How Leaders Can Inspire Wellness in the Workplace with Dane Palarino

Welcome back to Culture and Compliance. My name is Matt Vadie, and today's guest is Dane Pallarino. Dane's an inspiring entrepreneur who's made a name for himself in a couple of interesting and powerful areas. First, he's leading a successful niche recruiting firm called Pallarino Partners, and he also has an amazing business called Dad Bod Sculptors, which is where we're going to spend the bulk of our time talking about today. After his own personal journey of going from 30% body fat to 6% body fat, Dane now helps busy professionals find the balance between wellness and professional success. We're going to dive deep in how companies can create a culture that champions fitness and wellness. So, if you're looking to boost your team's productivity, morale, and health, this one's for you. Let's dive right into it. Dan, thank you so much for joining me today. You've undergone a remarkable fitness transformation in your own life. How important do you think it is for leaders when it comes to lead by example in health and wellness?

Yeah, thanks for having me, Matt, first off. I think it's super important. It's one of the things that I realized in my journey as an entrepreneur, being in the tech world, coming from the headhunting side, dealing with CEOs and investors and advisors and leaders of those companies. I had recognized that I, at 30% body fat, was the standard, right? And so, that's why I was so comfortable being where I was because I look like all the other people around me. I actually was one of the founders of Entrepreneurs Organization here in Charleston. And I was probably one of the best fit dudes in the group, unfortunately. And that was at a lean 30% body fat. So, I think one of the things is the standard has dropped a lot in men and also neighborhoods and in companies. So, I think it's super important, one, by setting the standard in your own life and how you carry yourself, not only on the field of business but off the field. It says a lot about your discipline. It says a lot about the level of seriousness you take yourself, right? Like, if you don't respect your own body, how can you expect other people to fully respect you? Yes, you're accredited and you run a business and you've got money, but essentially, I think nowadays in a world that's evolving relatively quickly, like, there are different standards that people measure men on. And I think from a leadership standpoint, when somebody steps into a room and they're fit and they're vibrant and you could tell like this person is different, they've got discipline, they've got consistency, I think that raises the bar for everybody else around you.

Yeah, I think a couple things to unpack there. First and foremost, you're right, dude. I'll never forget one of my first corporate jobs. I'm walking through the cubicles, meeting the new people, and one of the guys says to me, "Hey, I used to look just I was like you when I was your age, and he's got a belly that's 15 inches out in the front. And he's, you know, oh, this will happen to you one day sort of a thing too. And, you know, he was a former college athlete as well. And it was just like, dude, that's not going to happen to me. I'm sorry. Like, it's not. You can think that all you want. And that might be the normal for all you guys to go out and to eat big. You know, that's the thing is like in a corporate environment too, everybody's going out and getting a big lunch every day. Right. So it's like, I'm going to have, you know, I'm going to have Carbs on carbs. This is the thing that always amazes me, Dane, is like in America we've made it where not only do you have a sandwich which has more carbs than you need wrapped around it in the bread, but you also have some fries or chips with it is the norm as well. So you double down on garbage. But anyways, as I told you before getting into this, this is a topic near and dear to my heart. I'm going to take this in a million different directions and I got to call you out, bro. Like, I don't know if you did an actual body scan before that. That 30%, man, you might have had a little more than 30% on the front end of that.

Yeah, I probably was. Yeah, I was being generous. You know, I looked at that picture and I showed it to my wife and I was like, how would you let this happen to me? You know? And it's so common for men because you start running a business or you run, you know, running your career, you have kids, you get married, like life just starts hitting you at a really fast pace between providing and protecting and succeeding. You're kind of like building the plane while it's in the air as a man, right? And so your health and fitness just slowly starts getting lower and lower on the priority pole. Most of us trained or athletes at some point in our life, and we always kind of play that Uncle Rico card, you know, oh, you should have saw me in my 20s, you know, you should have saw me in high school. But it's like nothing needs to change. You just need to— you need to, just like you did to scale your business and your home and your family, you need to create a system, a system that is repeatable and is based on habits that, that are consistently in control, in your control. And then you'll be able to create the physique that you want. So yeah, I think that when I look at those pictures, it's, it's we have a good chuckle. You know, my wife's like, I can't believe you look like that. You know, I didn't see— she— luckily she's always nice. Like, I didn't see you that way. I was pretty pissed off when I saw that picture.

Well, it's all too common, like you mentioned. I mean, it's kind of wild to me. I mean, now look, I have it different. And so the joke I always say— and it's not a joke, this is a very real thing that I tell my wife— is like, look, I will not be fat and bald. Like, I can't help that I'm bald. That piece is like— I will not be fat and bald. So like, that is one thing I will not do to you, like, as your husband. I can't control the bald piece, and I'm certainly not going wear a toupee or get a hair plug. So, yeah, but, but you nailed it right there.

Control.

Yeah, that's right. Control the controllables, right? And that's the thing is like the discipline level has dropped so substantially on what is acceptable. And I was kind of joking— not joking, I mean, I said to my kids the other day, we're watching television, we're watching a football game, and every commercial is either for, you know, some disgusting food that is going to make your body sick or a prescription that is going to try to make you better. The band-aid. Right. So, societally, we've made it okay to be obese. And then, now, we've even got this imagery of these people plugging themselves with needles to try to lose weight. Makes me sick to my stomach. Yeah.

All band-aids, man. All these short-term fixes for a long-term problem. You know what I mean? Yeah. I get irritated too because I'm like, when guys say, "Oh, it's too late," or, "I'm 40," or, "You'll see. You'll get there one day." I'm like, "You're 42." Like, let's just say you live to 75. You've got 30+ more years with that mentality in that body. You think that scales well for anybody around you? Do you think that's fair to your kids? Do you think it's fair to your wife who signed up when you said you were going to be your best? You know, like, we— it's way too early for men to be using that excuse. And so for me, I recognized when I, when I saw the painting on the wall and I saw that picture and I had a little bit of cognitive dissonance, it was really tough conversations that I had to have with myself. But essentially, I was like, Nobody's going to fix me but me, you know? So it's time to find the problem and raise the standard in my own life. Because, Matt, like, you've got kids. We're naturally going to want them to have standards. We're naturally going to want to keep raising the bar for them. How can you do that if you're not doing it in your own life, right? If you're a business owner, how can you do that if you're not running your business and your own brand that way? And I think nowadays, like, in the world of business and personal brand, like, they're blended. You are your brand. You are a walking commercial of your brand. So you're telling us that yes, you're great in one area, but you're way below par in another area? That impacts your brand.

Well, so a couple things here. You talked about repeatable habits and systems. I want to come back to that in a moment. But I also want to say, I'm just going to call it out, right? Because the name of Dane's company is Dad Bod Sculptors. He's already mentioned this in men. We are men. It is going to be very difficult for us to speak about, you know, the female vantage point and what to do there. And so we're going to talk about how we can lead by example. And honestly, I think I looked at our channel on YouTube analytics the other day, and I think it's like 86% men. So I think we're going to hit our base anyway. But, but I do want to cut— I'm pretty sure, Dane, you're 45-ish, I would imagine, because we graduated high school the same year. I saw when doing my research, and I'm 45. I just turned 45 last month. During that time, I started a new program that is one of these hybrid athlete program. So, I was running 25, 30 miles a week in addition to working out 5 to 7 days a week of strength training, 45 minutes to an hour 15 every day. And I own multiple companies. I have multiple children. I coach multiple sports. I have every reason to deprioritize my health, every excuse as a lot of people call it because that's what they always say is they don't have time. But it is about those repeatable habits and systems. And that's what helps to save us in the end is we default to the level of our habits and our systems. Talk to me about some of the hardest things that you have to do when you bring somebody into Dad Bod and you're really trying to break some of those habits, put some of those systems in place. What are some of the things that you tackle first and what are some of the biggest challenges that you have with an individual?

Well, I think everybody— what got them here won't get them there. So, it's a mindset thing. It's being able to— I always tell people like, "Hey, man, if you're looking to lose 15 pounds to go on a summer cruise, this is the wrong program for you. Go on YouTube, figure out what a calorie deficit, calculate some macros, you'll get there, but it's not sustainable." So, for me, the men that come in, I say, "What we're doing is building 2.0 version of you." So, in order to do that, we've got to work on the mind. The mind is going to impact the body. The body is going to be impacted by the nutrition. So, we start working on the mindset and changing the way that they look at things so that the things they look at change. And so, I just present them with facts, right? Like, we're over 35, our metabolism slows down, right? Our body has gone from a furnace in its 20s to a storage unit in its 30s, 40s, and 50s. We've got to reverse that and we can do that, right? Two, we've got to recognize like we're losing muscle mass. And if we want to be strong leaders and men and protectors of our family, we have to focus on building good muscle, right? And then three, we've got to recognize that our thoughts become things and our thoughts are a direct relation to what we put in our body. So if we're not feeding our stomach and our gut good things, we're not going to have good thoughts. So we're always going to have this wavering cookie cutter mentality. So let's just control the controllable. And so, then we install a couple of things. One, it's an early wake-up time. We're going to prioritize you first, right? So, we're going to make sure that we're unwinding properly at night so that we wake up first thing in the morning before our children, before our kids, before the world starts pulling at us, right? And we're going to have that me time. Two, we're going to start reading things that work on the mindset, right? And you wouldn't believe how successful some people could be, but they're so far away from this component. I've got guys that run $150, $200 million businesses that have gotten so far away from that. And so just spending 10 minutes a day in a book that kind of helps them reframe their thoughts. 3, I say, we're gonna do an intense workout, whether it's 15 minutes or 50 minutes, we're gonna move the body. We're gonna release some serotonin. We're gonna release that dopamine and we're gonna raise our vibration, right? These are things that we can control. 4, we're gonna follow a meal plan, one that's gonna give us these micro goals every couple of hours that's gonna allow us to have the energy and the stability in our mood to get through the day. These, you know, these fasting protocols and these ketos, they're great protocols, but they're not sustainable. For the busy guy, he crashes around 2 or 3 o'clock, and now he's relying on caffeine, and he's crushing his cortisol, and then he's not getting the results he wants. So it's like, we're gonna stabilize that. So that's gonna be following a meal plan that's gonna work for you. And then I always recommend number 5, like pull out the vices, brother. Like remove the alcohol, remove the weed, remove the escape that you, you have in your nighttime routine. Like create a life that you're so proud of that you don't need to escape from. And so, those are kind of the 5 controllables that changed my life. And I teach guys, some of them, it's just cutting the cord on certain things. But every single day, I become accessible. And every single week, we do a check-in to calibrate. And those calibrations really become impactful for them because they're able to kind of look at their week and their habits through a lens and say, "Yeah, you're right. I didn't see that." We start catching these these bad habits and we just start swapping them out for better habits.

I love that. That's a great protocol. I mean, there's nothing in here. Let me ask one thing on the reading piece. What are some books you recommend early on?

The Art of Living is a great book.

Yeah.

The Daily Stoic is another great book by Ryan Holiday. Ego Is the Enemy is another great book. Really, it's stoicism. Like, if you look at the premises of these books, it's teaching you how to control the controllable, which is the only thing that we can control. We cannot control what comes at us in a day, like from our kids, from our wife, from our business, from our employees. All of that we cannot control. But when we realize we are in control with how to, how we respond to those things, then it becomes a lot more, you feel more empowered. And so if you create this routine that I talked about here, which is getting yourself to an elevated state every day, it's not this place of, oh, I'll be happy when I lose the 30 pounds, or, oh, I'll be happy when my company raises this money, or I'll be happy when I fill this position. No, you have to wake up every day in a state that's low vibration and create a high vibration state. So that you live from that place every day. And when you're there, you start to attract the things that you desire, right? Like your subconscious. And so that's what I'm teaching guys is that you have a chance every single day to win. Like you're not going to be in the body of your dreams tomorrow, but you can have the mindset of your dreams tomorrow. And that mindset is going to impact everything else. And oh, by the way, your body will slowly come around and be one that you actually admire and respect.

So, the interesting thing is how quick the results start coming once you start making the changes. I always sometimes, you know, even I've been a workout 5 to 7 days for my entire adult life guy. Yeah. Like, there's not a week that goes by that it's just part of my routine. Like you mentioned here, like, I'm not as ripped as you, Dane. There are a few of these that I don't do as well. The meal plan, you know, I'm an 80/20 guy, right? Like, I eat healthy 80% of the time. I am not trying to get to 6% body fat. That's a level of discipline that I'm not trying to have in my life. I'm trying to live in that 10 to 20 zone. That's a great job. Depending on where we are, I'll be, you know, right now I'm probably sitting a little closer to 20 coming off of that vacation to Paulie's, right?

Pizza the whole time. So vacations are for, get that surplus in there so you come back and use that as fuel.

That's right. Then I feel good. Then you can take a quick before and after photo when you get back, right?

That's what I want to do. 3 months transformation.

That's right. My wife jokes, you know, man, our Google Photos are just filled with a bunch of before pictures. When are these after photos coming?

How come they never show, you know, when they show you the carousel, like, remember when? You're like, they're all the befores. Where are the afters? Yeah, I agree, man, with what you're going to say. Just to touch on upon that, it's a level of comfort that's for everybody. Like, I meet people where they are, and I think that that's really important. But the goal of the meal plan is to create structure And it's so that there's no decision fatigue. Like, think about how many people start thinking 2 hours before lunch, "Where are we going to go today?" How much energy they're starting to put on where they're going to go. They start getting these raises in their dopamine like, "Oh, yeah, let's go there." And then they eat that lunch and then they lose 60 to 120 minutes digesting and coming out of this food coma. Now, "Hey, let's get some more cappuccino or some more caffeine and get through the rest of the day." It's like when I remove that from my executive clients, right? They're like, Dude, I absolutely love that this is no longer a decision for me. Just eat the food. It's fuel. It tastes good. I actually look forward to every meal. I no longer have any decision. So, when you're able to remove that decision fatigue, I was able to launch a whole nother business that's become on track to do 7 figures in less than a year, right? Because I removed the decision fatigue of what I was going to eat every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It opened up so many other areas to where when I knew I just ate. I got 4 hours to my next meal. I can be where my feet are. As a business owner, when you know you could be where your feet are and you've taken care of you, the productivity goes through the roof. And then flip that to the later end of the day when you've done your business and you've had those productive blocks of work and you've fed yourself properly, you're not like a glutton and, you know, your brain fog and all that. But now you get home with your family, you're able to be where your feet are, which means you could be with your kids, you can be with your wife. How many times as men do we get home and we're there, but we're not there? I mean, for the first 3 or 4 years of my children, it's sad to say, I was there, but I don't remember a lot of these moments because my mind was thinking about growing a business or what about this deal and what about that client? And it was because I just didn't have a schedule that was optimized. I wasn't optimizing me.

Well, a couple of quick things in there and then we'll transition into how we can employ this in our workplace so that we can positively influence our teams. But if you're liking this conversation around mindset, make sure you check out our other video, Winning Mindset one of the things I talk about in there that I've lived for the last decade or so is E R O. Event plus response equals outcome. Dane just said it in a completely different way. We also say life is 10% what happens, 90% how you react. But like that framework, and it's funny because I use it with the 11-year-olds that I coach as well. And I heard a dad yell it from the stands during a baseball game last weekend and my heart nearly melted. Like he yelled it at his son who was getting down after a play. He yelled, E R O. And it's events happen, right? And every day something— when you walk in the door, I remember early on in our business especially, it was like I knew that every day when I walked in, somebody was going to throw something at me that was going to take hours of my day away because I was client-facing. I was involved in serving the, serving the clients directly. So that meant my calendar was really subject to them and their desires every day. Right. And I had to get comfortable with my response to that, because if your response is like fighting it and like, oh no, how do I? I don't want to do all the client work. Well, that's my job, right? So like that. So if I, if I'm angry or I'm upset about that, like I've got to find a different way, then my outcome is just going to be bitterness. And like you said, I'm going to carry that home and I'm going to complain and I'm going to have a ripple effect in a negative way based on how I responded to the events of the day. But conversely, if I understand like, oh, hey, this is my job, I'm going to do it the best of my ability. And I'm going to also look to ways to automate and delegate that. And so I'm going to continue to grow as an individual in a business, then my outcome are more positive, right? So, there's always that R is the only piece we can control, but it dictates the outcomes. And then, you also nailed the other piece there, which is very much along the same line is I learned a long time ago, once you get in that driveway and you get home at the end of the day, man, you've got to take a deep breath, reset, and say, "Now is my most important job of the day. I'm going in to do the real work now." And that's be a husband, be a father, and all the stuff that happened all day, you'll realize now I've been blessed enough to be married for over 16 years. And so, So over those years, I've realized like, hey, nobody really cares about what happened in my day at work. I'm not saying that they don't care, but it's time for me to be dad and husband here. And that's what time it is, right? So yeah, dude, important, important stuff there, Dan.

Yeah, very. We're emotional beings. I don't know about you, but I'm super passionate. And that can sometimes have been my downfall until I kind of learned how to control the controllable. I used to be very reactive to everything. And in recruiting, especially, You cannot control humans, right? So, I would have a client that wanted this, you know, very difficult candidate. I have this candidate that didn't need to leave and I couldn't control any of them. So, a lot of times I was stuck with the emotions of what are they going to do? Why aren't they listening? All these things. And I put a lot of that on my wife and that carried into the energy of my household at night and that carried into how I woke up. And training and getting in a place where I was doing the uncomfortable thing and getting comfortable being uncomfortable, really trained me to go like, dude, I did 200 squats today. Like, I can deal with, you know, these 15 tasks. I could deal with the candidate not responding, whatever it was. And, you know, I just changed my perspective on a lot of things. And that allowed me to be a lot more pleasant of a dad to be around because my kids were still luckily 3 and 6 months old. Now they're 5 and 8, right? When I— now I'm on the later side of this. So they get to see a lot happier dad than I was on track to be.

Well, at some point, to your point, like the identity of being athletic, like your kids notice it too. Like, my daughter loves that I'm in great shape, right? Like, she loves that she knows she's got a dad that can protect her and that is, is strong. My son, who's an athlete, loves to look, you know, the fact that I can go out there and play and I can still, you know, do this stuff. That it's not like I've got to say, hey, go play with some other kids. Like, I'm able to do the things with him that I want to do. Um, and it's not, you know, again, we're talking about not a massive— I used to tell people, I used to— so, so full disclosure, I used to be a personal trainer, and so this is not a new thing for me. But, you know, I used to tell our when they do a 45-minute boot camp, I'm like, this is 3% of your day, y'all. Like, I mean, it's next to nothing. Like, you've got to invest the time. Like, that's right, it's so simple. But let's talk about that accountability in the workplace and how do we make that transition from— I told you before we jumped on, I'm hammering a pre-workout right now, which I'm sure you approve of, with the, uh, uh, because I'm, I'm leaving here from the office and I'm getting ready to go to the gym at 10 o'clock in the morning to go work out for an hour because it's 2 minutes from here, and then I'm gonna come right back. And that's me leading by example and saying, hey guys, like, this is an acceptable behavior is to leave and go work out in the middle of the day. Like that's just one of many ways I try to influence the team in a positive way. How can we do that as leaders? How can we do that as teammates at work to try to reinstate what norms should look like of healthy individuals?

Yeah, that's a really good question. Cause I've got some, I thought about that. I have clients that are, you know, in law enforcement. So SWAT and these guys get 90 minutes paid to go to a gym every day. Like that is a great great promotion for them where they pay for their membership and they say, "You have 90 minutes a day to take care of your physical body." So, I picked up that from kind of law enforcement. I also have clients that are in the tech world that get a health and wellness stipend, right? Like, $1,500 every quarter where they can invest. And so, those guys use that and they get the coaching. It's personalized. They get the nutrition, the training, the accountability. That is something that says, "Hey, we're going to meet you where you are." A $60 gym membership doesn't cut it. Because they don't know what to do. They don't know how to do it. They don't know when to do it. Then when they do do it, they don't get the results because they don't know how to feed themselves. So it's giving them a little bit more of the ability to kind of support, like, hey, when you're not here, we want you to prioritize you. And so one of the ways is, you know, helping them get a— give them a stipend that says, hey, go find yourself somebody that's going to support this journey for you, you know, from, from training to nutrition to mental health. And be the best you, because when you take care of you, you're going to take care of the business. So, I think those are really good initiatives. And that starts with promoting movement, right? So, you've got to be a culture that promotes a healthy individual. Two, it starts with when you do have these events or these lunches, don't encourage it to be about the alcohol. Be about the gathering, right? Be about healthier foods. Give them better options. When you do have these events. Like, I worked in the financial industry. I mean, dude, I was such a— and every 5 days a week we had these mutual fund guys coming in just feeding you like just carbs. I was like, I don't even think they offered a protein source. So, you know, like those types of things where it's like people just don't know. So as a company, you've got to educate yourself, get yourself with an organization that says, hey, we can support your employees and let's give them a path to personalization around this healthcare, around this physical health, around the nutrition, around the mental health. Like those clients that I have, I absolutely admire those companies that we work with because it's like they give the employee the financial freedom to say, hey, this is a priority, so take care of you. And those employees overcommit to those organizations because they don't always feel like they're playing from their heels, right? Like they're just an employee. So I think that's probably a good summary of like supporting that employee with some sort of stipend that says, hey, We're going to give this to you every quarter. We want you to invest this in you, right? Find a solution that's personalized, not a cookie-cutter program for $60 a quarter that's going to solve, you know, a million-dollar problem. Because essentially, you're going to pay for that in healthcare. The more hospital visits they got, the more doctors they got to visit, like, that's coming out of your pocket. So, why not prioritize making their health a priority for them? And therefore, that's going to make— that's going to impact the whole organization. When Johnny gets healthy, Jimmy gets healthy. When Jimmy and Johnny are healthy, now Bobby's getting healthy, right? It's this ripple effect where men don't like being around other men that have a higher standard than them. We just have this trigger of personal development. And so when somebody shows up, like I always say, like the dad bod's cool until Alex Abs moves in the neighborhood and shows up at the summer pool party, right? And then all those chubby dads are like, well, who the hell is Alex Abs and what's he doing? So I think it's just, you know, somebody setting a standard and holding it and then saying, hey, we're not here to judge, we're here to support and put that hand out for them.

Well, and it sounds like we align a lot there in that more often than not, what I see people do with any benefit at an organization is they roll out what they think they should roll out. Right. So let's use the example of free gym memberships. Yeah. Awesome. Everybody on the team, free gym memberships. Well, only 20% of those people are going to the gym because to your point, the others are either intimidated They don't understand when and how they should go. They don't understand what to do once they get there, whatever the case may be, they're just not going. So it's a waste of money, right? So yeah, you've got to meet your people where they are and make sure that you've got programs that are designed based on the size of your company, the demographics of your company. Like, you know, to your point, you might work in a company that, heck, half of them are CrossFitting already. And all you've got to do is add some, some fuel to the fire and you're just going to help them out. And it's going to be, they're going to have that level of commitment to you because you've supported something that's important to them. Whereas others, you might see them through that transformation that they couldn't have gotten anywhere else because they did not get that positive influence. And that positive influence, man, David Liverett, I'm going to give you a shout out. I know there's never in a million years you're going to listen to this, but this is a guy I used to work with at one of my first corporate jobs. And I noticed going back to the going out to lunch every day, well, he would have broccoli as a side instead of fries every single day. So he'd get, you know, instead of the big loaded up sandwich, it would just be a prime rib sandwich on a roll, wouldn't eat the whole roll. And he'd have broccoli instead of fries. And like just that small thing of knowing like, hey, this is a balanced meal, right? Like what, what those guys are having is a bunch of garbage and they're gonna be the results of it. And like, you know, this is a balanced meal and this is what I'm gonna have for my lunch. And just me seeing that as an early 20-something going like, oh, there are guys following the path. That's true. Yeah. That makes sense. Right? Like, so set the example. And oftentimes, you know, because otherwise I see this all the time too. People will see me at an event where I am eating super unhealthy because it's like, hey, we're at the football game, we're eating Bojangles, whatever. And then they'll be like, Oh, he eats Bojangles too. He must be doing something like there's something different. I had a guy ask me literally at a kid's birthday party a couple of weeks ago. He's like, like, what supplements? You must be taking some like really good supplements or something. Like, what are the supplements you're taking to stay lean like that? I'm like, dude, it's not supplements, bro. Like, this is the only time I'm going to eat pizza this week, man. Like, I'm not going to eat pizza every other day this week. Like, that's right. Like, I make room in my life to have pizza at the kid's birthday party, to eat the cupcakes. To do all that stuff. Yeah, because I'm balanced the rest of the week. So that's right, make sure that you're, you're seeing the whole picture when you think. And now again, I'm gonna go off on a tangent because again, this is a really important topic to me, but like genetically, that's the other thing people always think, it's genetics. Well, genetically they're different, and look, genes are different for sure, but I come from a family of obese people. It has been a bugaboo for my family forever, and then they just keep perpetuating the cycle of obesity in our family. And so it's something that's important to me Because you can break it, right? I'm breaking this cycle for my family, and I know that if you're listening to this right now and you made it this far, like, I tell you that you can be the one who breaks it if you come from a family of that. It's not genetic more often than not. It's habit-based. It's what you're putting in your body. It's a wellness and understanding of what that is doing to your body. So don't, don't, don't fall trap to that excuse.

Yeah, it totally is, man. I want to elaborate on that because both my parents are super heavy. They've just let themselves go, and they, you know, I've been the black sheep forever. But here's the thing. Every business and business owner wants the power of influence, right? So, I teach my clients, like when they're like, "Well, what do I do when I go here and I don't want to be the oddball?" Why don't you want to be the oddball? Why do you want to show them that you're average just like them, right? Let's just reverse it. Let's say that you start showing up with a balanced meal that's got a good protein, a lean carb, right? A healthy vegetable. And you start carrying that in and eating that. At first, they're going to be critics like, "Oh, who's this guy bringing his lunch? Who does he think he is?" Right? But if suddenly they start seeing that your body starts changing week after week and they're not, that critic turns into a curious individual and they start saying, "Well, hey, how many times a day do you eat that? And how do you season it? Oh, does it taste good? And how have you— how has that impacted you?" Now, when you open up the rule of curiosity for this individual, you have what? The power of influence. You have the ability to say, "Yeah, let me tell you why I'm doing this and let me tell you how I make this happen." Let me tell you how it's made me feel. And now you've just lent a great amount of knowledge and information through your standard to somebody else. And I have so many examples of my clients like this. Like, they're always initially, like, uncomfortable, like, oh, I don't want to be eating something different than my kids. I'm like, do your kids like— like, do you want to eat Chick-fil-A with chicken nuggets and fries every night? Like, is that what you want to show them, that you're the cool dad, that you can do that? Or do you want your kids to be curious about, damn, why am I— why is my dad jacked? Why does he look different than the other dads? Well, because he makes different decisions at the dinner table. And hey, I want to eat like my dad because my dad looks different. My dad looks fit, right? So, it's like when you implement these little changes, at first they can seem uncomfortable, but eventually when you bring it to the workplace, like I have one of my clients who's a CRO, he's like, "I used to hide in the corner the first couple of weeks of the program, like eating my food, you know, because I was usually the guy going out and getting the burgers. But then I just said, screw it." And he said, "You wouldn't believe all the people that were just like, genuinely curious about what I was doing and why I was doing it, how long it took me to do it, how good I felt. Like I said, so now as their leader, do you think that they have less respect or more respect for you? You know, I don't have to answer that question. I think, you know, and then he was able to say, yeah. And so now guess what? Betty and Barbara and Johnny, they start thinking about, well, I don't want to be the guy eating the burger and fries now, you know, I don't want to be the guy overeating the pizza or overchecking. So So, you know, when you open up, when you set a standard, people become curious. And when they're curious, gives you the power of influence. I mean, hands down, there's no greater way to influence.

Well, I couldn't agree more. It's become the running joke at the office with my gruel that I eat every morning. It's just oats and protein powder and it's every morning. It looks disgusting, but it's delicious to me. And, you know, it's kind of the joke as I'm walking through going to microwave, "Oh, you got the gruel? You ready to eat your gruel?" There he goes. But, you know, and then conversely, look, so you talked about the other devices as well, right? This reminds me of, you know, back in high school when we get into the bad stuff, you know, the alcohol, all that. Like, what do we do? We want our friends to go down with us. So, so what do people— like great humans that we are, right? So the— yeah. So, so what happens, you know, in an office setting? I'm going to bring in the cupcakes. I'm going to bring in the donuts. I'm going to bring in the, you know, like I want my friends to go down with me. So like, if you can come, you know, bring in a bag of apples, bring in a bunch of bananas, bring in something different to help folks to guide a better choice. And, you know, even, you know, for us around here, like, we keep restocked snacks all the time. And it's like, it's a delicate balance of like, ah, Goldfish is better than potato chips, right? So it's kind of like we're picking our battles and we're putting some things in there trying to influence folks eating a slightly better way. But, uh, you know, ultimately at the end of the day, it often, you know, I think a lot Dane, people will raise their hand and come to you, but oftentimes they just don't raise their hand. And I hear a lot of advice and like, you know, a lot of people who are not in a position to give advice say, oh, you know what I do to stay healthy and thin? And it's like, well, you're not. So why are you giving me advice?

Right?

So like the—

when did you do that?

But it's like, you know, but it reminds me of coaching, right? So like when we coach an employee, we have to lead with questions, not answers, because people want to believe that they know better. That's true. So if you ask questions and draw what they already know out of them, you're much more likely to see success than saying, hey, here's what you should do, Dane, especially if they're not asking, right? So that's right.

So that's it. Especially another man, he doesn't like being told what to do from another man.

Absolutely.

Yeah, a lot of ego comes in.

So what about the mental side of it? I mean, this is a piece for me, mental health and fitness. Um, you know, personally, I'm kind of like the term mental wellness, like I understand it and we all need to keep our brain in a healthy place and all that, but I'm a little tired of the term itself. But, what about mental health and fitness? Where does that fit into your protocol for what you're prescribing to the men that join you?

Yeah. So, my whole journey started not to get in the body that I'm in now. It literally started to stop the negative self-talk that I was having about myself. Right? Because of the way that I was treating my body and the way that I looked and felt in my body, I no longer was taking— looking myself in the mirror. I no longer believed my own word to myself. I no longer was like desiring or taking and leading my wife. I wasn't taking selfies or pictures with my kids. These are all things that I was super proud of, but for some reason I wasn't displaying that. And a lot of it came down to the insecurity that I had. And the insecurity came from the negative self-talk. Which came from a direct correlation of I constantly was saying I was going to do things that I no longer was doing, right? I'm not going to drink that. I drink that. I'm not going to eat that. I eat that. I'm going to wake up early. I'm going to— I slept in late, right? Like, so I think a lot of the mental health comes from not holding your own word to yourself. So you no longer believe it. And if you don't believe your own word, how could you expect other people to believe your word? But when you set a system up that becomes habit-based, where you validate yourself not on a result, but on a habit, habit, right? And the habit is the work, and the work instills the worth. That person could be unstoppable because regardless of what's going on around you, you control the controllable again, right? You control the habits. If I do these every day, I will be in a place to where I'm proud of myself. And if I'm proud of myself, then that's all that matters because now I'm going to show up for the people that I love and care about. So, mental health for me came down to I need to get to a place every single day by 5 o'clock, I was proud of the individual that showed up. I woke up early, I read something positive, I trained my body, I ate a meal plan, and oh, now here comes that last one. Don't drink that glass of wine. If I did that and I woke up the next day, shoulders are back, head was— I didn't do it. I kept my word yesterday. And now I stack that over 7 days, 14 days, 1 month, 2 months, 3 months later. Do you know how much better my mental health was? Because I was somebody that kept their word to themselves. I'm taking pictures of my family. I'm asking my wife to take a photo with me. You know, all these little things. And I always say, like in my program, I tell— I don't tell guys this, but the first picture, like the starting photo, it's always like this, man. Shoulders are down. I don't know who's taking the picture. The head's there like, take the effing picture, you know, like, let's just get this over with. By the 90th day, it's like the evolution of the shoulders are back. There's a grin. Like they're just so proud of what they and they don't look like they're ready for a bodybuilding stage, but they have shown up for themselves in a way that they have not in so many other years. Yes, they've shown up to be a provider. Yes, maybe they've shown up half-assed to be a husband, but they've shown up for themselves. And when you do that through your habits and you validate yourself through those habits, man, the world becomes your oyster. You then can think like you can take on anything. Like, this isn't a problem. I, I'm a man that's consistent. I'm a man that knows how to get through the hard things and do the hard things other people aren't willing to do. So, for me, that's the relationship for mental health. It's less about like sitting in a room and talking about your feelings all day, right? And it's more about just getting up and controlling the controllable and being a man that you admire and gifting that to the world. And when you do that every single day and you make that your job, you're doing your job, being a husband, those are easy. You know what I mean? Because you've done the hard work on yourself. So, my program is less about a meal and a training plan and more about a journey of personal development.

I love it. And the, you know, I have a saying I use all the time, evidence breeds confidence, right? So as soon as you produce that evidence, no matter what it's in, in life, all of a sudden you get that much more confident, right? I think it's your point. Like, it, it's very hard to be confident in something you've never done before, especially a lot of people. I'm in a unique spot, right? I've been playing sports since I was 8 years old, and it's always been a part of my life, even if it wasn't part of my family's life. Either way, it's something that the people around me influenced me in a positive way to go on this journey. And like, I wouldn't know any other way. I wouldn't know how to start a day without a workout. Like I said, I'm already antsy right now. It's almost 10 AM and I have a workout.

Pre-workout's kicking in.

The skin's tingling. Yeah, I got in the face a little hot.

I know.

And I want to go back to the, you know, like I always feel like I have to hedge on this. Like I'm not saying there's anything like mental health's not a real thing. I don't want my earlier words to be misconstrued. What I get tired of is the, I need a mental health day. Well, you just need a day off, right? Like, we don't call it a mental health day. Like, we all need a day off. Like, that's why— yeah, like, that's it.

That's the labels.

We don't need to throw it— yeah, exactly, a label on it. But the— I do love what you just said there. So many great things coming out of this, and I think a lot for people to build on as they take their own fitness journey. What's the lead domino for you? If I'm somebody who's listening to this and I've made it this far, this means I'm really, really interested in this topic. This means I've got something inside of me that's telling me right now I need to take a step towards creating a better me. What's that first step you tell somebody to take?

It's setting a goal to wake up early, earlier than everyone else, and prioritize yourself. Like, have that space for you, right? You're going to realize, like, the negative self-talk may start coming, the anger, like the frustration, like those come, but that's where you start working on that process. But the predecessor to that is planning the night before, a nighttime protocol, like unwinding properly. When I said I needed to start getting up early, I recognized, well, then I have to change the way that I go to bed. And so, that meant unwinding earlier. So, I teach guys a very simple protocol. It's like, we're going to not eat 2 hours before bed. We're going to shut off the phones and devices and TV an hour before. We're going to drink a nighttime routine. We're going to take some magnesium. We're going to start telling our body that we're unwinding and we're going to set a goal to be in bed by 9:00. And when you do that, getting up earlier just becomes this natural progression to you don't need the alarm clock. Like, getting up at 6 was early for me back then. Like, when, when I started this journey, it was like, oh, 6 o'clock, like, geez, you know, like, what am I going to do that early? And then now it's like 3:30, 4 o'clock, no alarm clock needed. You know, I'm up like that. And because I unwind, I have this routine every night. It's very consistent and it's, it's reliable. And it helps me say, like, I'm going to be ready tomorrow. And I always wanted to be somebody like one of my goals was like, 'Cause I was never this person, like, if somebody is in a wreck or they're in a jam, like, and they have to pick up the phone at 3:30, 4 o'clock, 5 in the morning, like, they're gonna think, who's the one SOB that I can call? It's like, Dane Pallarino. Like, I wanted to be that person, you know? And that meant I needed to be consistent to my routine and my habits. And that meant I need to show up for myself if others were gonna know that I was gonna show up for them. So having my wife and my kids know every morning, like clockwork, they're gonna come down and I'm already there, are, right? And I'm ready to receive them. That starts from the night before, me just setting in a proper protocol. And then that leads to healthier habits.

I love that. The day starts the night before, something I lived by for decades and can't agree more with. And now let's hit on that self-talk for one quick minute and then we'll call it a day here. But, you know, I had this, so I'm human like everybody else and I'm not jacked like Dane. I'm going to do something. I'm going to put up a couple photos of Dane over the stuff so you can see just how jacked this cat has gotten on his journey and the I'll even give you a little recent beach photo of me after lots of pizza so you can see I'm not BSing. But the, uh, the self-talk thing is so important, right? Because I, I'm one of these guys who ebbs and flows a little bit, right? So I'll go through a period where, like this vacation, like vacation, I just binge eat on vacation. It is like a natural trigger for me that if we go to Pauly's twice a year, when I'm in Pauly's, I just eat from sundown to sunup. It is terrible. But then I come back and I bounce back and it's all right. But so I go through these times though throughout the year, like the nighttime food, right? Oh, football game's on. I'm standing here over by the pantry. I'm munching away. Now, I'm doing the sweet and salty evolution back and forth, back and forth, right? And then, I'm just pounding food. And then, the other night, it's been a couple months now, but I remember I just said to myself, "This isn't who I am. I'm the protein shake before bed guy." that self-talk was there for me when I needed it because I'm about to go down the drain again and go into it. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's not who you are. Get the protein shake, have it with your almond milk, and go to bed like you do every other night and be done with it and move on, right? So once you've established the habits, they also help you to rescue yourself with the self-talk because you realize like, hey, I am this other person even when I make mistakes, because you're going to, right?

Yes. The gym is for the mind, the kitchen is for the body. Money, right? And so for me, I started to— I made a lot of mistakes in the, in, in my process, but I would always play the tape like, okay, I'm gonna eat this ice cream tonight. What happens tomorrow? Do I wake up at 4 o'clock feeling great? No, because I know how I, how I respond when I have sugar, right? One, it screws up my digestion. When I eat the pizza, it screws up my digestion, which means that impacts my meal plan tomorrow, and then that impacts how I show up for my business and how I respond to people around me, because now I didn't keep my word to myself last night. So, now I'm going to have a distained lemon in my mouth when my wife comes at me with something basic. And I'm like, "Ah." And I'm pissed off at her, right? And she didn't do anything, but I'm really pissed off at me. So, I played enough of these tapes out like, "Okay, I'm going to do this and I'm going to indulge in this. What happens tomorrow? How do I feel about myself tomorrow? What happens 2 days from now?" Like, "Okay, yes, I love french fries, but I know every time I eat french fries for 3 or 4 days, my body's inflamed from the seed oils." So, I know, okay, well, is it really worth it? So, I had enough of these experiences to where I started to associate more pain than pleasure with some of these decisions around alcohol or pizza or fried foods, things I love and I enjoy indulging in at the moment, but I recognize, play the tape, Dane, play the tape. And so, I would play the tape. And I always love the person, like created a man that I admired and gifted him to the world. So, I love like, no, I love waking up this version of Dane more than I love of this short-term feel of consuming this ice cream. So, I'm not going to do it. And so, I created this association like a while ago that bodybuilders don't do that, right? What would a bodybuilder do? Because I was trying to really focus on building muscle like a bodybuilder except keeping in my everyday life. And so, even things like with alcohol, my son had asked me like, "Well, Dad, do—" He knew what alcohol was. Like, "Do bodybuilders drink wine?" And I said, "No, bodybuilders don't drink alcohol." It stops fat burning and it stops muscle building. They don't do it. So now we're out at an event one time and the lady said, "Oh, what do you want to drink?" I said, "Oh, I'm going to get a tequila." And my dad said, "But Dad," my son who's 6 years old, "Dad, I thought bodybuilders don't drink alcohol." Man, I looked at him like, "Damn, he's right." And I said, you know, like I had to make this conscious decision because I put myself out there. I set a new standard for him, but now he's holding me to that standard. And I said, I can now just talk my way out of this and completely show my son that I'm not a man of my word, or I got to hold the line here even though I wanted this tequila because I was out in a Mexican restaurant. I wanted to like have a good time. All right, I'm not going to do it. A month later, same thing. I said, I'm going to get a tequila. He said, isn't that alcohol? I said, yeah. He said, bodybuilders don't drink alcohol, Dad. I went— that was almost 2 years ago, and I've never drank alcohol since. All this, these years where I was lukewarm on just this one little thing. My son held that standard. And now even with things like ice cream and cookies, like if I go, Dad, you can't eat that, you're going to lose your abs. It's like, all right, man, you got me. So, I've put people around me through my habits to where they've recognized even family members that used to be like, come on, have the cupcake. They know this son of a bitch ain't breaking. He don't eat the cake. So, for me, it was just holding the line long enough to get on the other side of it. And I always tell guys in the beginning of my program, I'm the tugboat. But once I get you 2 or 3 weeks down the road and I get you results that you have not been able to get for yourself in a long time, your compliance is going to go from 60% to 70%. Because once you're a believer, you tend to put a lot more inner energy and interest behind it. And that's kind of where the magic happens. So it's just getting far enough along the lines, you know, like how this decision impacts this result in this outcome. And so I I created a life that it was like, I love the way that I feel and operate running my meal plan. Like, I'll be honest, over the last 2 years, I've eaten almost the same exact thing every single day, 5 or 6 times a day, very little variation. And I look forward to every single meal because of how it makes me feel. So, you know, men are creatures of habit. It's just creating the right habits.

I love that. And if you're looking for an easy way to do that, one of the things I did was I got my Fitbit. Fitness Pal, and I would go in and I would design a day based on what some of the things I like to eat normally, to Dane's point, and then where are my gaps in my macros, and where does that, you know, do I need to be at a deficit, do I need to be at a surplus. And then now I just have like, I know what if, if I eat this generally for breakfast, this generally for snack, this generally for lunch, this generally for midday, you know, etc., that like I'm gonna be in my zone. So I don't have to track macros, I don't have to track calories every single day. I know what a great day looks like to get me to where I want to be for my goals specifically. Um, and, and I'll finish with this because you reminded me of this, Dan. It's, it's a— I think I've never thought of it this way, but I think you could change the word alcohol for food. Uh, but I heard a long time ago, alcohol is borrowing joy from tomorrow. And so like, the— and just think about that, right? I mean, if the good time today comes at a price tomorrow, right? And it's the same thing with food. And I never really connected those dots until you just said it, is like, you know, that slice of pizza at 10 o'clock is just, you know, you're just borrowing some joy from tomorrow, man. That's all it's going to be. So this has been awesome, dude. I appreciate the time. And we'll put links where you guys can connect with Dane and learn more about him in the description. Make sure you do that. Make sure you follow along. If you made it this long, dude, you better subscribe. You better smash the like button. You better do all the stuff, dude, because obviously you like what we're doing here. And I appreciate you stopping by. Thanks, Dane. It's been an awesome conversation.

Of course, brother. Thanks for having me. Great, great chat.