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Health & Fitness Redefined
Health and Fitness Redefined with Anthony Amen. Take a dive into the health world as we learn how to overcome adversity, depict fact vs fiction and see health & fitness in a whole new light.Fitness Is Medicine
Health & Fitness Redefined
Fitness and Self-Care as Keys to Entrepreneurial Success
Prioritizing fitness may be the key to unlocking greater income and professional satisfaction. We discuss the direct correlation between health and wealth, the challenges faced by entrepreneurs, and emphasize the importance of community accountability in fitness routines.
• Importance of prioritizing health to enhance productivity
• Differences between entrepreneurs and business owners
• Barriers that prevent business owners from focusing on fitness
• Seeking discomfort to build discipline
• Benefits of finding a supportive fitness community
• Realistic approaches to nutrition in today's society
• Final actionable advice for aspiring entrepreneurs and fitness-seekers
Learn More at: www.Redefine-Fitness.com
Hello and welcome to Help the Fitness Redefined. I'm your host, anthony, and today we have another great episode for all of you. But before we get into the episode, welcome to 2025. Oh my God, crazy. This is five years we've been doing this. Thank you for all you guys listening. Follow along. We got some exciting stuff coming out of our main parent company, redefine Fitness. We are going through a crazy rebranding, a crazy, just uplifting thing. We're changing our logo. We're becoming more into the medical community. It's going to be exciting. You guys just can't wait and with this show, obviously follow along. That it's all thanks to the listeners here, showing that that's where we really need to be. Is that top tier? So excited to announce that without further. Just welcome to the show, dan. Dan, it's a pleasure to have you on today yeah, I appreciate you having me man.
Speaker 1:I'm excited for this yeah, me too.
Speaker 2:We got someone local for once. I feel like the last guy was from australia, so this is nice to be back on this time zone. No, he's teasing. It's great get to interview people everywhere. Uh, before we hop into the show, though, just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into the health and fitness world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so, dan Singer. I'm a business coach, eos implementer, so I work with business owners and their leadership teams and coach them to help them get what they want from their business. Also a reservist in the Marine Corps, father of two, husband, been into health and fitness really my entire life. Did mixed martial arts growing up, you know, from about 10 years old till I was 18. Swam in high school as well. So always kind of more on that individual effort, team type of environment. Um started lifting a lot of weights in college and then kind of got back into some jiu-jitsu and stuff. Um, after college kept through that through the marine corps and then really started getting into more high intense stuff after I went into the marine corps.
Speaker 1:So I went in at 25 um. That was when I started running for the first time, which I still despise, but I forced myself to do it and then found CrossFit in 2014, which I've been doing since then. I'm not a CrossFit cultist, right. I think. There's a lot of modalities out there and they're all great. I just happen to like it because it checks a lot of the boxes. All I got to do is show up. There's a workout already there, I don't have to think about programming. I get to lift heavy weights, I get to do body weight stuff, I get to do cardio. It's all packaged together and it kind of keeps my attention span engaged. So it's been it's been a journey for me.
Speaker 2:I love it. And then, more specifically, you work with, obviously, a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of business owners, people that are just trying to make it on their own, but also, just before we really hop into the topic, this can also apply for managers, employees, I mean. It doesn't have to be, you, don't have to be an entrepreneur to I really feel like learn from where this conversation is going to head. It's important to understand that, even as an employee, this is a priority, and I'm going to branch that into the very first question and just be as direct as possible, because it's 2025, so let's do it. Is your health and fitness directly related to the amount of money you make, yes or no? Yes, why?
Speaker 1:I think by prioritizing yourself, your fitness, your health, that it allows you to get to a space where other things become easy, right? So I heard a quote recently, I think it was a Mark Twain quote eat the frog, right. So the idea is, if you wake up in the morning, you know you have to eat a frog at some point during the day. Eat it first thing in the morning, get that shit out of the way, and then everything else becomes easy. So for me, getting up at five o'clock sucks, like every day. I've been doing it for years. It still sucks. Getting into the gym at six o'clock and breaking myself off for an hour sucks. I feel great afterwards, but what it does is it sets the rest of my day up where everything feels like it's easier in comparison.
Speaker 1:And so my to-do list, my things that I know I have to get done to keep the business moving forward, is not as big of a mental drain at that point because I've done the hardest thing that I'm going to do all day as soon as I got up and I think you have a compounding effect of that.
Speaker 2:Why do you think most people don't prioritize the health and fitness world, especially in the business owner entrepreneur world? Because I've met a lot of people and over half don't even work out. So yeah, why is? Why is that a thing?
Speaker 1:uh, the short answer I think they're being lazy, I think it's hard, I think it sucks and I think it's really easy, especially as an owner. You know this is not to discount. I mean there's a lot of shit on your plate as a business owner. There's a lot of pressure, a lot of burden, and you can either get in front of that and do like what I said go do your hardest thing in the morning and then make those other things relatively feel easier, or you can use all that hard shit that's on your plate as an excuse to not take care of yourself.
Speaker 2:And I think that's the short answer.
Speaker 1:I think most people are just being lazy. It's uncomfortable to get up at five o'clock in the morning. It's dark, it's cold, it sucks. You're going into a gym to do hard shit. It's easier to stay in bed till seven o'clock and be comfortable.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it's the lack of understanding to really do the harder part of what's coming, and I'll talk a little bit. Let me first clarify a point. People think it's easier because I own gyms that it's easier for me to work out it's. I don't understand how hard it is to show it's actually. I want you to imagine something for a second, dan that you work in an office, setting right, and you go to work, you plug in, you're in work. Now I want you to go back to your place of work, to go do something that's stress relieving. You don't get to go to an outside place like a gym. You have to go back where you're in all the shit. Everyone's talking to you, everyone wants your head and you have to find your relaxation and mental fortitude to push through a workout at your place that you own or work.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Way harder.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent.
Speaker 2:And I still do it right. I still there. I add an extra hour to my day, I still show up. I still do it right. I still there. I add an extra hour to my day, I still show up. I still get it done. It doesn't matter if we're crushing it or we're doing really poorly. It's that's got to be my priority and my mental clarity to wake myself, to get myself going, because if I don't do that, I don't take care of myself, the business is going to suffer and at the end of the day, that's the number one biggest priority. I want to ask you a very specific question and tie it into health and fitness. So first it's going to feel like it's a little outside, but then we'll double back. What's the difference, in your opinion, between an entrepreneur and a business owner?
Speaker 1:Okay, so I think an entrepreneur I kind of go to um, there's a dynamic within eos that we kind of capture. You have the visionary and integrator, which are two critical roles. Um, so think of steve jobs, steve wozniak. Steve jobs is that visionary that has all these crazy ideas. Um, steve wozniak is the guy that kind of sifts through them and he's like that's the one that I'm going to take and make it executable.
Speaker 1:I liken those two roles to what you're asking. So I think the entrepreneur is more of that visionary, someone who's got a lot of ideas, they've got aspirations, they're probably a little bit ADD, they're the one that's a little crazy, which allows them to take that leap of just starting something, and they're like fuck it, I'll figure it out, but I'm going to make this work. Whereas the business owner I look at more of that integrator type of person that has that equity piece in it and is really good at getting those methodical things done every day. But they're probably not the one that's constantly got all these new ideas and branching out and, you know, seeing opportunities amongst all the shiny stuff.
Speaker 2:And have you found a correlation between how someone takes care of themselves to whether or not they're an entrepreneur or business owner? Because I definitely see it because I definitely see it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so. I mean it's a case by case basis, right? Like there's definitely and I think it comes down to how you define success Because there's successful business owners out there that financially right, their their top line revenue and profitability is growing. And you look at them and you're like, are you physically aren't taking care of yourself growing? And you look at them and you're like, oh, you physically aren't taking care of yourself.
Speaker 1:But it comes back to what's that definition of success, right? Are you going home at the end of a 10 hour day and just lump it on the couch and you're too tired to engage with your kids and you'll have an active relationship with your wife and are you dealing with health issues? So to me, that's not successful. Yeah, you're making a lot of money, but your life outside those four walls of your business sucks, right? I define success as being able to have financial growth and freedom, the ability to spend time with your family how you want, be there and be present and engaged and have the energy and not have these looming health issues over you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm even just to add to it kind of what I was grasping at. Business owners get stuck in the I own a business. Yes, they can make a lot of money. They still pull a salary for themselves. That's kind of their goals. They want to have a business but make a salary for themselves, while entrepreneurs are really head first dive into it. They all have ADD in that bucket.
Speaker 2:And they're just taking these risks to jump forward and move the company forward and care less about the let me just make a steady salary and call it my own more about leaving a mark on this world or really pushing something beyond themselves and then to tie that into health and fitness. Those that are entrepreneurs, you see a lot more, understand the aspects of at least going to the gym Yet again, taking a risk of working out three or four days a week, at least eating healthy understanding like I need this for my mental clarity in order to have these visions to move forward, whereas a business owner gets stuck in the okay, it's the same monotonous tasks over and, over and over again. I get really good at them. My brain doesn't have to think and I'm just happy being in that status quo and I feel like I can meet somebody. You know instantaneously whether what they are and I could just figure that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think you know it's interesting, right? It's like I we're all, as humans, kind of programmed to make pretty quick, snappy judgments. You know, I think it's part of our DNA and survival tactics. You know, when we were living in the woods, Hold on it's 0.
Speaker 2:Yeah, six seconds. We make a decision on something, something like that, something ridiculous, yeah and I think from a evolutionary standpoint right.
Speaker 1:It's because you have to decide pretty quick like is this a threat or not? Do I fight flight? Where am I going? Right, and that's still ingrained in us. And one of the things that I do is I look at someone and if they're not taking care of themselves, I now extrapolate that into everything else. If you're not concerned about keeping your health and fitness in check, what does that mean for everything else in your life If you can't prioritize yourself first?
Speaker 2:Tie that into an employee now, because a lot more people are in that range, right, a lot more people are employees than employers. Agreed, if you can't prioritize yourself outside of work, how do you expect you to prioritize yourself inside of work? Right, and there's always ways to help people and I'm a big believer in that. Don't get me wrong. I am all about take the bull by the horn, ask for outside help like that. We do personal training. We were talking pre-show, just so everyone knows the importance of. Even as an entrepreneur, I have a business coach, right, I still have someone that coaches me and pushes me to go forward I still have a team behind me that pushes me to go forward.
Speaker 2:So I still need that accountability from the outside. It's the same thing, for an employee can have that accountability from the outside. Like you said, you want to show up to CrossFit, have the workout planned out for you and not think you just get through because you know that they're keeping you accountable to show up. Same thing as an employee. If you're going to go hire a trainer, have someone ready for you so you don't have to think about it, but you just show up and do it and the hardest part is showing up and then let everyone else take care of the rest 100%. And that will pay back fourfold about whatever you're making for, whatever it costs because of the A being an entrepreneur or a business owner, you're going to be able to think clearer. You're going to be able to live longer, so it's going to pay out dividends for you or be as an employee. You're going to become more productive. You're going to start building and do operations, do systems for the company. They're going to start noticing higher levels of energy. So with that you're going to get promoted. You're going to move up the ladder a lot quicker and be able to make more money. That way it's a win-win for your regard.
Speaker 2:One side and then even the flip side of all of that is why work your ass off, why work to make all this money in the world if you're just not going to prioritize yourself and you're going to die at a young age or you're going to have a health problem at a young age and we've mentioned a lot last year. But just to reiterate living life like a rectangle as opposed to a standard deviation curve. So don't live your life where you peak at a certain age, let's say in your 30s, and you slowly dwindle out and die. That's a standard deviation curve. Live life like a rectangle. You're born, you're living a great life. Whatever age you end up dying, you just die at the top, that's it Dead. It doesn't matter what age, it's, just not having that debilitating slow end up in the hospital all the time you're sick, all the time you have to go out of work because you have XYZ health issues, just because of things that are all preventable. That you would have taken care of that prior to nursing health in the first place.
Speaker 1:You know it's funny. You mentioned that too, because that's one of the things that you know. I just turned 40. And I've heard throughout my entire life oh, wait till you get till 30. And I got there. Nothing happened. I'll wait till you're 35. Okay, nothing happened. Wait till you're 40.
Speaker 1:I'm in better shape now this year than I have ever been, and that's not because I was ever in not good shape, right. Like I didn't have one of these stories where I lost 100 pounds and now, because I'm in the best shape of my life, it was in comparison to being a bag of shit. Like I didn't have one of these stories where I lost 100 pounds and now, because I'm in the best shape of my life, it was in comparison to being a bag of shit. Like I've just incrementally, just like you said, gotten better and better and better as time goes on. And I think most of society overplays the age card and I think a lot of it's just bullshit. The age card and I think a lot of it's just bullshit. You know it's like if you allow that seed to plant in your head again, it now becomes the excuse that you let yourself use to not be disciplined.
Speaker 2:So as an outside like I mean non-fitness person just because you don't own a fitness company.
Speaker 1:So let me just clarify that point.
Speaker 2:I have a question, because I ask this a lot to people who are in my field and I want to get a little more of the outside perspective. How do you get somebody to start?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's really tough, right. I almost look at it as, like you know someone who has spent that amount of time not prioritizing their fitness. I look at them in the same context as an alcoholic or a drug addict. You know their substance abuse is food. They have to want it. Now you can.
Speaker 1:I think you have an obligation people that you definitely, you know, care about to be able to call them out on that and say, hey, like I'm letting you know because I care about you and I'm concerned, like I think you need to get your shit together and get healthy, but they're not going to do it until they're ready. You know, and it's it's. I see the same thing on the business coaching side, right, like every client that I work with. When I meet with them, they're like I'm stuck, I'm not really sure how to get unstuck, I need help. And they look at EOS and me and they're like and this is the way out.
Speaker 1:But I've also been introduced to other business owners that they recognize they're stuck but they don't want help. They're just kind of comfortable living in their day to day. And I think it's no different with fitness. I don't, I don't. I think they've got to get to a point where they're like all right, enough's enough, and they take ownership of it right, that's got to be an internally driven decision and they take ownership of it.
Speaker 2:Right, that's got to be an internally driven decision, so there's no external factors.
Speaker 1:I think there's external, there's influencing, right, there's external factors that can influence it. But I think, ultimately, when it comes down to it, that decision and here's the thing, I think there's layers to the decision right, you can have sort of a halfway bought in decision of like, okay, it's January 1st, I'm gonna go to the gym, right, and they're just going through the motions, and then it fizzles out mid-February, that's, that's not. It like it's got to get to the point where someone's like I'm done, I don't, I'm done looking like this, I'm done feeling this way, I'm done buying new clothes every year because I keep getting bigger, and they just make a decision that's going to allow them to stay focused. Because here's the big thing, I love Jocko's stuff and he talks about a difference between discipline and motivation. Motivation is fleeting. If you only do, if you only work out when you're motivated, then you're going to get those fizzle offs, right, it's going to. You'll be motivated for January and then it goes away in February. You have to make the decision to be disciplined.
Speaker 1:that when the alarm goes off at five o'clock and you're like I am tired, my body's sore, that you go and do it anyway. And's where the growth happens. But to be able to get to that point like you have to consciously make that decision and and make that. You know, colby talked about it. I made a contract with myself at the beginning of the season. I'm making a contract with myself that I'm getting up when the alarm goes off, I'm going to the gym, regardless of how I feel.
Speaker 2:It's true. Everyone thinks like I'm always motivated to work out. 99% of the time I'm not motivated to work out. Maybe 1% of the year I'm stoked to go work out. I'm like let's go and I'm like that looks heavy and I feel great. The other 99% of the time I don't want to work out. I don't want. 99 of the time I don't want to work out. I don't want to be there, I don't want to lift, I don't be in the gym and I go do it anyway and then I feel great.
Speaker 2:That's the fact that I did it at the end of the day, right, I'm glad I went and did that. I don't want to. I wasn't motivated, I was no, I just got to go show up and go do it because I have to. Yeah, right, that's what my body requires. My body requires. I go constantly work out. I don't have a choice. Now I believe that discipline and that hard has become more fleeting, and what I mean by that is people are afraid to do hard things. People are afraid to put themselves in a stressful situation. They expect the life to be all glorious and happy and when one little thing hard comes through, they blame everybody else but themselves and say help me, get out of this. No matter how easy that thing to us may seem, they think it's the end of the world. Why? Why is that happening and how do we reverse it?
Speaker 1:I think, as a society, right, we've gotten to a point which is nice that, like, life is comfortable. We're not waking up every day wondering if we're going to eat, trying to go hunt food, wondering if some animal is going to kill us, right, everything's there, food's in the refrigerator, the heat's on, you know, for most people, and I think we've become desensitized, where we just sort of expect that things should be comfortable, and so, when they're not, we don't know what to do. And this goes right back to the discipline, like. So one of the things I started doing this year is I joined a run club. We run we meet up at Coho and Patchogue Anywhere from four to eight miles.
Speaker 1:I fucking hate running, and every single time I go to this run club, I'm like I don't want to do this. I start the run, I'm 40 minutes in, I'm like this is even worse than it was 40 minutes ago, and then, when it's done, I get that little endorphin rush. I'm like all right, I'm glad that I did this right. The reason I do that, though, is because I'm like I need something. On a weekly basis, that's a mental grind for me. I force myself into a position where I'm extremely uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:What I realized is I really don't get that with CrossFit.
Speaker 1:I mean, the workouts are tough but I enjoy them. I have fun doing them. I don't have fun running. I'm like I need something in my life on a regular basis that I don't enjoy. That's a mental, physical grind that I just push myself through, um, and, and I think you have to seek that discomfort, you know, because it's too easy to just live comfortably all the time and like you said, and then when something goes off the rails, you know what do you do?
Speaker 2:which I see a lot I'm. I feel like I'm able to handle stressful situations, like that's really not a big deal, more than most people when they flip out of the little things. I feel like that's really not a big deal More than most people when they flip out over little things and you're like, fine, you'll be fine, you'll live. But because I went through hardship and I had to learn that the hard way. But a lot of people never had that chance to go through mental hardship or I wouldn't even recommend it to begin with. But just in general, it's just.
Speaker 2:I feel like society as a whole is going the wrong direction. There's more gyms in the US than there ever has been in any time in history, and people are fatter than there's ever has been any time in history and people have multiple comorbidities more now than there ever has been in history. Our lifespan is going down for the first time in human history. So all of this has consequences for what we do and how we approach ourselves and take care of ourselves. And I just I think the most important part about everything and I know we harp about the fitness part a lot, and I'm a big believer in movement, I'm a big believer in exercise, don't get me wrong, and I always get back is I don't have time, I don't have time, I don't have time.
Speaker 2:Fine, you want to argue that point and be a dead horse. I'm not going to sit here and say you have time always. Whatever, get off your phone, whatever you have to eat every day or you die. So you always have to put food in your mouth. No-transcript, you don't have to eat the shit food, you can go eat the healthy food. It takes no difference on time, it has no difference on cost. If you're doing it right, why aren't you going the healthier route? What's that excuse and that disconnect from eating healthier as opposed to eating like garbage? Why, that's what gets me. There's no time differential, there's no extra money. Why and how do we change that?
Speaker 1:yeah. So I call bullshit on both of them, right, like you don't need a lot of time, um, 15 minutes with a 50 pound dumbbell and you could be broke the fuck off. So I'm not. I'm not buying that Some of the worst workouts that I've had in CrossFit were four minutes long. They were. I'm throwing up afterwards, but for the conversational purpose we can put that aside.
Speaker 1:You know the food piece of it. There's no excuse anymore. It's 2025. You know, when we were growing up, you know 80s, 90s you sort of had the food pyramid and the doctors you know prescribed to that methodology and way of thinking. And you know we had commercials on TV balanced breakfast, which is low fat, milk and orange juice and cereal and toast. You had an excuse at that point, but not today.
Speaker 1:Like everybody knows, right, you know what you should be doing, you know what you shouldn't be doing and you're making the choice to do it anyway. So you know, to me I'm like it's total bullshit. You know, very simple Forget all the diets. Diets, right, you can do paleo, keto, vegetarian, whatever. I tell people all the time, listen, if you just eat meat, vegetables six days a week, you'll be fine and then on your seventh day have a cheat meal. But like you don't need to over complicate it, right, shop shopping that perimeter of of the grocery store.
Speaker 1:Um, you know another phrase that I came up with. So in the marine corps, when we do a range, we police call. So you get all the marines online and you go step by step just picking up garbage and we have a saying if it doesn't grow, it goes. And I'm like, take that saying and apply it to food. If it doesn't grow, it goes. And that will. I'm like take that saying and apply it to food If it doesn't grow, it goes. And that will let you know what you should and shouldn't be eating and if you follow that, you'll be fine.
Speaker 2:But everybody knows that you probably shouldn't be eating it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yep, and listen, you got to live life right. So I'm like on Sunday you can have your cheat meal, eat whatever the hell you want for one meal and then go right back to that methodology. But you can't claim diet's too hard. I don't know what to eat, not in 2025. That excuse is far gone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I totally agree. And, Dan, just to kind of start wrapping this up, I want to get more of a direct response for this field for you, because this is where you're at, for specifically, people that want to become entrepreneurs and specifically for those that are. What's an action item you would give them related to health and fitness to start first over anything else?
Speaker 1:So I'm a big advocate of find something that's group oriented. I don't care what it is, it could be fit body, orange theory, CrossFit, jujitsu, kickboxing, bootcamp something that's a group, that's coach led, that all you have to do is walk in the door. This is a couple of things. Number one taking out the mental baggage of having to come. What am I going to do today? Just walking around LA Fitness doing the bro splits in 20 minutes on the treadmill? That shit gets boring. It's probably going to fizzle out. I couldn't do it Even at the level of fitness that I'm at. I'd lose interest. Find something that's group-based, coach-led. You don't have to come up with the programming, you just do what you're told.
Speaker 1:But the second piece of that is the relationships that you're going to build through that shared misery. One of the reasons that Marines have such a strong bond is because we go through a 13-week boot camp that's miserable and any time we meet each other we know what we went through. So I don't need to know the Marine, I just met him and I'm already going to have a relationship and a level of trust and understanding because of that shared experience, that shared bond. The same thing happens in a group fitness environment on a micro basis, right.
Speaker 1:Each time you go through one of those difficult workouts, each time you're broken off and you're like, man, that sucked. You have this group of people around that you start seeing on a regular basis. You're developing a bond with them. There's a social component to that and that becomes now this driving force of like all right, if I don't show up today, I'm not going to see my crew that I work out with, they're going to give me shit about it. You start driving accountability and I think that's really where the momentum picks up is now. You're making this into a social relationship based experience where there's group shared experience and accountability.
Speaker 2:I love that. And then, to summarize the episode, the last two questions I asked everyone is. The first one is if you were to summarize the episode in one sentence, what would be your take-home message?
Speaker 1:Say that one again.
Speaker 2:If you were to summarize this episode in one or two sentences, what would be your take-home message?
Speaker 1:Just fucking do it, love it. Just get up and do it, that's it.
Speaker 2:Just get love it, just get up and do it. That's it. Just get up and go.
Speaker 1:And then the second question how can people find you, get a hold of you and learn more? Yeah, so a couple ways. You can just google dan singer eos. That'll bring you to my website. Um, dan singer eos on instagram. Um, and then dan singer on linkedin. I always say instagram is probably the best way to go. I was talking to you before. There's a community of implementers out there. The big differentiator, if someone's thinking about implementing EOS in their business is going to be the implementer that they choose. I'm not the right fit for everybody. My Instagram page is more about me and my values, the things that are important to me and my personality. So go there, understand who I am. If I'm not for you, I'll gladly introduce you to someone else, but that's the intent behind that right Is to make sure that, if we're gonna engage, that we are common, like-minded and we're gonna click and connect.
Speaker 2:So I love it, dan. Thank you for coming on, thank you, guys, for listening to this week's episode of health and fitness redefined. Welcome to 2025. Welcome to season five and until next time. And don't forget, I'm ready. Outro Music.
