How a Celebrity Trainer Rose to Success – Jason Walsh | 1138 | Dave Asprey

This is an example of an employee that gave him the opportunity to train Lady Gaga at Rise Nation. Music dancer. And then all of a sudden, I get a notice that he was going to be leaving and going with Lady Gaga on her tour to train her. The guy didn't know how to train somebody. He goes, I'm a dancer, Jason. I know how to do this. More or less, like, just shit all over, you know, the years of experience and, you know, knowledge that I have. And of course, once Lady Gaga's people found out about it, because I trained Bradley Cooper and he's close to Lady Gaga, I was like, I can't believe this guy thinks he's gonna train her. He doesn't know what he's doing, you know, and it's a big responsibility. She fired him and he came back. Wow.

Did you let him back in?

I forgave him. And I thought, wow, if he's got the, you know, the balls to come back and actually confront me. He was resentful and he had a plan in mind. Mm.

There was that. That first betrayal. It's like, okay, I'll do something nice again. Because you're a good person. Cause you're forgiving, right? You thought forgiveness meant giving him another chance. What forgiveness was, was you being nonreactive and you also having boundaries and respect for the other people on the team.

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Today we're filming in beautiful Beverly Hills, site of one of the Upgrade labs for many years. And this is a chance to talk in person with one of the most sought after celebrity trainers on Earth. And when I say celebrity trainer, just like celebrity, we'll say nutritionist. I'm always kind of like, what's your qualifications here, dude? So I went deep before I decided to talk with Jason Walsh. Jason's trained Oscar winners. You've maybe heard of Justin Timberlake or Jake Gyllenhaal and Brie Larson and so many more. 30 years of working in the field, 20 of them in LA, with studios saying, you know, this person with this body and this background needs to look this way by this date. How are we going to do it? And so he's got a unique perspective that's from a true expert in the field. And working with celebrities means either that you're good at schmoozing. We'll figure that out. Or whether you're actually the best in the field. Because it's like, are you a vet? Or do you work on racehorses? And I look at celebrities and musicians. They're basically human racehorses in that every minute they're spending on stage or performing is really expensive. So the world's best has to work on them. So we have a lot to learn from people who are working in that field and helping celebrities reach whatever their goals are for a specific film or for a specific performance, because that speaks to biohacking, this idea of changing the environment around you and inside of you so you have control of your own biology. You might have heard of rise nation or rise 3 11, and these are both Jason's. Jason, welcome to the Human Upgrade.

It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

I've always wondered, like, when you were 12 years old, you say, mom, I want to be a celebrity trainer. When did this come into your universe?

Far from.

How do you even get into that?

You know, it's a great question. And, and I think that the best justice I can do this is to kind of give you some background into my history, where I came from and where I think that these markers really happened in my life. Because I can sit back and think about the certain moments in my life, the crossroads that had such an impact on me, that made me into the person that I am today. I never dreamt of being an entrepreneur. I didn't even know what the word meant. Um, I'm from a little town, Springfield, Missouri, in the Midwest.

Did you know Homer Simpson?

I'm not sure it was the same Springfield. I think that was Springfield, Illinois.

Okay, got it. But I could be wrong. They sound the same.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

I have no idea.

You know, I'll take it. No, I'm. I'm from the. I'm from the same hometown as Brad Pitt. That's where he's from. It's a good. It's a.

Did you guys hang out when you were kids?

No. No. But I did get to meet him and hang out with him in my late teens, which was interesting story. I got so many stories. I know I'm gonna start rambling today. So if I go off on a tangent, just.

I'll rain.

You end up. No. I think that I can tell you two stories that I think are very important moments where I really got a glimpse into who I am and my capabilities. And one of those happened early on. It was like first or second grade, something like that. And I was walking home from school one day and I know this is gonna sound self righteous, but it's a good story. I was walking home from school one day, and I noticed this kid that was surrounded by these three older kids. This kid was in my class, and it's on this, like, far field, so it's far away from the actual schoolhouse. And I don't know, there was just. I could tell this kid was petrified. He didn't know what the hell to do. Got these three older kids around him. And, you know, I just. I didn't think about it. I reacted and I went over and I put myself between him and this, you know, the lead bully, as you'd call him. And, you know, the bully, you know, he went ahead and just started swinging away. But, you know, kids don't really know how to fight. Sure, it's a lot of slapping and scratching and all this kind of stuff. So I don't. I just felt. It was almost. It was this. This moment of feeling. It was probably endorphins, but I just felt impenetrable. I felt like I could take anything, you know? And at that moment when the fight was done and I didn't fight back because I didn't know how to fight. I just felt empowered. I just felt incredible from this moment because I knew, you know, I had a decision, but it's really the actions that define who that person is. And I took action.

Did you get your ass kicked?

I guess, technically, yeah. There were three guys, but you know what? No, it was. The one guy was the main boy. He's got the two friends pushing him onto henchmen. Right. But that moment really started to define, and it had a ripple effect through my whole life. It's something that just kind of. It turned that switch on, you know, and I gained a best friend from that. You know, the kid that I saved. We became best friends. His name's Trevor. And. And I think about that time often because it's something that still impacts me to this day. Wow. Yeah. It was powerful.

It feels like a lot of guys today have never been in a fight. Like, a huge number of.

There's a lot of guys that need to be slapped. But I'm just. That's my opinion, you know.

You're not wrong. You know, I've been in that situation with actually up to eight kids around me.

Yeah.

Fortunately, being the tallest one and relatively obese, I had physics on my side, so I would sit on them. But it does help. I mean, you're a big guy, too. But it's funny how much bullying, it affects people way later in life. I see it all the time.

It does.

People are going through 40 years of Zen. This is my neuroscience program. And one of the guys who came through, I didn't realize everyone's a 1200 person company because all of my success is because I was bullied. I'm still trying to prove myself. And he dropped that because that's not a. A fun way to succeed. It serves you for a little while, that anger. And, like, I'm good enough.

Yeah.

But it sure is painful to do that for long periods of time, so.

It doesn't serve you. I'm beyond that, you know, Like, I. I want to evolve into a person that doesn't need that. And I. Yeah, for the most part, I'm. I'm getting there. I'm 48 years old, and I'm just. I'm getting to the point where it's exhausting. Oh, yeah, Exhausting.

You know, are you one of those guys, like, walk. You walk into a room and you're like, I know where all the bad people are. I know where all the exits are.

Yeah. You size people up. I mean, you. You know, it's. I think it can serve you in that way. It's. It. But it's also a lot of ego. Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I struggle with that. And we'll get into more of the training stuff. Part of it is, you know, you need to. You need to be physically fit if you can handle yourself. But I just did this. This thing that included, you know, four hours of bjj, including full contact, full strength each day. Great run by. And I'm not officially trained in that run by a bunch of military guys in Texas, which is super cool. And it's called Sheepdog, if you guys are wondering. And the thing that got me was some of the guys in there had never been in a fight, and they're our age and they're rigid, and I've been in way more fights than I'd like to be, and I never threw a first punch in my life. But what you realize really quickly is who's conditioned and who's not. Because they run out of energy in like five seconds. And then who's trained and who's not. Because people are trained don't use any energy to fight.

Right.

Which is.

Which is there's no efficiency.

Yeah. It's kind of shocking, the difference.

Yeah, Right. It's exhausting.

Yeah. And there's like a preparedness that you need. That's a physical thing.

Right, Right.

And then there's the mental thing, and it feels like a lot of people got the mental harm and what results from that is the mental harm from childhood. If you're hypervigilant because you can't turn it off, then you have a problem. And I used to be that way. You walk into a room, like, where all the threats. And then you go to one of these classes, and they're teaching you to be hyper vigilant. But it's not really hyper. It's just vigilant. So there's this interesting sliding scale where if you're always paranoid, but if you just calmly walk into a room and you assess, okay, those are the guys.

You gotta worry about. The ones that are calm and cool. The ones that aren't shouting are making a big. Those are the ones that I wouldn't mess with.

When we were doing full contact, we did eight rounds of three minutes the entire time. Like, okay, I can handle whatever. I'm one of the bigger guys that helps. And then this guy was probably 8 inches shorter than me. We kind of got into a sense, and he's positive, and he looks me up and down. I'm like, oh, fuck, this guy's trained. He's a trained wrestler. I mean, he took me down, I landed on my face. I got my elbow in his neck, which was good. But so, like, he kicked my ass up and down the street because it was the calmness when he just paused and looked at me. When you're like, oh, man, this is gonna hurt, right?

But that's what. That's what Brazilian jiu jitsu is really rooted in. You know, the Gracies and I actually took jiu jitsu for seven years. Oh, so you're pretty well trained. And I actually rolled with Hoist Gracie, who, you know, he chose me to roll with him in front of the class on purpose because I was one of the bigger guys. I was 235 at the time, you know, big and strong. And he made an example out of me. Before I knew I was passed out, he had my gi wrapped around my neck. You know, it was. It was pretty. It was. It was humbling, needless to say. But that's why. That's the beauty of Brazilian jiu jitsu and how powerful it is. Now you're combining those sports with, you know, Muay Thai and boxing and wrestling, and, you know, these athletes are becoming so multifaceted and very scary kind of people. And. Yeah, no, it's. I got to. I got a chance to meet some of the jiu jitsu guys. When I was training Jake Gyllenhaal for this movie Roadhouse, that's coming out and yeah, they just have this aura, this energy about them. And I used to work with special forces. I've trained some special forces guys also do that kind of stuff. They're very calm and they're tired guys, un unsuspected.

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The military probably just decides like if they're smaller, they, they can fit more than a helicopter. Maybe they're efficient, but I've never met like an operator that's super big like I am or even like you are. Yeah, but I think that might just be. You can't get in a submarine or something.

I'm not sure, maybe, maybe some of that. But I definitely know that it's more about efficiency in the way the body physically reacts and how people can calm themselves and have those types of powers. It's incredible, incredible to be around them. I trained athletes for years and that was really my background in strength conditioning. And it's easy to train the type of people that have that kind of discipline. The yes sir, no sir. It's way easier than training actors who.

You really have to a little entitled.

Well, it's not, by the way, I don't think it's that that's not the biggest, you know, step to get over. It's really to get them to buy in because everybody's trying to sell them something. Everybody's trying to convince them. People are trying to manipulate, take advantage all the time. These guys have a six about that though. They can read that. So I think that's one of the superpowers that I kind of developed throughout the years. And I can root that into. I was a bartender for years and years and I don't know, there's a certain amount of empathy and compassion and communication when you have these types of Things and you're backed with science and you have these tools in your tool belt, and you're able to present this thing in a way, you know, look somebody in the eye and you tell them, I'm gonna get you as stronger than you've ever been. But you've gotta listen to me. You've gotta have that ability to read the room to, you know, talk to these people, convince them, get them to buy in a bit of a sales.

Process, you could see it.

Yeah, you could see it as a sales process. And then I think that that, to me, that's where bartending for so long. And my grandmother was a bartender. She was 83 when she was bartending full time before she. That's cool. Amazing woman, right? And, yeah, it's just. It's. It's. It's. It's a different process. It's a very, very complicated and convincing conversation that you have to have with these guys. Now, when I get to this point, 20 years in, you know, my results and what I've accomplished, really speak, you know, loudly as far as my reputation goes. So sometimes that's not the problem. But early on, I've got some great stories, you know, Matt Damon and people like that, that I had to. It was, you know, one of the first times I've really had to convince someone that I had their best interest and I had the knowledge and I was going to, you know, do things differently than what they were used to. Because Matt had worked with, you know, a dozen different trainers, and every single trainer, he told me, he's like, look, this is what we're going to do. I got to get ready for this thing. Gonna eat some broccoli, chicken. I'm gonna get on that elliptical, which is a piece of shit, and, you know, it's worthless. And, you know, I'm gonna get skinny and I'm gonna look good on film. And I had to have this conversation with him and convince him. I just said once I put him through a screening and I realized where the deficiencies really were throughout the body. Picked the easiest deficiency, which is his shoulder. Something that had bothered him since he was in his 20s because he played baseball through the fourth football, you know, so he had a bum shoulder. And I decided to choose that path to convince him that I'm different from everybody else that's out here. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to. The pathology of this is going to be way, way different than anything he's ever experienced. And once I was able to fix that shoulder Just because there was an imbalance, it was weak, you know, stabilizers weren't working, and so on and so forth. It's pretty easy, honestly. And, you know, went to the house and threw a, you know, football at him, and he caught it and he threw it back. I just did that just because I knew instinctually he's gonna want to throw it. And I looked at him, I was like, how's that shoulder feel? He's like, you son of a bitch. Matt's an awesome guy. I mean, guy has. He's incredibly talented, number one. Very intelligent. He's a family man. You know, I think I learned a lot about being a father, a good father and a family man, being around him. Because I grew up with a single mother. She was 17 when she had me. We grew up in poverty. Food stamps, those kinds of things. I'm not supposed to be here today.

Come a long way.

I know that society has things in place to keep people like me from, but these are. This goes back to your friends that you're talking about that are CEOs of companies. And you either use those moments in your life that keep you down, you recognize it, you do something about it, you decide. You have a decision to make and you have actions to take. And that really separates. You can use that. If I can tell you one more story, this one was more of a crossroads, my life, this story, this is a tough one because to me, this was do or die. This was stay in Missouri and accept what society has given me or I'm going to do something with my life. And it started. My friends and I, we went to a 24 hour steak and shake in Springfield, Missouri, and these six guys walk in and they started throwing racial slurs at my friend Toby. Obviously he's black. And Toby, being a cool cucumber, just got up and went over and diffused it. I was amazed how these guys. You went up to these six guys and diffused the situation. It seemed to go pretty well. Came back over, we're eating. Time goes by, these guys finish eating, and as they go outside, one of the guys kind of steps back, real cocky and just says this really horrendous racial slur. And Toby, you know, I think that's. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. And he dropped his fork and he got up and he went out. And at the time we had these two girls with us. And it was like. I was like, you know, I don't want to. I want to get in a fight. I want to go Back to the house, you know. You know, Exactly.

Yeah, two girls.

Exactly. So I had other motives, but I also didn't want Toby to get his ass kicked by these six guys. I'm a big guy, you know, I figure I'd walk outside and just. Just be like, you know, you guys go on. I step outside, and before I knew it, I was hit blindside with this. I think it was a tire iron.

Jesus Christ. It didn't kill you.

And it don't. Yeah, nearly killed me, but the guy hit me in the face. And of course I blacked out and came to and I saw Toby. I'm like, what the hell am I doing out here? Toby's out there just beating the shit out of all these guys. He flipped out when he saw what happened to me and reacted. And the other guys reacted, too. But I knew that I just had to get this guy's license plate. So that was only thing going through my head. And I got the guy's license plate. I walked into the Steak N Shake, bleeding all over the place. My face, I could see my. I could look down with my eyes and see my cheek, it was swollen. And of course, went to the hospital, X rays. My face was broken. They said, you could have been killed. Because they came very close to hitting me in the temple. You know, let's cut to the next day. I get up, walk into the restroom, I look in the mirror, and I was pissed. I was so mad. You know, it's sad. I think it gets me when I talk about this. It's just. It's disappointing to see what people are capable of. You know, it's disappointing. But I used that anger to drown out any and all fear in my life. And at that moment, I decided to flick the switch. And it was on this game on, you know, So I made my mind up that I was leaving. I was going to go to North Carolina and pursue something that I had been wanting to pursue, which was nutrition. At the School of Public Health in North Carolina, Chapel Hill. So, you know, after the healing, the surgery, which, by the way, my face is all pretty much all titanium steel plates from here, from the zygote, the orbital, all this stuff.

A Terminator thing going on.

Yeah, it was a Terminator thing. No, I don't set off the alarms when I go through the.

Does it hurt a lot still, or is it.

There's a lot of nerve damage, so I don't really feel anything. Like when I can't feel anything when I go through here and touch. And this eye Definitely, like, swells up more than the other one when I'm tired. Too much salt. But that moment was. It was critical because I. I think that that was life slapping me in the face and being like, what are you gonna do? So I use the anger. I drown out all my fears and anything that. That kept me from, you know, pursuing what I was capable of, things that I, you know, I knew that I was capable of. I knew I was a leader. I knew I had, you know, something special inside of me. I just didn't know exactly what it was. So I moved to North Carolina. Within the first year of moving to North Carolina, my dad passes away. Now, if you remember my mom's single mother, I didn't even know my father until I was, I don't know, nine or 10 years old. And my grandmother called me, and I was at a PJ Harvey concert in Atlanta. PJ Harvey. It was so cool.

I like PJ Harvey.

God, she's so good. But I was there with my best friend, Derek, and I received a phone call, and my grandmother was just like, hey, I just want to let you know your dad's dead. And it was just such a weird moment for me. I didn't know how to process it because, you know, I was kind of, I guess, apathetic or indifferent towards my dad, but it was the first experience I've had with death, you know, so I didn't know how to process it. So, you know, my best friend Derek, it was like my brother, I looked up to him, my older brother, and he's like, why don't you come with me, man? I'm going to go to Italy. And I'm like, okay. You know, like, that's. Yeah. So I put school on pause. I moved to Italy and I got cultured. You know, this kid from Missouri that didn't have any culture whatsoever. It changed everything.

That's a. Wake up. The world's a little bit different over there.

God, it was such a, you know, I. I think that, you know, humans, we are, you know, kind of our brain is rooted in, you know, fear and judgment. You know, I think we're born that way. And fear and judgment and the evolution, you know, of our brain is to become compassionate and empathetic and that, you know, it takes the brain a lot. Something has to trigger that. And me living in Italy gave me that superpower, man. I was ready. I left Italy. I was there for almost a year with Derek. He stayed because he found a girl and went to Germany. And, yeah, I moved back to North Carolina, full of vinegar. And, you know, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. It was awesome. You know, it's just amazing to sit back and look at these moments in your life that really, it's opportunity, it's character building, you know, And I can see it now. You know, I knew what was going on, came back. I went back into school, I started bartending full time because I wanted to pay for school as I went. I went to school part time. I got an internship at strength conditioning program there with the Olympic sports, 450 athletes. Here I am, this guy. You know, like, my background is just work really fucking hard and do like, find the guys in the gym. I've been working out since I was in seventh grade because of sports. I thought I had a secret. You know, it was like I was the guy that the coach picked out. He was like, you're talented, let's make you better. And here's some shitty weights behind the, you know, the curtain in the auditorium. And when you're done with school, you.

Should go in there and do cement wrapped in plastic.

Oh, no, no, it was worse than that. It was like everything had rust on it. And you definitely needed your tetanus shot before you went in. But he gave me, you know, a really rough idea of what I should do. And I just, you know, I worked on a farm when I was in Missouri, and I value hard work and I love physical labor. There's just. It's rewarding. It's not efficient, but it's rewarding. And it teaches you a lot about yourself. These are, you know, moments that, that, you know, and tools that you'll use for the rest of your life. And, you know, working on a farm, working out, realizing that, it really propelled me, you know, and what my capabilities were. I could hit the ball out of the park, you know, I could knock the snot out of a guy, out of the guy. You know, if we tackle football, you know, it just kind of gave me that superpower. And there was just. It was something that started that discipline. Discipline is amazing if it's used well. And I, you know, yeah, I think that's where the discipline started for the training. And then getting into the strength conditioning program just started building that foundation. And I was a hard worker. And why did I do well? Because I empathized with the players. I got in the trenches with them, I worked out with them. I looked like the guy they wanted to look like. But athletes aren't necessarily, you know, physically in that great of shape, but they're strong, they move really well. Football players, they have that look, you know, they can do anything they want to do and they have that physicality, you know. So, yeah, North Carolina happened. It was amazing. I worked under Greg Gatz, who's, you know, produced a lot of national champions, the women's soccer team, so on and so forth, baseball team. It just, it was an incredible environment, but it. I knew that there was a very low glass ceiling working there, you know, So I started searching out, you know, people in the hierarchy of strength, conditioning, strength coaches. And I found Luke Richardson, who lived in Arizona, and he invited me out and so I quit my job as a strength conditioning coach and I went back into volunteer work working with Luke because I wanted the knowledge. That level of knowledge is just. He worked with professional football players, special forces. I mean, the guy was. I mean, he was God to me. Wow.

So apprenticeship is something that matters.

You know, people reach out to me and they always, they're like, I want to do what you do. And I'm like, find your nearest strength college. Go talk to the strength coach. Get in there and get some reps. I mean, nothing's going to teach you, you know, school, you learn the science, you learn how to apply the science. Working in a strength conditioning program or something like that. I think it takes a long time to develop wisdom and experience, and those are things that are always going to serve you, you know, especially if you get to the level that I'm at. I think people read and they understand that I have that I've been doing this for 30 years, 20 years in LA, and it's something that it's important.

It's kind of funny, I remember when I was like, maybe 25, I got my first corporate job in, you know, Silicon Valley, right? It's a company called 3Com, if you guys remember that. You probably don't, but they were a big deal in the mid-90s. If you had a. If you had a modem and remember those amazing. And within like six weeks of being there, I'm applying for a director level job, right?

Oh.

I mean, the VP was like, who do you think you are? Which I think she was more polite than me, right? But I did that because, like, I didn't know what I didn't know. I'm like, well, I want to be great. And it turns out I've had a pretty damn good career in Silicon Valley, but it took a few more years. Actually not that many more years. But I just needed to understand the way of the land. I needed to have. And I did find really good mentors and people who would just give me advice. And it kind of drives me nuts. Now people are like, well, you know, you just came out of nowhere. I'm like, do you know how many great managers I work for? And all the different stuff that went into it and it seems invisible. So when someone who's a 19 year old comes up to you as I want to be you, it took you 30 years to be you and it took you really, it sounds like 10 years to be the you that could even function in Hollywood.

Right? Yeah. I mean, I won't pretend that my route to where I'm at today is the most efficient, I think. You know, honestly, we live in a world where everybody wants to lie, cheat and steal and take all the shortcuts that they can. And it worries me to get to, you know, certain positions. And I've had people that have I brought on to come work for me that really taken advantage of the situation. It's all right, they have to live with that. You know, I took the long road. You know, I built this thing. I came to LA and I wanted to be a pioneer. You know, I brought the phrase, you know, train like an athlete. You know, back in 2005, nobody was talking about that or doing that or making those kind of applications. And it's what set me apart. I knew I had to find something that's going to set me apart. I had that knowledge and, you know, expertise of being a strength coach. So that's going to separate me. I'm going to fix people. I'm going to work on foundational things that nobody was addressing. When I came to la, I went and looked at what other people were doing and it was just, it was like, okay, I get it. I know where I'm at. I know what my capabilities are, what my intentions are. You know, I, I put people first. My, my uncle bought me this book that has that I still, I'll go back and read once in a while. You've heard of Yvonne Chouinard? The guy, the CEO, the owner, the creator of Patagonia?

Okay, yeah, yeah, got it.

He had this book that he made for his employees and it was more of a philosophy thing and it kind of went crazy. And I just, I don't know, man, reading that book. When I came out here, my uncle gave me that book and it had a very big impact and I knew that, you know, if I focused on integrity, I knew what I'm capable of. I know what I can do for people. The foundation for me was integrity, putting people first, letting my results and the things that I'm capable of doing speak for themselves. And that's what has propelled me. It's been an organic chain of events that's gotten me to this point. In 2007, with the economic crisis, I've been out here for two years and building my reputation. But I saw an opportunity. I think everybody was scared to death because of, you know, we were in a recession. But I knew it was my opportunity to get my own space in brick and mortar. And I took this. It was a retail shop, and I had this office space above it, and I converted that into my first studio. And I wanted to create a space that was safe for the clients that I was training.

When you say safe, you mean, like, not being injured, or you mean, like, not having, you know, needles in the street in front?

Well, I was renting space out of this gym in Santa Monica. And, you know, it's an environment that's not very conducive to the type of people that I'm training, because you go in there and everybody's looking over your shoulder, or they'll come up and start talking to you.

Oh, yeah.

Or the actual equipment that they have. Is it really what I want to use?

You need, like, a private space.

I needed a private space, and I wanted to create this environment that didn't have, you know, pictures of me with my clients and. And quotes on the wall. It was just a beautiful, safe space. It was private. We trained, like, five people at one time. Everybody that came through the door, I vetted. I wanted to make sure that we didn't let any of the creepy people through the doors that wanted to see people or be seen. It was amazing, but it was risky. It was like the economic crisis, and somehow, some way, I mean, I guess if the why is big enough, the how is gonna figure that out, you know? And that's what guided me through that, you know, and it was. It was pretty amazing. And it just built. It was an organic thing. And so how big did it get? I mean. I mean, I was always on projects. You know, I was always away. My job, you know, has really taken me to every single continent in this world besides Antarctica. I've been everywhere doing these projects, which is good and bad. I mean, it's a lot of sacrifice, a lot of hard work. I lost a relationship with someone that I really cared about because I wasn't able to give them what they wanted. I made a lot of mistakes. A lot of mistakes. You know, but all of them with good intentions, you know, I, I mean, well, I want to do great work and I want to inspire people. You know, I have this, have a gift, a passion, you know, that's how I see it.

So you ended up, you had that one location and it. Is it still open? Like, what happened?

Well, the, you know, rents escalate and it was in la. It's insane. Don't get me started on landlords because I'm not very.

I shut down the restaurant I had here for eight, eight years recently. So the, if not the first one of the first places that was all grass fed and everything and now you can buy grass fed everywhere. But yeah, it was like rents keep going up and LA is not the place it once was.

It isn't, it really isn't. It's sad, but no. I moved to another space down the road. Beautiful space. It's 4,000 square feet before I had 2,800 square feet. It was cute, it was just, it worked, it was great. But I definitely grew out of it and, and the landlord and I didn't really see eye to eye, so I figured it was time to move on. And I've been in this new space for a while, but during that time I really wasn't very fond of group training or boutique fitness. And I just, I don't know, I see things differently. I think this is where the entrepreneurial mindset started to really develop because I had cut my teeth on opening my first studio. Get a little cocky, you know, you think you can do anything. And I decided to open this or, you know, it was a passion project and it was called Rise Nation. And it was my attempt at making something that I thought was far superior in the world where group training to me is just like low hanging fruit. It's just not good. But I understand there was something about it that is really appealing to people.

So group training, like a bunch of people in a room on spin bikes, right?

The really dangerous stuff where one person's in a room telling 60 people to do burpees and get on a treadmill and sprint their ass off, you know, like. But what the pros of that is that there is community, which is powerful, it's appealing to people and you get to reach a lot more people than what I do, you know, so if you could put something really great. I knew if I can come up with something that I thought was incredibly safe and effective, then I'm gonna do it. Nobody told me the first rule of owning a business, which is don't use your own money. But I decided to use my own money because I didn't know any different. I don't have a background in business, by the way.

I do, but I use my own money because I believe in what I'm doing right. And I use other people's money too, because I don't have enough money.

Exactly.

There's that.

But I started this studio. I had a horrible contractor, didn't do the work, put one person on the job. So I was down there, I was cutting flooring. I wanted to get this place up and going. And I came up with the concept on a plane ride out to New York. I was sitting on the plane and kind of putting pressure on myself to come up with something that I thought was going to be, know, fantastic. And man, when you get the, you know, you get the brain moving on something that you're very passionate about and, you know, you get to be creative, it's a lot of fun. And that's the fun part. The hard part comes after you built it and then you're like, oh, how do I get people? You know, I don't, you know, how am I going to get people in here? But the idea came to me on a plane and the climber has. It's the cross crawl motion. It's an innate primitive movement. I knew that you couldn't get hurt on it, but it was really, really hard.

It's also good for your brain, by the way.

That's one of the things. It's actually the only piece of equipment that works both hemispheres of the brain. Right. The crawling motion is something that they rehab people that are paraplegics and they start to get them back, they learn how to crawl.

I had to relearn how to crawl as an adult. I learned how to read when I was 18 months. I just read when I was a kid. I didn't move very much, so I had all kinds of weird movement stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does it, does it.

So, yeah, like my cross crawl was all screwed.

Probably still is, but it's big. Tell us, you know, parents to let them let the kids crawl until, you know, it's, it's developmental. But having that knowledge and understanding, I was like, I was like, wow, we're gonna, we're gonna center it all on this, you know, this crawling, climbing motion. But it was really, really hard. It's not something, you know, in my mind I knew that, you know, it had to be an hour long. And I started questioning that and I got on the climber And I started doing these tempos to music because I love music. I'm classically trained, and I grew up with music. And it's. You know, it's something that has always been a part of my life, and I appreciate it and love it. But I came up with this tempo training when, you know, with music on the climber. And then, you know, the creative side started going, what else can we do? You know, how can we make this different? And 30 minutes really kind of hit home. You don't need to train, you know, condition for an hour. I wouldn't put anybody through an hour long. You know, it's visual. It doesn't make any sense, and it.

Doesn'T work because all the data I have is like five minutes. Three times a week is enough. I mean, that's what we're doing at Upgrade Labs, right?

Right. Yeah. So this, you know, the climber, that's nearly impossible. We used to torture athletes on it. I figured out a way I cracked the code on this thing, and it was fucking fun. You got on there with amazing music with these beats, and if you put these different types of songs in, you know, and back to back, and they have different tempos and you do different moves on it, the workout takes care of itself because you're kind of like dancing. You're getting lost in the music. It's a lot of fun. And then, you know, I'm. I'm a. I love live music. And I was at a Nine Inch Nails concert, and I've seen them live once. They're so good. They're so good.

Reznor can bring it.

He's. He's the man. And it. It impacted me. I was like, wow. I'm, like, jumping around like I'm getting a workout.

That's a community fitness style.

You know what I'm saying? So it's. But the environment. So I really kind of pushed myself. And we were the first to really implement lighting with the music. It was kind of like an EQ with the music, but it was distracting, so you don't have to focus on how horrible the class was. So this whole thing came together, and it was just a lot of fun. And at a certain point, it sparked interest with Mark Cuban. He reached out, and we had a lot of people that wanted to buy it, and, man, I wish I would have sold it when I had the chance.

A lot of us have said that before.

You know, it's like, you know, LeBron James was going, we trained Lady Gaga there. It was like, this thing was hot. And this was pre Covid. So, you know, Mark Cuban came on, and I was. I was flabbergasted. I couldn't believe that this guy was going to take interest in Rise Nation. So I flew down to Dallas and, you know, I had to pitch all this stuff to him and this board. It's just me. I didn't know what I was doing, but I was passionate about it. I knew everything there is to know about it. Corrected them, told him what was up. He liked it enough that he invested. And, you know, Covid happened and just devastated the group training. A lot of people went out of business. You know, I just recently paid off the landlords for different locations that, you know, background. I can't believe nobody's talking about small businesses and, you know, what landlords were able to do on a technicality and just ruin us.

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