The Meat Mafia Podcast

Bobby Ryan is a former competitive skier turned marketing professional and entrepreneur. He's the founder of Hybrid Athletes Consulting and co-founder of Drink Birk. Bobby also runs marketing for Sisu Sauna. Raised in Kingston, New York, he competed globally in skiing and skied for the University of Colorado. After a career-ending injury, Bobby pivoted to marketing, utilizing self-taught skills in writing, copywriting, and AI to lead efforts for Sisu Sauna. Bobby is an endurance athlete, recently competing in the Leadville series. 

Key topics discussed:

- Navigating career transitions from sports to business
- Leveraging endurance challenges to boost personal growth and resilience
- Developing valuable skills independently, such as writing and using AI in marketing
- Building and maintaining a strong professional network
- Learning from high-performing individuals and mentors to accelerate personal and professional growth

Timestamps:

(00:02) Navigating Growth and Ambition in Youth
(04:10) Life After Competitive Skiing
(08:12) Overcoming Injury and Career Transition
(12:59) Mental Toughness in Competitive Athletics
(23:40) Pursuing Physical Challenges and Growth
(33:14) Embracing Discomfort for Personal Growth
(36:29) Embracing Risk for Personal Growth


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Creators & Guests

Host
Brett Ender 🥩⚡️
The food system is corrupt and trying to poison us... I will teach you how to fight back. Co-Host of @themeatmafiapod 🥩
Host
Harry Gray 🥩⚡️
Leading the Red Meat Renaissance 🥩 ⚡️| Co-Host of @themeatmafiapod

What is The Meat Mafia Podcast?

The Meat Mafia Podcast is hosted by @MeatMafiaBrett and @MeatMafiaHarry with the mission of addressing fundamental problems in our food and healthcare system. Our concerns with our healthcare system can be drawn back to issues in our food system as far back as soil health. Our principles are simple: eat real foods, buy locally, and cook your own meals.

When you listen to our podcast, you will hear stories and conversations from people working on the fringes of the food and healthcare system to address the major crises overshadowing modern society: how do we become healthy again?

themeatmafiapodcast.substack.com

Part 1 Bobby txt
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[00:00:00] Bobby Boy, what's up, brother? Nah, I'm Mods, just down in Austin, Texas for a couple days to hang out with you guys. Dude, it's been so cool having you at headquarters. You'd be such a good fit in the office, honestly. It's been so fun getting to see the unique team that you guys have built and people operating in their different roles in the culture that's kind of starting to evolve out of the office.

It's been super interesting to see. What have you observed? It's unique. No, I mean, you have a ton of young, super talented, creative people, and trying to cultivate them into a team is definitely a challenge to a certain extent, but it's interesting to see, like, the different ways people build businesses and teams, and it's super fun.

Yeah. Yeah. There's something special about, I mean, it's crazy that you're 25. I feel like that actually blows me away, but Or almost 25. Um, I had to start talking to my, my shirt 29. He's on the chair talking. They always come on. The tuck is going to make its way [00:01:00] back. I think it is. Yeah. For anyone listening, Brett talks his shirt in and it's going to start a revolution.

Yeah. Um, I'm converted. Yeah. Yeah. First convert. I think I might've been the first convert, but yeah, second. Um, but I was, what I was going to say is just getting young people, Who have this creative drive to do something and have big aspirations and being able to channel that basically in any direction you choose.

If there's a plan in place, you can do so much. And I think that's one of the biggest takeaways Brett and I have is like leveraging this talent pool of people who are just super creative, think outside the box and are willing to just like go above and beyond to like develop skills, learn new things.

There's almost nothing that can replace that level of hunger and ambition from someone who's like in their 20s and just wants to do something cool. Yeah, like getting around interesting people I think is such a massive opportunity. Is that for when you're in your early 20s when you don't know what that is?

Five or ten your goal is [00:02:00] and you don't know necessarily what your passion is or what you want to do for the rest of Your life. And so by getting around Interesting people who have done things before who are further ahead of you You get a pick apart and learn the skill sets from different people and start to create your own flavor Yeah, we had on um, this guest a couple weeks ago.

His name is Zane Griggs He lives in Nashville and his whole brand is fit after 50 and so he's 52 looks like Hugh Jackman Shredded taking incredible care of himself great dad, great husband. But one of the things that he talked about on the podcast that was really profound was this, um, desire that he has to surround himself with people that are like a generation older than him and then also a generation younger than him too.

So obviously we're like five, six years apart, but we were both like extremely impressed with the way that you carry yourself, not just in terms of how smart you are with business marketing. You know, we met because you're running marketing at Sisu sauna, which is our favorite sauna company. Incredible.

handmade, um, saunas based out of [00:03:00] Ohio. So shout out Pete. We had Pete on the podcast, but just like the way that these different endurance races and your mindset, you're a very cool combination of a lot of those things. And it was actually striking to Harry and I, when we were walking over to go to the studio, you were mentioning how you had graduated from college about a year ago.

So it's pretty insane what you've done in the last year, but Dude, for the listener, I'd love to just get a little bit more backstory on you because you're basically the Dos Equis man, the most interesting man in the world in a 24 year old's body. So I'd love to just kind of recap your, your backstory and kind of like all the really cool, interesting things that you've done.

Cause it's fascinating. Yeah. So I grew up in Kingston, New York, which is about 90 miles north of New York city with two older sisters and a younger brother and then my parents, so super close knit family growing up. Family values were instilled. To a tea and I mean, I learned a lot from the dinner, the dining room table that was probably [00:04:00] like the classroom where I've learned the most sharing meals with different people.

You got to learn so much about them and their ideologies, but skiing was a big thing. It was foundational for me and it was a family thing. When we started, we would go to a tiny little mountain in upstate New York and pack peanut butter jellies and bring hard boiled eggs. And we would do it on Saturdays and Sundays.

It was 800 vertical feet. And I loved it. I never had an issue getting up first thing in the morning. It was, it always felt right. And somewhere along the lines, we started going to Vermont. We had family up there. My older cousin ski raced, and I wanted to be just like him. So I got into it. I fell in love with it.

I remember being sick in 2006 at the Torino Olympics when Bode Miller was racing. The end. From that moment on, I was like, I want to go to the Olympics for skiing. And it kept kind of growing and it kept coming back to it. And that's essentially got to take me all over the world. Super grateful for the experiences.

Going to Chile for training in the summer, or getting to train with [00:05:00] national teams in Europe, in Saste in Switzerland, or Austria and Germany. And then ended up skiing for the University of Colorado for the past four years and then graduated about a year ago. For anyone who's not familiar with what it's like to be a ski racer, talk about what it's like standing at the top of the hill, toeing the line, and knowing that, like, you, it's you versus the course, but you're also competing against other people.

I'm curious, you know, what's the mindset going into a race like that? Yeah, so, first, it doesn't just happen every four years. Most people are committing their whole lives training for it, trying to get to that next level. But it's unlike any other feeling I've actually ever felt before. Other than probably public speaking from a lot of people, it's like a similar pit in your stomach, but you're standing up there looking out at the mountains and you're right.

It's, it's you versus the course. You kind of go down and inspect it, but then you have to kind of trick yourself into being able to, to push the line and take risk in order to go as fast as you possibly can down a sheet of ice. Because in a perfect [00:06:00] world, we're not skiing on snow. They'll go down with, uh, water injected every six inches all the way down.

So picture just a hockey rink of perfect ice. It's That's ideally what we're competing on. And then you're going 40, 50 miles an hour, depending on the discipline, up to 70, 80, if it's a speed event. And you're trying to calm your mind, but be ready to move as fast as you possibly can and react to everything.

I mean, it's the hardest challenge that I've ever had mentally is to allow yourself to consistently perform at that high level and let yourself free fall down the hill. Yeah. interesting that feeling that you were describing how. The only feeling that you've ever had similar to competitive skiing is when you public speak in front of a lot of people.

And I think that's something that ex athletes really struggle with, especially when they're done, when you've basically committed your life for, you know, 15 plus years to something. And then you graduate and you're like, alright, that's it. I'm not, you know, I'm not doing this professionally. Now I have to figure out what else I want to do.

And it's really hard for people to get that same experience [00:07:00] in the corporate world. I think a lot of athletes mistakenly try and get it, and I'm sure some can do, can get that feeling, which is great. But I think that's something that Harry and I both felt in our, at our jobs when we were living in the Northeast, it was very difficult to replicate the purity of that feeling.

And I think we're getting that now, but it, you know, it took some years to get there too. And it sounds like. you're maybe getting that feeling earlier than we did with all the cool stuff you're doing now, or at least the endurance races. Yeah, the endurance races, I miss training for something, um, but there's definitely still things you struggle with when you've done something every day for 15 years of your life and all of a sudden it's like, okay, move on.

There's definitely times when you still think about it or you still have that childhood dream of like, oh, what would it be like to go to the Olympics? And last year it was December 22nd and I was racing and tweaked my back and then. 24 hours later, I was lying in my bed. I woke up, tears running down my face and my entire body was having a Charlie horse happen and I laid on the floor.[00:08:00]

I couldn't sleep in my bed. It was too soft. Um, and then I woke up the next day and my range of motion was about two inches. So I thought I was going to have the senior season to get to compete one more year, try and be on the national championship team when it, when a championship with CU. And like that went away.

And if you've been hurt before, you know what that, what it's like to be injured. If you have, if anyone who's had an injury, you know, it's like, Oh, I can play through this pain or my season's over. And I knew it was going to be over. I ended up bulging a disc, cracking my disc wall, pinching my spinal column.

I got MRIs up at the Steadman Clinic, and we were talking about discectomies and back surgeries. Dang. Um, so overnight, the end of the season, my last college season, went away. And likely, in the same time I'm processing, that's likely the end of my career. Um, so walking away from that was definitely a void.

Um, but filling it with training for something has been, been huge for me. Just an outfit. Was that injury, was that from a crash, or was it just, you know, Kind of wear and tear. [00:09:00] It's more just like overuse. Spears have notoriously bad backs, will push three or four Gs in a turn. Um, I probably know seven, eight, nine kids who've had back surgeries, spinal fusions before 25.

I broke my back when I was 17. Um, so I knew kind of what I was getting myself into. I decided to do more of a non traditional, uh, rehab process through yoga, stretching, core mobility. Um, I was able to get back to like 99 percent by 10 months without having to get surgery. But it was a long road to get there.

Did you feel like you entered a mourning period at all when you realized that the season was over? Um, in the short term on the micro, definitely. Like there's so many thoughts running through your head. So I basically finished all my credits by that point. So I was doing a fifth year to basically compete one more season at school.

I had a one credit grammar class and maybe a marketing. Bing. Capstone, but essentially I didn't even have school all my friends had graduated I was three or four years older than everyone else in school And the one thing I [00:10:00] was supposed to be doing was gone. I couldn't walk So I was just lying on the floor in my room thinking what the hell am I doing with my life?

um, and that's when uh Kind of through that rehab process is when I started spending a bit more time with eric because I had free time on my hands I could drive down to the gym in denver and work out and that's when I started meeting You other people in the health and wellness space or the entrepreneurship space because I was excited about some of these other opportunities that I hadn't been able to say yes to for a long time.

Is there a race that stands out to you as one where you're like very dialed in and just had the performance of your life? Yeah, it's funny. So I actually transferred to CU. I went to Boston College for one semester and then took a semester off, transferred, luckily got a spot on CU. Uh, there were three kids that were supposed to be on the team, uh, in the spot that I ended up getting.

One of them went to a national team. One of them ended up not being NCAA eligible because of credits in high school. And the third one had some issues where it just didn't work out. So I got a call December 17th [00:11:00] that I had a spot on the team to start January's portion. And the coach calls me and goes, Gosh, Kido, when are you coming to school?

In his Czech accent, and I'm like, what do you mean? I had no idea what I was going to do. I had like, I was, I didn't know if I was going to go back to college, if I was going to be on skiing. Two weeks later, I'm driving up to Colorado with my dad. Two days after that, I have the best race of my college life.

And it was no pressure. I had no idea of how I was supposed to do. And I moved from the back into sixth position with a massive mistake. And then I spent the next four years chasing that result again. It's like a blessing and a curse because the blessing is the performance itself, what you learn from that, right?

It's like this weird paradox of, okay, the less pressure that I put on myself, the better that I do. But then at the same time, it's like you have this incredible race, and then you're just continuing to chase this performance. And some people like peak early and they never hit it, but there's always positive.

I'm sure looking back, like, well, I became a better skier throughout the next four years and I got technically better and I, but I always struggled with races and competitions [00:12:00] with a certain aspect, the mental aspect of it is huge in skiing. Yeah. Can you talk about the mental aspect? Cause I, when you first brought up the ski racing, I just am thinking about going down one of these Vermont mountains that I used to ski and how icy it was.

And just picking up speed and going as fast, basically as fast as I could down a sheet of ice and how nerve wracking it is knowing, like being a confident skier and knowing that like I'm in control, but like there's a certain element of serious risk on the injury side of things, but you're in competition.

So you have to be able to push that out of your mind so you can do what you're designed to do. So yeah, it helps that you've been training for it your whole life for a certain point. So it feels so instinctive for the most part. But. The difference from like competition and racing is the higher you get up in any sport, it just becomes more and more mental.

And typically the best racers also push limits and everything else, whether it's partying or driving too fast or doing these other things. Um, and like me specifically, I always trained [00:13:00] faster than I raced. I had a hard time allowing myself to perform the way that I knew how to do on race days because of the competition of it.

And I always think there's a difference between mental strength and mental toughness. Mental strength to me is like being able to perform at a high level consistently at the snap of the fingers versus mental toughness is something where you have a bad day and you're able to pull yourself up and continue to sustain effort towards something for that period of time with blind faith.

And I've always been mentally tougher than I am mentally strong. I like that delineation between those two terms. I've never heard that before. Did you find is that common skiing where you'll? have certain teammates or competitors that are amazing in practice, but mentally they just can't put it together in competition?

Uh, to a certain point, yeah. And then there's some who are just lights out. Better than others. And typically they're the ones that are partying the hardest. Like there's definitely like they'll chase limits in everything that they do. And I do it to a certain extent. Like the sports I do, I downhill mountain bike, [00:14:00] I chase extremes, but not in the same way in some other outlets.

You've been known to take a few FaceTimes while on the mountain bike. Downhill mountain biking while FaceTiming Brett. That was the best FaceTime we've ever gotten, honestly. That was a work call. You're getting stuff done. You have decisions. Yeah. Screw the standing desk. Just do it while you're biking. I learned that one from Eric Hittman.

Yeah. Do you ever, um, do you ever have dreams about skiing? Like, I wake up in the middle of the night dreaming about skiing? Or think about it? Um, no, literally wake up in the middle of the night. Because I do about baseball, so that's why I was asking you. I don't remember my dreams. Ever. Okay. That's interesting.

Yeah. Never? I couldn't tell you a single, like, dream from sleep that I've had. I could tell you my childhood dreams. I definitely, like, lie awake in bed at night thinking about certain things. I wonder what that is, why some people have, like, vivid recollection of their dreams and others don't. I'll go a really long time without remembering any dreams, and one will just be, like, [00:15:00] so vivid.

Do you still ever dream about baseball? Not really. Too often. It's just time. I don't know what that means. Do you think about it? Yeah, I think that, um, I, I consider it to be a blessing, but I really felt like I underachieved in college relative to the potential that I had to. And I really graduated just feeling like maybe disenfranchised might be the right word with just the way that I showed up as a baseball player as a student.

I really felt like I was operating in a small fraction of my potential and was like kind of embarrassed about my college career, to be honest with you. And I think that's helped me in a lot of ways now. And it's a motivating thing, but. Um, I'm guessing if you're dreaming about it, that means that there's an element of that that's still on your subconscious mind too.

So but it's like you can't go back and change the past. The only thing you can do is, is really learn from it and iterate and get better in these other facets and use it as a teaching point. Yeah, I think sports interesting because there's very few things in life where Your [00:16:00] biological window of being able to be a competitive athlete is over at 30.

Most things you can keep progressing at until you're 40, 50, 60. Learning, writing, business, entrepreneurship, education, sports, one of those few things where you have a peak competitive age and if you move away from it, you can't really ever go back. Yeah. And you're always competing against guys who are 23, like you're, you might be getting closer to your prime, but then you're also going up against the youth, which.

There's advantages to both. So it's like sports is so unique in that sense where, um, you know, it's, it, there is a window, there's just like that perfect window of actually you being able to put it all together. Yeah. I mean, in skiing, your peak male, males, their peak age is 28 years old in technical disciplines, because you have to get onto like world cup or Olympic level.

Get used to the venues a little bit. Um, you have to become stronger faster to be able to handle the forces and everything Obviously, there's some anomalies But if you look at the average age, it's older and [00:17:00] then it's into your 30s and to speak because it takes so much time Same thing with endurance sports where professional cyclists are 35 36, but that is your career There's a reason those people are professionals Everything's dialed in from training to sleep to nutrition to supplementation And your life revolves around it and by saying yes to that you have to say no to so many other things Hmm How did the um, your pursuit and endurance in a lot of these races come to be?

Was that in college? Were you kind of looking for an outlet after skiing was over? Yeah, so my dad was a big runner. He's run 10 marathons. He's run a 252, 54. So I don't know if I'm ever going to touch that one. But yeah, it was something he always did, um, so I grew up going on Saturday runs with him and his buddies and that's where he built some of his best friendships.

Um, so I always saw that growing up and then in high school we would train endurance, we would never run because we put enough force on our bodies to begin with, uh, but we would bike a lot. So I biked a thousand miles, two thousand miles, three thousand miles, four thousand [00:18:00] miles a year since the time I was sixteen.

Um, and then in college I was just looking for an outlet or for a challenge. So when I did that, uh, Everest ride that you were talking about earlier, um, it actually was after my junior year and I was pretty upset with how the season ended. And Senior, or Senior Spring in Boulder is pretty fun. So I, my two best friends were graduating.

And it was 70 degrees and sunny every day. So I didn't go to the gym. I didn't touch a weight. I drank beer and ate pizza for four weeks and went from 180 to 205 pounds. Wow. And had the Senior Spring of my life. But then I looked at the scale in the mirror the day after graduation and I was like, Okay.

It's time to go be an athlete again. So I broke out my road bike and I couldn't ride the climb to the top without stopping. Um, which is a five mile climb, 2500 feet. It gets up to like 16 percent grade. So it gets pretty steep towards the top and I had to take a break and I was like, what is this? That's not meant to be.

So then I was like, okay, I'm going to do this [00:19:00] as many times as I can in one day. And the Everest challenge is a thing and running and biking. So I decided I was going to do that. So you literally scaled, like, the equivalent of the vertical distance of Mount Everest, which is 29, 000 feet in a single day.

140 miles. That's the craziest thing. That might be the craziest thing I've ever heard. Yeah. It's up there. No, it's, it's definitely up there. That was the hardest thing I've ever done to date. I got up to 118 degrees on the asphalt. I couldn't eat anything, which is a huge thing for endurance. So I was going with an old school cyclist trick and I was just drinking straight Coca Cola for like five hours, just straight sugar.

And that was the only thing I was running on. Um, and then got late into the night and riding at night descending by car lights in the rain. And like you go through so many highs and lows when you're doing endurance sports for like one moment and you're feeling absolutely incredible. And then the next moment you don't know how you're going to take another step or do another pedal stroke.

And it's just a mental challenge to keep going. And then you unlock and hit another limit and get another [00:20:00] unique high. Did you hallucinate at all? Like with how far or how hard you're pushing yourself? Like, did you start to get to, cause I feel like those cycles when you're iterating through them in endurance races, there's a point where you're like almost, you are delusional, you know?

Like, and I think you can hit a point of like. Yeah, you've just like broken through mental barriers to the point where you start feeling different things that you've never felt before. Definitely. I mean, that was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. And you go through so many emotions in it.

You're laughing, you're crying, you feel incredible, you feel horrible. It's like living 10 years in 24 hours. Yeah. So you just picked a mountain and just kept going up and down until you hit 29, 000? Yeah, it was like, in Boulder there's the Flatirons, which are kind of the picturesque backdrop on the university.

And there's one road that kind of goes all the way out, Flagstaff, and it's arguably like one of the hardest climbs right there. So I picked that one. Did you do it with anyone? I had some friends come and join me for [00:21:00] laps, but I was the only one that did the whole thing. Dang. And now you're training for Leadmill.

Yeah, Leadman in the summer. Or Leadman. So Leadman is all three of the endurance races in the Leadville series? Yeah, so it's a trail marathon, June 29th. June 29th. 50 mile run into a 50 mile bike, July 6th and 7th. 100 mile bike, August 11th, into a 10k run, August 12th. And then the 100 mile run is the last one, August 18th.

And there's an overall leader for the entire series. That's sick. Is there one that you're more concerned about? The 100 mile run. The 100 mile run? Yeah. Dude. So wild. I'm not a runner. This is all new. Would you say that the, I've heard people say like that the Leadville 100 is equivalent to like a 250 mile race.

Just with the altitude change, the elevation, the texture of like, you know, just the gravel and the branches and everything like that too. Would you say that that's true from what you've heard? [00:22:00] I never run a 250 mile race. So I, and I haven't run a hundred before, so I have no actual context, but we do compete over 10, 000 feet elevation for the duration of it.

And we're changing, I think there's 000 feet of elevation gain throughout it, and there's some massive climbs. So Hope Pass is a three mile climb with about 3000 feet of vert. And you have to go up over, turn around and then go up over again, right before mile 62. So when did you decide to actually sign up for the race?

And what have you done since then for training? Cause obviously you've been preparing for this, whether you know, or not through everything that you've been doing, but when did you actually decide and start actually putting a plan together? So I had some buddies do it last summer. Uh, Joey Muccio did it.

Um, Some other people did the run. Dan Churchill attempted the run. Some, some people that, you know, follow and I trained with them before the races. Mike Adala tried to do it. Um, Eric was [00:23:00] doing the 100 mile bike, and so I got a ton of training volume in with them last summer while they were prepping for it.

And I was like, it's kind of cool. I had no idea really what it was. And then, last November, December rolls around, and I was struggling a little bit with walking away from sport. Didn't really know what I was doing, necessarily, and training was kind of going out the window. So for me, it was just a forcing function to get myself to start working out again consistently, because I knew if I didn't put something on the calendar, it's pretty easy to let it slip.

So, it was more so something that I knew I was going to have to train for, and it was something on the calendar. So it started with that, and I just started running, uh, five, 10 miles a week or so just to get some volume on the legs. And then about eight, nine weeks ago, I hired a coach because it was time to start getting serious and start to dial in a training plan.

Yeah. When you're signing up for something like as momentous as lead man, are you, are you motivated by this concept of like, just trying to tap into an understanding? Like what is [00:24:00] a hundred percent of my potential is Bobby look like, or are you just someone that likes to do difficult things? Like I'm just kind of curious behind.

Like everyone's motivation for doing difficult pursuits like this. Yeah. I think there's something about doing a hard physical endeavor once a year. This is roughly something I've done for the past six or seven years since a high school coach started having us do a bike race in August in Europe. We would actually fly road bikes over with us and we would do the one of the last stages in the tour to Swiss.

Yeah. And it would be our entire team, some of the other coaches from alpine teams would join in, some of the national team athletes. There would be a whole skew of us going up to the top of this reservoir. Um, and that was the first year. And then I did a mountain bike ride from the south side of Mount Toponogos, so right outside of Utah, up and over Brighton into Wyoming.

I did the Everest Challenge. So I've always had this one, um, Physical challenge every year to work towards because it's such a restorative [00:25:00] process because you go basically go back to being a baby again It strips everything away And i'm a huge proponent of that. So i'm kind of looking for what that would be um But yeah there's definitely something about Wasting your potential or trying to figure out what you're capable of because I think we're all capable of way more than we think And endurance is one of those things that tests your limits both in the training leading up to it But also the day of the race when you actually push through and you walk away a bit knowing I can do whatever Was there a moment for you where you're like i'm gonna do One hard thing every single year Or is that just was it just something where you're like i'm just kind of doing this naturally In the beginning it wasn't necessarily something at this point.

It's something I look forward to putting on the calendar. Yeah And I mean, I've loved having a coach again. There's like a natural forcing function over having their coach and somebody invested in helping get you better through a goal where they're looking at your strengths, but also your weaknesses and how to improve them.

The training plan shows up in your [00:26:00] email, um, or on a platform once a week, and then it just becomes doing the work. And there's something very simple and relaxing about that aspect of it. Yeah, the, I feel like more than anything else, just the accountability that a coach provides of like, I'm paying this person my hard, hard earned money.

They're programming me these workouts and training peaks. Like if I don't do these workouts, I'm really like letting them down too. And almost like being disrespectful to their time. I feel like, you know, there's that aspect of it, but it's also somebody total whose entire job revolves around helping you get better.

Yes. And if you're an athlete, you grew up and you always have that coach who's putting together strategic plans, helping you look at weaknesses on film. And then all of a sudden you graduate and you don't have that anymore. That was something I missed. To get on you, figuring that out early, figuring that out early in your twenties.

Cause I feel like for me, it took me a little bit later in my twenties to realize that I was missing that coaching element. And the void is huge because if you don't, if you're an athlete and you're constantly getting [00:27:00] that feedback and you don't have people who are constantly like pressing you to continue to develop, like a lot of times in these corporate jobs, like you'll have a senior, but they're not necessarily like looking at everything you're doing.

It's either just kind of like good work, bad work, or like, you know, I'll take it and take it from here. So if you don't have someone who's good in that role. You're missing out on a huge growth opportunity. Um, and just having a coach in general is like irreplaceable. Yeah. I mean, it's the reason I worked with CJ for, uh, four or five months this fall.

Um, when I was kind of doing stuff on my own, just to have somebody again, outside looking in, um, helping me like add new skillsets, like, Oh, you're, you're not great at pitching people or signing new clients or sales. Like let's really focus on that. Okay, you're on sales calls all the time. Let's record one of those sales calls and then go back and watch through it again.

Just watch a game film. Like, any athlete has done that before, but it's just using that frame and applying it to the new sport or the new endeavor that you're trying to play. [00:28:00] So like, what does going pro look like in business if that's what you're trying to do now? You a Pressfield fan? Uh, it's like War of Art.

Oh, I've never, somebody asked me earlier today if I'd read that. I haven't read that book. You just stole one of his lines. Turning Pro. Oh, really? It's a really good book. We'll get it for you. It's really good. Yeah, here I am. Stealing people's work and going to the tower. Well, it's just such an iconic book that's like permeated throughout this whole space.

And he's more known for War of Art, but the second book, Turning Pro, has been like even more impactful to Harry and myself. And a lot of people don't know this, but Pressfield He was kind of like this journeyman writer that didn't publish his first well known book until he was in his forties. And um, I think he was a copywriter in New York.

And just really felt like there was this deeper calling to create something that was truly his own. And so he basically had this year that he called his turning pro year where he just went out and he got a cabin somewhere in California. Ate like eggs, beef liver, completely isolated himself [00:29:00] from all distractions.

And he was like, by the time I finish living in this cabin, like I will have the first. Manuscript of my first novel ever and so like he he does the whole experience writes writes the manuscript Tries to sell it. It doesn't sell he goes back works in the city makes more money He goes back to the cabin does that for like four to five years before he publishes his first book But it was like that summer of turning pro it almost was an identity shift for him of like, okay I can really do something difficult and like meet this goal of being a writer and it's just amazing Yeah, I mean, I think that applies to anything and everything that you want to do in life.

Like what was going pro? What did that mean to you guys when you guys were getting started with the podcast or the agency? It's still incredibly relevant. I feel like we're, we're not even close to where we'll be. Um, when we feel like we're officially pros, like when I listened to our podcast, um, incredibly critical of filler words and questions [00:30:00] not being direct enough to get the right response from the guest.

So like there's a lot of things that I feel like we're doing at, not an amateur level, but it's like when you're looking at it, it's like this stuff takes so much time. I've played baseball from the time I was like five until I was 18. All right. So 13 years of playing a sport. And I still didn't make it to the pro level.

So, when I put that in context of what we're doing now, like, where are we? We're super early. You know, we're still complete amateurs. But I do think that, you know, continually surrounding ourselves with people that can press us and keep moving us in the right direction, I mean, you included, like, Just high level people who have different skill sets that can constantly be someone who is lending experience and knowledge Like that's what I'm like.

All right, we're getting there. We're getting around the right people But I still think we're super early Yeah, I mean that's [00:31:00] something I was saying to myself earlier this year was like it doesn't have to be perfect or perfect right now, like you're six months into a 60 year career type thing and starting to think about playing long term or infinite games.

Like what is something that you want to play for the next 10 or 20 years? Because that's how long it takes to become successful at something. Definitely. Yeah, that's a really good mindset. And I, and I agree with Harry too, where I think there's, we can take this thing so much further. And I think like both of us being really consistent in like all the different buckets of your life at the same time.

It's something that, that's like a goal that we both have, like if we kind of like unite that energy in the same way in terms of the way we show up to work, the way you show up for your family, the way you approach the gym, the way you approach nutrition, like having that shared energy is super powerful, but I will say a turning pro moment for me was after Harry and I did, um, Ironman Waco and we were in Austin for three months.

It was just such, um, it was just a, you know, [00:32:00] moment in time that just shifted our perspective on it, on everything. Just because we, we broke out of the Northeast, we broke out of our jobs. We had like both bizarrely shed these like relationships that we've been in as well. It was like this crazy period of transition.

And then you come to Austin, Texas. And when you come here for the first time to immerse yourself in the culture, it's like this health and wellness Renaissance that kind of shatters all your preconceived notions about everything. I didn't know a city like this existed. Yeah. And we kind of left that experience just knowing that there was something really special between the two of us and there was something amazing that we were supposed to be doing.

We just couldn't put our finger on it, but we were like, we know we're supposed to be working together. And then, um, Harry stayed in Austin, I went out to San Diego, and I remember sitting there in January, and for years I had wanted to like publicly talk about my health story, like healing ulcerative colitis through a carnivore diet.

And I actually drafted. blog post up three separate times, put so much pressure on [00:33:00] myself. I literally crumpled it up into a piece of paper and just threw it out because I just didn't think it was good enough. I was kind of letting perfection get in my way. And Harry really pushed me. He was like, dude, I think, I really think that you need to publicly tell the story.

You should do it on Twitter. He had just created a Twitter account. And I remember sitting in my room in San Diego, feeling all of this resistance to write it, but just having this feeling of like, Just the feeling of the life that you want is actually on the other end of you, just like finally putting this thing out into the universe and publishing it.

And so I wrote the blog post. It was way too long. And then, um, I actually edited it down to a Twitter thread and scheduled it for 5 a. m. the next day. And I just had a, I had a good feeling about it, but I ultimately didn't know what was going to happen. And then, um, woke up, scheduled it, posted it, and it just kind of like took off.

I think we gained like 500 followers or 1, 000 followers, maybe it was even less than that, but I feel like that was enough juice to make us realize, like, okay, there's something here. And then Harry Road Fred, it did really well and we just [00:34:00] kept going back and forth. But that's a moment that sticks out where I do feel like there's this much higher level of consistency we want to tap into.

But that was this Turing Pro moment of like, nothing that I read in a business book is going to, Prepare me for this moment. Like I just have to like lean to this discomfort and just do it And I don't have another option besides that yeah, I mean Nothing is going to replace the work that you need to do and the sets and reps and the repetition of it Absolutely, but I think it's really interesting Is that moment of like discomfort that you had to lean into one to publish that piece of content But two before you guys really started to have as much success with it where you're still working this other job You know And you're like, oh, Austin feels right, but I don't know what that thing is that we're circling our finger in.

And, I mean, that's what I struggle with the most, probably, right now, and I think that's what a lot of people struggle with, is leaning into that discomfort during those periods. Well, it's, it's also, it's the benefit of being around people who are going to encourage you to be like, no, you're, you're actually seeing this correctly, this is going to be way [00:35:00] better than you expect.

Um, cause, uh, We've both helped each other out a bunch, but I feel like the moments where we've had breakthroughs, it's the other one being like, dude, you're right. Go for it. Lean in, do the thing. And, um, it's, I think it's tough to replace that level of, um, camaraderie. Um, just like someone who can see the things you don't see.

Um, cause there is always that other side, like the other side of that feeling of fear or just the resistance. that you're feeling with Brett's story, like publishing it. It was like, dude, this story's amazing. You wrote it incredibly well. There's really like, the only thing is like the maybe personal vulnerability that is a little bit wrong and uncomfortable, but like, this is going to be valuable to people.

People are going to hear this story and think about change. Maybe it hits someone who's like struggling right now in the moment that you were struggling in. So that was [00:36:00] just a huge learning lesson over the past two years, like having the people who are in your corner in your foxhole, who are going to be able to give you legit advice, like legit, Hey, take this step.

It's going to be worth it. Yeah. I think that's super, it's so cool to see the relationship that the two of you guys have and how you talk about that and having somebody there to bounce ideas off of and push you to jump off that cliff or jump off the bridge. His mom said not to do it with your friends, but Sometimes that's the push that you need in the right direction in order to actually start doing the thing.

Yeah. Well, I think most people, after taking a risk, surprise themselves with how capable they are of, you know, finding the parachute on the way down. And even if you end up hitting the ground and, you know, having a few bumps and bruises after you hit the ground, most people probably will say it wasn't as scary or it wasn't as intimidating, intimidating as I thought it was looking, you know, from the perspective [00:37:00] of before you take that step and before you take that leap.

But that's where all the growth happens is on the way down when you're in a little bit of a panic mode or like, you know, you're in that grind up late at night, putting the story together, trying to make sure it's perfect, like going through the details of making every single word the right way you want it to be.

That's when you're actually growing. Like, that's the magic. Yeah, I think A lot of people get caught up in the stories that we tell ourselves are worse than anything that's probably ever going to happen for the most part in terms of like limiting beliefs. No one's going to critique your work, no one's going to think about your stuff the way that you do.

But we all get caught up in that aspect of it. So overcoming that I think is like the biggest hurdle for most people in the creative space especially because you're putting yourself out there. Like 99. 9 percent of people don't create in the way that you guys do and do creative work in that aspect of it.

So like being able to overcome that shifts everything around the platforms, but also in terms of like the creative [00:38:00] process.