172: Are You an Asset Or a Liability? | DJ Shipley of GBRS

24:10Nick Bare:What was that transition out in the military like for you going from, I mean, I've seen a lot of my guys that I was in with transition out and struggle, but we're coming from a conventional mechanized infantry unit at Fort Hood, Texas. Coming out of a tier one unit where the standards, the routine, the lifestyle, the Alpa Tempo is so high and different. How hard was that transition of coming back to the reality of you now being surrounded by, for lack of better terms, a bunch of lazy men? It's the hardest thing I've ever done, man. No one ever talked about it. Because, you know, you have the deal when you get on like, oh, you're going to have freedom.

24:54Do whatever you want to. you know rich guy's gonna pay you a couple hundred grand a year to teach them how to shoot on their flat range and there's millions of jobs and google's gonna hire you and amazon all the all the nonsense people throw out there and you get out and you realize that you have been developing a skill set that no one needs unless you're an officer or unless you're like senior senior enlisted a bunch of leadership schools that they like you went to wharton business school the enlisted guys don't do any of that because we're so obsessed over the craft now for me medically retired 17 years in And if I would have done 20 or 22, it would have been the same thing.

25:27I was never going to college. I can shoot really good. CQB is nasty. My jumping is great. Mission planning, I can do all of those things. Google is not going to pay you to do that. No one is. What are you going to do? Contract. That was the plan. But it was terrible, man. That first Monday, the guy retired on a Friday. I had a really good transition job for a little bit. I was teaching selection for the Air Force guys, for their tier one dudes. that was one of the best three years of my life but personally the worst never been more depressed suicidal on all kinds of meds got electrocuted went through multiple shoulder surgeries hand surgeries everything in between it was just terrible man not having a group chat there's no purpose no one's going to call you never going to put the thing on again like what am i doing here i don't have any transferable skill sets i can't do anything else like now that my shoulder's blown jumping hurts so bad now i can't even do it and it's the thing i love to do the most i can't even do it what would i do like i never got to finish a bunch of chapters that i started and now it just haunts me the transition's the worst thing i've ever done

26:37Nick Bare:by far i'm curious you know leaving the team

26:45Nick Bare:how those lines of communication maintained. For an example that is somewhat similar but different, when people leave this organization on their way out, say, yeah, we're going to stay in contact. We're going to keep hanging out. We're going to keep talking. As soon as they exit that door, this thing keeps humming and moving. And if you're not in it, you almost become forgotten. is it like that in the teams where yeah we're gonna keep talking but once you leave they're still doing the job it's hard to maintain communication it's a bullet train man it's going you jump off it doesn't even know you left like at the end of the day and i think that's the hardest thing is because you're so committed to it all the guys are and you love it so much because in the day you're a magnum whiteboard you get shot you get killed you get retired you get whatever.

27:37Madden gets thrown off and no one goes in your place. That's it. It's very hard to come to terms with. So I mean, when guys get out, that's usually where you reconnect is now you're out, I'm out, hey, what did you do? You start talking a little bit, but the guys that are in are gone. See them every now and then, but no. Because I mean, all the stuff they're doing, they can't talk about anyway. Yeah. So what are you going to do? What are you going to talk about? There's nothing outside of that building for them. Nothing. And now that you're on social, forget about it now. now it's a huge resentment i could see that i talked about that last night a little bit yeah i mean it's like that with everybody why you're in why you're under the spell i get it i was the same way but i would also say that i would have never done this never i would have never got on social media it was the evolution of the transition it's how you help people it's how you do it's like yeah i gotta unblur my face gotta tell my story but i think i try to do it in a professional way where it's never chest beating it's always elevating up everybody else i served with like i was talking to one of the guys not too long ago um i said a quote on sean ryan i said watching those guys do cqb was like watching gretzky take the ice like i'm a purist I love cqb it's my thing I could watch it and train and do it all day every day for the rest of my life never had a board session and at a certain point you think you know cqb well enough until you see a professional team that that's all they do bro it's hard to put into words it'll make you emotional like when you're a purist when that it becomes the only thing you do it's like it's like if you're a golfer and you watch Rory McIlroy or Tiger Woods really go on a burner and you're like, oh my God, I can't believe it.

29:29Now imagine 12 guys doing it in unison. Like, oh my God. Doesn't matter the opposition, doesn't matter the pressure, the time constraint, the lighting conditions. It's amazing to watch. It is. Oh my God, it's amazing. It's like always trying to elevate them. Like I want little kids to grow up to want to join the military. That's why I talk so high about Rangers and MARSOC and PJs and CCTs. like because I've got to see the extreme end of the spectrum. I've got to see them right when they come in, and then I've got to watch all of those same units go up where they've been doing it for decades plus.

30:04It's amazing. It'll blow your mind how far people are willing to take to craft, and it never gets the attention it deserves. There's no difference in the amount of time, the discipline, and work ethic it takes to make a really good Green Beret than it is a guy in the NFL. It's the same thing. If you look at numbers, it's pretty damn close anyway. There's not too many people who do that job. Nobody ever puts a spotlight on that.

30:27Nick Bare:Like, oh, yeah, they wear a green beret. Yeah, they're an Afghanist. They don't know anything about what they do. Do you know how hard it is to make that guy? Do you know how hard it is to make a ranger at 75th? Not easy, dude. There's not millions of them running around. Super high attrition rates. It's hard to make. Trying to elevate those guys. Like, we got away from it years ago. Defund the police didn't help. It's like, you remember back in the day, you show up for career day. It'd be three people. There'd be some jack cop with a perfect mustache. There'd be that handlebar mustache with a fireman.

31:00You'd typically be a black guy, Marine on a pull-up bar. Super yoked, knocking out sets of 25 all day long. Any comer, here we go, pull-ups head to head. Those are your three options as a boy in the 80s. What do you want to do? Cop, fireman, military. That's it. We got away from that. Nobody wants to do those jobs anymore. Why? We don't highlight them enough. Everything's just a negative spotlight. Negative spotlight. I don't know, man. To me, every little kid should want to grow up and be a Marine. You should want to grow up and be of service. I got eight-year-olds now. They're like, I want to be a TikTok influencer.

31:34Like, oh my God, dude. It's not even a thing. What are you talking about? Like, be a fighter pilot. Oh yeah, maybe. Better than a TikTok star. And be of service, man. Right? Did you watch that Blue Angels documentary? No, I didn't. Spend some time to watch that. Watch their dirt dive. It'll change your whole perspective on anything. It's amazing, dude. The level of detail they pour into that craft, that's how they can do it. It's not wizardry. It's not AI-generated planes. Those are humans flying those things. It's so impressive. That's what it's like. They just take it to a level where you're like, the level of detail.

32:10My God, okay. Now I get to see it. It's so impressive. Now when you get to see all these people now, I get to do these speaking engagements now and meet all these different teams, and you get to see the savants of their craft. That's all it is. They live a routine every single day. They wake up. They've got a minimum standard they're going to meet that super exceeds everybody else's standard, and they just live it unbroken. Like Tiger Woods makes 1 ,000 contacts with a golf ball a day. When he says that, he doesn't mean, I don't know, two, three days a week. He does mean seven days a week. When Steph Curry says whatever his shot routine is that he shoots every single day, he doesn't mean roughly.

32:47Like he's doing that. if it's 500 made threes a day, he's making 500 threes every single day. He's living a routine. Kobe Bryant, same way. It's like, look at that inspiration, the level of detail, the ownership, the accountability, the obsession. Now apply it to everything else in life. That's it. Everybody in super high success, that's what they've been doing. Yeah, I haven't thought much about how the aspirations of the younger children,

33:15Nick Bare:especially young boys has evolved over the years. going from service-focused industries and positions to selfish, self-imposed hero mindset,

33:33jobs, social media,

33:37Nick Bare:influencing careers, if you will. Where do you think that's leading us to? Where's it leading the world to? And more importantly, where's it leading men to? it's making us weak it's exactly what it's doing it's making everybody weak it's making everybody soft and the fact that we can't say three quarters of the things we used to say in the 80s and 90s now because it hurts people's feelings is absolutely absurd the fact we're having argues about gender and everything like it's it's absolutely insane all of it is and it's just by weak men it is like you feel guilty about being a man why? why? I don't get it you don't have a choice no matter you're born to do the most you can But I don't know, man.

34:16Being of service has always just been the highlight of my life. It's all I've ever wanted. Everybody in my family has been of service. Everybody. Grandfather was a fighter pilot. Had another one land on Omaha Beach. Stacked Nazis 10 foot tall. Uncle's an Army Ranger. Jumped into Panama. 25 years on a counter sniper team at Secret Service. Got another uncle's Marine. Dad was a SEAL. Father-in-law's a SEAL. Brother-in-law's a SEAL. Wife was in the Navy. Mother was in the Navy. I mean, the whole family's of service. Everybody gets it. but I think it makes you almost sacrificial to a group. Like you have to do whatever that group needs.

34:50Okay, when you transition out and now you're working for somebody, you have extreme buy-in on whatever that is because you're trying to replace the void, the Navy, the Army, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, whatever left you. Same thing. I see it the most like out of Joey. Andy, guys who are in teams, Cole, they're so committed because they're trying to place the void the team left. Like, GBRS becomes the team. I'm showing up every day just trying to be better than I was yesterday. I'm trying to be good at these. For the team. Yeah. Like, not because of me. And that's what we talk about a lot. Like, don't put your individual needs above the needs of the group.

35:23Every time I've ever really messed up my life, that's what it's been. I haven't asked myself, does this make the team better? Is this just some selfish shit I'm doing? Is this good for the team or is it good for me? Team first. Always team first. Well, that solves it. Continue. If it's not, don't do it.

35:40Nick Bare:Don't do it. what happens to guys who show up to the team who don't have that mindset, who are selfish, who want the spotlight? Yeah, they go away quick. You just get voted out. Usually they get them in training, especially the tier one level. They'll catch them in training. They'll get period out, top five, bottom five. They'll take bottom five guys and just drop them. What is it? Culture, culture, culture, gone. It's like it's a performance thing. It's like, well, he's got a great culture. right you know performance and trust we want the high performer of high trust but really we'll take a media performer of high trust well before we'll take a high performer of low trust like all this dude is awesome but he's an individual bro i don't care at all about his performance i can teach a monkey to do this job i just need to lock him in a room with 12 other monkeys that are way better than him and he'll naturally progress that's what i need is he super disciplined oh he's hungry too how is he super humble love it bring him we'll take that guy all day long high performer of high trust you don't have that i don't want you at all gotta have it you could be amazing we see dudes that are so fonts dude oh my god you see him on a flat range you seem to kill house you're like okay could you make 25 of him i'll take him and then you watch one cultural component break down like why is he eating alone like there's 65 dudes in his class right now why is he eating alone Why is he walking back alone?

37:06Why is he the last guy in here? Okay, why is he never taking out the trash? What's everybody else saying about him? And you watch the peer reviews come out and you're like, oh, okay. That's what that is. Shows up late, first guy to leave, never takes out trash, never volunteers for anything, doesn't care about anybody else. He's a singleton. He's in isolation, never making jokes, never offers a drive, blah, blah, blah. The small things add up. Do you want 25 of those? No, I don't. Beat it.

37:34Nick Bare:Solves it pretty quick. That's the hardest part about building an organization, especially outside of the military, is, you know, we talked about this last night, even hiring C-level executive roles or higher positions, you're looking for experience, you're looking for competency, you're looking for talent, skill. And sometimes you have to sacrifice a little bit of that experience, a little bit of that competence for higher trust. It's very rare to find someone I found that has lots of experience, the right experience, high competency, and also high trust. They're more of a unicorn than I would like to believe.

38:14Nick Bare:They are, and I don't know why that is. I'm still racking my head around why. I've only been here for an hour. I can feel the cold from this place and I dig it. when people don't come in and they immediately feel it and they're like, ooh, I'll put this on. Okay. They want to come in and try to change it to something they know. It's super rigid, overly structured, like, nope, got to put them in uniforms of the day, got to have clock-in times, nope, got to do this, got to have a geofence. And you're like, where are we going? Like, we shouldn't have to do that. We shouldn't. We should be hiring off culture.

38:50So I have a thing I always tell the guys, like, I'm trying to draft, not trade. Like, I'd rather bring you in here, teach you the skill set, make you a product of the culture, and then watch you naturally blossom. We got a dude out there, Jared Tapper. His dad was on teams, unfortunately, passed away overseas in combat. But I've known him since he was knee high to a doc. He came in here ripping up carpet in the building. He was like a multi-tool of a human. He ran tribe skates. He ran filming. He ran customer service. He came over to training. Now he went to media. Now he's a creative director.

39:21Could I mass produce him? No, but I wish I could. If I could have 25 Jared Tappers, I'd be in a much better position. I wouldn't. He's got an amazing work ethic and he's just a great human. Everybody loves him. That's what you need. Why can't I find a CFO like that? Why can't I find anybody who has corporate experience who isn't corporate? That's the hardest thing. You want to try to come in here and reinvent the wheel. We don't want to reinvent the wheel. I just need to add some C-level people in here. That's a hard thing, man. Brad Gary's always say, culture eats strategy for breakfast. You have an amazing strategy.

39:54Best battle plan you've ever written up in your whole life. It goes against the culture of the group. They'll never adopt it. If you don't adopt a plan as your own, you'll never commit to it. Great plan, sir. Nobody's going to do that. Yeah. No. What do you do?

40:07Nick Bare:Got to go culture first. You got to hammer them with it. No. We're not doing that. Nope. Not willing to compromise on these things. This does matter. Fitness. You brought in the CEO of McDonald's. He walked in here right now and he's like, tear down that gym. We're not catering meals. We're not doing that. We're putting them in uniforms of the day. We're doing these KPIs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's like, guarantee you a double revenue. I don't give a shit about that. I don't care at all. That doesn't matter to me a bit, dude. I'm not chasing a dollar sign. I'm chasing a feeling. I want to wake up every day with the same feeling I had inside that compound.

40:41I go, I'm making a difference. Everybody in this room is rowing in the exact same direction. I might not know the final destination because there isn't one. We're just going to keep going in a positive direction. Everybody row. Same stroke. Same cadence. Let's go and they are it's amazing dude. I'm i'm truly blessed. We have an amazing team But it's so hard to have that team grow man Especially when they come in with outside experience. We see the same thing in special operations You get guys that come from the fleet navy Say they do four six even eight years then they come in to nsw. They have a very hard transition They're not used to an unconventional mindset We don't salute we don't call each other sir.

41:21We don't call each other by rank everything's on a first name basis When it's time to snap it in gear, you snap it in gear. But it's very unconventional. It feels like a professional sports team way before it feels like anything in the military. They're not used to that. They have a very hard transition. I think the corporate mindset's the same way. They're not used to that. Or they've only been indoctrinated into high-level businesses, and they've never actually built one from the ground up, and they don't know the social media component either. So they come in here like, it's got to be this, this, and this.

41:50The only reason we have those customers is YouTube, right? nobody understands that business model. So it's hard, man. It'd be a lot easier just to get them and build them. Like I don't want to trade. I don't want to lose Jared Tapper. I'm bringing a creative director from Nike. I don't give a shit what Nike's done. It doesn't matter to me a bit. I'm not trying to be Nike. I think if you just hold true to the culture, hold true to the values, you'll eventually build a team.

42:14Nick Bare:It's equal parts art and science. I heard this quote a long time ago. I still think about it all the time in regards to people. if you can understand someone's incentives, you can predict their behaviors. If you bring someone in who's incentivized to build their LinkedIn profile and their resume, people - I'd love you said that. This is like a hard fact that there are people who live their life to build their LinkedIn resume. It's like - Dude, we have to be really careful. And I'm sure you do too. even when you put on jobs like Indeed, often you can't really tell them where the job is because if you tell them, all the guys on social stalk you, they'll spam you, do the whole thing.

43:02It's like, no, man, I need really committed people. Now because of COVID, everybody's working remote. Oh, can I do this job from Albuquerque? No, I need you here. Okay. What do you want to do? COVID jammed a lot of stuff up too, but getting through it.

43:18Nick Bare:Me and Trey were talking about this last night. because we drove to dinner and then we drove back to HQ from dinner and just, you know, watching your team communicate and you can just feel the energy of your team. And I think we were talking about, you know, how the workforce has changed over the years is it used to be, and probably some of the way that the military still operates. It's the mission first. It's the organization. You are there to support the organization, the mission. But a lot of people now believe that the organization and mission is there to support them as the employee. So it's what is this company?

44:04Nick Bare:What is this mission going to do for me as opposed to what am I going to do to build this company up? It's completely flip-flopped and messed up and selfish as opposed to selfless. It is not service-oriented. It is me-oriented. It's painful. It is. We got super lucky, though. You guys have been around a lot longer than us. But right when we started to get momentum, we brought in basically a core group. Dave's is one of them. Jared's one of them. A bunch of the creatives, they were the first ones in there before it was even a thing, before we even opened up social media. So they've been there for the entirety.

44:41So they got a lot of buy-in, a lot of brand loyalty to it. and they know it better than anybody else because they've lived it day by day. Like they've seen, there's no business model. Like we're not held by any standard. We're setting our own standard every single day. So they show up. If you turn to security cameras, nine o 'clock, nine on Tuesday, three quarters of creative team's still in there. It's one of those jobs like you couldn't pay them for the time they put in or the passion they put in for it because we couldn't afford it, right? You pay them well, but the understanding is like that we're building this place.

45:13as many hours as I've logged they've equally logged the same it's nice having a team full-by-ended

45:18Nick Bare:oh those are the people you never want to lose exactly ride or dies and I heard one I don't know if it was Gary V one of the one of the dudes online and he goes we're going to go through and he goes I'm going to line out every single person in the company and if they turn in there two weeks now if I wouldn't beg them to stay I'm going to fire them and you look down at the list of everybody we have in the company right now like who if they turn their two weeks where I go, no, dude, come on. Okay, let's have an honest conversation here. Everybody on the team right now would have a hard conversation.

45:49Like, don't do this right now. Don't, like, I don't want to lose you. There's nobody on the team where it's like, oh God, it'd be so much easier if you just left. We're good. We're in a great spot. And I think that that's part of the success. Started small, scaled it as we could. But now we've got a team that's like, we're all buddies. And I know that's got flaws in it too, but not culturally speaking. it was the same way in the team everybody loved each other get the highest performers out because now it's a group buying like i really care about my performance because i really want you to be able to go home at the end of the day and if i mess this up chances are i'm gonna die or you're gonna die i don't want that to happen same thing in work like everything they do truly matters now they get it from order fulfillment customer service ops everything they got true buying

46:35Nick Bare:I'm curious on your thoughts on this. And maybe it's just a matter of different ways to describe the same thing or different titles that really don't matter. But I think it kind of sets up the way you run an organization. You can either call your organization a family or a team. And we've gone back and forth over the years. And again, does it really matter? maybe, but I think it sets realistic expectations of what is your role here and how are we going to operate together? Or when you're a family, it's like you put up with a lot of stuff. You got to live with them. You got to stay with them. It's like, we're in this together.

47:16Nick Bare:We're blood. You can be a turd and you're still my brother. Or you can be a team, a professional sports team, for example, or it's like, hey, we got a mission. We're here to win championships. and if you're not holding the standard, you're off the team. Do you view your organization as a family or team or a combination of both? A combination of both. It definitely started as a family and now we, you know, you have to redefine the standards. They're like GBRS sets at True North. Like I check in with it every single day. On days I don't want to get up, I don't want to go to the gym. I don't want to do this.

47:53I don't want to do that. I do it because the brand deserves it. Everybody else does the exact same thing. We hold each other accountable. I mean, there's people in there, personality-wise that they got their quirks, you navigate around, but you love them at the end of the day, you'd beg them to stay. But it's easy to get them for full buy-in. Like right now, do you think you're upholding the standard that that sets? No. Fix it. Okay. If you can't fix it, you got to go. The brand deserves more. Same thing for me. If I'm not cutting it, I'll leave. I've said it from day one. The moment I can't hold the standard, I'm gone.

48:25Everybody else has the exact same mindset. If you put that at true north, it'll keep you going in the right direction the family stuff you're right you'll put up with a lot of stuff a lot of piss poor performance a lot of bad attitudes bad cultural stuff if you don't have to put up with the cultural stuff it is a family you can have those hard conversations the rough ones you don't want to have but at the end of the day we are a performing team we do have to perform so it is a team if you can't meet the minimum standard if you can't exceed our standard right now if you're not putting in a work ethic you can't be part of the team

48:55Nick Bare:when you were in the teams in the navy did you have to have many hard conversations or did everyone show up with the understanding of this is the standard when i was first thing you'd have to have a couple of them with the new guys when they checked in yeah and usually that was they just got a lot of buds you know you're broken down you're kind of weak it's like here's a lifting protocol you need to put on 25 pounds right now like we've got new new guy Olympics coming up, there's body weight bench, weighted pull ups, like you better crush that test. Okay, forcing that kind of stuff. If guys aren't well round on a flat range, you need to shoot more.

49:35Like you're gonna get attached to this guy, you guys can hit the range two, three days a week. But at a certain level, you never have to. The only time you'd have to have hard conversations are Liberty incidents. Guys drinking out in town, guys getting in trouble. It's like, you gotta tighten this up. Outside of work. Yeah. That's not good for the team, not good for the organization. because all they see is Navy SEAL gets DUI, Navy SEAL gets in bar fights. Oh my God. Haircuts and shaves. Like we'd have to wind in guys for that on the same way. You know, I had incidents when I was younger too. Yeah, not too much.

50:08Nick Bare:Can you talk about DevGrew? And even for me, over the years, I've heard DevGrew getting thrown out a lot. And to be honest, I thought being a Navy SEAL was tier one. I didn't understand that being an AVC was tier two. Correct me if I'm wrong. But I was researching it. It said like DevGrew, for example, is tier one. What is DevGrew? And what does that selection process look like to get there? It's the maritime counterterrorism unit. Army's got one too. You got legacy tasks and all that, but we basically divide the world up 50-50. You got revolving schedules for blowouts, but high value targets, hostage rescue, direct action, counterterrorism.

50:54If you need it, that pops up, we're going. So we've got supporting assets. We've got army helicopter assets. It's all under a joint special operations command, but it's very hush-hush. Don't talk about it much, but they're prepped, ready to go on whatever happens. Any scenario in the world that could throw out, they're trained for it. They're the response element for it. And you are always on call. Even when you're not on call, you're on call. Because if something happens, and you got to go, you have to be able to spin them and go. Essentially, you know, blocks throughout the year, you're on a 30-minute recall.

51:28If you get that text, you get that page, you're inside on a bus heading to the airfield in 30 minutes. Wow. You got to be ready to go. Can't be drunk, can't drive over a bridge. Like there's a whole bunch of stuff you have to be with inside of this geofence. If you leave it, you can't make the recall time, you're off the manifest and their heads are going to roll. So you got to be locked in.

51:46Nick Bare:How long were you a SEAL before going through that suction process? I did three deployments, six years. I screened after my second deployment. So I was like 21, 22 years old when I screened. And then I did one more rotation on Iraq and then I went in 2010. So I was 20, 23, 22 when I screened, it got picked up 24 when I went and I turned 25 at the end of the selection. Something like that. and do you choose to go through selection or do you get selected you have to screen okay you have to put in a package your command has to sign a bunch of paperwork you got to go there and do a week-long screening process psych shooting cqb physical fitness the whole thing formal boards everything in between you get through all that they'll give you a slot to attend selection training and it is intense dude i go through buds twice before i go through green team again really oh Can you talk about what that selection process looks like?

52:50It's everything you'd have to do in BUDS because now you're broken down. Even the screen test to get in, the one to get in the BUDS is pretty easy. The order you take it in, it sucks because you've got to do the swim first and a bunch of stuff like that. The push-ups are doubled, the sit-ups are doubled, the pull-ups are doubled, the run's twice as long, the swim's twice as long, it's open water, a bunch of those different things just to get in. Then you've got legacy test, bodyweight bench, broad jump, whole NFL combine. but it's nothing but assaulting you're just doing cqb and trained on that and all the infill methods jumping diving walking helos driving every aspect of that and then every type of problem set you should see every type of building everything and all you do is cqb to everything it goes into that and how long is that selection nine months it's nine months i'm just getting but i mean the crap you get smashed dude but it's cool because you bring in the world's best at whatever that discipline is.

53:48So it's the same model, right? So you'll bring out the world's best shooting instructors for four weeks. And all you do is shoot eight hours a day. And then you go off and do CQB, or you'll break it up four hours on a range, four hours in a house, four hours in a house, four hours in a range, back and forth. And you'll do that for four, eight weeks consecutive. And then you'll just shoot three to five days a week after that. Then you'll do another shooting blocks. Your baseline keeps increasing. Do the same thing with jumping. You'll go out and do a hundred jumps in a couple of weeks, and then you'll jump once every month, but you'll do 25 jumps in those two or three days.

54:21So now you're just increasing currency. Do the exact same thing, exact same thing. Then you put it all together and you do a month of just straight full mission profiles, jumping in, helos, driving in, every different type of scenario. It's sick, dude. But man, it is intense, especially for me because I'm an idealist. like i grew up in the community i didn't know anything about the command i knew nothing about that group never heard about it growing up really didn't know what it was didn't know the mission set until you got in and you would see the older guys in your deployments leave and then you'd see him at a bar six months later hair down to the shoulders beard down to here and you're like what happened to jt and he's like oh he went over to went over to dev group what is that and you're like ah it's another team oh okay don't know anything about it and then later on in your career you get the mission brief and you hear about the whole organization screening process and drop your application and go

55:16Nick Bare:how many guys are in dev grew at a time um like going through like a selection course like actively in a in a team you can't talk about it but it I'll tell you the number off camera shockingly low wow like you know everybody in the building you've heard every single person's name you've seen every single person it's very very small very small when you're going through that process and then on that team were you mind blown at the level of professionalism that you're surrounded by or it was just that's what you grew up in very different very professional very locked in very disciplined extremely funny team guys are funny team guys are funny dude and some of the instructors you have they could be stand-up comedians they are hysterical but when it's time to switch it on they'll go from that to being a crankster back and forth really really quick they'll be able to toggle in and out those are my favorite type of people they're amazing but i'll tell you you talk about performance anxiety performance pressure i was eating double benadryl every day before cqb to try to drop my heart rate down try to be kind of lethargic because every dude you've ever looked up to because all the guys you've worked with eventually elevate up and now they're there.

56:29So when you'll go in, they'll put you in a room as big as this. Four guys will take it down. There's not a target in it. And up in the rafters, there'll be 25 dudes that are demigods to you. It's like Tom Brady standing up there watching me about to catch passes. You're like, oh my God. Don't look up. Don't look up. Heart rate's at 190. You're like, oh, here we go. everything you do and you're walking down he's like stop freeze back up one inch half of that back up scan over move back half inch four and a half inch back three quarters of an inch right there that's where you have to scream and you're like oh my god okay okay when they when they mean right there they do mean right there they don't mean two inches further they don't mean an inch past they mean right there it's a very just one that's incredible it's like it's a remarkable craft to hone in and just become an expert it is man but a lot of its big boy rules apply like once you get in there's no command pt like no one's forcing you to do anything you just better hold up the standard like if a human being can't do it in this job everybody's expected to be able to do it can one guy climb up and down that mountain yep everybody's going let's go you should be able to do it so a lot of guys they adopt weird routines but i mean everybody's old everybody's broken but somehow they're still maintaining a super high standard it's uh it's super impressive to watch i've heard you talk about this in other interviews and podcasts but

57:56Nick Bare:just the amount of injuries you have sustained over the years no i have nothing to compare to some of the guys in there we got dudes double pec tear double bicep tear torn hamstring torn quad I've been shot twice, blown up, countless TBIs. I mean, as soon as you start getting the replacements, that's where it gets dicey. But there's multiple dudes with no ACL. They took a cadaver ACL, didn't, now they don't have anything. They're just operating on braces. Like, they don't care. You'll never be able to tell. But as soon as you have to get a hip replacement, that's where it gets dicey. You get a shoulder replacement, you got to go.

58:27But outside of that, I mean, everybody. And most of the guys, and it's not a good thing, I'm not super proud of it, but the injuries you hide. they become your limiting factor. Like now I'm at a point where I can't hide it. Like I can't throw a grenade. It's 50-50, my shoulder comes out of socket. Like now we've got a serious issue. Okay, well, how long can I KTT that thing in place, taking 1 ,600 milligrams of Motrin and PRP shots and all this other stuff? How long can I push this off? Can I get through deployment? And as soon as you get back, you've got a surgery scheduled. You walk in and now you've got four guys working on you for the next 12 weeks, trying to get your shoulder back up so you don't miss the next deployment.

59:07so you time everything you get really used to just dealing with injuries bad ones like ones that would just i mean we got dudes that had been shot before have made it through made it through training checked in and had to have two or three more surgeries because the wound won't heal they've just been training on it anyway waterproof bandages and just legs pussing out draining their boot and you're like oh my god you're not going to be able to pull him out like he's never going to tap out he's just going to suck that up forever eventually you got to pull him out like you have to get a surgery on that you have to fix that we need you at a hundred percent not a hundred percent mindset we need the total package right now and that's what happened to everybody everybody's hurt man these are injuries from training and from combat from everything yeah everything but i mean training is super dangerous dude dangerous doing hundreds of skydives a year all the cqb all the breaching all the combatives everything i mean dudes shoulders get blown out hip i mean i broke my femoral neck off in green team.

1:00:06I just kept jumping on it. Made it all the way through. Finished selection, walked in, had emergency surgery, pumped in 15 inches of titanium. I was on a plane to Afghanistan in a couple weeks. Like, we'll just hide it.

1:00:20Nick Bare:And the up-tempo and frequency is so high, you just don't have time to recover. No. No. When we get done, I'll show you a picture of the day I checked in. It's still on my ID. And then you'll see what I look like now. It ages you quick, man. It looks like depressancy. Like four years in there. I mean, it puts on 15 years on you quick. Not sleeping, just everything. Transitioning out of the military then, that's when you got all of the, or most of the surgeries and rehab and started taking care of yourself again? No. I did my hip, I did my stomach three times, a bunch of stitches, stuff like that, fractures while I was in, nothing crazy.

1:01:01What happened to your stomach? I, not a cool story. I had an inguinal hernia surgery when I was a kid. So, balls were like this big. We were overseas, we were in Afghanistan doing something, we were doing fight club, one of the guys gave me a push kick in my lower abdomen. And as soon as he did, I felt something.

1:01:18Nick Bare:I was like, what the hell is that? And I looked down and it looked like a half an egg was under my skin. So I went over to the surgeon's command. I was like, yo, check this out. The ultrasound, he's like, it looks like a big cyst. Let's just cut it. Stuck a knife in it and cut that thing. A little bit of fluid came out, but nothing. He's like, I don't really see anything. Closed it up. Two days later, this little green thing came to the surface. I picked that and I pulled it and a strand of like eight sutures came out from 1985. Oh my gosh. So pulled him out. I was like, what the hell? Went back in there.

1:01:46There was a fistula track that went from my testicles up my leg, connected to my hip surgery, and then ran into my stomach. It was like that long. You could scope the whole thing. Yeah. Oh, it was dicey, dude.

1:01:58Nick Bare:So I had to pack that whole thing for months, dude. It was a, yeah, it was a nightmare. So you were getting surgeries while you were still in. Yeah. To maintain. Yeah, but I mean, you have to do that one because now I have an open wound. I mean, I can put four fingers inside like this marsupial pouch and palpate it. I couldn't feel anything. The skin just wasn't connected. It was just a huge void. Just filled with pus and fluid. It was disgusting. Yeah. I did three rounds of plastic surgery on that. It wouldn't heal. And yeah, when I got out, I had that gnarly shoulder dislocation. That's what really did, man.

1:02:30That thing medically retired me. It shredded everything on my shoulder. They wanted to fuse my lower back, my neck. I had to get double shoulder surgery, double hip surgery. What are we doing? I'm not going to sit here and get five years worth of surgery and never deploy. I'm not doing that. So got a medical retirement and started knocking them out.

1:02:48Nick Bare:I've heard the story of your transition out between surgeries and then being on a bunch of medication that doctors had you on. And then you got electrocuted while doing up skateboards. You've got to just beat the crap on. Been through the ringer, man. on the journey yeah yeah some people had a lot worse than me i mean still got 10 fingers 10 toes but a lot of um a lot of emotional distress because when you're there you've got such a purpose you feel like you're well-rounded you feel like you there's a reason i'm waking up every single day when you don't have that anymore and then you get hurt now i don't have the physical connection my mental health is right behind it then i start to spiral now there's no purpose There's no reason for me to get out of bed now.

1:03:37No one needs me. What am I doing now? And now when you get so hurt that I can't get out of bed, I can't feed myself, can't shower. It's like, oh my God, how did I get here? Like, I don't want to live like this. I don't. How'd you dig out of that? My wife and Vernon. Yeah, man, I came out of the hospital. Had two plates, 20 something screws. It tore all the anchors out we had previously put in the shoulder. I had to mumford the bicep tendonesis five or seven anchors in my shoulder and from the contraction it ripped all those anchors out and it shattered my collarbone shattered my opposite scapula this is from getting electrocuted yeah yeah blew out of my thumb welded that tendon to the nerve bundle so my thumb was like this so we had to do a z lengthening break up all that scar tissue relocate my tendon blew it at the top of my hand out of my thighs one spot right next to my ass probably about that deep um blew out of the top of my head like small ones like almost like ingrown hairs, but just electricity was coming out of them.

1:04:34So shorts can catch it on fire, the whole thing. And I mean, you're familiar because you endurance rhabdo. Yeah. When you get electrocuted, your body goes through a process very similar to rhabdo. It releases some kind of enzyme. It gets all your muscles and basically liquefies them. They turn septic and you die. So I'm laying in a hospital bed and this doctor comes in and he's like, hey man, I got to come back here every hour. I got to check your blood markers. When this enzyme hits this, number i gotta start chopping you up i was i just came out of that shoulder surgery i've been with vernon for like a year some change straight i was probably 230 pounds six percent body fat built like a brick shit best physical condition i've been in and it made me really second guess getting out it's like dude if i could build back to this would just die and lifting twice a day like i could still do this job like i'm good then i got electrocuted so i had this huge fall from grace Now I'm back on a high.

1:05:29I'm like, okay, I'll be able to transition out, have a nice, easy roll. Boom, get electrocuted. And now I can't do anything. I'm in double slings for months. I can't wash my hair. I can't wipe my ass. I can't do anything, dude. I mean, nothing. I couldn't do anything. And he shows up my house, brings over a two pound dumbbell. He went through range of motion. He said, what can you do? Like, nothing. Well, you can do wrist curls. You can do wrist curls in 20 minute walks, man. That's what we did. got into there until I could actually pressurize my upper body. If you were broken a collarbone, it's miserable.

1:06:01Your scapula is even worse. You can believe that. But we had a belt squat in the gym he was working in, and we did that probably for a month straight. That and anything lower body we could do. I couldn't do anything upper body. And as soon as I get moving back around, we hit it again two days every day and rebuilt back. So without him, yeah, I probably wouldn't be here. I didn't want to play the game anymore. I hate saying that but man I was I was in the depths of it dude no purpose no connection my wife I hadn't been down to Mexico yet like I just I was circling the drain dude and if I would have had the strength to end it I would have if he wouldn't have came over then there's no telling I was in total isolation I didn't want to see him I don't want to see anybody else I was embarrassed I was hurt everything just sucked and he showed up he's like no no we're living the same routine we're gonna wake up 6 a.m we're gonna do this every day okay i five or that two pound dumbbell went to a five went to a 10 went to a 15 went to a 30 went to a 40 now we're doing all these grip things to try to rebuild my hand strength i got the surgery on my thumb we had to rehab that surgery on a bunch of different other stuff and just kept building so now i just don't break the routine no matter what every time i have something bad has happened so i just don't break it i force it even on days where logistically i don't have time I'll find time.

1:07:25Nick Bare:I'll do something. Stick to the routine, man. That's the power of routine and people. Yep. Having the right people in your life. Dude, Vernon's been more of a life coach than a strength coach in a lot of different ways. But that combination, man, he's just such a good human, but he's so knowledgeable. And he can look at me. He can read my energy level from across the room. He can look, what's going with that foot? He's like, nah, it's fine. He's like, no, it ain't. Pull your sock off. Let me sit. Nope. All right, we're doing foot health this morning. Like he sees everything that's going on, all my limitations and he helps me navigate them because I got a laundry list dude.

1:08:00But all the things I want to be able to do in life, he just develops a program so I can still do those things. But live the routine, man. Surround yourself with people better than you and live the routine. You'll naturally progress.

1:08:10Nick Bare:I've been really motivated by your guys' approach to training as I've dove more into it for a few different reasons. You know, for me, training for a long time has been either a bodybuilding strength training approach or on the other spectrum, long distance running. And I found that like you guys have developed this protocol and program that incorporates both and connects the dots of observation of what are you trying to accomplish? Why? What are your limitations? And you can build on a program to achieve very high levels of fitness that are very unique and personalized. But at the same time, I think about fitness as a whole.

1:08:58Nick Bare:A lot of people turn fitness, and I've done this too for many years of my life. Fitness has been a selfish pursuit to make myself look impressive. I'm going to train for this race to get a PR, not necessarily for myself, but so that I can say, hey, look how fast I am, look how impressive I am. and what I'm now as you know getting older and my focus is my wife my children my team fitness is a responsibility I have to be an asset to the people in my life so I would rather be able to train in the morning that builds all of this sustainable energy to show up for my family in the afternoon as opposed to train in the morning that fatigues me so I'm just hanging on by a thread until the evening and I'm a zombie for my children.

1:09:52Nick Bare:But viewing fitness as it's not for me necessarily, it's for the people in my life to show up as an asset to them and avoid being a liability. I mean, do you know the deal too, because you train so much when you're not able to train the guilt you feel? Oh, definitely. You know, people tell me, it's like, you know, you do too much. If I was a bodybuilder, I know I do too much. I know I should probably train three days a week. I need to optimize recovery. I do this more for my mental health and for just force myself to be well-rounded. Like you said, for the people around me, trying to redefine my own standard, especially on days I don't want to go.

1:10:26When I wake up and I'm super sore, I'm like, oh God, I don't want to do this. Those are the days I love the most because everybody else would go, I'll just take the day off. I know you would. Yeah, so I'm not doing it. I'm going in. I mean, we'll land on a red eye, two o 'clock in the morning. My alarm clock goes off at five. My wife looks at me and she goes, you're insane. She's like, nobody's expecting you to be in there. Honey, the fact you think I'm going in there for them alarms me. I'm going in for me. I'm going for my mental health. This is my little spiritual conquest. Like I need this time for me.

1:10:55Self-connect every single day. But no, I mean, it's make yourself well-rounded. Make yourself an asset. Like I don't need to be a marathon runner. I need to be eight weeks away from doing whatever I want to be able to do. Maintain a high average. It's something that's repeatable. Like I see guys that do these crazy diets and these crazy fads. I call out David Goggins all the time because people look at him and it's so impressive. One that he's 50, able to do all that. And they're like, man, I can't run a hundred miles. Brother, you don't have to. That's his thing. That's what he does. You don't have to do that thing.

1:11:27The discipline, the workout that he puts in, just apply that to your life. That could be a 20 minute walk fasted every single morning, 365 days a year. Don't ever mess it. Add the exact same thing at night. You want to see a cheat code to a diet? Walk after every meal. I'll change your whole life. I pulled hundreds of pounds off people with that. walk 20 minutes after everything single thing you consume just do that you just lose weight oh my god it's easy dude just be disciplined you don't have to run 50 miles you don't have to you need to get on a program you need to make yourself well-rounded

1:11:59Nick Bare:what is your view on long distance running i'm curious you and vernon and i'd like i mean i've had to do long distance running when i call it long distance anything over 12 miles is long distance to me actually anything over eight miles is long distance to me but we've had to do crazy long runs man and i get it the more i got into running the more i was forced into running the worse i got at everything else right like when you actually get in the gym everything else but i'd like it for the mental preparation like we weren't listening to music like i told you like on our run we don't wear a watch there's no music it's just you that's very different like if you ran a hundred mile race with no stimulus just you that's very very different like you got to go in the spirit world to get that thing done yeah right i've never seen anybody well-rounded enough and i know they exist because i mean you're one of those guys a lot of these guys cam haynes is one of those guys like i consider you guys all really well-rounded but i think the majority of the people they realize that they don't want to put the time in the gym and they're running as low as hanging fruit they can do with no logistics.

1:13:07I can just buy these$150 shoes and turn on my driveway, take a left and just run. Like I don't have to go to a gym. I don't have to be strong, but this is impressive enough. Yeah. Until you got to do something super dynamic. Until you got to do something where you have to jump, grab this dude, move him through time and space against his will. Then you realize like, yeah, maybe being a marathon runner isn't the best thing for me. Maybe running really fast half marathons might be my, might be my jam. Maybe get in the gym a little bit more. But for me, I don't care what they do. I just want people to be active.

1:13:37Yeah. Like I want little people to look at you and go, dude, my dad's an ultra marathon runner. Like sick. What do you think that kid's going to do? Be an ultra marathon runner. He is. He's going to run in college. He's going to run professionally. Not enough people have physical presence in themselves anymore. Like you don't have to look like C-Bomb, Mr. Olympia. You don't have to do any of that. I'm not talking about aesthetically. Can you perform? Like if somebody grabs your daughter in a Walmart parking lot right now, what are you going to do about it? you don't have any tools on you, you ain't calling 911.

1:14:07What are you going to do about it? You're not going to run them to death. What are you going to do? You need to be well-rounded. You don't have to be a fourth degree black belt in this, but you need to put in some significant, some significant effort early in the phase to lay down a foundation to where you're capable. And we talk to cops all the time. Like if I was a cop right now and I had to make a mandatory rule, I'd make every cop do a hundred classes BJJ a year, twice a week. I'd make the department pay for it and make it mandatory. Make them well-rounded. Get them in the gym. Like, why we're not putting gyms in all these police departments baffles me.

1:14:42Like, guys having to put a kitty together, buy their own gym equipment. It's like, what are we doing, man? Yeah. What are we doing? Firemen, same thing. It's like, they're buying their own gym equipment. What are we doing? Like, you want them to be physically fit. It saves them. That becomes their first lifeline. What's the best EDC? Me. I wish I had a bunch of tools, but if I don't, I'm stuck in an airplane. I'm not a victim. not by a damn stretch. That's what we're trying to push. You can get a lot of it done, the work ethic, the discipline, the routine, just by sticking with the gym. Now you add in one more factor.

1:15:15Cool, now we're going to do this. We're going to go boxing one day a week. I'm going to run that for six months. I've got a pretty decent base. Let's add in BJJ. I'll be one day of boxing, one day of BJJ. Do that for two years straight. You've got a really good foundation that's going to stick with you for a decade. Add in one more discipline. Now we add in shooting, we add in something else. Maybe you're not a runner. Maybe we add in running now. Maybe you're super strong, you're a hybrid athlete, but you don't run. You only sprint. Let's push it out to four miles. Push it out to eight miles.

1:15:41Let's see where you start to fall off. You learn more about yourself, become more well-rounded.

1:15:46Nick Bare:How do you guys at GBRS establish goals within fitness programming? So instead of just showing up and going through the motions, I was talking to Vernon a little bit last night at dinner. He was talking about how you guys are in this focus right now of a training block. How do you guys as a team identify what's the goal for this training block? And then like, how is it established and met to keep training interesting, but also have these things that are driving the motivation of fitness? Well, I'm blessed because we had a bunch of strong dudes in the gym. So you're really always chasing. So we do them in blocks.

1:16:23That first week is kind of like a feel out week. The movements might be slightly different. The order might be out of sequence from what we typically did before. And you're like, oh, we're starting off with incline dumbbell wrestling. okay what's three working sets okay what's the last time we did that okay well that was the end of the workout and i only did 70 80 90 90 we'll make it up okay well now since i'm fresh i'm gonna go 80 90 100 110s let's see how far we can push this let's see how far i can milk out these reps and really try to make it more challenging because now i'm listening with vernon davis jared they're all super strong we're all basically chasing each other like joey drops down and knocks out a set of 12 with the 110.

1:16:59You're like, Jesus Christ. Okay. Okay. Here we go. It's like everybody's making you push a little bit further. The sprints are the same way. Everything we do, even though we don't have to say it, we're chasing. Like Vernon's in there. He's right over top of you. He's doing all the movements with you. He's strong as an ox anyway. His movement's fantastic. Like he's setting the example. Now everybody else is setting their own individual example. How much intensity you can show up. Some days you're drained, dude. On those days where you land at two o 'clock in morning i'm in there at five i'm not firing at a hundred percent but i'm giving you a hundred percent of whatever i have i think that's the whole point is there's an internal mechanism you have to turn on to make yourself self-motivated like i can just go through the motions like i can do that exact same workout with 40 pound dumbbells and not feel a single thing from it that's not the point the point is i'm chasing what i did last week pushing myself just a little bit further like last week i did 80 80 90 and i did 8 8 8 okay let's go 80 90 100 110 and i'm gonna go 8 8 i'm gonna make a push for 10 like really really push it just a little bit more and the confidence it goes called stacking micro winds the same condition i do in my morning routine i'm putting all the conditions in place to where i'm not late my car's full of gas phones at 100 i've taken all my pills done all my things i'm not stuck behind a school bus i'm not late by any means i walk in everything all conditions are set.

1:18:20I'm not thinking about anything else except to the lift. How far am I willing to push? The whole way. We got to. Crank of the intensity. As soon as we're done, power down. I'm not thinking about the gym anymore. I'm not thinking about my family now. I'm only thinking about the meeting I have to walk into right now. How do I put myself mentally in the best condition to be the version of DJ I want to be before I clear that threshold? I have to have that morning routine. If I don't have the gym, like you got to speak in engagements kicking off at 9 a.m. They don't have a gym and I'm down in, the Marriott dumbbells to 40.

1:18:51It's like, is it even worth me going down there? Yep, I'm going to maximize everything I can with those 40 pound dumbbells. I'm going to try to give myself the same physical exertion I would at my home gym so I feel the exact same because I know how I normally would feel if I had a perfect morning routine. I'm not just going to look at the gym and go, man, I got dumbbells to 40. I'll take the day off. I will feel so out of sync the whole rest of my day. I'll think about that one day for months. Nope. Not what Steph Curry would do. Nah, dude. I'm going. just wake up and just wake up and push man you got to be able to control your own intensity and my wife gives me crap all the time for where she's she sees me wake up and i'm trashed

1:19:30Nick Bare:i did a nine mile run the day before and lower body strength and i'm waking up to go run eight miles you know i feel every part of that previous day in my legs she's like what are you doing just chill you know i need this and i know some of my training probably a lot of my training creates diminishing return. But mentally, I need that to lay into the foundation of the day. Because for me, just like you, it is so much of my morning routine, whether I'm running or strength training. Have you ever tried working out in the afternoons? Only when I have a second workout. Everybody will argue with me like, I get better listening the evening.

1:20:12I bet you're not as consistent as I am. You won't. your kid will miss the school bus. You'll have to go pick her up. You'll have to get Chick-fil-A. You'll have to come home. You got to do this. One daughter's got soccer practice. One's got ballet. Your wife can't be in both places at once. You're going to miss the gym. Not if I wake up before they do. And that's the whole point. It's like that was the routine. I'm going to wake up before my family's going to ask me, hey, can you take out the trash? Can you do this? Can you do that? Hey, can you make them breakfast real quick? Nope. We're not even having that conversation because I'm not going to be here.

1:20:43Going to power them down, only focus on my routine. and I know it sounds selfish and it is, but it's selfish now to be selfless later. So like you talked about, when I come home at five, six o 'clock now, I'm not thinking about any of those other things and I'm just going to think about six o 'clock to 9.30 when I put them down. I'm only going to get three hours, three and a half hours a night with them. Let's maximize those three and a half hours with the same intensity and focus that I had in the gym. It's very hard to do. If now I'm sitting here like, I should be in the gym right now, but I'm not because you missed the school bus because you want to talk to your friends after class.

1:21:13I live inside of a reality. I'm not going to be consistent if I don't get it in first thing in the morning.

1:21:17Nick Bare:Yeah, I'm the same way. In the spillover, like you talk, the dopamine hitting everything else that cascades. Like I walk in 10 a.m. meeting like, I feel like I just drank four shots of espresso, man. I'm good to go. If I don't have it, I just feel lethargic. I feel broken. I feel like I'm on the wrong side of 40. Not if I get my lift in. Like why would I ever break that? I'm not going to. Yeah, as soon as I get home, that is no longer my time. That is my family's time. and even if I try to save a training session for the back half of the day because our gym is here at HQ, it's very easy for people to access me when I'm in that gym.

1:21:55Nick Bare:Hey, I just got a quick question here. We just came out of a meeting, can you answer this? When I'm in the training session, I'm focused. That's all I want to focus on. Do you do most of your training sessions with the team or do you do some alone? I do most of them with the team and a lot of that's to it sounds stupid a lot of us to show the example like nobody in that team will ever ask me if I'm coming in in the morning to lift like you should have stopped asking that seven years ago like I'm never going to miss it and if nobody else can make it I'm still in it like I'm not doing it for you I love having a group there but if you ain't going I'm still going it's just part of it so no I mean I'd love to have a group in here to lift but I'm fine in isolation doesn't matter to me a bit I'm the same way but I have found that when I train with a group of people who have the same intention behind training the intensity is on a whole other level you're pushing reps to places that you couldn't push on your own you get a bunch of dudes together that are thrown down at a gym I mean you walk out of there a whole lot more fatigued and tired and so the next day that's what I love man like that's why you know I tell you it's a universal formula.

1:23:08Surround yourself with people that are better than you. Magic will unlock. It's the same thing in the gym. If I was the strongest dude in my gym, I would need to move gyms. I'm just, I'm blessed. I've got a bunch of people that have the same work ethic, same intensity, same focus. They're bigger, they're stronger, they're faster. It just helps me push. I love it, dude. That's why I like coming in here. Beautiful facility. Everybody lifts, everybody gets it. It's not like a bunch of novice in there. One of the things I, you watch Pumping Iron, right?

1:23:37Nick Bare:Oh, yeah. Everybody's watched Pumping Iron. I fucking love Pumping Iron. That scene when Lou Ferrigno was in there training in that old school gym and that dude with that soft body is next to him with those 15-pound dumbbells. Dude, what a... Oh, so demotivating, right? Then you watch the exact same session in Gold's Gym. It's like very different. Very different. Just by scenario. Just by scene. You got to find those places where every day you show up, you're like, man, I don't have it today. well that's unfortunate because vernon feels like a striped ass eight and he's about to push today and you're like okay okay here we go on the days you don't want to have it somebody will have another level they're going like oh thanks davis he just pulled 605 off the floor you're like oh god here we go it's one of those man yeah you got to surround yourself man that big fish small pond thing just never works you outgrow it really quick there was this gym we went to in pittsburgh in January.

1:24:30Nick Bare:We were there for, we're the on-course nutrition sponsor for the Pittsburgh Marathon. Oh, sick. In May. And there was a kickoff run in January. So we went to Pittsburgh with the team to create some content and film this kickoff run. We found this gym called Exercise Warehouse in Pittsburgh. Backstreet, probably built in the 60s, 70s. To this day, it's the coolest gym I've ever been to in my life. all the old body masters, pretty cool, or Cybex machines. If I ever build a public gym, I'm getting old equipment. I'm getting nothing new. Old school Nautilus. Dude, yeah, all that like, it just hits perfect.

1:25:12Nick Bare:Old York dumbbells. There were bodybuilding signs everywhere. It was one of those environments where you walk in and you feel like you have to perform because of what was created there, the legacy that was in that gym. and then there's 70 year old dudes there training in a stringer and old wrestling shoes curl on 70 pound dumbbells. But that is the standard of that place. You don't walk in there and just go through the motions. I love places like that. I love cultures and environments that set this level of excellence. It's one of the reasons I love going to dinner. I love going to a good restaurant that really cares about the experience the environment, the ambience, the music, the service, the food, the intention.

1:26:02Nick Bare:I love that level of professionalism, no matter where it's at, because I respect it. You learn a lot from kitchens, man. Efficiency, culture. I think a lot of them are expecting Gordon Ramsay slamming plates, screaming. I got to tour Nobu. Oh, wow. Dude, pretty, pretty amazing. You could have a conference call in the middle of it. You can't hear a thing. Everybody. They look like you put together Rolexes. It's mastery, dude. You ever watch that show, The Bear? I love that show. Dude, I love that show. You've seen the show, the movie Burnt with Bradley Cooper? Oh, yeah. I've watched that movie probably 50 times, dude.

1:26:41Nick Bare:I love that. I think about that scene all the time where he intentionally messed up the dish when they were going, dude, I don't know why that pops in my head all the time. That's so funny. It's a level of

1:26:55Nick Bare:professionalism with intensity and just raw anger and emotionally driven. So I want to talk about GBRS and how that came to be.

1:27:13We started that thing with a couple buddies. Me and Cole have been best friends for 20 something years now and went to Bud together. team 10 together three deployments together screen together he went to a different squadron but essentially the exact same career path and we opened that thing up in 2019 i was supposed to contract with the agency we had other guys doing stuff military contracts cole was doing real estate everybody's doing fine and a bunch of my buddies that were overseas kept getting shot getting blown up they were getting killed and i just gotten electrocuted we were doing the skateboard thing me and cole davis just came on board and he looked at me one day and he's like why don't we just do our own thing i was doing contracting i was teaching the thing with the air force and i loved doing it but it wasn't consistent but he wasn't giving me 180 days of work a year which is what i needed to maintain functionality for the family plus retirement all that stuff it wasn't consistent so i was picking up jump contracts and you know still skydiving still teaching still throwing tandems doing the whole thing he's like why don't we just do our own thing like like what so we'll just get a couple guys we'll teach cqb flat range you can still jump like we'll just do that okay let's do that and covid slammed us so we opened up a social media page didn't know anything about it never had an instagram didn't know how to do anything open that thing up and you know started following a bunch of swat teams in the area and right when we posted our first photos and videos started growing started getting momentum a bunch of guys started hitting us up hey can you come down here can we train can we do cqb and fly range like yeah yeah yeah boom covet nothing oh my god now what we had a mentor we had met we were in teams that he ran marketing for nike adidas basketball football beijing olympics i mean a brand builder came down gave us a crash course on how to build it started selling soft goods and that was a big thing he's like you gotta start selling t-shirts and hats like it's funny do you say that everybody keeps asking us in a dms do you have t-shirts we can buy in hats why would you want a t-shirt and a hat he said with your logo on it no man it's just for us he's like we should sell them like nah now we're good because it's a thing you know in the team like we don't sell the patch i don't post a picture what it looks like like very keep behind close hold and that's how we thought the brand needed to be exclusive right like invite only type of stuff.

1:29:42Reserved. Very reserved. Like, you know, my face was blurred. We never really said where you came from. The guys put two and two together, but you didn't want to come out and say it. I think a lot of that during backlash from the community, really, you can't come out and be like, oh, we used to work at this unit. So try to stay away from that. And dude, he came down, we did our first run of t-shirts and they flashed all within minutes, seconds. Like we thought the website crashed. Refreshed it, refreshed it, refreshed it. Big number, inventory's at zero. and you're like, oh my God. Okay, let's take all that money.

1:30:14Let's buy more t-shirts. And we basically did that until COVID lifted and we could start training again. And in that time we're making those soft goods, we just sat around a table like this, a bunch of coffee and just talked trash about all the gear that we hated. Like, how do we make this better? How do we make a better belt? Let's make a better belt. Let's make a better sling. I was teaching CQB at the time and they were running their carbines in a weird configuration. Their laser slid all the way back, pressure pads in front because i had done nothing with cqb at night for 20 years essentially i knew all the issues with that but i knew what they were trying to solve for so i went back me and cole and sketch out this thing and i was like this is what they're trying to do i knew the objectives i knew the end state they were trying to perform at and it was the first time i'd have heard anybody talk about we want to be able to perform in regards to the lighting condition i want to be able to shoot just as fast in daytime as i can at night with a laser pass it through night vision and with a gas mask which has never been done before because the you ever shoot in a gas mask no it's a nightmare you can't get a cheek weld the optic's not high enough you can't see anything and then trying to look through actual tubes when it's on the rail line but you can't get your head articulated over to shoot through it so we just use nothing but lasers so i knew what they wanted went back and sketched that out and then as a brand started going got more popular on social media the product line launched those started to sell dealer networks grew, media team grew, operations grew, fulfillment grew, all those things.

1:31:41And yeah, then I went on a Sean Ryan podcast and the whole thing exploded. It went from a handful of employees to 30, 40, pretty quick. And now we're just trying to grow the vertical. So we had Vernon. He was my strength coach right when I was retiring. I've been with him for seven years now, never missed a session. He came inside. So we opened up the GBS performance program with him. It's essentially just my personal program. We just opened it up for everybody else. Got a fitness vertical, soft goods, hard goods, so belt, tactical nylon, gear, Patreon subscription does really well. I love that.

1:32:15That built its own little ecosystem, its own little community. So it's all the behind the scenes stuff. We get on monthly Zoom calls and there's tier access into it. We started hosting specialty events. So three-day shooting courses just for Patreon. And we did that because we you're trying to buy down the risk. Like after the Chris Kyle stuff and a lot of this stuff, you start getting popular on social media. You're like, how do I get these guys to a background check? How do I know they're not psychopaths? How do I know they actually want to train and they just want to come out and hurt somebody?

1:32:45Like, how do you do all that? Get them on the live stream. Start talking to them. Start DMing back and forth and you build some really intimate connections with a bunch of these people and then you have a training course. So when they come down there, there's 25 of them. Like, I legit know all 25 of you. Now it's super cool. They've got personal rapport with us, with all the cadre, all the staff. So now it feels like a big family reunion. Now we just trained for three days. Started swapping those out. We added in courses, you know, one-day pistol, one-day rifle. Next day is live tissue medical training.

1:33:16We'll do high-speed driving, marksmanship. We'll bring out SEAC tactical group, knife fighting, blade work, all the different stuff to try to force guys the opportunity to be well-rounded. We had in fitness every single morning with it. Then we shrunk them down. we got a mobile training team knocking out cqb and flat range for swat teams seal teams all the tactical teams in between knocking all those dealers from here to poland everywhere in between and it's been great man but it's been a lot harder than i thought it would be that sounds like a lot going on oh there's a ton going on yeah and like and now we're finally at the point where you can see where we need to really invest the time and energy into it's like but there's so many things happen at the exact same time i feel i feel like i'm just sitting in front of a drum set it's like fitness soft goods hard goods oh my god training oh my god oh my god podcast

1:34:10Nick Bare:back and forth back and forth like how do i do all this stuff yeah but we've been super fortunate man davis running the brand team got his brother running all of operations now and soft goods so we sit in a room we drop out a piece of content we'll pull out a snippet hard to kill we'll do a whole soft goods collection with that runoff products off that it's just it helps connect the audience to us like i'm about the most normal dude you'll ever meet when you build that rapport on social we were talking about last night like they know you it's no secret to me i've fucked this whole thing up but i just i want you to be better than me i want you to exceed your own standard because now that i've seen i've seen a performance plan it's so easy to maintain you just have to live it I just want everybody to be better than you were yesterday that's essentially the essence of GBRS what it is now got a bunch of different verticals trying to do them at high levels and trying to collaborate with people that are doing those things at a high level but really try to prop people up on a pedestal wherever you can to a lot of stuff the guys overseas guys we got to train with there's no fanfare for those guys like you see a lot of these countries in Europe kids don't grow up wanting to be of service because they've been so cloak and dagger for so long that they don't even know that's an option.

1:35:27It becomes an afterthought. Like they join the army out of necessity and then they find out like, oh my God, there's a specialized unit that I could have been training for this whole time. And oh my God, my grandfather was in that unit and I had no idea. So we try to give credit where credit is due. All the guys we work with, put them on a pedestal. Like tell their people how amazing 2-2-SAS are. They have no idea because nobody ever talks about it. They're exquisite, dude. Try to do that. I love that. it it's super cool it's super humbling but again man it is so much harder than being in the military it just is i had no idea i thought it was gonna be sunshine and rainbows and we'll build another team room we'll build a gym we'll be trained like be easy no brother hardest thing ever done by far what goes back to you know you don't get to focus on us or the craft you are now

1:36:16Nick Bare:the logistics manager of so everyone else can focus on their craft that's what makes it so challenging as you scale and grow it's more logistics it's more overhead it's more verticals it's more things and saying no is it's something we have to get better at doing i'm the worst at it i'll stop whatever i'm doing they'll run upstairs like hey there's some kid downstairs he drove here from from minnesota no phone call and he just wants to meet you yep i'll walk downstairs two and a half hours later walking through this tour getting to work whatever like i have to stop doing that i learned that the hard way i didn't say no was i used to set zero boundaries and then i found it started wearing on my family and my ability to show up for the deal in my life so i've gotten really good in my opinion at setting hard boundaries even when i don't want to like as much as i want to say yes to this i gotta say no it's made a big difference even for us like opportunities everything sounds great and you're like oh that sounds great let's do that you don't really realize logistics to pull that thing off you're like man we dug ourselves in a hole with this one oh yeah and at what point do you go this isn't even worth it just shoot it in the head and be done with it you have a hard time that's kind of like we were talking about last night i heard um there's this podcast have you heard of the founders podcast David Sinra and I forget what founder he was he was talking about who said this I think it was the guy who created this popular vacuum brand and the guy referred to himself this founder as the anti-business billionaire because there's entrepreneurs there's brand builders and then there's business people I'm not a business person.

1:38:17Nick Bare:Me neither. I'm a brand builder. I love bringing people together to go chase down a mission. I don't like looking at the numbers or don't care about the numbers. It's a feel. It's exactly how you described about walking into this building. There's a feel. It either has it or it doesn't. And that's what keeps me in this fight. I'm a brand builder. I'm not a business person. Same. I've been saying that forever. And I think, you know, we were talking about it last night. the issue trying to bring big corporate over is they don't understand it's a brand like they look at it and it's like well you sell the most of this so you're a product company it's like no not a product company it's a brand it's a culture it's a cult it can be whatever you want it to be but it's not a product company you can't look at it like it's a product company because there's so many intangibles with it it just is i'm here to change people's lives i don't care about top line bottom line i don't care i'm never chasing a number and i think that's one of the reasons we've been so successful is we've been trying to be bought a bunch and not just actually bought like hey run this product exclusively we'll pay you x amount of money no why because i fucking hate that product he's like well we'll pay you this much i don't oh i'm not chasing dollars man i'm not coin operated and a lot of people in business hate that it's like well so and so does it like i don't care what so and so does i'm not shooting it i'm not wearing it i'm not drinking it i'm not smoking it no but we'll pay you money i don't care about money i care about a feeling if i don't like it and i mean but it keeps you true keeps you honest and it helps you avoid a lot of stuff you normally wouldn't do me and vernon were talking about like what saw a picture it was like uh sophia vergar holding a pair of sketchers gorgeous right next to her face like do you think she wears sketchers no how much money would it cost you to wear that i'm not because I don't wear Skechers.

1:40:07I'm not going to. I'll give you half a million dollars to do that. No. Everybody's got a price at some point, but I'm not going to tell you I wear that shoe and I don't. If you just want to take my photo holding it, yeah, maybe we'll talk about that.

1:40:18Nick Bare:But I'll be completely honest. Some people can't understand that. Yeah. Like with this podcast, for example, we don't monetize this podcast. And we'll talk to people at these podcast networks. They're like, how much are you guys pulling in on this podcast? Like, oh, we don't monetize it. We don't run any ads. what do you mean you don't run any ads yeah we don't we don't run any ads we don't monetize it well then why do you do it well we do it because it helps people and it provides value which should be the reason of doing it uh-huh once you start focusing on the money like i've watched people who turn this passion of a show into a money grab and they monetize it and you can just watch the passion their eyes turn off overnight when you start chasing the dollar it it changes the whole mission of everything you're doing and i've had to learn that the hard way at certain intersections and parts of my life and when you focus on the mission you focus on the people you focus on providing value it all ends up working out in your favor same man when you're starting out though it's hard not so hard yeah especially when when you see true money coming in like i mean you talked about it i'm gonna scrape and buy 20 grand a year for several years back to back it's like man if i signed a a hundred thousand dollar a year deal with this company like you could change the face of the company now you become a slave to it like i don't want to drink that like oh you owe me x amount of social posts and i was like well brother we're not doing that no i'm not going to change the face the company's social media so i can drink coca-cola brother i'm not doing that yeah no but it keeps you true to yourself it does and that is like that provides sustainability and longevity.

1:42:01I started creating the fitness content in 2014.

1:42:05Nick Bare:The fitness industry was a whole lot different. And a lot of people that I started creating with back in 2014 aren't doing this stuff anymore. They sold out. They chased the dollar. Our growth was a whole lot slower. And I watched people early on fly by me and explode. I was like, man, what am I doing wrong? and now I'm like oh what did we do right if it's playing the long game playing the long game but as I heard you describing the way you guys built GBRS last night at dinner I related to a lot of that because a lot of the investments you make a lot of decisions they don't make any financial sense but like you just have this gut intuition feel of this feels right we're just going to keep depositing to what feels right in hopes that it pays off in the end.

1:42:57Nick Bare:In most cases, it does. Sometimes you're going to miss, but you'll feel better about the way you build it. For sure. Yeah, I've been saying that forever, man. I'm not chasing a dollar amount. I'm chasing a feeling. Like, I want to wake up in the morning and just be so content with the work we've done, the lives we've changed, the products we've made, the stories we've told, whatever. I want to wake up and go, this is now the true north. I wake up every day as a representative of this thing because I put it above myself. Makes you feel better, man. It's so hard when you're tied to it financially.

1:43:29Like, ooh, I got these investors now. I got this. Like, I have to. Man, I can't do this. Man, what's the ROI? Well, we got a feeling like, brother, nope, nope. We are in debt, up to our eyeballs. Like, we have to have a true ROI established. You can't do one. How are you going to do it? The whole thing's based off a hunch, based off a gut feeling, off intuition, off experience, and all the intangibles that you can't quantify. so now you're not comfortable. Yeah, well, this is how it is. It's this tough balance of being financial responsible,

1:44:02Nick Bare:but also not letting the data and the finances drive all the decisions. And it's this dance. It's art and science. It's like, I have to just say no to certain things because if I said yes, it'd be financially irresponsible. But sometimes I say yes to things that make zero financial sense, but I know it's the right thing to do. But that's what makes visionaries and entrepreneurs and founders, visionaries, entrepreneurs, and founders. It's that ability to take massive risk and being okay that none of it works out. It's hard to do when you're starting though. God, the stress level. I've made so many mistakes.

1:44:46Nick Bare:I've lost so much money, but I never sweat any of it. it's part of it yeah man as long as you got revenue coming in you can lose it here you can lose it there when you diversify the portfolio like you're good like I can lean all in on this one thing oh I didn't hit all the way okay at least I tried it yeah did we really go all in yeah okay well it's not working shoot it in the head be done with it close it out we've done that with you know performance brands and all this other stuff too and like this just ain't working manufacturing's not there the cutting still's not there like let's just be done with this cool kill it done next a lot of people just hold on to it it's a lot of ego pushes like no like i'm going all in on this one thing at a certain point you have to realize it's not working make a different plan dude let's go around the backside yeah kill what's not working yeah this isn't working anymore let's kill this let's do this yeah be quick to pivot be nimble quick to pivot well i love what you guys are building i love what you're doing it it's got a unique look and feel very well branded and um i wish you guys massive continued success you too man this is um it's one of those things coming out here and saying it you know you're always trying to chase someone always looking for a mentor role model or somebody a little bit further down the path than you you can just see them turning the corner like okay i'm still going in the right direction coming here it looks like that yeah i was able to talk to the gym shark crew a little bit a few weeks ago because we hosted our race at the ranch and their chief brand officer was there.

1:46:22Nick Bare:Their creative director was there. I mean, they're on the way of doing$2 billion in revenue a year, but it was so refreshing to have a conversation with them of hearing the story of where they started and what they went through and even the problems they're experiencing today. and as a brand that is much smaller, seeing yourself in their previous shoes or even their current shoes, it's reaffirming of, okay, we're not that far off and everyone's got these problems. We have the opportunity to sit in the circle with some other founders of much larger brands than us. Huge. And I found that no matter what size you are, you go through the same problems.

1:47:08Nick Bare:it's branding it's people it's marketing it's new customer acquisition those are always going to be problems but they're also just opportunities and they never go away and as soon as I was able to accept that it made the job a whole lot less stressful there's just scales and levels to it levels to everything yeah I got a really good mentor now he's had thousands of employees all these businesses taking companies public and all that and he's like it's the same thing. He's like, just at a bigger scale. Like you think Elon Musk isn't dealing with this? Of course he does. Like just at a way bigger scale.

1:47:46Everybody has the exact same issues, man.

1:47:48Nick Bare:Yeah. Like, but if you, again, it's no different building a salter or building a Steph Curry. If you set the foundation, you stack with great people and a great culture, you can withstand all of that bullshit. Consistently. Consistently. Get the right people in the building, man. Magic unlocks. Okay. Well, Google does it. Amazon does it. Tesla does it. and all these other massive brands, they do the exact same thing. They hold a super high standard. They try to lock in all the logistics, try to pack in the best performers in there and make them all row in the same direction. It's the same thing.

1:48:18Man, I'll tell you, when you're building that ship on the high seas, brother, it feels unsteady. Oh, completely. Like, I mean... Completely. I didn't know. I don't know anything. Nothing. Like, none of... We were talking about it last night at dinner. None of this is part of the plan. None of this. This is one massive pivot. we were supposed to be no more than five people essentially four guys teaching cqb jumping and shooting maybe one person in finance we were never going to do soft goods never going to make products never no subscription we were basically going to open up instagram youtube is an afterthought like all that stuff there's no business plan we just keep pivoting commit to the pivot commit it's not working kill it go around and that's what makes entrepreneurs successful

1:49:03Nick Bare:the ability to pivot really hard really fast when it's needed instead of staying stuck and getting shot down yeah i mean we talked about last night too like so many people they spend years crafting this amazing plan i could have never done that never i would have been so committed to the plan that if it wouldn't work i just would have ran into the ground it's almost better that you know you stepped in a ring with mike tyson you're just getting smacked you're like okay well he's not killing me i'm eventually just gonna figure this thing out I'm just trying to survive, trying to survive. And eventually it ends.

1:49:36I've got a ton of experience in that beating. I'll be better prepared for the next one. Better prepared for the next one. Okay, we weathered that storm. What's the next one? Oh man, what about this one? You just keep coming, dude. No, it's great, man. You've got an amazing facility. You've got a sick team stoked on your success. I appreciate you sharing it. Not a lot of people do. They get in there, they build a massive brand. They do whatever. and they kind of just become a recluse. Like they don't want to tell the story. They don't want to talk about their failures, their successes, all that stuff.

1:50:07It's just super nice to see.

1:50:08Nick Bare:I appreciate it. And in fact, you had a good transition out of the military. Good for you. No, thank you. Mine was terrible. I found that the failures were more fun to talk about than the successes. Because they're more relatable. Yeah. You come in here and it's like everybody expects everybody to be like Mr. Beast. Like, brother, it's significantly harder than you think. Absolutely. Well, DJ, I appreciate you, man. Yeah, man. I appreciate you. Looking forward to staying here today. All right. Thanks, man.