The Johnjay Van Es Podcast
From the mastermind behind one of the most popular morning shows in the country, Johnjay Van Es brings his signature blend of curiosity, humor, and fearless honesty to the podcast world. If you’ve ever had a question on your mind but were too afraid to ask, don’t worry—Johnjay’s got you covered.
With hilarious, jaw-dropping conversations, amazing guests, and the inside scoop on everything you actually care about, this show is a wild ride through the stories you’ve never heard and the truths nobody else dares to say. Whether it’s celebrities, trendsetters, or just the most interesting people on the planet, nothing is off-limits, and no question is too bold.
Come for the interviews. Stay for the insanity. This is the podcast you’ll be talking about. Don’t miss it!
The Johnjay Van Es Podcast
Would You Hire for Culture Fit Over Credentials?
What if hiring your next CEO started with a real conversation instead of a job post?
Max Hansen, co-founder of Y Scouts, shares how he turned recruiting into a purpose-driven adventure, matching leaders to roles that actually fit who they are, not just what’s on their resume.
We get into covert searches, culture fits, and why great leaders don’t need a script. Plus, Max opens up about his own routines, from hiking Camelback to testing cold plunges and chasing adventure with his family.
Hit play for a fresh take on leadership, purpose, and building teams that thrive.
Okay, so welcome to our podcast. This is a little bit different today because this podcast is a spin-off of our radio show. This podcast is so unofficial, Max.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. But um I listened to part of Joe Polish because I know Joe Polish well. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That guy fascinates me, man.
SPEAKER_01:That guy is fascinating. I'm not probably gonna tell you that I got raped by priests and had to lie about it for ever all years. So I'll tell you whatever I can, but I probably don't have that in my back. Did you know that about him already? Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, you did? I didn't know that. And then he starts talking all of a sudden he starts boom, he drops it. I was like, whoa.
SPEAKER_01:I saw, I heard you guys like like wait. I saw you're kind of reeling it in, then you're like, wait, where can we take this?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Then there's like other questions, like.
SPEAKER_00:Because I was kind of like, wait a minute, how do you overcome that and have intimate relationships? And how do you first of all how do you drop that on me? Because I didn't, I didn't know I was not prepared for that, you know.
SPEAKER_01:But he's so funny too, because you know, he was a coke addict and you know, and a sex addict. And like he'll crack jokes about like, you know, that would be that would be great for like a cocaine addict or something like that. I mean, he like pokes fun at it. Right.
SPEAKER_00:He's got a great sense. Sometimes that's how you have to deal with stuff is with humor when you deal with the tragic stuff. Wait, so him being raped by a priest is common knowledge in his circle of friends?
SPEAKER_01:Uh I kind of just yes, yeah, yeah. He he said he was sexually abused and like and in the Catholic, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Wait, so how do you know him?
SPEAKER_01:Uh I've been I was in Genius Network the last, or I still am technically for the last two or three years.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, really?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. That guy blows me away, man. How connected he is. He is honestly like one of the most connected people. I mean, it is last annual event as a surprise to the people that were going to the annual event. He had Tucker Carlson. Like, this is just a couple days after the election. Tucker Carlson, RFK, RFK, and Jordan Peterson.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, as he told me. So he told me, I was like, what the hell? Yeah, as like a surprise. So he's got another one like in a couple weeks, and I think Tucker's gonna be at that one too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't tell if he's invited me or not. He keep or he keeps telling me, texting me about it and stuff. I'm like, so are you asking me to be your guest, or do you want me to buy a ticket to go?
SPEAKER_01:I you know, I just don't he probably wants you to buy a ticket to go. I probably but uh he is funny about even that, about his business model, because he's like, Yeah, I like dedicated slow learners, you know, that have money.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That's you know, because then they just always want to learn. They keep coming back. Yeah. It's like it's 35 grand to be in their group, and then there's a hundred thousand dollar group.
SPEAKER_00:I know. That's crazy. It's so I went, you know, it's I went to the grand opening of that stem cell, the stem cell clinic when I'm doing Cabo, and there was a doctor in his back room. His name was Dr. Pompa. Have you heard of that guy?
SPEAKER_02:Uh-uh.
SPEAKER_00:So he's some chiropractor that does a lot of biohacking stuff. And I had seen him on Instagram before. And they put I walk into his room, they go, You want to be Dr. Pompa? I'm like, sure. I walk into his room, I go, Oh, hey, I've seen you on Instagram. He's like, Genius Network? Are you part of the genius network? And I was like, uh, yeah. I was just gonna roll with it and do it. He's like, Oh, so you know Joe Polish? And I was like, No, I go, I don't. And then he started talking to me some more, and I was like, What is this Genius Network? And then Joe started popping up on my Instagram, and then I got interviewed in a bunch of podcasts with people, and he was a guest on that podcast too. I'm like, Who is this guy? And the dude, like, him and I graduated high school at the same time, rival high schools. Like, I just his whole story is fascinating to me. Well, here we're here to talk about you, Max Martin. Um okay, wait, because you were say uh you were gonna say what you were in Vegas, and I said, uh I was gonna ask you something, I gotta I didn't want to ruin it. This isn't the official start of the podcast, but it is, but it isn't because you were talking about Vegas. Oh, I know what to tell you. Uh-huh. Um you stayed at the plazo.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Ian, our friend Ian.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I just saw him last week too.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, you did? He invited me. He goes, he goes, uh I'm going to this it's called I'm gonna make it up, A24. Do you know what it is? It's a medical convention. Yeah, he goes, I'm going to this convention. It's December 10th, 11th, and 12th. He goes, You have to be a doctor to get in. And he goes, Isn't that Ian right there? Yeah, you have to be a doctor to get in. But he's there. But I'm going. He's not a doctor. And he goes, I'm going to get you in. And he sends me this link and he goes, Here, fill this out. Tell them you're a doctor. And he goes, and then you can see I'll get you the passage we'll stay. And I go, what is it? He said, There's like thousands and thousands of these biohacking booths at this doctor's convention where you do the red light, like whatever's going to come out five years from now. So I'm trying to, I actually want to go. But I also think, isn't it illegal to pretend you're a doctor?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, maybe not in that context. Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true. I'd rather ask for forgiveness and think for that's him. Ian, well, it won't move on, but uh I went to Ian's club that he's a a member at down in um uh Mexico. I can't remember what it is.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, yeah, where he's got in Cabo, where he's got the place.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, it's a four seasons golf golf course, and there was like, I don't know, 20 of us that played golf, and at the end of the golf course, he had them keep in mind it's a four seasons. He had tubs with ice and water in them, and we just stripped out like on the golf course, everybody just started taking their clothes off and jumped into these things in their boxers. Nobody cared. They just brought us tequila and it was perfectly fine. So I'm like, this guy can orchestrate some pretty funny.
SPEAKER_00:He says to me a couple months ago, hey buddy, um, I'm doing this thing at Savannah. Sirvana, Savannah, that place away from Cape Greek. He goes, You think you can come pop by for a minute? Uh I want to show it to you. I go, what do you mean, pop by? Because just pop by. I go, okay. So Blake and I go, and next thing you know, we're involved in a three-day seminar, and I'm I'm hosting it. I'm I'm I'm doing a bunch of stuff. I'm interviewing people, I'm being interviewed. It was great, but that's Ian. That's so easy. But anyway, Max Hansen. All right, dude. Uh this podcast I do, it's just it's everything, right? I talk about everything with everybody. Uh it started off being about health and nutrition, which by the way, I mean, you are an incredible example of health. Uh, and then it started turning into I started talking to like my successful friends, and I wanted to know about their businesses and where they started. And then I know I was on your podcast not that long ago, and uh uh and then I don't we were talking a couple weeks ago, and I was like, man, you can you gotta come on my podcast. Yeah, because I I remember when we were chatting one time about your career, and I was trying to figure out because I'm gonna ask you a bunch of dumb questions, okay? That's cool. Because I don't understand exactly. But what is Y Scouts? That's your that's your business. Yeah, you're the founder, CEO. You um is it is it a for lack of a better phrase, uh a headhunter?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. For uh that's probably not how we refer to our scouts. I know I didn't want to say that.
SPEAKER_00:I knew that would be politically incorrect. No, it's it's okay. It's like people call me a DJ. It's like I'm like, I'm not really a DJ.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, maybe a morning host of a big radio station. Right. Uh yeah, we're Y Scouts is a uh retain search firm. So we do uh higher level C level roles on a retained basis. So the difference is the other companies that I started in 2002. I started my first company. It was a contingent firm. So we did a lot of contract, contract to hire and direct placement. But the difference between contingent and retain is contingent, you get paid once you find the person they want to hire them. Retained is they hire you because you understand a process and they basically hire you in prepay to help have you go to market with them to go find them uh leaders. And it's all C-level stuff, some VP level stuff. But how how do you get involved?
SPEAKER_00:How do that how does that happen?
SPEAKER_01:How do you start?
SPEAKER_00:Are you in college? Where'd you go to college?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so I uh I went to NAU, which is kind of like Princeton of the West, if you don't know NAU. Okay. I was just thinking about this today. Uh, because I'm preparing for my YPO speech when you graduate. So I'm trying to think of like clever things to explain my background. But uh so I went to NAU, and the one thing about NAU that I notice when I'm there is there's certain people that stay and get stuck there. And like I recognize that like I didn't want that to be me. You don't want to be stuck in FlexX, because next thing you know, there's three, four years have gone by and you're like basically still getting out of college. Right. So I decided like the day I graduated, I drove to San Diego. This leads to why how I got out of business. So I go to San Diego, I live with my brother in Pacific Beach, and I like learned how to surf, and I thought I was gonna be like, you know, kind of a surfer guy and get a job in San Diego. But uh I actually interviewed places I never got a job. I interviewed at Enterprise Rent A Car and didn't get hired.
SPEAKER_00:Just as a person behind the counter? Totally, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I didn't get the job. So uh so anyway, I stayed about a month, and then my buddy was working at AeroTech, which is a very very well-respected recruiting company. It's based in Baltimore, big company, it's one of the biggest companies. Actually, Steve Bushotti, the founder of AeroTech, owns the Baltimore Ravens. Oh, wow. So this guy's a like nobody talks about this guy. And this guy, you think about it, he grew, you know, a multi-billion dollar company, bought the Ravens for probably 500 million. They're now worth like two or three billion, I'm guessing.
SPEAKER_00:Did you ever interact with him?
SPEAKER_01:Uh, we went to that company was so good, they flew everybody to headquarters and they spoke to you. So we got trained in Baltimore. So um, but I got a job. My buddy worked for Aerotech here in Phoenix, and he called me and said, Hey, we're interviewing. And I drove back from San Diego and got a job in the recruiting business.
SPEAKER_00:So you're like 21, 22, 23.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, 21, 22. And uh back then it was definitely a little different. Like a lot of the things that I do now um go kind of counter or there they are things that I wanted to do different than what AeroTech was. But Aerotech was an incredible place to start, like very well run, taught me the business, in and outs. I learned more there. That was the best foundation I could probably have um in recruiting, um, just just learning because it's a very well-run company. But I I worked downtown in the Xerox building, actually, which is like right across from Durance or whatever, if it's still Durance, I can't remember.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's still Durance. I was there yesterday. Oh, is it? I mean, I would no, I was at I drove, I parked there, but it's still there. I think they're reopening it. I think it's the state 44.
SPEAKER_01:Um, so I worked in that building. Uh, that's where I started my career, and I worked there for two years. And I literally, we had to wear a tie every day, and we could only wear a blue shirt or a white shirt. So, like how I dress now and how I have people dress my company is kind of directly reflective. I mean, it worked for them, but I remember thinking, like, if I ever get to do this on my own, I am not making people like dress up every day, especially in Arizona where it's 110. Yeah, right. Wearing suits and ties. So uh, so I got my start at AeroTech and was there for two years.
SPEAKER_00:So it was a commission, how do you get uh yeah?
SPEAKER_01:So I was a recruit, just like an entry-level recruiter to start. I think I got promoted one time, and that's what kind of kept me in the industry is I made a direct placement because you can do contract to hire, which is you put somebody on contract and then eventually they can go direct or direct placement. And I remember I had a direct placement relatively early in my recruiting career, and I can't remember the commission that I got. It was a you know a good chunk of money. It was like at eight grand or something.
SPEAKER_00:This is so way more than you would have been doing at enterprise.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it made me realize like that was the moment where I started to think about it. I'm like, you know what? I could make as much in recruiting as I could being a doctor or lawyer, but I don't have to go back to school. So that was kind of one of the things I remember thinking back to as like, this is pretty lucrative. And then um, like every person does, I I knew I was in a line to be promoted and I didn't really want to wait to be promoted. So I quit that job and went to work for a small local company in Tempe for like$10,000 more base. And uh it was a it was not the best step of my career. Like I went, they they like barely even had computers at this place. And AeroTech was so advanced that I felt like I jumped off an aircraft carry and I was like floating in a dinghy. But now I was I had to go sell. So now I was I my job was to go get job orders and bring them in and get recs. And so I did that pretty successfully for those years for that small company. The interesting part was I don't I won't call this company out, but the the owners were so dysfunctional with each other, and like the culture was interesting, like it was just super interesting. So I kind of knew a lot from AeroTech, and I would always tell them, like, hey, make put me in charge. You know, I mean I want to run. Can I manage the office and make the right changes and grow the business? Well, right when I was about a year and a half in, they were like, All right, we're gonna put you in charge. And then 9-11 happened. And we did a lot of manufacturing and aerospace stuff, and like if you remember what happened in 9-11, they grounded every airplane, they shut every, like they just stopped everything. And uh, so and then they were kind of like, Why aren't you growing the business? I'm like, dude, it's like you know, it's like the pandemic, and like you take it over and be like, why aren't you growing? So eventually I I it was weird. I just started thinking about it, and I, because that was so bad, in my opinion, the culture and how it was run, I was like, you know what, I don't know that much, but if I want to build it the way I want to build it, then I think I have to just go build my own company. So I went, I met with like this guy that I competed against. He was like a couple buildings down, and I he eventually became my business partner. So I started talking to him about hey, I want to start my own company. And he worked for a smaller company and he only had like, you know, two or three employees in that office because it was a satellite office from a Minneapolis uh office. And I started meeting with him, like, why don't we start meeting like, you know, like I don't know, a couple times a month, have lunch, and start talking about starting our own business. So we did that, and then eventually he called me one day. He's like, hey, I have a customer that pretty much asked me the same thing you did. He's like, How many people work in your office? He's like, two or three. And the guy was like, Why don't you just start your own company? And so this customer was doing really well in the ACH business, which ended up being our business partner. But I met with him in like two hours, we all we decided to start a company, and so that was my first the three of you started what company? Yeah, there was a fourth. It was called Job Brokers. Okay. Um, so I started that. I remember I I started in their office first, so they had office space for us, and we started that.
SPEAKER_00:And but you leave the Tempe company. Yeah. So what's your concern for income? Or are you a single guy at the time? You don't really have to worry about wife and kids at rent or yeah, I was single.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's a good question. Um, because even my parents, when I told them I was starting a company, they were like kind of because my parents aren't entrepreneurs, they were like, Do you have how much money do you have in the bank? They were more concerned like I was making a bad move.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, because you gotta go if you're making good money, like you said you took that big foundation, that big bonus. How do you like how do you live? Or you are you just like like for me, I remember you didn't even think about that. You're just going.
SPEAKER_01:I kind of didn't. It was weird after I had that conversation with this, you know, the with the new partner, the investor. I like, I remember I left, I had a girlfriend at the time, I went home and I was like, hey, I'm starting a new company. And usually you say that, but you're like, I maybe about like I was after that two-hour conversation, the guy's like, let's do it. He's like, How much money do you need? And I like I didn't really know. I'm like,$200,000. And uh so we started. He said, okay. He said okay, oh yeah, he had he had so much, he had a ton of money just in in from the processing credit card processing uh processing company he was in. So I started the company by myself basically with a phone book, and that's it. I hadn't even named the company yet. So I'm sitting in this this uh cube in the back of their office, which is a credit card processor. This is an Awatuki. And uh so we named the company. Um, it interesting enough, from the very beginning, I named the company, I was gonna call it Employment Brokers. And if you know, if you've ever started a company, you just go to the Arizona Corporate Commission and you start a company, right? You just you you reserve the name, then you register the name, and then you start the LLC or incorporate it however you want. It was an S-corp actually. So I'm thinking in my head, they're like, they're like, you can do this one of three ways. You could come down here right now and reserve the name. You could mail it, you know, over like and take two days, and then when it gets here, we'll reserve it. And then there was like one a third other option that was gonna take longer. In my head, I'm like, nobody's chosen the name employment brokers, and all this time I'm like, I'll just mail it. Well, sure enough, this guy came walking in, Jeff, the employment broker, that day started that company. So I did all this branding and built the company. So the first thing I had to tell these partners was like, sorry, we have to change the name. And they were just like, You're such an idiot. I mean, that was like my start into entrepreneurship. So, anyway, it became job brokers instead of employment brokers because this guy, Jeff, the employment broker, went and reserved that name. Um, but that was the beginning, and that job brokers uh with my old business partner, Ryan News, we were business partners for 13 years. We uh we did it was fun, like it was a good ride. After we got through 9-11, the that six months through a year after that was a little bit slow. And then we hired a ton we hired over 50,000 people. So we went on to like hire like across the country, uh almost all in Arizona, actually. Wow, yeah, and and um so it was a good ride. We grew pretty much 100% every year for like eight to 10 years, so we're doing like 40, 50 million. And then, you know, I started to get a little bit um there was a lot of reasons. I just kind of wanted a different business model. Uh leadership search or retain search, what I do now, is kind of like in some ways is kind of a step up, you know, instead of hiring kind of like mid-level. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Right, right, right. But for me to advance my career, I kind of wanted to play at a different level and hire leaders, which could impact more people.
SPEAKER_00:And it's just, you know, it's did you sell job brokers?
SPEAKER_01:I sold them, yeah. My business partner bought my half.
SPEAKER_00:Bought your half, and are they still around?
SPEAKER_01:Uh, they are. Yeah, it's rebranded as is uh a different company now, but they're same guys are running it, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Same guys could do. You said I want out, they give you enough money if you're pulling in. I mean, they they took care of you. You yeah, he uh moved.
SPEAKER_01:It was interesting because we we kind of, I mean, maybe both and talk for you know both him and I. We had so much success. And I think what you forget when you're an entrepreneur, this is kind of one of my pet peeves about most people that are successful entrepreneurs, is they they forget that luck always has a place in the equation. But when you're successful and you've driven numbers like that for a long time, you think it's because of only you. And so I think we both had a little bit of that, like you know what I mean. So yeah, a little ego, like you know, he's like, I I don't need this guy, even though you know I developed a lot of the business. He it was a perfect match because he was more of an operational detail guy and I was a biz dev guy, and he was good at recruiting and I was better at sales, so it was kind of like a natural, good one-two punch. But once we kind of grew and you know, all that, I think we both kind of got a little bit like we thought we could do everything ourselves, and you know that but for me, the reason why I got out of that business is it it got a little too transactional for me. Again, I don't want to bang on people like there's a there is a place for contingent search and contract hire contract to hire and like either even interim stuff. But as I was in my career working for job brokers, um I started to there were three things. Was I I I was really good at business development, but I when I realized what like the best prey was, like we were preying on the ineptness of people's ability to hire. So we would go into a company, you know, like I don't know if I don't mean to talk bad about companies by any means, but like University of Phoenix, for example, we would come in and they hired us to help them build a kind of call center. They changed their process, and and these are people that were like pre-qualifying students before they got in process. And there was a ton of turnover, but that was like actually part of the equation of success for us was go find a company that has enough turnover because on a contract-to-hire basis, you just keep filling the seats, and some stay and some don't, and they don't really care. But for me, as I started to get older, and at Maxwell was like, you know, six, seven years old, I was kind of like, is this can I really feed my family? Like relying on the fact that there's gonna be somebody just inept enough in something that I do. So I kind of felt it like a little predatory, and as I got older, I'm like, I don't know if that's how I want to, I don't know if that's how I can feed my family. And then the other things were um it was back then there wasn't as much ACH, and like some of these big companies would kind of muscle me, and I'd have to go like drive there to get a check, like a you know, million-dollar check, because I I'd have to pay the people, and then we had a line of credit when that ran out. So I didn't really, it wasn't that fun chasing money and having you know big companies pretty much like we'll pay you when you want a little bit.
SPEAKER_00:Uh but when you cashed out, when you sold out your part of the business, was that a moment where you're like, okay, I'm good for a while? Or were you like, I gotta start the next thing?
SPEAKER_01:No, I actually uh it worked out good because it wasn't as easy to like get out of the company as I probably wanted to. So the process was we were running job brokers, we're doing very well, making a lot of money, and then I started Y Scouts. And that's actually a super important piece to like the whole conversation because we started Y Scouts as the first ever purpose-based leadership search firm. Meaning our goal and still today is aligning people on soft skills and hard skills. And back in 2012, when we started the concept, I know now everybody, you know, purpose and culture are table stakes. Well, back then it wasn't really like that. People were still figuring out that um, you know, that that people are still uh turning people over because they weren't aligned to the soft skills of the role. So we were the first kind of company that we know, the first purpose-based leadership search for on the planet that has a process to align people on purpose values or just culture, just soft skills, leadership skills, and the hard skills of you know what the job needs. So it was, I mean, I think we started the category of one, um, but I think it was more of uh movement in general. Like I think most people and you know, our younger kids like they want to work for a company that like is actually doing something like purposeful or has some sort of mission. Yeah, that's big right now. Or like at least they develop their people or care about the right things. Um, so we started that in 2012, but we I didn't sell the companies, back to your question, until 2015.
SPEAKER_00:But you already had Y Scouts.
SPEAKER_01:But I had Y Scouts, yeah. I conceptually was like, hey, I want to do something different. My partner was awesome, he's like supportive of everything. Um, but uh so then it took a while to sell the companies, but I already had started this. But the interesting part was um I didn't I gotta start it in a way where like I didn't have to make money from that company. You know what I mean? I could test stuff out, and because that that's what we did. I mean, a lot of the stuff that we do now, there's no way I would have had the discipline if I needed to make money off that right away, I would have stuck with it way back then. So it was kind of almost a gift that I had to run the other companies as well and started started Y Scouts. So in the transaction, it came like why Y Scouts is more of kind of like um like a passion of mine to like start it more so than my partner. So in the transaction, Y Scouts wasn't making money, so he was like, why don't you just take that company and so now Y Scouts is making money. Now My Scouts is making money, yeah. So I gotta keep it because he didn't want to figure out how to run it because it wasn't really his thing. So I basically took it in the transaction and then sold it. So I had something to do right away back to like one of your points you made before, which I think is interesting. Um, because I have a lot of friends in in my YPO group. Um, when we started in a forum, it's like usually like eight to 12 people, right? There was five of us right out of the gate that sold our that sold companies. And to your point, what I think is fascinating, I almost want to write a book about this. Every person that sells their company, or the people that I've met that sell their company, probably 75% of them go through like the most um like depressive like point because they're so important and instrumental in growing a business, and then all of a sudden they sell it and their bank account's full of money, but like then they don't they they don't know what they want to do and they're like they're lost.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:I think this is just such an interesting like thing. I mean, you think if you had you know$50 million in your bank account one day and the next, like you could just look at your bank account, but it doesn't really work like that.
SPEAKER_00:Because you you you need to do something, right? Yeah, yeah. So if you wrote the book, what was your book? What would your book be about? After you sell, how you survive, or what's next, or how to how to conquer the depression of selling your$50 million government?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I think it would be more of like studying the patterns because I I I see it's like a it's like a bad movie I see over and over. I see friends that are chasing after this big transaction. They get there, uh they sell their company, and then they're like go through a state of like misery. There's gotta be for how long?
SPEAKER_00:Because uh a couple of my friends that have sold their companies, they're immediately starting another one. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That's is that the other part?
SPEAKER_00:That's probably you either fall in depression or you just go to the next one.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think the people that don't have something right away are the ones that typically so I naturally did because I continued running a business, which hindsight 2020 was kind of a blessing. Yeah, but I did create uh a um I did create a little bit of a runway for sure. Uh I traveled a bit and did some stuff. It was like kind of right when Brian and I got married. So for the first year or two, I didn't I had somebody else running that company for a while.
SPEAKER_00:So I just kind of like took a break and traveled and did your thing. But where where did you come up with the name Y Scouts?
SPEAKER_01:Um it's a good question. Uh the Y Scouts So there's a there's this X theory and Y theory. If you look it up, it was, you know, it was uh I can't remember the guy that that used those terms, but it was like uh an academic. And X theory is that like people only work for money. Like they're only like driven by money, and Y theory is that people want more than money and they'll give you a discretionary effort if they, you know, if it's something, if you give them something more, like a purpose and values. And then why is like a fork in the road. And like when we were thinking about this, is again, this is back then this was a lot more revolutionary to like focus on soft skills and like with their own.
SPEAKER_00:So you're way ahead of the way ahead of what people are doing now.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so the the why was like, hey, you're either gonna be the person that just is always gonna take jobs for money, or you're gonna go the you know, the kind of the less traveled route and go find something more meaningful. Um, and then the word scouts, the way we got that was we took our what we thought at the time were our 10 biggest competitors, and we put like a word cloud of like you know what words they use most often on their website. Not one of them used the word scouts, and I'm a big sports guy. I mean, you you with all your boys and uh so the word scout to me, like if you're if you're really good at what you do, scouting for the best. Yeah, you're completely you're seeing leaders before everybody else's, right?
SPEAKER_00:So that was giving me some goosebumps there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's so that's how we came up with so the one of the funniest parts of this was I remember when we figured out what purpose-based recruiting was. Like we we were like, what is this called? And we we we like created the category. We're like, we're this is purpose-based recruiting. So we put it in uh Google. I was remembering I was on a conference room. This was this guy, Brian Moore, great good friend of mine. Um, and we put it in the we put it in Google, and the first thing, the only thing that comes up is the Boy Scouts. Oh wow. Like, so there was nothing out there on you know, purpose-based anything. So anyway, we kind of set out on that road. And uh creating a category one people think is like the like the end-all, like where you've got it. Well, you also what I learned is when you create a category one, you're creating a new sandbox that nobody has any idea of what it is. I go sell it to people and they'd be like, oh, that's fascinating. And then they would like, it's too much of a risk to do something that different. Right. They're using like old traditional like search firms. Now we've obviously built our brand up and we don't struggle, but we used to say hydric and struggles is probably the biggest retained search firm worldwide, especially in the in definitely in the US. So we used to always say nobody gets fired for hiring Hydric and Struggles because we were kind of like a whole different route. Um things have changed now. I think people again, the whole aligning people on soft skills and hard skills, people know it's you know that important and that culture matters.
SPEAKER_00:Uh what are some of the your clients, who are some some places you've placed, like examples of of your work?
SPEAKER_01:Um man, most most companies the that we work with, we work with multi-billion dollar companies. Um I was just on the phone with one of our clients today, Lemoyne Company, it's uh it's a billion-dollar construction company in in uh Louisiana. Um but so most of them are like are 50 million to 200 million kind of fast growth companies.
SPEAKER_00:Um, but are they coming after you and they're saying, hey, we need a new CEO?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, they hire they'll come in and say we need we do a lot of COOOs, presidents and and CEOs. So they come to us and yeah, they have us hire their CEO. Like uh like on the fitness side, we hired um second in command for V Shred. Did you ever see all those commercials? V Shred? V Shred, yeah, based in Vegas.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, it's uh it's like a$300 million uh so they come and you say we need a new COO. And do you say, well, tell me more about the position? Are you like we got the guy? And is it through you you've got like a database of people, or do you go, I know this guy? Is it more uh human than AI?
SPEAKER_01:This is this is a great question because most people the way they buy retained search in the past is they've always bought it in the traditional sense is I need to go find somebody that specializes in my industry. And uh so people come to us, and what we bring to the table is the role visioning exercise on the front end because most people don't know what they're looking for. That's the thing. And that I learned this back, you know, when I was in with my with job brokers and early on in the in the business days, but I learned it in a different way. There were so many things that I just learned and just knew instinctually knew. And when it comes to the role visioning piece, so that's one thing that like I think we do extremely well. We actually built a piece of software that helps us do it even better. But it's basically taking information from multiple people, multiple stakeholders on their, you know, it could be a board member, but like the team, like this, the main stakeholders, and getting clarity on what this person needs to achieve, especially in the First 12 months. I know it sounds kind of short-sighted, and when people are hiring a CEO or a president, they think like, oh, I need to figure out what this person needs to do to be successful for a long time. Well, the best way to do that is to figure out what they need to do for the first 12 months, because if they're successful in the first 12 months, they'll make it to the next. So uh so the role visioning piece was important. And the way I knew that that was a piece of the puzzle that was important was I used to go to big companies, um, like uh what's a big company that you would know here? Uh they're like defense contractors. Like I don't know if you know some of them, they're they're big companies. And I'd go in there and I'd ask a hiring manager, like they they give me a rec. So that was like the official job, you know, like description. And then I ask them, like, what are you actually looking for? And it would be like basically like one or two things on here, like that's all they needed. And I go find them that and I'd always get the person hired because everybody else was looking for all this. And so I so just from the past, so so we really help them understand, even get it out of their head and clarify what they're even looking for.
SPEAKER_00:But v Shred comes to you. How do you find the person for v Shred?
SPEAKER_01:Do you through our yeah, through through our data? Like we do have a database full of data.
SPEAKER_00:And then you get 15 people, and then do you do you personally, are you were you involved with that, or is it people in your company? Uh I have a good team that does most of the search. Do they run it by you first? Hey, what do you think we're gonna pitch Larry for v Shred?
SPEAKER_01:Um uh we we have a transparent system. I can see an update like on who's in process at all times. Um so usually I don't uh I don't have to get that far involved. Like they they will handle the execution.
SPEAKER_00:Do you ever pull somebody away from another career and you think, boy, this person would be great over here. Oh, yeah. I know they don't do that, but you just cold call them. A hundred percent. You came up in our database or something, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:So no, the interesting part, at least I think it's interesting because I've been like I think it's interesting. So uh what what what what we do is yes, we always have a database full of people, but what we do different than most uh recruiting companies, and you know, there's some retained search firms that probably do this, but I don't think as well, is that we don't ever post jobs. Like if I had to give advice to somebody on how to hire, like you post a job, and like every single person knows how to use AI and rewrite the resume with your job posting, and then they all look good.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And so we that's not the only reason why we did it. We genuinely wanted to align people on soft skills first, and it's human nature, especially in the United States, to basically tell somebody an interview, it's like a game. You want to tell them what they want to hear to get the job. Right. And so what we started to think about was we don't want them to know what the job is. So when we reach out to candidates, so we do have a database full of people, but we also put together a customized search strategy and we reach out to candidates um and we do covert discovery, which means I reach out to you and I say, Hey, I've got a role that we're retaining exclusive on. Uh, and this company cares so much about the alignment on culture and competencies. We want to take you through a discovery process before we get into the details of the role and company. Are you cool with that?
SPEAKER_00:But you just came, they they don't they're not associated with you, they haven't signed up with you. You just found like if you came to me, you would find some of the meeting.
SPEAKER_01:You would get you would get like a cryptic text with that same message, and then you get an email, and then you get a phone call, and then you'd be like, Well, first you think it's scam or spam, right? You might but then but then you're like, wait, they're retained exclusive, and they just want to get to know me because that's what people in the hiring in these days, they want everything to be easy, like they want AI to like try to post it as many places as possible. That'd be like the last way I would say if you want to hire the best person, you the more places you post like all the information, the more everybody's gonna know what you need.
SPEAKER_00:And then you gotta weed through a bunch of stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So so our way is we we to we determine who we're reaching out to. We'll determine a hundred people that we're gonna reach out to based off of a specific search strategy with our client, show them the whole strategy. Here are the clients, here are the roles within those clients, here are the names of those people, and then we have we have a bunch of pieces of software to find their contact information. And then we do that covert discovery. And what it's turned out to be, which I think was fascinating, because when we started, this is what I'm saying. I started doing this a long time ago, and I thought started doing it when I still had the other company. And I thought I like, I don't even think it, I didn't think it would even work. I thought people would be like F you and hang up, like I need to know. But as it turns out, everybody has become findable. Like if you're a C level, you know, if you're talented, I mean, if somebody wanted to find your contact information, they would they would figure it out.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:So everybody's findable. So what we started to think about is how we engage with them is really the differentiating factor. And I think for any company, even doing their own hiring, I think that they do need to think about that. And those are the ones that are gonna find the best people because I mean, all we do is super critical roles that are like mission critical for this company's success. Those people aren't looking for work on job boards. Not that it's terrible, not that I'm talking badly about people that have to look for jobs and job boards, but it would be like, you know, if we wanted a replacement for Kyle Murray on the Cardinals, which could be the case. I'm just kidding. Uh yes, you would um you wouldn't post it, right. I mean, you'd go find the seven quarterbacks that fit the system that you're looking for, and then you reach out to them and get in an engaging conversation. And so it's been fun like that because everybody we're reaching out to for the most part is gainfully employed, and so they get into the conversation more out of curiosity. You want to find somebody that's yeah, yeah, yeah, and doing good, already doing a good job, and then you know you figure out like what they might not like about their job.
SPEAKER_00:You want to put them in a position of like, yeah, you're happy, man, but look at this, right? You gotta make it have them make the tough position.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I the the the thing that's uh blows my mind even still this day is when it feels so good for people to be interviewed without knowing what you really want, because they get to just default to telling you the truth about themselves and being vulnerable about like what they want, what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are, because they don't know why you're asking the question. So uh we've just gonna kind of put that like that iteration on steroids where we get to ask this person a lot of questions. And in it for the candidate experience, like go into it, they're still like a little hesitant. And by the way, if a candidate's like, no, I don't want to do that, I need to know how much it how much it pays and like who it is, otherwise I'm not gonna take you. They're gone. They're not the people that this company wants to do.
SPEAKER_00:Whenever we've interviewed somebody, when they bring up salary right away, done. Yeah, we interviewed this girl one time, remember, she brought it up five times in the interviewer like, see ya. So what would you say uh out of your years of doing this is the highest paid position you've filled? How much how much was that annually that they made?
SPEAKER_01:Um definitely over a million, you know, like one point two three. Uh some of these CEO roles with uh, you know, because they there is long-term incentive plans, they can uh get up there pretty high, but you know, usually and then you know, we're usually charging a third or like you know, 30% depending on the what it what the deal is. So I mean it can be pretty lucrative in that sense. Um but most of the roles we work on, they're like, you know, total comps, like half a million to seven hundred.
SPEAKER_00:So what's your day like? If you're you you know you run the company, you've got a great crew. Yeah. What what do you do you have to do you wake up, do you work out, do you go to the office? Like what how does your normal day go?
SPEAKER_01:Um, I wake up and I work out. You know, like I feel like and and I know my body doesn't like a workout first thing in the morning. But like, you know, once you have kids, you start to figure out like the only time you're gonna actually like be able to get stuff done is you just gotta beat them up, which you know you do every day. I don't know she how she deals with you waking up so early. It's tough, it's starting to get tough. Uh but so I wake up, I work out. Um I typically spend most of my time doing like one-to-many, like I'll speak at like you know, a webinar or like you know, presentations, or with um uh kind of we do a demos, like a demo of the process because it's so unique that it I can take like 30 minutes and walk somebody through it and you know they pretty much got it. So a lot of time with customers and then just internal meetings with my team. I'm building a piece of software too, so that's been consuming a little bit of a lot of people.
SPEAKER_00:Do you do mostly from your home office or do you go into the office?
SPEAKER_01:No, no, I I do mostly from the home office. I still like face-to-face like with clients. Like if I can go meet them, I mean, I'm way better. Like I say this like half kidding, but I'm way cooler in person than I am, like over Zoom.
SPEAKER_00:You know, I I I believe I I agree with you. Um, we just had this huge meeting with iHeart last week, and they did all this research. You know, you everyone's scared of AI and all this stuff, and it was all about human connection and being a human being. The people want a human being. Um, and I think that's so important. They did all this, you know, when I was in in college and learning about radio and how to speak, one of the things that were like red flags is you don't ever want to go, um uh yeah, uh you know, you want to move it. Now all this research says that human beings like hearing that because they know you're a human being. AI takes all the pauses out of everything, right?
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, and even like to the on that, like even now, people like enjoy a misspelling because they know that KI didn't write that because AI wouldn't have misspelled it. Right. Actually, what's interesting uh about AI and kind of like what we've been building with a piece of software is that we do that role visioning exercise on the front end, and uh it really helps get clarity on what they're looking for in the role, and we can do it really fast now because we can have people we have we actually built this bot that people can talk to, and so we collect all the information. If you know, if it's not a person that like if they want their time leverage, we can leverage their time and make it so these people can have a 50-minute conversation with the bot, and we can from that 15 minutes we can map out a whole strategy of like how to find this person. But I think the thing that I'm finding right now that's super fascinating to me is I started building this to help define clear get clear on what this person needs to achieve be successful, and I built this piece of software. But I'm actually what I think is going to be like the golden nugget in it is that because of AI, I think that you need to continue to continue to define roles ongoing, meaning like you start a role, you define it, you get hired for it, and then maybe six months, you probably need to redefine it again. And the reason why is I think the most successful companies, what they're doing now is they're defining, they're putting a line in the middle, and they're they're defining, having these people define what um what a machine does, so what what AI can do and what the human does in it because it's gonna continue to change at a pretty rapid rate. And as human nature, we kind of get territorial about what we do. But the smart companies, they need to be very, you know, they're gonna be very forthcoming about like this is what the person does. Because eventually there's gonna be a lot less things that the human does, but you're gonna want to find the human that can do those human things better to your point. Right, you're right. It's gonna be more about connection and things like that. You don't need a person that's like really good at you know financial modeling when like that can be done with AI bot. So I don't know if that's been cranking around my head the most is like that redefining of a role right now should be like a normal thing, but people don't do it as often as I think that they should. I think you're right.
SPEAKER_00:Um, getting back to the working out thing, I want to talk about your biohacking and all the health tricks because you're obviously in great shape. You've shredded your veins or popping out of your arms just sitting here talking. Um, what so what what what are your th your must-dos every day?
SPEAKER_01:Um, you know, I've I think over the over the years, so I this started like I played a lot of sports when I was younger, and so I was in really good shape when I was younger just because I played so many sports. And then I played a year of college baseball and that it wasn't that great at at Glendale Community College, and I moved on. And then in college I like, you know, drank and smoked cigarettes and like did all those things. And so uh, but then I got to this point in my life. I remember when um when Maxwell was uh like when my ex-wife was pregnant with Maxwell, and I remember looking, I don't know why this was the moment, but there's always a moment, like, and and it I know your health is you know why you start working out, but I think you always got to figure out like what got this person to like want to be in shape. And for me it was I know this sounds stupid, but uh Maxwell being born, and I wanted him to meet the person I really was, which was I felt like I was more of an athlete and in shape. So from that day, that was you know, he's 20, almost 21. I've been basically, you know, working out like pretty heavily, you know, like you know, four or five times a week. Now I feel like since I've done it for so long, I I you know, you probably do the same thing. I'll I try to actually find the stuff that is the um the least path to resistance to staying in good shape. Yeah, you know, I mean it's like I was just talking to my buddy that I went to Vegas with this past weekend. He's like, I'm like, how many days do you actually lift a week? He's like, Oh, I lift five days a week. I'm like, You lift five days for what? Well, you can just lift heavy three days a week, take the days off, let your body, you know, reset, and you're probably gonna like you know, if he's you've been lifting five days a week for the last three years. But he's lifting five days a week, like serious lifting? Uh well he he broke it up, he told me. He's basically hitting everything twice a week. I was like, dude, you're 50-something years old. Your body needs to like rest and rebuild.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, recovery so much.
SPEAKER_01:It's the whole, yeah, it's the whole process. So anyway, uh, I I do I do a three-day split right now. So I'll just lift heavy three days a week and try to do you know cardio for at least two or three more days. What's your cardio? Uh I'll hike camelback once a week. Uh play pickleball for one in a league for you know two hours one night. And then usually like ride a bike or like I've been contemplating running and I'm not a runner.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, running sucks.
SPEAKER_01:I know, I know. And then uh, and then if my week weeks are really good, I I like to do um like a VO2 max day. So it's like four minutes on something, four minutes off, like doing you know, for that four ticket.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. What so when you see a VO2 max day, what is the what are you doing what are you doing? Are you doing the the what do you call it?
SPEAKER_01:Usually running on a sprinting on a treadmill or like you know, now I'm thinking about sprinting outside just because it's nice out now.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But four minutes of like going after something really hard is fantastic. It will put you out of breath. Because I because I also think like to me, it became kind of second nature is um I think if you do one thing every day, it would be put yourself out of breath. Although I don't do that every day, I probably should. Because then your body's like in fight or flight. I mean, your body's smart. So if it has to like get out of breath every day, it's like your cardiovascular system, your everything stays like ready for action. Um, so I try to do that at least once a week. That's such good advice.
SPEAKER_00:Once a week, you'll take your body. So, like, what do you think your heart rate is? Like, what do you take it to?
SPEAKER_01:Um, I think it's like 180, you know, it gets up to like real high.
SPEAKER_00:So when you do camera back, you go choya, you go echo. What do you do? I go echo. And you just go up by yourself, up and back, down?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no shit. And uh it's so weird. It's like so therapeutic for me. Actually, going down is more therapeutic than going up.
SPEAKER_00:Do you not have any pain, like knee pain anywhere? Like, like I find out as I get older, I have certain pains that I don't understand.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I mean, that's definitely harder to get off the ground. You know what I mean? When I fall, like when I was younger, I jump out of a car and I felt like I was fine. Now I'm like not, you know, but but hiking, I don't know what it is.
SPEAKER_00:I I got addicted to hiking last year. Yeah, but I didn't do camelback, I did all around all the the preserves and all that stuff, and I would just go try to get my heart rate up. But then summertime hit, and I feel like I haven't got my heart rate up at all. And you can feel it. But I do I lift, uh I I work out, try to work out five days a week, but I don't do and one day is mobility. I try the mobility part is crazy, right? And and then I do um every morning I have the same routine, and I don't, I don't know if it's it's not necessarily lifting, but I do like one set of everything at 3:30 in the morning to kind of get me ready for the day. Yeah. I feel like I have to do that, and I don't know if it gives me results, but it just moves my blood, you know.
SPEAKER_01:There is one thing that I do. Uh I haven't done it as religiously as I used to, but I start doing, you know what a Murph is? You know what a Murph is? Yeah, oh the cross.
SPEAKER_00:100, 100, 100 or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Two miles. You gotta run two miles, and then you do 100 pull-ups, uh, 200 push-ups, and 300 squats. And you're supposed to wear a 40-pound vest, so I don't wear the vest every time. But I uh I started doing that more often. And then when COVID happened, I was like, I didn't know what to do, you know what I mean? The gyms I didn't have a home gym at the time. Um so I had a pull-up bar and I think I did 21 straight days of just murfs. Whoa. And then after that, when I started to like I liked it, like it feels good to do a murph. I mean, it gasses you, and then you time it, so you're kind of competing against yourself. I do it in like 40 minutes. The like world record's like 20 minutes. So you know, some people can really cook. But I kind of feel like doing that once a week gives me an idea of like how good a shape I'm in, like complete shape. God, you're next level, dude. So uh so I try to do that. I actually I'm in a rental property right now, and they're gonna knock this house down when I'm done. I literally put a pull-up bar right in the living room, like against the ceiling. Like drilled it right into the ceiling. Um, but I I don't know, I like the and then I got I've kind of got into CrossFit. So my neighbor is the founder of CrossFit, and I told him Greg Glassman, he's a great dude. I told him, I'm like, I want to start doing CrossFit. And I thought I knew, you know what I mean? Because I'm like, I've worked out a lot. You've worked out a lot. Dude, CrossFit is like it is barbaric stuff. I mean, I'll I'll do some of the workouts, but they are did you work out with him or you would just go in the class? He would just give me workouts and then you know, he'd show me like some um, you know, some form stuff here and there, but he would just you know give me the the workouts. And man, dude, they they're crazy. And then he told me, I was talking to him once I started asking him more about um CrossFit. You know the CrossFit games, you know they do those CrossFit games, a guy died recently to him. Well, those guys do two days of CrossFit games. I think they do three, three workouts per day for two days. After that, dude, they can't even move for like three months after that. And like they there's weird stuff that happens. I mean, they get like blood in their livers because it puts so much tension on you. Yeah, I mean, you know, there is there is a lot of positive stuff with CrossFit. Like, because you're to your point, it gets you super out of breath. It gas it put gets every last piece of energy, but you could hurt yourself doing that too. But it but the the net net is you know, Greg used to get asked this question all the time. Like, you're you know, they would give him shit, like people are hurting their knees and back. He's like, I mean, from working out, like I mean, there's way more positive that comes out from us, but than not for sure. What about sauna cold plunge? I wish I got in the coal plunge more often. I got in before I came here today. You did it? Yeah, my second time today. But I've been getting in uh Bryna, my wife, she likes to do um yoga in an infrared, like you know, uh sauna box. And so I get in there and there's like lights and stuff in there. Um, so I've been doing that, but I I need to get back in the coal plunge. We're remodeling our house, the one down the street from you, and uh it's gonna have a giant gym, and like then it has this like room that it's like the you know, it's like the uh the wellness room. So it has a coal plunge, badass red light, and uh a sauna in it that has like sound therapy in it, it's like its own separate room. That's sick. So when that's done, you'll have to come over and check it out.
SPEAKER_00:But it's not bad for a guy that didn't get hired at Enterprise Rent A Car. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I mean I had a couple I had a couple lucky bounces, yeah. Wow, man, that's freaking great.
SPEAKER_01:But we yeah, I'm looking forward. We'll we'll be in there in spring. Uh, and it's it's crazy. We basically all have our kids moved out, and so we're you know, in a seven-bedroom, nine-bathroom house, and we're like, this is kind of weird. You know, just kind of walk around the house reminds you that you know all your kids don't live there anymore. Right.
SPEAKER_00:So you just changed it up.
SPEAKER_01:So we were gonna actually downsize and go move somewhere else. And then as we started look at that, just the tax situation and all that, it just made more we like the area, it just made more sense to rebuild it. But with the gym, basically took out all our kids' rooms, and that's gonna be like the gym wellness area. That's awesome. Then built a guest house like uh at the other house. But uh I'm excited about that because I I had my own small gym in the backyard, and it was great. I mean, it to be able to go work out whenever I wanted was great. Um, but I've been going to like gyms lately. I've been going to um global and then that's a nice gym there. Yeah, Arizona Country Club's way better, the gym. Oh, really? I haven't been there in a long time. They just redid the yeah, the gym. I mean, it's you know not as trendy. There's a bunch of old people in there, but like I'm more about like the equipment in there.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Uh what about like uh like like this morning, for example, I took uh you ever do like the NAD stuff and it's do you do I don't know the system, but I just started doing NAD, I didn't just start, but I started many years ago doing the NAD IV drips, you know those things? And and uh I heard they were good for you, so I started doing them, and but I didn't want to take the time to do the NAD drip, which they tell you the right way is like a five, six hour drip, because they're used from what I heard, it was used to help people get off a heroin. So it was like an eight-hour drip, but it's supposed to be really good for you, right? So that's all I need to know is I hear from somebody. So next you know, I'm getting a drip. I'm getting a thousand milligrams, but I want it in 20 minutes. Yeah, and uh, I don't know if you've ever done that much NAD, but it's nauseous. Oh, yeah, it's the worst thing. So I feel like you feel like you're going into heart failure.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you feel like you're gonna die. I actually um this was more kind of driven by my wife. My sister does gives IVs, so she'll come you know, give me IVs. But uh, but like you, I don't like the time, so I literally just get NAD like injections?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's what I just started doing today. Or not today, but this morning I did the injection. But it's still like oh, you do the injection, like I do this morning at 3:30 in the morning, I eject it, and I'm like, huh. Guess it's not it's not that strong. And then about 15 minutes later, you're like, I gotta sit down. Oh right, and it's just this terrible.
SPEAKER_01:You feel like you feel like it's not gonna go away. Right. You're like, oh shit, I should have done it right now. And then it gradually goes away, and you're like, oh god, okay. And then you can't wait to do it again.
SPEAKER_00:Right, right. I I did it this way. I take the stairs at work every day. I refuse to take the elevator. And uh today it hit me like I was on the third floor in the stairwell, and I was like, I gotta stop for a second. I gotta stop. Oh, it's the NAD. Oh god, good. I thought maybe I was dying. But what what else? Like, I do a vitamin B shots, I do a little testosterone, um, I take a bunch of vitamins. Um, I go to see my doctor, I see her all the time, you know.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, peptides, I mean, you got me into the stem cell. Oh, yeah. Oh, you forget that. Remember that? Yeah. I ran into you guys at dinner. Oh, yeah, that Vicina peptide. Vicina, yeah. You're like, dude, you have to, and just the conviction in your voice, I'm like, you know what? Like, I mean, it's whatever this is. I'm in Okay, wait.
SPEAKER_00:So how many times have you done stem cells now?
SPEAKER_01:Um probably uh five or six rounds.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. You know, uh, I went about a month and a half ago, I did a whole new thing. I mean, I went to Cancun, same place as we go, re-health, and and I went to the hospital and they put me under. What? Yeah, yeah, because I had uh carry my doctor's like, your L5. I was having I was hiking, like I said, I was hiking, and then all of a sudden one day it hurt, I couldn't walk, it hurt so bad. She did an MRI and she's like, Your L5's fucked up. And I'm like, What? She goes, It's way fucked up. So I go to the doctor in Cancun. They put me, I get in the hospital, but just like you go in a normal hospital in the gown, they give me the stem cell drip of like 100 million, and then they put me under and they injected my spine. They went into my bone and they drilled little holes in my bone, and they did all this stuff uh and put more stem cells in. Then they put my PRP and the blood in. And anyway, it's supposed to be like in four or five months, some amazing things are supposed to happen in my back, which by the way, it worked pretty much pretty quick. I feel I like zero back pain. Like it's pretty amazing, yeah. And then I've gone to Cabo a couple times for or once for the drip. But my next thing is I've done one session of um the killer cells. Have you done those yet?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I did that. Uh the last round I did 90 days before I got the last round of stem cells. I did the NK. Do you feel stuff? Do you feel anything? Uh yeah, I mean, like, I feel like my body's like somewhat used to it. Not in a bad way, but in a good way. Like the first time I did it, I was like, I had like a fever for like a week and then eating too, right? Oh yeah, yeah. I still, that's that's my like crux. So um, so sometimes I I like the thing that I have to think about is uh so there's peptide, like peptides that are that are just turned just a brain off for hunger. I have to dip into those. Which one's that one? It's called uh test tesofencing. It turns you off your hunger? Yeah, just it doesn't do what like the the Olympic stuff. Yeah, the osempic stuff. It doesn't slow down your like mechanics. Yeah, I don't want that. It's just uh it was a psych drug that they figured that they were given to kids and they were like, these kids are not hungry. That's how they discovered it. But uh tesofencing, I mean they charge a lot for it. They can get it on at the peptide places. Oh, I want peptide. But it's helpful. I don't take it every day, but it's it's nice to know that I can if I get super hungry because I get like like hangry, hungry. Yeah, I mean I can't not eat when once when the stem cells are kicking in for you know, like two or three hours is like I'm like starving. Do you drink coffee? I do now, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, that's supposed to help with appetite suppressant too.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, it is? Yeah, I I I like coffee. I didn't drink coffee for a while because I got invisaligned at one time, and so I didn't want to drink coffee to stay in it because that was the whole like straight tea. So then I started drinking Celsius, and so I drank a Celsius every morning, and then I started figuring out when I went to work out from the Celsius. I mean, it took me months to figure this out, I was like already out of breath. I was wide awake, but I was like almost like I couldn't catch my breath to start the workout, and it took me a while to get into the workout. So then I was like, okay, well, I'm that's like I'm not gonna do that. So I quit drinking Celsius and quit drinking coffee, and then for a while I felt so good. I had no caffeine, and then I gradually started working into like a cup of coffee a day, which I don't think is you know black.
SPEAKER_00:I found um an energy drink that somebody told me about, and they said it's the only energy drink on the market that's healthy for you. Like all these other energy drinks out there out there, all of them, they give you the minimum FDA required for whatever, right? So this friend of mine tells me he's a trainer, and he tells me about this drink, and I became obsessed with it, and it tastes delicious, and it's supposed to be really, really good for you. It's got the it's got a thousand milligrams of everything. Uh the caffeine, I think, is 400 milligrams of caffeine, but all the other stuff, I don't know, it's called Gorilla Mind. You ever heard of it? Uh uh. It's freaking fantastic.
SPEAKER_01:I thought you were gonna be like, oh, this is it right now.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, this is the hydrogen water thing. You heard about the hydrogen water? Oh, yeah. No. Okay. I I yes, I have, yeah. Okay, so this this is there, this isn't you can't you cannot buy this, Max. You can't, this doesn't exist anywhere in the United States. Yeah, so this is hydrogen water in a can. So it's just it tastes just like water, but what happens is you these people back in the day, like Gary Brecca and stuff, they were selling this thing where you put the button and the bubbles go up, right? And it turns your water into hydrogen. I bought that, it broke three weeks later, and it cost$400. Then they started having these pills that you pop in your water and it dissolves and turns into hydrogen water. And they say hydrogen water is supposed to be really good for you. I don't know. I didn't have the time to wait for the pills. And I meet this woman, because I'm talking about on the air, and she says, I'm bringing this company to the United States, and they're in Australia right now, and it's exactly what it is. And you just open it and drink. And so she sends a couple cases every once in a while, and I drink it. Eventually it's gonna come to the United States. I don't know when. I set her up with Craig DeMarco because he's gonna start carrying it and he fell in love with it. He's gonna try to put it in air guitar and at uh Postino and at uh LGO. And then um I talked to my friend that runs uh One Stop Nutrition. Do you know Brian? One stop? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um he said he they sent her. I asked her to send him a case and he's gonna try to get in all his stores. But right now you can't. Even if you call them in Australia, they can't send it to you. But it's to me, it's simple, pop and go. I drink one every day.
SPEAKER_01:I think it's good. You know what I uh I'm pretty addicted to is this B12 injected water. Um, I haven't seen that. Yeah, it's B12 shots. Um oh my gosh, I can't believe it. It's my it's a guy that I know Wells company, I can't think of the name off the top of my head. Is it available like black can, yeah. He's I think he's gonna get it in Target. But so the the B12 water is like I do a B12 shot almost every day anyway. Um every day? Yeah, because my B12 is just I'd go to the doctor and I do it once a week, and they're like, just do a little bit every day. Oh, okay. So that's what I do now. But uh, so the B12 water, my wife swears by it. Like she absolutely loves this. So in the morning, I just slam a whole one of this B12 injected water. And for altitude sickness, like if you're going skiing, like that's an that's a hack for hangovers. B12 water is like great. I think I I told my sister who does um uh does IVs. I'm like, you need to bring one of these, like you're gonna distinguish yourself by saying, Okay, before I give you an IV, you're gonna give you this B12 water. Because clearly most people are getting it because they're dehydrated, they want to feel better. It's like I'd I'd start with that. Like, this is gonna start getting it in your body. I'm also gonna put some menu, but like, let's hit it from both sides.
SPEAKER_00:Do you feel it right away when you drink it?
SPEAKER_01:Um, I don't necessarily now because I drink so much of it.
SPEAKER_00:Um, but you don't know what it's called.
SPEAKER_01:Uh yeah, give me a second. I cannot believe I have got right now, though.
SPEAKER_00:It is available, he's gonna get it in target, but right now it's available.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I gotta I have to look it up because if somebody's watching this, it is that good. It's like a badass brand.
SPEAKER_00:This guy has done uh the Gorilla Mind guy that um he's the guy, God, what's his name? He's real famous, too. You ever heard that guy does more plates, more dates, or whatever? Yeah. That's him, that's his company. He has the gorilla mind.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, oh yeah, that's oh yeah, I know I know you're talking about.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, uh he's fat. He's the guy that popped liver king. Yeah. Um he's the one that had the liver king emails or something like that.
SPEAKER_01:So the the water is called acid rain water. I can't believe I forgot that's a great name for this. I mean, and it's like it is such a good brand. Whoops. Like the branding on the. And what happened to your protein bars? Oh, that actually, so the branding, they're they're they're black. The it's like a black like uh can. But it's there's badass branding. So what happened to the protein bars is this. Those are good. So uh it's coming back alive. But so what happened was we get in the supplement business, we we're making some progress, but not enough progress because everything was um we were getting it um god, I can't remember the approval um that you get it, but you have to like you have to um certify like almost every like production run. So it costs a little bit more, and we kind of want to do that. So anyway, it got to a point where like it wasn't growing like as fast as we wanted. So this other company um ended up called it's called Thrival, the company, they ended up buying all the shares of the like. So I have I got a stock deal from them, which I think it was like, I don't know, 400,000 shares of that. And so they're called Thrival Energy Bars now, and it's the same, it's the formula that they bought. And now they are about to go in every army barracks out there, and so the guy's telling me he's like, no, they're I just saw the new branding, and he sent me, you know, sent me like the some bars. So now it could potentially so Pete Hayes Hesseth, the you know, the guy that works for the the uh department. He basically loves it and it's got some like military background. And if you think about it, one of the problems with the the bars is that for the purists that do um like you've used Yucca before. Yeah. So it tells so in order for I told you guys about Yucca. Yeah, yeah, and yeah, we start, yeah, we start yucca and everything, and we next thing nobody's gonna be addicted to it, right? She threw away all of her cosmetics like the next day. Um so it had like a to keep the bars on the shelf, you know, to it has to have shelf life, it has to have a preservative in in it, which usually isn't good. Um so that was like the only you know kind of negative thing. But when you think about the best, like I just thought about this after they were telling me like this could it's gonna go in the army and then it's gonna go to some other other military like bases. And if you think about it, the best contract ever to have for supplements would be the military that's buying, like promising to buy a certain amount. So I guess it's still like going and there is hope. And then there is some crazy story where the bar itself, um, it's like how it's made. Uh uh, it has a nootropic in it, and how it's made and what it's made out of, it's literally like if you were on a mountain and you were deserted, and you had to the the small amount of something to keep you alive the longest, that's how this bar is built. And so the there the story of the thrival person that took it over is they had a relative that basically died because they didn't have enough time to be found. They found by the time they found them they were dead because they starved to death uh from a new from not having nutrition. So it literally uh that story resonated with this investor from Thrival, so they bought the formula. So I'm still hoping that it comes back around.
SPEAKER_00:But you still have it's still yours. Or they you have 400,000 shares. Shares of this thrival company, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that's not bad. It's like it's only like eight percent of that company.
SPEAKER_00:Wait, you know what I want to get into really quick before we wrap up is the way you enjoy life, like the vacations you take, the trips you take, uh the gumball rally. Yeah. Explain the is it the gumball rally? That's what it's called. Yeah, the gumball 3000. The gumball 3000.
SPEAKER_01:Man, that was fun. Uh a bit, I did it twice, but I did it in 2015. And it's basically um, you know, it's a point-to-point rally, so it's like, you know, fun to go to some cool places. But the guy Maximilian Cooper that owns it is married to Eve. Um and rapper Eve?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, he's cool. I just had him on my podcast not too long ago. Uh awesome dude. Like, I mean, he built this company basically from the ground up. Like, he knew fashion because he was like a model for a while, um, and cars, and so he kind of just blended everything together and like the skate world. And so he started doing the gumball, just inviting like people from those three, you know, kind of like industries. And they I think they this was like the maybe the 30th one, but now it's like you know, the company's big. So we so they changed the route every year. This past year, it was about two or three weeks ago, it went from Istanbul to Mykonos. So I mean, sometimes they go multiple continents. Is it Mykonos on an island? Yeah. So they flew the cars there and just finished it at like with so they do some so you sign up to do it. You signed up. So when you did it, where did you go? And we went uh Stockholm to Oslo to Copenhagen to Amsterdam, and then once we got to the stadium in Amsterdam, they took the cars, put them on a plane, and then we got on a plane next to it and flew to Reno, and then got off the plane in Reno in the cars. It was a long flight, and uh, and then went from Reno to San Fran to LA and then the finish line was in Vegas. But are you hauling ass?
SPEAKER_00:Like it's a race. Yeah. But the rules are if you get pulled over, you get pulled over?
SPEAKER_01:If you get pulled over, yeah, I've got I got a 5,000 euro ticket and going into Amsterdam. I was going like 175 miles an hour for like 10 minutes. There's four of us that they pulled over. And what kind of car were you in? Um, I was in a 911, like a modified 9-11, 775 horsepower.
SPEAKER_00:But that comes with like you pick the car you want when you sign up.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you you build it. Actually, my my friends that went with me, I there was three couples, so there were six of us, and they played a joke on me, and they had the shipping company call me and tell me that my car got fell in the ocean. Because I I customized this thing. I mean, like did everything I possibly could and was like, and they called and and they totally punked me and told me this car fell off the the ship and they drop it in the ocean. That's what this company told me. I was like, they thought I was gonna be so much more mad, but I kind of was like, Well, that sucks. What are we gonna do?
SPEAKER_00:You know, and they're like, So you sign up, you build the car you want, they build the car for you. No, we you build your own car and you ship it over there. You build your own car and then ship it there. So you have to buy your own 9-11, build it, whatever car, you can drive whatever you want. But do you still have the car? Uh, I don't have that one, no. So after you sh build, so you got to work a year or two in advance?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, you definitely you have to think about it, uh, think it out. And then you ship it over, and then it's basically like you want to drive fast, not because it's necessarily a race, like nobody's getting like prizes for being first, but when you go into different cities, like um the second year, one of those stops was London, and it was like a banker's holiday in London. There was a million people in the streets waiting for this thing. So you're pulling into this, like the biggest parties ever that are basically celebrating the rally going there, and then there's always an event that night. So you go to the event, which are like crazy, like you know. I I remember um uh Oslo was like, you know, that like the these people were like they're awesome. And in Europe, people the gumball is like the biggest thing. Like they think you're they think you're like Tom Brady, like every person that's driving a car when they get out, they like want to interview you. So in the kids, it's a bigger deal for them. Um, but it it's a lot of fun. So we we've done that twice. Um, yeah, we I don't know, I think how many people are in the gumball? Usually a hundred cars. Wow, and then you know, a lot of like a lot of camera people and a lot of like chase cars and just other stuff. Jeez in every city there, you know, it's like a whole new like venue.
SPEAKER_00:And but then I've seen you a couple of things on Instagram where you helicopter into the EDM festival.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You live life at a 10.
SPEAKER_01:I I like to go at it pretty hard. I mean, I think you gotta like have fun with it for sure. Um, yeah, we've done some I've traveled quite a bit, like I was thinking about over the last like 10 years. I haven't counted, but probably been to like 40 different countries.
SPEAKER_00:What's your favorite vacation you've been on the last 10 years?
SPEAKER_01:Um, I think like what immediately comes to my head, we did spring break in Tokyo with all the family. And uh that was the best. I don't know, like Tokyo. If you've never been to Tokyo, you've been having a lot of people. I've never been. It's on our list. It's Tokyo, it's such an interesting place. It's I mean, absolutely fascinating. Like the Japanese are so smart, like, and like just everything's clean, the way they treat people, the way they treat elders, like they just it's it's just uh it's like I think how we wish we treated people you know in our society. Did you just stay there for a week? Uh we stayed in um Tokyo, uh right downtown Tokyo. And then like the thing about Tokyo is like there's I mean so many people there, it's like a hundred times more dense than Phoenix. So like there's an underbelly just like underneath the city is like the you know, the subways and the trams. I mean, that's a whole nother city. Right. Like the train station has like hundreds of restaurants and stores in it. It's like this biggest, you know, it's like a giant place. Uh but it was it was that that had to be my favorite one. Every all the kids loved it. There's stuff you know always to do. But we did Tokyo for four days, and then we went to um God, I can't believe I can't think of the other city went to. Uh very common like city, and we took a train there, they took a bullet train there, which was fun too.
SPEAKER_00:But your would you say your your your favorite place or is is it uh Gaza or Court d'Alene?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean that's definitely my favorite spot. Yeah, it's it's so cool too, because I think if it was an all-year round thing, I could go there at all any time. I don't think it'd be as cool. But you know, as soon as it ends, you get to look forward to going back to Court d'Alene for summer.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, so does it end because of the snow and the cold?
SPEAKER_01:Uh I've never I like I stay there in COVID. We stayed till October, and it still hadn't gotten really cold. So Court d'Allain doesn't get like super cold, not like the Midwest. I mean, it'll get like 20s maybe, but not a lot. So it doesn't get extremely cold. We'll go there for Thanksgiving this year. Again, we they they opened it up for Thanksgiving. But I I would say Court d'Alane is uh is my favorite place. My daughter would agree, my seven-year-old would say that place is great. She it's her favorite place. You know, I grew up and I was born in Spokane, Washington. My dad took me to Court à l'ane growing up, like that's how I kind of like knew about it and kind of got back there. And then he uh he when he he told me since I was like 10 years old, like he'd take me boating on a little wood boat that was a Chriss craft, and uh we played Batham and stuff on the lake. But he since I was 10, he's like, Max, when I die, which was like a weird thing because he didn't really talk about death much, but he's like, When I die, I want you to throw my ashes out on Cordalane. And then he died eight years ago, and so we went and threw his ashes out on the lake, and we kind of already knew about it. And then me and my brother played golf at Gaza, and he ended up buying a place down in Black Rock, which is at the south end of the lake, and then we've been in Gaza ever since.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. So every time you're on the lake, I mean your dad's there. Oh, yeah. You think about that every time, all the time. I mean, oh yeah, that that was a spot. That's awesome. That's that's awesome.
SPEAKER_01:That's a even the uh the lake club, which you've spent a lot of time down there, that used to be a bar called Eddie's, and my dad would like we drive there, and he would like we would drive the boat and he would drink, and like it was you know, it's like right back to the same spot.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's cool because Gaza right now is the place, right? But for you, it's authentic. Yeah, you know, I mean for you, it's like you were going to Court d'Alene your entire life. Yeah, right, and now it's like that's that's the Hollywood hotspot right now. It's in the news all the time, or at least during summertime, right?
SPEAKER_01:Did I tell you uh so I had a 50th birthday at Joe, we talked about Joe Polish earlier at his his uh ghost town or mining table.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, was this this was the um burning max burning max, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So I have that in the the DJ, so out of all the DJs in the world, there's a guy that I like the best, his name's Z trip, and he's like, he's our age. So you know, he's like for a DJ that's 52, I mean it's hard to be like super popular, but like all DJs really respect Z Trip. He's incredible at his craft. So he plays my birthday, and I got to, you know, obviously know him because it's like my birthday. So I got to know him, and then it was so good. The music was, I was so impressed with the music. Like he literally had me talk him through like my whole music upbringing, like what I started listening to. I mean, it started like with NWA and too short, and he, you know, like all the way through like all the years, and he absolutely he played every type of music that like was exactly what I asked him. I probably told him he's like, tell me more songs. I told him like 75 songs, and these were all like different speeds and stuff too. He mixed them all in, mixed them all in. So perfect. So uh we threw a party at the tree bar and he played and it absolutely crushed it. The members were so excited. I mean, there was like Did he just stay at your house? Yeah, he stayed at the condo. Oh, okay. Yeah, but uh, but it was so fun.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so that was you had to rock that neighborhood. We went to my well, my wife and I went to um a party at U of A, and uh Tommy Lloyd, the basketball coach, invited us and he gave us his VIP passes, backstage passes, and mixed master Mike, you know who he is? Yeah, with the Beastie Boys, was mixing, and he's RH2, and he blew my mind. One of the best performances I've ever seen, ever. And you think about it, it's you know and it was it was from Beastie Boys to Rapper's Delight to Paul Simon to the way they could mix. That's what each of us does. That's exactly what he would do. Rush, Van Halen, and I was like, it was the most incredible thing I've ever seen. It might be up there in my top five concerts of all time, if you call that a concert. I don't even know what you call it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. I have a uh an hour set. I'll download it. He he did a yacht rock version, yeah. Everybody has their yacht rock version. Dude, it's so good.
SPEAKER_00:Wait, he did the yacht rot version like for you?
SPEAKER_01:And it's no, no, it was for like Cirrus Radio or something. Oh, so you can go listen to it? Yeah, I can I have it a download on my phone. You could find it on SoundCloud Action.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, because uh my wife's a huge psycho yacht rot fan.
SPEAKER_01:But yeah, oh it is the best yacht rock you'll ever listen to. I'm not joking. I I literally, I mean, obviously I know the guy, so I'm a little bit favorable, but all that music is like the classic music that my dad listened to, and to hear it mixed up in a way, and like he'd like you'll see it like starts to get a little faster, but still keeps it classic. But I uh I literally listen to it now like at least a couple times a week. It like grounds me. I'm not joking. Or when I'm playing golf and I'm not playing it, I turn on yacht rock and then I kind of like get right back into the swing. Well, dude, thanks for being on my podcast, man. Of course, man. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, man, that was great. That's my friend Max. Okay, so welcome to our podcast. This is a little bit different today because this podcast is a spin-off of our radio show.
