those athletes, and did you find a challenge in retiring as an individual and then team and now that not being your identity?

Jason Khalipa:    Really good question, and, I think, right now, it’s a really critical time in our sport, in the Crossfit sport. So you take football, right, or you take any of these other avenues, or I guess any professional sport, for that matter. These athletes, they get their paycheck, get their paycheck, get their paycheck and they’re developing these skills of competing, but I think it’s important, especially in the Crossfit space, to show the rest of the world, other skills that you have besides just fitness.

And what I mean by that is putting on seminars, educating, this way, when the competition ends, you still have something you can go pursue. And the competition simply allowed you credibility, but now, with that credibility from the competition, you’re proving yourself as a subject-material expert, which, I think is really important.

Like, for you, people come and listened years ago, because you proved yourself as an expert in networking these things. So, “Hey, I want to come learn from Lewis on how to do this.” With Crossfit, if you’re using your social platforms and different things to promote how fast you’re doing a workout, that’s cool, and it might get attraction. But if you’re promoting instead how you could elevate someone’s mindset, or elevate someone’s physical ability by teaching them something, I think, after they’re done competing they’ll have a much longer road.

So, when I finished competing, it was very easy for me, it was a very easy transition, well, it wasn’t easy because there was part of my identity that was still in Crossfit, just like with you in football. But it was easy because I had so many other things going on, my daughter was ill, still is. She gets donor treatment in four months, which is great. But the business was growing so I was able to focus on that.

Lewis Howes:                       You got something else, you’ve been building it, yeah. What do most fitness entrepreneurs miss out on in terms of building their business. There’s a lot of athletes who want to become fitness entrepreneurs. There’s a lot of fitness personalities out there on Instagram or just people who are trainers or coaches, things like that. What do you think they miss out on? What’s missing from them to getting to the next level?

Jason Khalipa:    Well, it just depends what avenue you’re trying to pursue. If you’re a personal trainer, how do you scale? If you’re in personal training getting paid, $200, $300, $500 an hour, that’s great, but if you ever want to take a vacation, what’s going to happen?

When I was growing up, throughout high school I worked the front desk at a gym. Throughout college I worked sales, and it was great. I was my own boss, in a sense, I was in charge of my own commission check. I would hustle, hustle, hustle, cold call, whatever it is, and I would try make my paycheck.

Now, if I wasn’t at work, though, I didn’t get a paycheck and so that was a blessing and a curse to me, that I learned at an early age that if you put in the hard work you get paid, but I also knew that eventually I wanted to have a team, so that I could be with my wife somewhere, and not feel like I’m losing any money.

And so, I think, if you’re a personal trainer you’ve got to ask yourself the question: how do you scale your operation, so you can have other people doing certain things, so that you can then go off and do other things. And, I think, as a gym owner, it’s that same conversation, where now you have your trainers that are there on the floor, you’re doing your thing. But what’s important, again, is to trust people to coach your classes, so you can go out and build your business.

Because if you’re coaching every class all day every day, who’s out there trying to build it for you. And I think that’s the biggest mistake that all these professionals make, is they’re missing out on where’s the growth trajectory, and who is going to do it. And if you’re not the guy who’s going to go out there and build the business, that’s fine, if you want to be the face inside, then go find someone else who can do it for you.

Lewis Howes:                       What would you say are a couple of keys to building a gym membership if someone’s listening or watching right now and they have a gym or they want to launch a gym, what would you say are the three things that they should be focussing on? Knowing that they want to continue to grow and maintain that growth.

Jason Khalipa:    Yeah, I think they got to decide what type of a gym they want to open. Is it a conventional gym model, where people pay X amount of dollars per month and they don’t necessarily have service, but they have nice equipment? Right? That’s A model. High budget entry. Very expensive equipment.

The other model is a group style, functional training style.

Lewis Howes:                       Bootcamp style…

Jason Khalipa:    Whatever, right. Crossfit style, where it’s low budget entry, low cost equipment, but again, has a large learning curve on this side, because you need to learn how to interact with the clients, you got to learn how to coach. Whereas on this side, you might be able to get away with putting up nice equipment and letting it kind of do it’s thing.

Lewis Howes:                       Come and work out whenever you’re ready, yeah.

Jason Khalipa:    Over here it’s very service based. So, if you’re not a subject material expert in service, you need to find one or you need to do it yourself, and so my recommendation would be A, make sure the service you’re providing is top notch, of course, whether it be conventional gym equipment, or group style training. B, is have some type of marketing strategy in terms of how you’re going to go out and attract new people.

What is the brand vision? What are you trying to be about? What type of a gym are you? And then finally, the retention tools, right? How are you following up with people? How are you keeping them in the doors? How are you earning a new member every day? How are you renewing a member every single day?

You know, the way I like to think about it, and it’s what we’re, at least we work as hard as we can, at our gym, they’re called NCFit and every day, it’s NorCal, and then “Fit”, we work really hard that every time a member comes in, we assume they’re not going to come back in. And if we work off that premise, it’s great, because then we have to earn their ability to come back in the next day.

You’re not guaranteed the renewal. Some people think you renew your members each month. You actually renew your members every single day, right?

Lewis Howes:                       You could lose someone every day, or gain them every day, right?

Jason Khalipa:    Right, because if they have a crappy experience, it only takes one crappy experience for them to say “No”. Like, you know, I’m sure you’ve had this happen to you. You go to a restaurant, you’ve been thinking about it, thinking about it, like, “You know what? I’m finally going to go.” Something gets you to go. You have one bad experience, you never go back again. And it takes you a long time to even try it again. And so, for us, we’d rather just try to have better service, better branding, better everything.

Lewis Howes:                       What are you guys do on a daily basis then, to try to retain someone? What’s your top key for that?

Jason Khalipa:    I think it starts with our session plans, our programming, making sure that across the globe… So we have 21 locations globally with quite a few trainers, and the goal is to try and have the most standardised approach, right?

I mean, I’m always fascinated by Starbucks. I was just in Malaysia, a couple of weeks ago, we have a location there. And I go, you know, Malaysia is just something else. But I go to this one location, I see a Starbucks, and it’s like, boom, it’s like that movie, White Castle that came out? It’s just like, “Aaahh!!” and I think with Starbucks, their consistency is incredible.

So the first step is how do you get consistency across scale. And so, our session plans, our warm-ups, our briefs, those are designed by corporate and then sent out. I think that’s a great way to do it, and then from there it’s just coaching development.

The facility being nice is cool. Of course it’s important. But I think it’s all about the people we put in place and how much time we spend developing them.

Lewis Howes:                       Yeah, of course. And just making sure you really care about people and being friendly and…

Jason Khalipa:    And people pick up on it. And we’re fortunate in our industry, a lot of people don’t get into it for money or fame, they get into it because they’re passionate about helping people and so it’s nice, for that matter.

Lewis Howes:                       I like it, man. Talk to me about how you’re teaching your kids about having a healthy mindset, or living a healthy lifestyle and the mindset of living healthy.

Jason Khalipa:    I think it’s less about telling and more about showing, right? If you want to talk about from a nutrition perspective, so my wife has this Ava’s Kitchen, she puts up recipes online, it’s really cool. But, she cooks at home, she cooks meals, dinner, and so she’s teaching about healthy eating, thing of that nature, and just balancing different types of macro-nutrients, but not being crazy, but just showing the kids this is what it is.

But I also think what we’re doing is we don’t have soda, you know, that’s the kind of… sugar’s kind of a problem. But I think the biggest thing that we’re doing is, my wife and I, we work out in our garage, every day.

Lewis Howes:                       Together?

Jason Khalipa:    Not together. So, what happens is, I get in there early, early morning and then I go off to the different gyms and sometimes I’ll do more stuff there, but in the morning I’ll do cardio, every morning in the garage, 6am, just boom, I’m just hitting it. And then I’ll come back in, I’ll see the kids before they go off to school, then I’ll go off and do my thing and my wife takes the kids to school and then she’ll go in the garage.

But on the weekends and on other days when they might have in-service days or whatever, the kids will be in the garage with her, working out or with me. So, on the weekends they’ll work out with me. So now our kids are old enough, they’re six and three, where it’s supercool! My son, he runs on the, we have a Trueform treadmill, while I’m doing other stuff, and it’s like, “Yeah!” It’s really cool, you know.

And so, I think we’re just showing them that, hey, humans are supposed to move. And we’re just moving. You could do whatever you want in this garage, just move around, have fun with it, play. Don’t make this into something bigger than it needs to be. Don’t look at exercise as a job, look at it like you could have fun moving, and how good you feel after.

And that’s how we’re trying to show them. We’re trying to be low-key about it. Especially with Ava, physically she’s had a lot of chemotherapy, a lot of steroids, so we’re just trying to be supportive of her, because even walking for long distances is very challenging for her. And so, we’re very, very careful in the way we approach her, whereas with my son it’s a little bit different. I’ll kind of beat him up a little bit or, it’s just a little bit different. Mainly from health perspective.

Lewis Howes:                       Of course, yeah. Talk to me about the AMRAP Mentality, what is the AMRAP Mentality and what have you learned about this mentality, about yourself, from living life?

Jason Khalipa:    It was one day, I don’t know, it was probably 2012, my daughter was, like, a year old and I was pushing her in a stroller and we were going down this nice street. Super nice. There were trees, and we were just walking, and my wife asked me some question, and I wasn’t paying attention at all, right? And I just looked at her, and I was like, “Babe, I have no idea what you just asked me, and I really apologise.”

And she’s like, “Dude! Enough is enough! What’s going on?” and I was like, because the Crossfit Games were a couple of months from now or whatever. I was like, “Honestly, Ashley, I was thinking about walking on my hands and that  my fingers can’t touch the white line.” And I was like, “I’m really sorry, and I need to be better to you.”

At that moment I felt really bad, right? I’m walking my daughter, I’ve got my wife here, and I’m just like, “Honestly, Babe, I have no idea what you’ve been saying for the last five minutes, because I’m thinking about…” Because at regionals one year, if any part of your fingers touched the line, you were disqualified. And that’s a problem, because there’s only X amount of events, so if you got disqualified from that you basically, doesn’t matter how good you did on the other ones, you didn’t qualify.

And it was at that moment, and I reflected on it later on, that I was like, “For me to be a better husband, a better father, a better businessman, a better competitor, I need to start compartmentalising my day better. And that’s where AMRAP Mentality was developed. It’s been even heightened even more through Ava getting sick. I’ve started to realise that all the nice watches and cars, those are cool motivators, but the best motivator is, the ability to be able, that if something ever happens in your life, to help your family out and not have to worry about money. Because when you have to worry about that and the other stuff, it just compounds.

So, the AMRAP Mentality, it’s very simple, it’s like riding a bike. We say, hey, you’ve got to have a strong “Why”, which we’ve talked about today. Then you have to focus, right? Identify your focus, just like riding a bike, if you’re not focussed you’re going to tip over. I used to race BMX bikes and if you weren’t focussed, you would tip over.

You need to work hard, so you need to pedal, and so the AMRAP Mentality is: Identify a focus. So, it’s maybe you and me right now in the podcast. I’m focussed on you, yeah, alright, I’m focussed on you and I’m not focussed on anything else. You don’t see me looking about outside, I’m not looking on my phone, I’m just with you. And then I work hard at it, so then you and I, it’s maybe a random analogy, but, you know, you work hard at it.

So, if you’re deciding to go find new leads for your business, you go out there and you actually do it. If you want to write an e-mail, go do it. Work hard at it and then switch gears. So after I’m done with this podcast with you, my wife and I are going to go to dinner and a grand opening and I’m going to focus on that.

I’m not going to be thinking about you necessarily any more, I’m going to be thinking about the next thing, and every now and then, right, you need to re-evaluate your focus. So, in my opinion, you should have three to four pillar focusses in your life. For me, it’s my family, the business, and then my fitness. Those are my three. But for other people it might be family, business, and golf. Or whatever.

And then every now and then, though, you need to re-evaluate. So, a good example of this is for years I competed at the highest level in Crossfit, I was building a business, I had two children. Then in 2015 I re-evaluated and said, “Hey look, something’s got to give here. I don’t have the time to do what I want in these different facets, and I couldn’t give up the family, I couldn’t give up the business, so the only one left was competing. And so I just kind of toned it down.

And then, obviously when Ava got sick, that was another re-evaluation phase and so basically, AMRAP Mentality is: Know your focus, know your “Why”, work hard at it, switch gears throughout your day, and then when something drastic happens, re-evaluate. Maybe you get married. You got to re-evaluate. You can’t be going out and clubbing with your friends till two in the morning every night. So, that’s the AMRAP Mentality.

Lewis Howes:                       Right, right. Now, tell people who don’t know what AMRAP is, and Crossfit.

Jason Khalipa:    Oh, yeah, probably should have said that. So what AMRAP is, it’s really a foundational workout type for hit style training, which is as many rounds or reps as possible. And the reason why the AMRAP Mentality was the name of it, is that I started to think, well hey, if I’m walking with my daughter and I though about this as an AMRAP, I wouldn’t be thinking about anything else but walking with my daughter.

Because in an AMRAP, like, if I asked you to do as many push-ups as you can in two minutes, you’re just going for it, right? And you’re not thinking about anything else, so in these workouts, it’s a great way to use the analogy to stay present and focussed in whatever you’re doing at that time. An AMRAP, As Many Rounds And Reps, right?

And so, right now, you and I are AMRAPping the hell out of this podcast, and then later on I’ll go AMRAP some e-mails, or whatever.

Lewis Howes:                       Exactly! Cool! I like it, man. Final couple of questions for you. What’s the something that most people don’t know about you that might shock them if they knew?

Jason Khalipa:    Might shock them… At this point, I mean, I’m a pretty open book. You know, I’m pretty simple. I’ve had one job and one girlfriend, that’s it, and been loyal ever since. Something… you know, I used to race BMX bikes, that’s kind of different. Not many people have that background. I broke my face one time and had to have magnets put in my nose. It’s kind of weird. I used to race BMX bikes, and as part of that I used to do dirt jumping. And I was heading for what was called a “rhythm section” for those of you who BMX raced back in the day, and I was hitting this rhythm section and I packed one, it kind of hit my back tyre and slowed me down, but I was in the rhythm section, so you can’t really get out. So, I hit the next jump, hit the front wheel on the landing, flipped over.

Luckily I was wearing a helmet, which is good, but I got knocked out and sort of broke in my face and so they had to reconstruct my nose a little bit, that’s maybe why I look so weird. But the way that they did it, is they put magnets in here to hold it straight, and so at school it was like a party trick. I was able to take a magnet and put it there. And this was for a little bit. Anyways, yeah, I got that taken care of.

Lewis Howes:                       You get the magnets out?

Jason Khalipa:    Yeah, magnets are gone, yeah, I’m good, I’m good.

Lewis Howes:                       If you get a big magnet you could, like, pull your face over?

Jason Khalipa:    There were two of them, just to hold it straight… I have no idea, but yeah, that sounds kind of a random thing…

Lewis Howes:                       Interesting, okay. Fun facts on Jason Khalipa. Let’s wrap things up here in a few minutes. I want to make sure everyone goes and checks out, where can they learn more about you? Jason Khalipa on Instagram, Facebook?

Jason Khalipa:    I think Instagram’s probably the best, that’s probably where I’m most active on. I have a website, jasonkhalipa.com. Those are probably the two best things to do. If you want to check out jasonkhalipa.com, you can see some of the philanthropic stuff we’re doing. The next Ava’s Kitchen event is February 24th, which is coming up here pretty soon. Bunch of other cool stuff coming out, yeah.

Lewis Howes:                       Amazing. Very cool. A potential book coming out very soon, so make sure to get on your newsletter and be ready for that when it comes out.

This is called The Three Truths, this question. So, imagine this is your last day, many, many years from now. You’re a hundred and something years old, you ended your life and your time and you’ve done everything you wanted to create in your life, you’ve tried everything, you’ve had the life of your dreams. For whatever reason, everything has been erased, of the information you put out in the world. So, people have no information that you’ve put out there of what you’ve said, or videos of you, it’s gone.

And you have a piece of paper and a pen to write down three lessons from your entire life that you would share with the world, or three truths. The things you know to be true about all your experiences, that you want people to know about you. And this is all they would have to remember you by, is these three things. What would you say are your Three Truths?

Jason Khalipa:    Wow! Wow…

Lewis Howes:                       No pressure.

Jason Khalipa:    No pressure!

Lewis Howes:                       I just want what’s coming off the top of you mind, just right in the moment.

Jason Khalipa:    The first one would be: There’s no better characteristic than loyalty and commitment. I really think about that, especially with everything going on, all the scandals and stuff, and you know, it’s just, if you’re going to get married, you just be married. If you’re going to just, you know, if you don’t want to be married, then don’t be married. But if you want to be married, be loyal, committed.

I think good things happen with whatever you’re doing, but I think it’s really important that when you make a commitment to something, you finish it and you stay loyal to whatever that commitment is. And if you decide at one point you no longer want that commitment, that’s fine, but you need to have that conversation. I think that’s the first truth that I know to be true.

The second truth is: I really don’t think there’s any hack to life. I think you should just, you wake up every day, you’re inspired, you’re motivated, you work hard. Whatever you’re doing. You could be a Starbucks barista, you could be a billion dollar investor, I think the idea is that every day you’re working to be the best that you can on whatever you’re doing, at your craft.

You’re trying to be the best at your craft. And to do that you need to work hard. So I would say the second one is, there’s no easy, wake up every day, be inspired, work hard at whatever the heck you’re doing. Doesn’t matter what you do, just work hard at it.

And if I had to say a third one, man, this one’s going to be a good, one, or a tough one! I would just say: Regardless of what you’re going through, it doesn’t mean that other people aren’t going through something as well. You might think that your life is so challenging, or whatever, but other people all have their struggles and all have their different things going on.

And just because one person might be going through, you know, losing their job, and I might be going through something else, doesn’t mean one’s worse or better than the other. Everybody, to them, that’s the hardest thing they’re going through, and we should all come together as a group and support each other.

So, I guess what I would say if I had to summarise that would be: Everybody has their challenges, and you should support everybody in your community, in your circle, and not judge based on what the challenge is. Because, to that person, that might be the most challenging challenge they’ve ever faced. And as a group, you should rise up and try and help that person through it.

Lewis Howes:                       Yeah, of course, of course. I love it, man! It’s a good three truths.

Before I ask the final question, I want to acknowledge you, Jason, for a moment, with your loyalty, your commitment to your family, to your daughter, to figuring out what priorities mean the most to you in your life, and giving up something that you love, for something even greater, and doing it with grace, doing it with a humble, giving heart. So, I think it’s really admirable, everything you’ve done. From chasing your dreams, to building a successful business, to being there for you wife and kids, and just doing it with grace. So, I want to acknowledge you for all o that, man.

Jason Khalipa:    Well, thank you! I appreciate that!

Lewis Howes:                       Of course, of course. My final question is: What’s your definition of greatness?

Jason Khalipa:    What’s my definition of greatness? Getting to a point in your life where you can look back and truly know that you reached your full potential. I look back at my Crossfit career and I ask myself, did I really reach my full potential? Did I honour my God-given talent, with enough hard work to reach my potential, right? You can ask yourself that same thing about football. And I think, in life, at some point, the definition of greatness is to be able to look back on your life and then truly say that I reached my full capability, by working hard and doing everything. I can rest my hands and say, I’ve really paid homage to what I was given and I reached my full potential.

Lewis Howes:                       Yeah. My man, Jason, thank you so much for coming on.

Jason Khalipa:    Yeah, man, thank you very much.

Lewis Howes:                       Appreciate you, appreciate you.

There you have it my friends, I hope you enjoyed this interview. If you did, make sure to share it out with your friends over on Instagram, tag me @lewishowes and @jasonkhalipa. The show notes, where you can get the full video interview, all the other stuff we talked about is at lewishowes.com/574, again, lewishowes.com/574. You’ll get some other great quotes on there, the video, resources. Share it all out on Twitter, Facebook, tag me and let know you’re listening, or you’re watching so that I can connect with you on social media as well.

Very excited about this one. We’ve got some big episodes coming up. So, make sure, if this is your first time, to subscribe to the podcast over on iTunes. We are also over on Spotify. You can subscribe there if you like, Spotify. Stitcher and all those other places, and YouTube. We have over 500,000 people who subscribe on YouTube. So, make sure to check us out, youtube.com/lewishowes. And click the subscribe button so you can get all those inspirational videos sent to you when they come out.

Again, Alexander Graham Bell said, “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.” Now is the time to focus your attention. Whether this is the end of the year, the beginning of the year for you, now is the time to focus on the vision for your life. What you really want, who you want to become, what you want to be known for, the actions you want to take, the people you want to surround yourself with, and the decisions you want to make.

Who do you want to become? Think about it. xcmbody it. Take those daily actions that are uncomfortable, but will bring you great benefit and fruit in the future, because you are committed to them. Use the lessons learned from Jason’s story and be committed to growing and improving yourself.

I love you very much. And you know what time it is: It’s time to go out there and do something great!