Sean Lake and Glen Doherty grew up best friends, teammates and roommates as they chased their childhood dreams of adventure. Glen became a Navy SEAL. Sean became a professional athlete and marketing executive at Burton Snowboards and DC Shoes.
In 2012, Glen lost his life in Libya defending American interests and freedom. To honor Glen’s commitment to teamsmanship, Sean helped launch the Glen Daugherty Memorial Foundation. In 2017, Sean launched BUBS Naturals to redefine the pursuit of the fountain of youth. Glen’s nickname was BUB.
Host Fran Racioppi and Sean Lake hop into the back of the Land Rover Ambulance at Sandlot Jax to talk about Glen, their life together as extreme athletes, the importance of Collagen Protein and MCT Oil, and what it means to truly live in the service of others
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BUBS Naturals was founded in 2017 after a perfect confluence of events. The national tragedy of a best friend, eventually leading to a morning coffee meeting of Sean and TJ looking to make a difference, preserve a legacy, and have some laughs along the way. The BUBS namesake derives from Glen ‘BUB’ Doherty, who was heroically killed in Benghazi, Libya in 2012. In addition to remembering Glen for the patriot he is, the BUBS ethos centers around the passionate and adventure seeking life that Glen lived.
Woven into the DNA of BUBS Naturals is that of professional athletes, top performers, rabble-rousers, and Navy SEALs. Through that, our goal is to exceed your expectations in everything we do, starting with our Collagen and MCT Oil Powder backed by scientific research and discovery; an endless pursuit to find the Fountain of Youth.
Lifelong friend to the late great Glen “BUB” Doherty and the BUBS Naturals frontline in forging Glen’s legacy. Merging his career experience as a professional athlete, director of global marketing, and entrepreneur, Sean has personally curated the product, communal spirit, and charitable mission that defines the BUBS Naturals brand.
The highest-performing teams are built on trust and integrity. Without these two foundational components, it’s almost impossible to find success. On the best teams, you often have to have the best teammates. The best teammates usually become best friends. Sean Lake and Glen Doherty grew up best friends. They were roommates and teammates. They chased each other around the world as they pursued adventure. They looked for the next challenge and almost nothing seemed insurmountable.
Glen became a Navy SEAL and Sean became a professional athlete and a marketing executive at Burton Snowboards and DC Shoes. In 2012, Glen lost his life in Libya defending American interests and freedom. To honor Glen’s legacy and his commitment to their team, Sean helped launch the Glen Doherty Memorial Foundation. In 2017, Sean took it a step further and launched a line of nutritional supplements called BUBS Naturals. Glen’s nickname was Bub.
Sean and I met at the GORUCK games in Sandlot JAX down in Jacksonville. I was inspired by his story and I was inspired by the relationship that he had with Glen and how he has remained committed to that relationship years after Glen’s death. I asked Sean to hop into the back of the Land Rover ambulance with me to talk about Glen, their life together as extreme athletes, the importance of collagen protein and MCT oil, and what it means to truly live in the service of others. Check out our videos and pictures from this episode and the entire Sandlot JAX event on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter. Find all our episodes on our website or wherever you get your podcasts. We’ll see you there.
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Sean, welcome to the The Jedburgh Podcast. Thanks for joining us for a few minutes.
Thanks for having me on. This is great.
Fran and Sean Lake at Sandlot Jax
Sandlot JAX is crazy. We decided we were going to do this activation. We started looking at everyone who is coming in and who was going to be vendors, speakers and the guests list. Every time I get out of here, there are more people who are coming through the gates. They’re starting to make their way. You guys are set up here with BUBS Naturals. I’m drinking my coffee and we’ve injected it with the collagen. Talk to me about BUBS. What brought you down here?
BUBS Brew is what you’re drinking. You’ve got a cold brew with collagen protein and MCT oil powder. You’re taking coconut oil, a high-fat oil, and you spray it into tapioca starch. Your coffee looks like a nice heavy cream delicious brew and it’s loaded with functionality. That’s why we’re here. I discovered the benefits of collagen protein when I was 45 years old. I’m 51 now. My wife and I had our first child and she was pregnant with our second. She came home one day and had a jar of this stuff called collagen.
She said, “You’re not getting any younger and I need to preserve your old butt. You’re going to take this and this is going to preserve you.” I looked at the jar and I said, “What’s in this stuff?” We don’t take any supplements in our house. We take a little bit of whey protein and plant proteins but it’s mostly diet. I looked at it and I’m like, “Hair benefits, skin benefits and nail benefits. Are you sure this isn’t for you?” I turned the jar and then it says, “Joint health and gut health.” I was like, “That’s interesting. Sign me up for joint health.” I was 45 and I used to snowboard for a living. I’ve run marathons. My wife has run nine of them.
How many have you run? Did you lose count?
One.
Which one did you run?
[bctt tweet=”If you take collagen, your body will rejuvenate. Your fingernails are going to grow like you’re Wolverine.” username=”talentwargroup”]
I ran the Boston marathon.
We talked about it. You’re from Boston.
I was born in Gloucester and raised in Winchester, Massachusetts. I got an opportunity to get a charity bib in 2014 to run for the Glen Doherty Memorial Foundation. We’ll talk about Glen in a little bit. My wife and I ran the Boston marathon together while we were engaged. The training and the running were part of our premarital counseling like the counseling that you do, “If I can run a marathon with this girl, then I can marry her.” I think she was thinking the same thing. We ran Boston together. She has done a gazillion of them by comparison. We keep fitness and wellness real close to the family because we like being active. I can’t sit still very long and I want a body that can still maintain and perform.
At 45, I was feeling it. I had the wear and tear. I’m not squatting like I used to. I’m not swinging the kettlebell like I used to. I’m not surfing and snowboarding like I feel like I could. You name it. I was like, “I will try this powder if it’s going to help with my joints.” Long story short, I take it for a month. At the end of the first month, my fingernails had grown like I’m the Wolverine. It’s bananas. I was like, “What’s going on here?” A week later, I needed a haircut. I only have so much hair, but the fact that I needed the haircut was two data points. I was like, “This was written right on the side of the jar.” I’ll never forget this. Six weeks into it, I get out of bed and we had to fly from San Diego to Boston with a one-year-old. Try and put yourself in that crap.
I know. I did it with the whole family going to Colorado. We’re that family with all the bags, the screaming kids, and my son who is two with the dinosaur beating the window.
I was at that burden combined with the pain of sitting in the back of the plane. I’m 6’3”. We were getting off the airplane and I was grabbing the bags and our kid. I was grabbing everything. I was walking and I told my wife, “Heather, nothing hurts.” She was like, “That’s nice, dear.” I’m like, “No, you don’t understand. My knees didn’t hurt.” I’m constantly in pain. That was the life state that I had. I’m going to be in discomfort and I’m going to grin and charge through it. It is what it is, and I wasn’t that time. I had one of those “oh crap” moments. I celebrated it with her and I was excited. She was like, “That’s nice.” I was like, “This is why you got this stuff for me.”
Since then, it has gotten better and better. I started a routine and then I started learning about collagen and what is in that stuff. It’s just ground up cowhide. That’s all it is. Not only is it ground up cowhide but it also got this amino acid profile that’s in most of your standard proteins, but the amount of the amino acids that are in collagen is through the roof. I’m getting 4 grams of glycine in every scoop of collagen. Glycine is the amino acid that helps produce synovial fluid. Synovial fluid cushions and lubricates joints. I was like, “I didn’t make that connection.” How would I? The more I learned about it, I just fell in love with it.
You’ve met TJ earlier. He’s my business partner. TJ is an eCommerce mastermind and I come from a more traditional sports marketing background. He comes over to the house one day and sees the jar of collagen. He looks at me and was like, “Do you take that stuff?” I started raving. I was like, “It’s the best thing ever. I live for this stuff.”
I’m not that guy, so for me to endorse something and get excited about it, it took that very personal experience and transformation to get dialed on it. He looks at me and goes, “We should start a company.” I was like, “I got a one-year-old, wife is pregnant, and you want to start a company?” He goes, “Yeah.” I was like, “What would the company look like?” He turns to me. We both looked at each other and we go, “Whatever we do, we got to do something cool for charity.” I looked at him and said, “I know the charity. It’s got to be the Glen Doherty Memorial Foundation. It’s got to be Glen’s charity.”
“Whatever we do, we gotta do something cool for charity.”
Glen was a Navy SEAL. He served for ten years and his call sign in the Navy was Bub. We named the company BUBS Naturals as a tribute to Glen and his way of life. This guy stood for self-improvement and he was always helping others. Every product we make will somehow improve the self. It could be our MCT oil with mental focus and the energy you get from that product or the collagen for all the stuff we’ve talked about on repair for the body. We give 10% of all profits to charities in his name, the Glen Doherty Foundation. We were like, “Let’s get them up and rock and rolling.” It just felt right.
For those who don’t know, Glen was killed in Benghazi.
He was one of the Navy SEALs that was killed in Benghazi, Libya. Hillary Clinton got in a whole bunch of trouble. There was a movie called 13 Hours about it.
Ambassador Stevens was killed in that attack.
There was the CIA intelligence analyst, Glen and his teammate, Tyrone Woods. The movie does its thing to Hollywood-ize the whole experience, but I lost my roommate and my best buddy. We grew up together in Winchester, Massachusetts. We moved out to Utah to go be pro skiers and snowboarders.
We had Steven Nyman leading up to the Olympics this 2022. We had Lucas Foster on as well. Those were the two Olympics episodes that we did. He was a Utah skier. Steven was amazing. People ask me sometimes about episodes. It was one of the ones where I was in awe. We had to do it remotely because he was in Europe training. I was like, “I’m talking to one of my heroes.” He’s my age too and I’ve been skiing my whole life. Talking to Lucas was also awesome because he’s the next generation.
It’s so great to see that. I came up in snowboarding in the ‘90s. I had this amazing career where snowboarding paid for my college. Snowboarding let me travel the world. I got to go to Alaska on a free ride to go jump out of helicopters and have a blast.
[bctt tweet=”It’s never a good idea to tell your parents that you’re dropping out of college to be a pro snowboarder.” username=”talentwargroup”]
It’s called training. That’s what we used to call it. I was on the mountain team. We used to say, “We’re training here for Alpine operations. We’re not heli-skiing.”
I grew up skiing and switched to snowboarding. I was in love with it. It was my true passion. I was so energized around these adrenaline sports, whether it was skateboarding or snowboarding. You name it. I wanted to scare the heck out of myself and go run in that direction, and Glen was the same way. My best buddy and I dropped out of college and told our parents. It was never a good idea. If you want to shatter some dreams, tell your parents you’re dropping out of college to become a pro skier or a snowboarder. We moved up to Snowbird in Utah. We lived there on and off and chased the mountain dreams for about five years.
I’ve always had that dream to do that, but I never pulled the trigger on it.
It was awesome. A little note to everyone who does do that, your parents don’t pay for you anymore. You’re on your own. We were turning 25. We’ve had all these adventures together since we were in middle school. He turns to me and says, “If I haven’t made it as a pro skier by the time I’m 25, I’m going to join the Navy and become a SEAL.” This was 1994.
“If I haven’t made it as a pro skier by the time I’m 25, I’m gonna join the Navy and become a SEAL.”
Neither one of these is a lofty goal.
This was when everyone was watching movies on VHS. We watched the Navy SEALs movie with Charlie Sheen. The next thing you know, we turned 25 and I am at the height of my sponsored life. I was getting free boxes of clothes and a paycheck. Everything was great. For Glen, it was a bad time to be a skier in the ‘90s unless you were Plake or someone. You weren’t getting paid.
He was like, “Drive me to the recruiter.” He was dead serious. I was like, “Are you serious about this?” The next thing I know, I’m driving him down to Sandy, Utah. There was a Navy recruiter in a little strip mall. He goes up and signs up. A month later, he was off to basic. Half a year later or almost a year later, I’m down in Coronado at Bub’s graduation with a bunch of our ski bum buddies.
Glen served ten years in the Navy. We reconnected and he lived in Coronado. When I got done snowboarding for a living, I got hired by Burton Snowboards to move to Encinitas, California to work with a young teenager named Shaun White. This little kid was going to do some things with a snowboard. I went from graduating from college thinking I’m going to go on a career path, and then I get pulled back into snowboarding on the industry side. Granted, it was a job I knew. I’ve been a snowboarder, so what would it be like to work with the snowboarders?
This young kid named Shaun was being groomed to be the next great figure in the sport. He’s awesome. I got to work with him twenty years ago. It was 2002 or 2003. That put me on this career path of working in the action sports industry. I worked with ESPN for a while with their X Games franchise. I worked with Tony Hawk and the Secret Skatepark Tours. I got to do all of these super fun travel jobs. After that, I landed six years working with DC Shoes launching their whole snow program, BMX, Moto, and surf. It was all of the sports that I’m jazzed about. All the while, my best buddy is deploying to Iraq and going through his whole Naval career.
He moves out to Encinitas and we became roommates again. It was like we got the band back together, and then Benghazi happened. That changed everything. On a more somber note, Glenn and I left our wills to each other. I was the leading executor of his estate and all the legal stuff that comes along with that, but you never think that was going to happen. It was like a formality like, “You get all my debt. Have fun with this. Take all my friends and go on and have a wild party.” It’s that kind of stuff and then it did.
The brand and the experience were born out of this innate desire that is shared by hundreds of individuals that knew Glen personally and never wanted to let his memory fade because he was inspirational. He was a national hero, but way more than that, he was your best friend. I don’t mean my best friend. If you knew him and you guys cracked a beer, he’s your best friend. He would remember you and would keep in touch with you. He was that guy that is not your archetype Special Operations person that you think of in the movies. He is the guy who’s going to help you move some furniture, tell you a joke, and drink all your beer. You’re going to have a blast with him.
“If you knew him, and you guys cracked a beer; Fran, he’s your best friend.”
The brand is a way of memorializing the fun qualities that he stood for and the inspirational qualities that we all have inside of us. He did a good job of bringing them out in people. We got started and the next thing I know, I meet Jason McCarthy and the folks at GORUCK. When he told me about this event, we were already figuring out ways we could do stuff together. Now that we’re here in Jacksonville and surrounded by hundreds of incredibly fit humans, the people that he has gathered himself and the tribe of wellness that we’re in, we weren’t going to miss that opportunity.
Watching the community come out of this thing has been truly inspirational and amazing. It has been nonstop. Everybody has come in with that perspective of, “I’m here because I care about fitness and becoming better.” It’s a commitment to come down to Jacksonville to do this. That speaks to the passion that this community has. I can say this because I live in the Northeast. You’re from Boston too. We’re not always the friendliest people but here, you are overwhelmed with the outgoing community that has been created.
I got sized up at the airport. I was going to my gate with a GORUCK backpack. I look at the other guy and he knows. We’re in the same tribe. It reminded me of CrossFit from 2002. We were early into the whole CrossFit world. I remember you’d see someone wearing a CrossFit t-shirt and you’d be like, “We’re brothers.” That also reminded me of what skateboarding was like in the ‘80s and what snowboarding was like in the ‘90s. It’s very tribal. It’s inclusive if you’re in the tribe. You’re like, “You do what I do. We understand each other.”
Fitness, on a broad level, just means you’re ticking some boxes. In fitness, when you get focused on maybe some disciplines, that’s where the community comes into play. CrossFit did an amazing job of that. They brought humans together from all different walks of life. The corporate banker is working out next to the stonemason or the carpenter. Everyone is equal on that floor. Everyone is motivated and everyone genuinely cares about what’s going on in that small room for those 60 minutes or whatever the setting is. What Jason has captured here with GORUCK is he has scaled that to a degree by combining what you do with a weighted backpack. What do you do with an obstacle course that you can maybe test yourself on? What do you do with F45? What do you do with CrossFit?
I’ve been listening to the F45 all day. They’ve been awesome. They’re coming on.
[bctt tweet=”When you choose a hard moment, you’re truly seeing what you’re capable of. It can unlock a whole world of potential for you.” username=”talentwargroup”]
I got to think so. You’ve got a group that’s saying, “Look at what you can do in 45 functional minutes.” The idea of how it’s pulling people together is fascinating. I wouldn’t have met you. We wouldn’t have met and we wouldn’t be bumping into each other at a show like this. It’s the opportunity to share. We’re here because we want to share the message that BUBS has as a complement to that space where people are genuinely interested in their wellness and they have a feel for the community. I’m going to go ahead and level that up and say that there is a sense of service that goes past that too.
There is an affiliation to the regimen. Jason McCarthy talked about that in episode 56. We interviewed him and talked a lot about that. Jason and I share that background of coming from the 10th Special Forces Group. There’s a level of a standard. We talked a lot about the standard. You have to live up to the regimen and the expectations of the regimen. That permeates throughout GORUCK and everyone who is affiliated with GORUCK. It comes down to the other concept. Sara Wilkinson talked about this in our episode with her. She said, “Hard things bond people together.” Olympic silver medalist Gevvie Stone whom I interviewed a couple of months ago said too, “Easy things bring people together and hard things bond people together.”
When you think about those hard moments that we all have, you can choose hard moments or you can choose easy moments. When you choose a hard moment and you’ve truly seen what you’re capable of, it unlocks a whole world of potential and future that a whole community is sticking with because there are other people that have done it or want to do it. You can become a tool of inspiration. You can become a support network for others. You’re going to see what you’re made of. Most importantly, it has got to start here. Once you recognize and see that it’s scalable to your family and your community, it brings you the energy. I would dare say until you’ve done that, you don’t know because you haven’t challenged yourself. You can step out of the unknown, and even if you fail. There’s failure throughout.
“When you choose a hard moment, you’re truly seeing what you are capable of.”
You have to because you won’t truly understand your limits until you fail.
You then got a new goal. I’ll never forget snowboarding. There was this one cliff that I wanted to jump at Snowbird. It took me five years, and right towards the end of my career, I nailed it. For those of you that are Snowbird geeks, it’s called Smokestack. It’s right under the tramp. It’s a big mother. It took all that time to get there to do that. That was me getting introduced to the humbleness of sucking at running.
I ran at Boston University. I didn’t run for four years, and then I went into the Army after I graduated. That summer between rowing and going into the Army in October was an emotional time because there were about zero fast-twitch muscles left in my body.
That’s exactly it. You’re training yourself. You have to suck, and then gradually you learn a new skill or you relearn a skill that you know or you get more efficient. There’s a whole process that is applicable to all these different parts of your life. My only GORUCK was in 2019 and I did it with a guy named Reid Roe who you’ve met. He’s the Deputy Director of Counterterrorism for the FBI. Reid met me through our chat room online at BUBS asking a bunch of questions. He hits us up and was like, “Tell me about your college. Tell me about this. Do this, do that.” We were going on and on.
“You have to suck; and then gradually you learn a new skill.”
Interview Melissa Urban who is the founder of Whole30. It is a clean eating protocol. She is a rockstar in terms of seeing what you’re capable of in the kitchen and how that can translate to your broader lifestyle. Her sister is the Director of Public Relations for GoPro.
If GoPro wants to sponsor us, I am all about it. We shoot every one of our episodes on a GoPro.
It’s about learning new things. It’s being willing to suck at something. For my part, when I got done working at Burton, I was probably the least fit in my adult life. I was in my early 30s. I remember going on vacation in Mexico and I looked down and I got a little punch. I was like, “What’s that thing.” Glen was like, “You’re going to start running. You’re going to buy a bicycle and you’re going to start riding.” He was picking things and was like, “You should be good at these things. You’re going to learn how to row.” I was like, “I don’t even have a boat.” He was like, “No. You’re going to get on an erg.”
We’re now friends with Greg Hammond at Concept2. He’s awesome. He makes a living off of making pain machines. I’ve met these people along the way, whether it was starting with running or doing my first 10K. They were these big moments. At first, it was a 5K, and then it was a 10K. After that, it was a half marathon, and then it was the world of CrossFit. Each one has got me hooked more and more. There’s vanity in it like, “I want to look good, walk around, and be muscle-y,” but it was the engine. It was what was on the inside. It makes you want to keep peeling back the onion.
In 2008, I discovered CrossFit. Glen and I were doing it at a local YMCA in Encinitas. Try and imagine two spazzes trying to do kipping pull-ups where you’re moving back and forth in a family gym. We were like, “What’s this handstand pushup? It’s on the internet.” We were flipping up against the wall and people were looking at us like we were absolute maniacs. Glen and I were working out one day and then he goes, “Did you know there’s a gym in Encinitas owned by a Navy SEAL?” I’m like, “There is?” He was like, “Yeah, it’s called SEALFIT. It’s owned by Mark Divine. He’s a former SEAL. I’m a SEAL. You’re friend with a SEAL. We got to go there.”
Mark is the Founder of Unbeatable Mind. He does a bunch of mental resiliency programming. We roll into this little gym in the middle of Encinitas, and the next thing we know, we joined this gym called SEALFIT. We were doing these workouts, and each workout is really hard. I couldn’t do them. I got humbled again. I discovered the running and the cycling thing. I felt the rowing thing. I thought I was on top of the world, but now I’m like, “I can’t do any of this stuff. What an opportunity.”
It sucked and I was pissed off. I’ve got the ego and all those things involved, but I was willing to be a student of that wellness, diet, nutrition and community. It’s all woven together. It’s neat how you can do that and tie it back to what’s the broader sense of fitness. If you want to show up at a ski resort, I’m pretty sure if it snows 18 inches, you want to go and book in that day and get as many runs as possible. You don’t want to be the guy who can’t hang. It’s worth it for that alone. There’s also chasing your kids around. It’s worth it for that alone, and probably even more so. I want to be able to chase my kids. I want to be able to keep up with their adventures, their lives, their interests, and their excitement. I don’t want to be that dad on the sideline that’s like, “I can’t do it. Go have fun.”
I think about that all the time. My daughter is twelve. She’s playing lacrosse every day. She’s like, “Let’s go out and play lacrosse.” I think I can catch and throw better now than I could when I played lacrosse because I’m doing it now. Back then when I played lacrosse, I felt like it was some sort of chore. It was difficult for me to figure out the catching and throwing. I was good at playing defense because they’re like, “Stand here in front of the goal. You knock down anybody that comes in here.” I can do that all day long. Now, I’m catching and throwing every day, but I feel the same way. My son is two and I’m thinking about what he’s going to be doing because he said to my daughter, “I’ll be your age.”
I’ve got my son on skis for the first time. I’m with him at Tee Ball and all of these little sports. I’m like, “I can fully be a part of this. This is great.” It’s finding the things that work for you to get there. Reid enters our lives and pulls us into this world. He was like, “I want to do this walk.” I was like, “I’m up for a challenge. What’s that? TJ is up for a challenge. What does that look like?” He was like, “We’re going to come out to San Diego and we’re going to put 20 pounds in a backpack and we’re going to go walk for 50 miles. You’re going to do this thing called the Star Course. You’re going to walk from all these different points around San Diego.” I was like, “It’s the ultimate tourist trip.” You’re going to get to see all the different monuments around San Diego going on this walk. It was the hardest 50 miles that I have done ever. I was seeing Jesus on that walk.
[bctt tweet=”In a gym, wellness, diet, nutrition, and community are all woven together.” username=”talentwargroup”]
The star model is based on land navigation in Special Forces selection. Not only is it physically challenging, but the defeating part is the mental part when you’re like, “I’m going to start here,” and then you would go to a point. You get there, and then you realize that the point that you have to go to next is back in the direction that you came from. It gets even worse when you start adding the short in the long legs and then you start passing points that you were already at and going further than the direction that you came from. It starts messing with you.
You’ve got twenty hours to finish 50 miles. You’re given all the different points. It’s called the Star Challenge and we did it. We did it inside the time hack. We finished as a group. It was a rollercoaster in all the right ways. At 3:00 AM, I was ready to walk off and be done with it. I was like, “I’m walking out of here. This is stupid,” and then Reid came in and was like, “Isn’t this great? Isn’t this the best thing ever?” All of a sudden, I was like, “Yes, it is awesome.”
You can be in a cubicle, 50 stories in the sky somewhere in a big city.
You got it. Instead, we’re here, we’re outdoors and we’re doing this great thing. We’re suffering but it’s neat. We’re seeing what we’re made of. You then realize you’re made of stuff that can do that kind of a challenge. You feed off each other and you grow in that. That community bond is forged in those moments. To think that we started a supplement brand that would lead me to a guy like Reid who then would be in my life years later, that’s the good stuff. That’s what it’s all about.
It’s being a part of this and being able to share what the brand is about. The charitable mission is a funny component of any brand because when you start with that being your cause like, “10% of profits are going to go to military charities,” that’s a different thought. That’s not normal for dietary supplements. They’re not known for being charitable. In fact, it’s one of the most uncharitable industries that I’ve ever noticed. We have donated $130,000 so far.
I’m like, “We can do way better than that.” I’m not looking at that like, “That’s amazing. Thank you,” I’m looking at it like, “How can we level this up? How can we charge it forward?” An event like this and meeting a community like this is exactly the tribe that I want to be a part of. I want to be a part of their families. It’s the ability to do that and help prepare them so they can do another GORUCK in the long run.
Our title sponsor is Jersey Mike’s. Jersey Mike’s is all about charitable giving and how we create the community. They gave 100% of revenue in one day to the Special Olympics, which was $20 million in all locations globally. They’re going to be here with us. They’re doing sandwiches for everybody for lunch. Peter Cancro is great. He is the CEO. He’s a great friend of the show. He was our first guest. He’s been with us from the beginning and continues to support us. I couldn’t be more thankful to be partnered with them.
That’s good stuff because they’re putting their money where their mouth is. We started with that. We didn’t know if anyone was going to care. We’re this little bootstrap company. There were no mega dollars behind it. We just knew we could do it better. If I was going to put Glen’s name on the jar and have a brand dedicated in his memory, I needed the best stuff we could get. We needed the best in quality collagen, the best MCT, and the best in whatever it is that we make and the standards that I can represent. I chased Melissa Urban and Whole30. I was banging down their door to say like, “You got to give us a chance. You’re going to love the quality in here.” We’re having a partnership with someone like that, NSF for sports. A little-known fact, we are the collagen provider for the Boston Red Sox.
“Little known fact…we are the collagen provider for the Boston Red Sox.”
Are you really? We had Jerry Remy on. I grew up with his kids. Jordan, his middle son, is my best friend. I was at the family funeral. We were honored to be part of the group that did the family stuff after. We had Peter Cancro of Jersey Mike’s for episode two and Jerry Remy for episode three. The guy was like a father to me. He was instrumental in starting this show. I called him up and was like, “I want to start a podcast. I got two questions for you. One, what’s your advice? I studied journalism as an undergrad when I went to BU, but I was in the Army and I haven’t done it, so how do I do it? Number two, will you be willing to be one of my first guests?” He was like, “Absolutely. Here you go. This is everything I can tell you about how you’re going to do it.” I’m so thankful to have him in my life.
You’ve got that immobilized too. You’ve got that conversation saying, “Everything else is up here,” but that one can be shared with the world. I would argue for sports fans outside of New England. That’s a good listen. We’re rabid about our stuff. That’s a scalable one. Knowing that we can take a brand and a product and make sure that it’s the cleanest and the best product that you can get and scale that is important. We then share that message about what it’s all about. What it’s about is getting outdoors, having great adventures and being able to. If you can get in the locker room with the Red Sox along the way, it’s good stuff. Thank you for being able to talk about this.
Thanks for joining me. I appreciate you swinging by and sharing your story. You talked about teams. Welcome to our Jedburgh team. As we close out, the Jedburghs had to do three things every day as their core foundational tasks. They had to be able to shoot, move and communicate. If they did these three things with the utmost precision, then they could focus their effort on more complex challenges that came their way because these were their daily foundational habits. What are the three things that you do every day to set the conditions for success in your world?
I have three things that I do every morning when I wake up. I wake up right around 6:00 AM. It could also be a little bit earlier or whenever the sun is coming up, but 6:00 AM is when the lights are on in my head. The first thing that I do every single morning is to meditate. Meditation is different for everyone. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. For me, it’s a very active visual meditation. It’s a Japanese style of meditation that I practice that is visually focused. It’s very much built around clearing your head. It’s like wiping the slate clean. Do you ever go for a long run?
It’s the most cathartic thing that you can do.
This is the six minutes slammed version of that. It is the longest 6 to 10 minutes or it’s the fastest. It depends where your head’s at, but every day is different. Start the day with that because no matter what happens after that, I’ve built part one of that foundation.
Can I ask you a question first though? I normally don’t do this. I don’t normally stop to delve deep into the answers to these sometimes, but meditation has come up a lot in conversations we’ve had. You’ve positioned meditation in a way that forces me to ask you this question. How do you meditate? What goes through your mind? People like you have said that this has changed their lives. I ask this question because I know people read these conversations and are like, “That’s stupid. What does that mean? I don’t know how to do it.” How do you do it?
One, let’s eliminate the whole idea that meditation is some woo-woo. You spend all day in your head. Is your head running you or are you running your head? Think about how you respond to a situation or how you react to a situation. If someone comes up running at you and screaming, do you react to it or do you respond to it? I want to build a life where I’m responding to situations because that means I’m taking a moment. I’m giving pause. I’m taking in more data and I’m able to respond, which means I’m able to analyze and see what’s going on around me. If I react, I’m going to react with emotion. Most likely 9 times out of 10, I’m going to react with the wrong reaction. Whereas if I respond, it’s a little bit more calculated.
[bctt tweet=”Build a life where you’re responding and not reacting to tough situations. Run your head; don’t let it run you.” username=”talentwargroup”]
Think about that in the context of business. I get an email and someone pisses me off and says all the wrong things. I could fire back. I can respond and say anything horrible. I just reacted. If I take a moment, look at it, and breathe and soak it in, I have those moments to give pause, and then I can respond to it. Meditation is a tool that helps me respond, not react. That’s why I do it. The why is super important. I use meditation as a tool to help me succeed in my day.
“I want to build a life where I am responding to situations.”
I’m a reactionary person. I’m fast and impulsive. I start my business. I’m a snowboarder. I’m jumping off cliffs. This allows me to be a little bit more calculated. How do I do that? The meditation that I practice is a Japanese meditation. It’s called Zazen. It’s a visual activity. You’re not closing your eyes and going into a hippie state. I kneel down on a mat and visually focus. I have a window right in my bedroom. I look outside my window and there’s a palm tree directly outside of it.
There’s one little spot on that palm tree that I focus on. Every time I breathe in, I’m looking exactly at that one little dark mark on that palm tree and every time I breathe out, I’m opening my field of vision. Are there things happening in the periphery? Is there a little hummingbird flying? Is this happening? Is that happening? I’m allowing those things to happen, but what I’m really doing is I’m clearing my head.
On minute one, maybe some thought pops in like, “I have an email to write. What about this contact I’m supposed to reach out to, or this thing that needs to get done?” You gently push those thoughts aside. The whole point is you’re trying to get to a truly empty state. If you can succeed in doing that for even 10 or 15 seconds out of maybe a 5 or 10-minute session, it’s game on. That’s a success. It happens in the briefest moments, and then you realize, “I went on for twenty seconds.” You can’t put time on it, but you went through those moments, and those moments allow you to then respond.
You had that empty moment. All the busyness of life wasn’t rattling in, and you were able to be able to say, “I’ve got a clear head.” I live at home with my wife who’s a morning newscaster. She leaves the house at 3:30 AM every morning to go and be on the morning news. We have a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old. On Monday through Friday, I get the kids the moment she leaves until the nanny shows up and there is a quick transition. After that, I take them off to school. I want to get the most out of that time. I do this meditation 9 times out of 10 before they’re awake. That’s habit number one.
Number two, make the bed. Do you know the whole McRaven make your bed thing? I didn’t know about that until later, but when I make the bed, I am performing a task and I’m completing that task. As simple as that task is, I’m getting one in the bank. It doesn’t matter if you’re folding laundry or doing the dishes. Whatever your thing is, find that task and do it before the complex tasks kick in for the day. After the bed is made, the kids are awake and chaos comes.
The third thing that I do is make a warm glass of lemon water before I drink anything else. Warm water and lemon are two things that go hand in hand. A warm glass of lemon water balances out your pH. You’re building up all this acidity as you’re sleeping overnight and it levels that playing field. I’ve done three things to start my day before I have fired off a bunch of emails, made a pot of coffee, and dealt with the kids getting all chaotic. You’re putting them in the bank. One is physical and the other one, you could argue, is spiritual if you want to be all woo-woo. I look at it as problem-solving and one is physical.
After that, there’s fitness. With the way our family life is designed, I usually get my fitness in the afternoon. I’m waiting for when the kids are old enough to where I don’t have to worry about them waking up from a nightmare, peeing in the bed, or doing the thing to where I can have a great morning fitness routine and I’ll add that in. Those three things right there represent different touchpoints in your life and the foundation for success. They work.
That’s awesome. Waking up early, meditating to clear your head, making the bed to perform, and having a warm glass of lemon water. I’m going to try those. I like all of those. We talked about the nine characteristics of performance as defined by Special Operations Forces. We mentioned those at various points in this conversation, the drive, resiliency, adaptability, humility, integrity, curiosity, team ability, emotional strength, and effective intelligence
At the end of these episodes, very often, I want to put into context the conversation we had. Your story makes me think of one of these. The concept of team ability is so prevalent in my mind. The reason is elite performers exhibit all of these characteristics at different times. It’s not all at once, but the different situations that you’re in will allow you to have to draw on certain ones of these.
Your career, your life growing up with Glenn, the relationship that you had, the loss that you experienced with him, and how you’ve now moved into a position to start something that is giving back to his legacy. You have embraced the community that you were both a part of. You have embraced not only your end of the community but also his end of the community.
Taking that on is something that is unique and often unheard of. That comes back to team ability. The bond and commitment that you had with Glen, and the word and dedication that you gave that said, “I will never forget his memory and what he gave to this world.” You continue to do that in his legacy while you define yours. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for exhibiting these characteristics. I’ve enjoyed this conversation.
Thanks. That means the world to me. That’s good stuff. It’s a unique opportunity. I say the word opportunity because grief and loss hit people in different ways. This wasn’t scripted. This wasn’t part of a master plan. It came a little bit from the gut and the mind, and a lot from shared relationships, people and community. It warms me up inside. Thank you for that. I appreciate it.
Thank you.
