Consistently Choosing the Hard Right Over the Easy Wrong

Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week

Podcast Transcript

Jerred (00:01)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Garage Gym Athlete podcast episode. So this one was spurred on by a community member. I forgot who you're talking with, but they were like, who the hell are you? No, not really. But they were like, it was actually a super positive email that Dave got or message that was like, hey, man, I feel like you've really lit things up around the community, which there's a ton of truth to that. But he was asking like, hey, what's your background? Is there a podcast we talked about? And I'm like,

Not really like you just kind of jumped in one episode with me and Joe and then I was like, yep, Dave's here. Hopefully he does a good job. Let's go. so ⁓ anyway, I think doing this for the garage, Matthew community, letting everyone get to hear your story a little bit, I think would be good. And yeah, so we can we can start with as far back as you want to go, ⁓ preferably birth. No, but no, I've known Dave for a long time. ⁓

And I think we can start there and then I'd love to hear a little bit more of your backstory. But we linked up through another business, PT Biz. And then Dave, you were part of, I think it was like the coaching. We were doing like a program on specific for like people interested in like fitness programming and coaching and stuff like that. And you jumped in there, we got to know each other there. I mean, that's been like six years or something like that, maybe more.

Dave (01:28)
think maybe more than that. That was like 2017. Sounds familiar? Where does time go on that?

Jerred (01:30)
Oh, dang.

Time flies, man. So anyway, yeah, Dave, I've known Dave for a long time. So I'm just establishing that fact of like, Dave, not some random guy that I found on LinkedIn who I thought could help garage gym athlete. Like, he's been around and I've always known what his capacity and caliber is. And I think he's awesome. But yeah, Dave, give us a little bit more about your backstory and you know, wherever you want to start and then I'll just start peeling the layers from there.

Dave (02:01)
Yeah, I think.

which I think we're good place to start is probably college that gives some professional background to it. I went to school in a university called Carroll University in Wisconsin. Played football there for four years, a Division III school. And I got my undergraduate in exercise science and then stayed on school there. They had a six year accelerated physical therapy program. So I got to get my doctorate in physical therapy in basically six years, which cuts a year off, which is awesome when you're talking student loans

and some of those things, but that was an extremely important time for me because I mean, I went there mainly for football and my mom's like, hey, maybe you should consider like not just being a strength coach because like, what are you going to do with it? Like they have this physical therapy program. I'm like, sure, like I'll do that. I just want to go play. I want to go play football, though, really. So. Linebacker. Yeah, yeah. So I was like, you play linebacker. I thought you'd be like a safety or cornerback. I'm like, well, I wasn't always.

Jerred (02:33)
Hmm.

what what position is your plan ⁓

Dave (02:59)
180 pounds like when there is 220, 230 pounds and a whole lot of whole lot more meat and speed on me. Maybe not speed, but yeah, so that was that was a that kind of kicked off the professional journey into PT school. I realized and this is knocking on the PT profession, but I realized I'm like I like strength conditioning so a lot more like that's the stuff I would always find myself studying and reading about even though we're like I'm like, OK, I can learn the stuff I need to pass the test, but I was always in my free time learning about strength conditioning and.

Mobility and performance and that's when like Kelly Shrett really came on the scene and different things and I was like learn a lot like learn from him and Just like different all these all these different strength coaches and things which is where I really got passionate about so I knew from graduate PT school that I wanted to Eventually start a business and not just do the traditional rehab route and I worked for a couple years around the Chicago area where I originally grew up because I was waiting on my wife to finish up PT school and she finished up two years after me and then

We got married in August of 2016 and by September of that same year, we moved out to California. No real good rhyme or reason on it. looked back. ⁓ We looked back, God was doing a lot of things in it, but we didn't realize at the time. like, this is just something we want to do. So we moved out there knowing basically no one with no money, no jobs. I'm applying to places on the way. We drove out there. We packed up our cars and went through Kansas City. like, ⁓ I'll apply to this place.

Jerred (04:08)
Mm-hmm.

Dave (04:27)
Can you do an interview on Monday? I'm like, I think so. Yes, I'll be there as long as my car doesn't break down. So we were just totally figuring out as we went. But the goal was to always start our business for my wife and I. And that's what worked for a little bit around there when we moved out there. And about six months in, we did start, I say, quote, start a business. We had no idea what we were doing with business either. And that's where Venture got connected with you and Danny and some of the guys at PT Biz. And you guys were incredible for us. And we saw.

Jerred (04:32)
Yeah.

Dave (04:57)
a lot of growth out there and then guided other plans and things change, our family situation changed, we ended up moving out to the south. So we moved from California, we made another cross country move to ⁓ Decatur, Alabama and that's where we're at now.

Jerred (05:12)
That's awesome, Yeah, I'll go back to the education piece because I I want to empower people too because you're not ever going to learn in college what you actually want, I think. And as weird as that may sound, I started in college as a food nutrition science major because I felt like I knew a lot about like...

strength and conditioning and I was like, you know, I'm a little weak on nutrition. It was like more of like I was trying to educate myself based off of my known weaknesses. Like that was my chart, my like the reason I selected that and I did it for two years. And then I was just like, I hate this, you know, like I don't hate nutrition, but I, the level of detail, the labs would go into to like measure fat molecules and stuff. I was like, this is like not going to help me at all. It's not interesting. It's not what I truly want. So most everything I've learned has been through self-education and I'm sure

you picked up certain things ⁓ here and there, like maybe some things in college or whatever, but a lot of it is like mentorship, guidance, other coaches that you learn from doing your own self research and education. You physical therapy might not be as much of that case. Maybe I obviously haven't gone through any physical therapy program, but like, do you feel that that's true? Like most everything you've had to learn is been self-taught, even though you are so highly educated, or do you feel like your education was like a major part of like

getting you to where you are and how much you know now.

Dave (06:39)
That's such a question. It's so hard to know how those influences are because I get people reaching out all the time. like, hey, I want to go to PT school. Should I do it? I'm like, let's talk. That's not a yes or no question because coming out, and I was a little more maybe naive, of course, as a newer grad and you think you know a lot, I'm like, probably only maybe 10 % of what I am using I learned from PT school and everything else was just self-taught. I'm like, well, that's.

Jerred (06:53)
Yeah.

Dave (07:06)
Like that number is hard to say because you don't realize, like I don't realize how much the in-depth knowledge I have now of anatomy and biomechanics and the human body and all those things. like, I don't know how much that's influenced how well I pick up on some of the other, the other things too, and how well I see movement and how well I can diagnose some of those things in my own training and other people. So it's so hard to say. I think it's, like there's so much that's been self-taught, but I think it's given me probably more of a foundation than I.

Originally gave it credit to as well.

Jerred (07:38)
Yeah. And I'll never be one of those people who say like college is a waste of time, like, or waste of education. I don't care what you learn. You learn, you learn so much in the process, even if you just learn how to learn, there's so much benefit from going through that process. but I think whatever you're most passionate about is going to spur whether or not you continue to educate yourself on. Yeah. Strength and conditioning, programming, mobility, whatever, whatever the case is. ⁓ so you just randomly decided.

San Diego, right?

Dave (08:10)
Not the worst place to randomly decide.

Jerred (08:11)
No, it's not. ⁓ but like, there's gotta be a

little bit more reason to that. Like why, why just pick up and go to, how long had you guys been married? Was it just like, so married, was it a plan before, like during the engagement or was it just like, ⁓ okay. So at least there is. Yeah. Okay. All right. So you get married, you kind of had the plan during the engagement and then you head off to San Diego. What's, what's purpose in that?

Dave (08:22)
⁓ Two weeks, I think. Yeah, yeah, had planned before that. Not great planning, but some planning.

Yeah, there's, I mean, there's the, I think more like surface level fitness side of it. I mean, it's beautiful out there. You can be active year round. think there's a lot of, when we had been, we had both, so Lindsay had been out there before. Like I'd been out there several times on either vacation or to continue to have courses out there and some different things. I'm like, this place is like, there's so many active people out here. You can be active year round. It's like, there's just a lifestyle there that.

from a fitness side of things that's attractive to someone coming in that loves health and fitness, like the amount of, and came from a cold place where it gets, and I think the winter before, or at least my last clinical was like negative 40 or negative 50 wind chill, and I was working in the basement of a hospital, so like I would go in and I have to like sprint for my car, because you can get frostbite if you're out there for longer than like a minute, so it's like sprinting for my car in there, it's dark out, I go underground to work for eight hours.

Jerred (09:11)
And you came from a cold place, right? Like you.

Dave (09:34)
And then I come out and it's dark and cold out, like, this has gotta be the, like no wonder I was depressed that winter and those things too. So, weather doesn't hurt, but I think it was just more like the, you for us and it was the wanting something different. It was the wanting to do, like I think for us as a couple, like we just, it was like not necessarily like fresh start type thing, but I think we kinda had to re, you know, not like re-identify ourselves or anything like that, but.

Jerred (09:39)
Yeah.

Dave (10:03)
⁓ There's just like a desire to like work on our marriage and like work on the things and it sounds because because again We were probably naive of like well We don't need help and we don't need community in this and that which is absolutely wrong but I think there was just something about like us doing that and taking out a challenge together and doing something hard and like starting out our marriage that way getting to Just basically rely on each other that Created probably more challenges in some way But also like we grew so close through that and like it really did build a strong foundation for us ⁓

Starting our marriage with that.

Jerred (10:34)
Yeah, I take for granted in my own story. I think I forget that a lot of people like. Like if you just like whatever, graduate high school, go to college and in surrounding area, like then you're just in that spot for the rest of your life. And like that bothers a lot of people. Now I'm I'm back in the spot where I went to high school and not college, but where I went to high school and kind of grew up. ⁓ But the military, like did all of the things that you're saying forcefully. So was like.

The second, right after, I mean, similar story, we just didn't get to pick where we went. was like right after we got married, we're off to, you know, pilot training, doing all these things. I think, and we had multiple different duty locations and like trips and stuff. And then also we were working actively to get out of debt. And it was like those first, let's call it four to five years of marriage, we went through a lot. And I'm not saying that they were hard. Like, to be honest, I think the beginning part of marriage is easy, you know.

And I think if you can maintain that and go through difficult things together later in marriage is also not all that challenging because you've gone through all these things not to hop on here and give people marriage advice, but like what you're saying is like you're going through all of these things you're learning together, you're growing together. There's no outside influence if you will, it's just you two, right? There's no one else to like.

to run to or talk to or go hide out, it's just like, hey, we're gonna figure this out together. And I think Emily and I did that a lot, like I said, forcefully just by being in the military, but you guys chose to do it, which I think is awesome.

Dave (12:06)
Yeah, and there's stuff that we would have for sure done things differently at the same time. It's like that gave us such foundation that we still look back on and we're like, wow, we were absolutely crazy for doing that. Would we do it again? If I knew everything that went into it, probably not, but I'm glad we didn't. Yeah. It's still happening.

Jerred (12:22)
Oh yeah, most of my life is the most fun I never want to have again. I'm waiting to stop saying that phrase, but like, I'm in it right now and issuing out a remodel. like, this is the most

fun I never want to have again. Um, hopefully permanently this time. Uh, so let's fast forward a little bit. Um, San Diego. Well, then you go to Alabama, right? So big reason there. Like that's another seems like, uh, you just got a dartboard and kind of, you know, you know what?

We hit Alabama this time, let's go. So why Alabama?

Dave (12:57)
Yeah, sounds totally random. People are like, where's Alabama? People from California, what are you going there for? And people, when we come here too, we're even crazier because so many people I think are, they have always been around here. They're like, oh yeah. I'm like, are you from around here? And they're like, oh no, I'm from the next town over. I'm not from around here. I'm like, oh, that's like 10 minutes down the road. I consider that around here.

So we had, there's so many reasons that went into it. ⁓ But some of big things when we just looked at, mean, family plays such a big role in that. For us, our faith's super important to us. we reflect on some of the things that we saw around us, the things we saw, and we got connected actually, kind of like how you and I got randomly connected. We got connected with some pastors out here who do marriage coaching virtually, and we sought them out through a friend of a friend.

Kind of recommendation type thing heading into when our daughter was being born. We're like, hey We'd like we want our marriage to be better and like I don't know what's coming with it with the new kids we sort of proactively sought them out and We've been out here to visit here as in Alabama several times to visit them and they come out to seen us we just Like how they were how they were doing life how they were raising their family like the things we saw were just things that we wanted to be around as a as a family that We had a we had a really good community in California, but what we saw

out here was just different for lack of a better word. And our son was gonna be born that June and was kinda like the timing was like, we either need to like, it's now or it's gonna be like a year and a half from now and the timing just felt like it was something that we had to do. So it moved pretty quickly again and yes, it's been ⁓ another awesome journey out here and some challenge I feel like restarting especially when we had a business that we were already trying to

kind of move more online with some of the things that we were doing. So we had a little bit of a platform for it. But again, you have no idea how hard it is to actually uproot everything again. And then I'm so glad we did. But it was ripping the bandaid off a little bit with some of those things professionally and some of the things that had to kind of like, you're like, well, we have done, if things were different business-wise, would we have stayed here? And those aren't necessarily the right questions to ask. But you look back, you're like,

you having to face, you know, for someone like myself who's always been like performance and goal oriented. It's like, well, it feels like, it feels like failure when you close down something that you work so like we put our life into that business out there for so long, my wife and I owned and it's like, well, we're not like completely closing down. We have this like online leg that we're able to, you know, help, help us to some degree, but you face like failure and you face like, man, that was like, that's hard. That feels like.

I didn't see it going this way when we moved out here. move out there, like, oh yeah, I know we see ourselves out here long term and we're gonna do this and crush this and hit these things. Then it's like, well, this isn't happening and this isn't what's best for our family. So like, now what? And that was kind of the now what type thing.

Jerred (16:04)
That's awesome, man. I mean, to be honest, I think that's why we came back to Texas. And I think people, if you don't have kids or you're not raising a family or whatever, it's harder to realize. You kind of just feel like you can just live anywhere, do whatever, but community is a big aspect of life and the type of people you want to be around. ⁓ That stuff started to matter a lot more for us as our kids were getting a little bit older. And we've kind of hit on this here and there, but you do have kids. So how many kids do you have and what are their ages?

Dave (16:31)
Three kids, so Elise is our oldest. She turned four in August. Noah turned two in June. And then Kayden was born Cinco de Mayo this year, so five, five, two, five. So he's six, seven months now, celebrating our first Christmas with him. ⁓ They're so much fun, yeah. They're little buds, they're like they've, Elise and Noah are so close. They're best friends already, and we think it's so cool, but how they've...

Kayden were like, I don't know, like we're bringing another one into this and they just they've just been like so receptive to him and already seem like they're gonna be buds. So it's fun to fun to watch them grow up.

Jerred (17:08)
That's awesome. The reason

I have to bring that up is because I think people have to know, right? People have to know what you're facing, what your life is like on a daily basis and what you're trying to accomplish, you know, with performance goals, consistency. We're talking about daily over decades and 2026, all this kind of stuff. None of that's easy when you also have three kids, you know, like, cause if you don't, if you...

We talked about this in the Daily Over Decades episode, but if you're not very intentional about your planning, it becomes very challenging. And I think that's what kids have done for me. They've just sharpened me. When it was just me or just me and Emily, it was pretty easy to get things done. I'm not gonna lie. And if you don't have kids, I'm not saying you have to have kids. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying I never was gonna be the guy who was like, well, I had kids, I guess maybe I'm not gonna work out anymore. Or like.

I won't be as consistent, you know, and if that happened to you, no shame, like you can always get back on the horse, but I never wanted that to be my story. And so what did it take? It didn't take sacrificing the family. It took sacrificing a lot of myself to figure out how to fit it in when I needed to fit it in. And I think there are a lot of dads and moms listening to this who are going through the same stuff. And I, know, this is very family oriented company, right? Like we...

We have ⁓ wives, we have kids, and they mean the most to us in this world, but we still want to get everything else done. And I think it's important for people to know that you're in that same boat. You know what I mean? Because it's honestly becoming harder and harder for me to relate to someone who doesn't have kids. Not that, like, again, whatever. But it's just like, don't tell me about how it's hard to get in workouts with, and it's just you. I don't want to hear that. ⁓ Because you have to...

It just sharpens you. And would you feel like that's been your story? Like have kids sharpened you or just made life messy? Like which one is it for you? It's both to be honest, but.

Dave (19:04)
Yes, no. No, but definitely

sharpen. It's something, and sharpen from a way of, for sure what you're talking about of like, it's something that we have to figure out how to navigate this. And Lindsay has health goals and like that's something that's always challenging too of like, especially her and you she's been nursing or pregnant for probably like 80 % of the last four or five years. And like, she's got health goals and those things too. And it's how to prioritize those and not be.

Jerred (19:28)
Right. Yeah.

Dave (19:35)
not be selfish in those and just be like, because it's easy for me to just be like, oh, I'm just gonna go work out. It's like, well, I need to make space for her to work out too and prioritize those things. But there's things, because both fitness and family are so important to me, it's not an either or of like, oh, I'm just gonna work out at the expense of my family. sorry, dad's gonna go do his workout. But there's it's.

Jerred (19:55)
Good luck. Yeah.

Dave (20:03)
It's so important. It's sharpened me in the way of like realizing what I'm passing down like because I've arguably gotten more healthy with kids which I know seems backwards to some people but like I think it's just been the There's like a pressure and a weight on Like how I'm leading my kids and for me it's never been the getting workouts in it's been like controlling food quantities and not like like things of like not overeating or like making

poor choice there, like that's how much I see, like those are the things I see more often, kids are watching, I'm like, where'd you, I'm like, that's like something you directly got from me. So I think there's just the pressure of like what I want our kids to see and what what health and fitness and nutrition and that lifestyle and the discipline, all those things that like all the lessons can teach. I think it's one of the best ways to just be able to like teach lessons and demonstrate and live it. And I've always been kind of a, ⁓

I'd say I'm very much like a behind the scenes type person. Like I'm not out there on social media a ton. I probably could be more like in terms of showing people what I'm doing, encouraging people, but it's something that it's always just like, I'm kind of just like putting in the work in private and like, but my family sees it that's what's most important to me.

Jerred (21:15)
That's awesome, and I think we have very similar mindset there. mean, that's most of what I, it's most of my motivation now. Like I want to live a long, healthy life, but like, you know, I want this to become a part of my kids life. Like I want them to love, find a love for fitness. And that's different than forcing your kids to do fitness. And I think that's where, that's where it's really challenging for me. It'd be super easy for me to force my kids to work out every day. That's an easy thing to do, but to...

try and foster what kind of interests they might have athletically and then translate that to a form of training and like helping them learn how to push themselves without pushing them so hard. And I know you're not at any of these stages yet, but like it just, the challenges never stop. Like right now you're just trying to be the role model and then it's like, okay, I'm actually trying to introduce this into your life, but I don't want to force it. It's like getting someone to love you, right? It's like, you can't force that. just, it just has to.

has to be done over time. And so it is very challenging. And I think that's something that you and I are gonna be talking about for years to come. And I'm just a few steps ahead of you with the kids and their ages. And so whatever mistakes I make, I'll let you know ahead of time. ⁓ But professionally, let's jump to that, man. You've been training people ⁓ predominantly from my understanding one-on-one, right, for a while. And is that something that you...

have always done, you mentioned having the online portion of your brick and mortar practice. Have you always been training people, this combination hybrid of in-person and virtually?

Dave (22:55)
Yeah, and one-on-ones, that's when we started our PT business. was all around when lot of insurance models were seeing, I don't even know how it still is, but probably a lot of places are seeing multiple people an hour and those things were like, we're going to work one-on-one with someone. Even in our PT business, people were coming with injuries, like, OK, my knee hurts. it was more, we always wanted to be more like coaching of the entire.

Person their entire fitness there. So we were talking nutrition. We were talking we were looking at their exercise program We were like seeing what their goals are we were so address the knee pain But we were always we're always building that into we saw a lot of people that they're like I want to do a hundred mile race I want to do a like I'm getting an ultramarathon running. I'm I do Ironman competitions I'm like a competitive CrossFit athlete like those things and and even people that aren't necessarily on the competitive side They're like, I just love doing CrossFit and working out and like if I don't have this I'm not

I'm not a good mom or dad or like husband or wife because like this is an outlet for me and and you've seen that a lot a lot of times over the years so it just sort of evolved into what started out as physical therapy turned into like I realized how much I was just coaching people and Having them like working on habits and lifestyle and mindset and like how they're approaching it and how to like Yes, how to bounce back from an injury, but how to like okay? What our next like what is the next six months and year look like what do you want it to look like from a?

from a health standpoint. that evolved into the actual coaching of people, ⁓ which were more people who come with specific performance goals or even ⁓ some people it's body composition, some people it's performance, a lot of people it's a combination of that. But ⁓ physical therapy was sort of the, I guess, launching pad that realized how much I enjoyed that side of things and working with people on a one-on-one scale to help them do whatever it is that they wanted to do.

Jerred (24:49)
That's awesome, man. And who knows, maybe we'll see some of that one-on-one trickle into garage gym athlete next year. But let's talk about garage gym athlete. I'd love to know, because you could have done everything. You could have done anything, should I say. You have a lot of experience. You're highly educated. You could get a job anywhere. You could start another brick and mortar practice in Alabama. You have any and every option ahead of you. And you're a smart dude and very ambitious.

So why take this opportunity with Garage Gym Athlete? What excites you about, I would say, Garage Gym Athlete in general that makes you want to be here with the community?

Dave (25:30)
Man, Several ways I could take that. think ⁓ if we start purely, yeah, like as I got into concurrent training more, like I've traditionally been, you football and like bodybuilding, power lifting more, like power building type stuff's always been my background and over the past few years of sort of getting forced into doing a hundred mile ultra marathon out of nowhere that you helped me through and some of those things, I've...

Jerred (25:55)
Mm-hmm.

Dave (25:59)
fall in love again with like the strength and conditioning side of it that similar to what we were doing in football. And I kind of got away from that for no good reason, but ⁓ from a training standpoint, it 100 % aligns with everything that I've been working on and the challenges I see with getting into that style of training. I'm like, you guys do it. know, at Gresham athlete, I've found out it's like, this is the best programming for that. And like things that I've seen already been able to learn, but the program is definitely not the

I start there because that's like as we were, as I was looking at different things, I'm like, okay, who can I learn from the fitness side? But then when I realized what I was trying to do from a coaching standpoint, what you were already doing at Garage Gym Athlete and like seeing the, a, like looking at the community you've already built up, looking at some of the things you guys have already done. It's just like, we have the same daily over decades type mindset. When I talk about, I'm like, I'm.

I'm about putting work in behind the scene like it doesn't have to be this flashy like hey look like look everyone influencer style What are we like? What are we doing over here and your brand's never been? About that the brand that that you've built up but we talked about like Who do you want to do life with it's like you and the people that you've like the community that you've? Built and the people that I know you surround yourself with I'm like why try and do this thing on my own that I've tried to do before and like why try and

have the uphill battle of like Do something against my nature of like look like I have to like Play the social media game and look at look at me like why not step into an awesome community? that's already here people that are training how I want to be training people that are living how I want to be living and Get to you work alongside you and surround myself with people like you that I'm like What's more exciting than that to be able to do that and people that love fitness and see the long-term approach of it?

versus people who are just looking for, because I ran out of the coaching stuff, it's like people are like, okay, I want to get better for a few months. And it's like, I know, like this isn't, I didn't really know what I was signing up for. like, there's things that like, I don't want to play those fitness games of like trying to be something that I'm not to other people. I mean, you demonstrate that. And I've already seen all the people I've gotten to connect with in community. It's like, there's just awesome people around here.

Jerred (28:21)
Yeah, man. I, well, first I appreciate, you know, saying the nice thing that you have, but I'm also like glad and we're lucky to have you here. ⁓ because I mean, sometimes I look back and I don't even know how garage gym athlete has been successful at all. Cause it's like, if you take the typical status quo of what the fitness industry is right. Of like, like you're saying be flashy on social media and make sure your shirt is off at least 80 % of the time. ⁓ doing content on like.

how to do a hamstring scoop or like a back squat. Like nothing's wrong with those things. It's just like, it's never the company I want to be. And I'm not like interested in those things. And I'm only really interested in teaching people how to do things the right way for a long time. And that's it. I'm not really interested in your quick win. And I get it like from a marketing angle, know what sells a whole lot better is telling people you're gonna get results really fast and it's not gonna be all that much work. And that's what.

99 % of the industry does and it's very unfortunate But we have been successful because of the community right like there are people who've heard this message and they're like, That's that like it's why you're here. It's why they want to be here They're like, okay, cool. Like this is like this is a place where I can be myself and I just want to be consistent I want to do this stuff for my family Yeah, this is it. This is the place and you know, we're gonna continue to build that for years on end but I'd say something you mentioned that's been my biggest like

know, realization over the last several years in business is like, yeah, we have to, we have to make money. Like we have to support our families. Like there, there is that element of this. There's no hiding that that's what business is. But at the end of the day, feel like a lot of the decisions I make in business now are about who I'm going to be doing life with. As you put it, like who, who am I going to be with? Who am I, who's going to challenge me? Who's going to be there? Um, you know, cause business relationships like that.

I mean be as long or as short as you want, but like everything I look at is very long-term So what is this 10 10 years from now 15 years from now 20 years from now, you know, and so it's like well, you know Dave would be a great person for that level of commitment right because ⁓ The reason I like having you here is you have a commitment to excellence, right? You have a very high level attention to detail and and this is just me kind of laying the groundwork for all the athletes and their expectations as I've talked about quite a bit, but like

The program will be excellent. And if you give feedback, we will act on that feedback. ⁓ know, and Dave is bringing a lot of that here. Dave cares a ton about each and every single one of you. Any one of you who send a message, a comment, anything, Dave cares. He wants to reply. He wants to talk to you. And I'm not saying I don't want those things. It's just like, this is what he's bringing to the community. And then you also just have all this experience and education and everything else, which is like, you know,

I don't want to say the least important of the three, but it's still really important, right? It's like, care, you're here for the right reasons, but then at the same time, you're incredibly smart, incredibly intelligent. You understand all the things that you would need to understand to be a good coach and good programmer and everything else. So I think you are a massive addition to the garage gym athlete team. Like I said, I'm glad to have you. I know the community is, is stoked to have you around man. And I think we're only going to do great things from here. And that's what I'm really looking forward to, not just in 2026 for

but for many years to come, think this community is really special and it's gonna be awesome to work on together.

Dave (31:47)
Yeah, I appreciate all that man. And I know, I everyone I've gotten to interact with and if you haven't gotten to interact with me, can message me within the community or reach out however you need to find me. But it's been awesome connecting with some of you. yeah, I'm just like, am, I'm super stoked and thankful for the opportunity. So I know we're gonna do some awesome things and don't hesitate to.

to reach out and just say hi. Cause I know a lot of you have been around for a long time. I know it's not easy for someone to step in and especially, and I think I was actually messaging with some of you of like, it's hard to step into a new community that's like really well established. And like on social media, I just feel like, like everyone's always trying to like pull a move or something like, like, Hey, like I'm reaching out to help you, but actually, Hey, buy my product type of thing. And it's like, I'm generally here just to like get to know you and, and help how I can. So I know it's hard to step in and like trust someone.

knew this coming in, it's like when you guys have had this community that's been building for years on end, but I'm just thankful to be a part of it.

Jerred (32:48)
Yeah, and I'll reiterate that. Like that's one thing I think that's really special about our community is you can reach out to us at any point inside the community and we're going to talk to you. We're going to engage. I feel like there's a lot of these programs out there, whether they're ex CrossFit Games athletes or ex NFL players or whatever. And they put themselves on this pedestal to where it's like after they cross a thousand athletes or whatever the threshold is, they just are uninterested anymore. ⁓ And I went through

Like I did the recent podcast about pulling back away from the community had nothing to do with me thinking I'm better than anybody or like that's not worth my time. It was more of just like it was burnout. was injury. Like there are a lot of other things that, that led to that, but like getting back to the community now has been, I would say the biggest missing piece I'm going to say in my life as ridiculous as that might sound, but like

The community really motivates me each and every single day. Like I want to interact with you. I want to talk to you. I don't want to like sit around and like do all this stuff by myself. And so I think that's what's awesome about the communities and what's like I said, going back to my original point, you can interact with us at any point in time. It doesn't matter how big this community gets, we're going to interact back with you and we're going to be there to do life with you. At least do the fitness portion of your life with you, keep you consistent for daily over decades. That's the goal. So anyway, Dave, anything else before we get out of here?

Dave (34:10)
That's all I got. I already don't love talking about myself as it is, so it's an awkward podcast for me. Yeah.

Jerred (34:13)
Yeah, we had to force him to do this one. But now you know who Dave is. I'm glad you have officially met Dave. He will be around for a long time if you need anything. Don't hesitate to reach out to him or me. That's it for this one. Remember, if you don't kill comfort, comfort will

kill you.