The Ageless Warrior Lab
Dave Meyer | Host, Ageless Warrior Lab podcast | President & Co-founder of Food System Innovations and Humane American Animal Foundation
Join BJJ coral belt, Gang of Eight and Dirty Dozen member Dave Meyer as we draw wisdom from Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and the martial arts and explore how it applies to your life, success in business, and your long-term health.
Dave Meyer is a pioneering American Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) practitioner, and accomplished non-profit founder and Philanthropist. He is an eleven-time world champion in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and is the current world champion in his age/weight division in the no-gi format.
Dave co-founded and served as CEO of Adopt-a-Pet.com for two decades, turning it into the world's largest nonprofit homeless pet adoption website and helping save millions of animals, before its acquisition by Mars Inc.
Today, Dave leads Humane America Animal Foundation and Food System Innovations, working on farm animal welfare and a healthy and sustainable food system. He frequently advises U.S. lawmakers on these issues, and has raised and deployed over $160 million in philanthropic capital as part of his work in the nonprofit space.
In his athletic career, Dave has risen to the highest ranks of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He earned his black belt from Rigan Machado in 1996 and ranked among the first Americans ("the Dirty Dozen") to do so. He was the first American to medal at the black belt level at the BJJ World Championships in Brazil in 1998. Dave is one of just several Americans to achieve the rank of coral belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, a group now referred to as the “Gang of Eight”. He continues to compete at the world championship level, winning world championship titles in his age division.
As a martial artist and instructor, he taught at UCLA, Steven Seagal's Tenshin Dojo, and developed a globally used grappling curriculum with John Will, including customized material for Chuck Norris's UFAF association. He has written several books on Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, including "Training for Competition: Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Submission Grappling".
Meyer also played a critical role in post-Katrina animal rescue, co-authored books pet care, and co-founded a Haiti orphanage for children with HIV, exemplifying a lifetime of impactful leadership in both martial arts and philanthropy.
Dave resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, and continues to coach BJJ athletes and compete at the world championship level. He is the President & Co-Founder of Humane America Animal Foundation and Food System Innovations, of which the Ageless Warrior Lab is a project.
The Ageless Warrior Lab
Mission Days: The powerful tool to keep your work and life on course | Ep. 18
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Are you living on autopilot? Most people never take real time alone to examine their lives—until a crisis forces them to. But what if you could proactively gain clarity, purpose, and direction without waiting for disaster to strike?
In this episode, I reveal my "Mission Days" practice—a powerful personal retreat I've used for years to build a major nonprofit, land significant business deals, and make life-changing realizations. This isn't meditation. It's intentional contemplation designed to unlock your inner wisdom and create actionable breakthroughs.
You'll learn: ✅
- The 6-step framework for conducting your own Mission Days retreat ✅
- Why boredom is actually the key to creativity (backed by science) ✅
- How to "live into the future" instead of being held back by your past ✅
- The "tipping point" strategy from Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu that applies to life goals ✅
- How Bill Gates, Carl Jung, Thomas Edison, and even the Buddha used similar practices ✅
- Specific prompts to guide your thinking during the retreat ✅
- How to turn insights into actionable results
Whether you're feeling stuck, seeking more meaning, or simply want to ensure you're on the right path, this episode gives you a proven system for regular life evaluation and course correction.
Get the full Mission Days guide and prompts at my website: agelesswarriorlab.com/blog
Links from the show:
4 Hour Work Week book
"Does being bored make us more creative?" Published in 2014 in the Creativity Research Journal.
"Mind wandering during creative incubation predicts creative performance” published in 2025 in Scientific Reports
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-19753-005
2018 article called "Solitude as an approach to affective self-regulation". Published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance book
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/629.Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance
2001 paper called “Self-concordance, goal attainment, and the pursuit of happiness: Can there be an upward spiral?” published in the Journal of Happiness Studies
Landmark Forum
https://www.landmarkworldwide.com/the-landmark-forum
Music “Disambiguation” by Robel Borja https://open.spotify.com/artist/7j0DUZ79z4edeLkU2H1UoJ?si=eISl0YfaQ-yLThljs48j5A
This episode was directed and presented by Dave Meyer, editor & coproducer by Ryan Turner, producer & marketing Robbie Lockie, music kindly provided by Robel Borja.
