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“And people think that ‘Oh, you’re going to take this thing and then you’ll just be creative.’ And I think most people who have that consideration, they maybe don’t really grasp what creativity is.” –Mike Bledsoe
Mike Bledsoe (@michaelbledsoe ) and Commander Divine talk about a huge variety of different things in this wide ranging podcast. Mike is a very successful entrepreneur, podcaster and all around “Renaissance Man.” In one episode, these two old friends repeatedly digress to talk about politics, business, spirituality, iowaska and Crossfit. Their insights span from the theoretical to the practical and everything in between. Listen to this episode to be able to get a huge variety of knowledge on different topics.
The Neurohacker Collective have recently come out with Qualia, an extensively researched nootropic that combines natural ingredients with the best synthetic ingredients to maximize our capacity to think effectively. When you purchase an ongoing subscription for Qualia at neurohacker.com, enter the code “unbeatablemind15r” to get 15% off the price of a monthly subscription.
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Other episodes of our podcast that you might be interested in are Mark’s podcasts with John Welbourn, Ben Greenfield, and Daniel Schmachtenberger.
Transcript & Shownotes
Hey folks, this is Mark Divine with the Unbeatable Mind podcast. Welcome back. Thanks so much for joining me. I do not take it for granted. I know you have lots of really important things to do, so it’s really cool that you like to spend some time with us week in and week out. Really appreciate it.
Before we get started–this is my drumbeat–go to iTunes. Rate the show so other people can find us. And just click on the right button. So I think that’ll get all 5 if you just click on the right one. Just all the way to the right. That’s the only one you need to worry about.
Introduction
[02:34]I am stoked to have my friend Mike Bledsoe with us today. Mike Bledsoe. I’ve known Mike probably for like 5 years now, or so? Mike is an entrepreneur, runs the number 1 rated fitness podcast on YouTube and iTunes. It’s called “Barbell Shrugged.” He also runs “Barbell Business,” which is aimed toward gym owners and Crossfit and general fitness fields to up their game. Bring some systems in there how to improve their business operations.
And Mike is also committed to mastery and evolution and so we’re going to have a lot of fun conversations about that. I think that’s where our connection came was initially through “Center for Integral Wisdom” and trying to find some wisdom in the world. (laughing)
Mike Bledsoe: (laughing) Trying to find the truth.
Mark: I met you, Mike, at the “Center for Integral Wisdom,” which I’m no longer affiliated with. I don’t know if you are. We can talk about that. It’d be fun. But that was about 5 years ago…
Mike: Or not. I don’t know.
Mark: (laughing) Maybe we will, maybe we won’t.
Mike: (laughing) Mark and I both got kicked out… no, I’m just kidding.
Mark: (laughing) Pretty much. We got run out. Just kidding.
So, yeah, welcome. I’ve done a couple of your podcasts, and so it’s high time that I had you on mine. So thanks for joining me.
Mike: Thanks for having me.
Mark: Yeah. So how things going?
Mike: Really good. Staying really busy. Like we were just discussing, 2016 was no joke. And…
Mark: Yeah. Kicked our asses. Even hearing other people say that. You said…
Mike: It seems to be universal. Like, every entrepreneur I know–most of my friends are entrepreneurial in some way–they got their asses kicked in business, they got their asses kicked in relationships and all sorts of things.
Mark: And at the same time, cause I completely agree with that. Like ’16 was a hard, hard year for us in a lot of ways. But also a lot of great lessons. And I felt set the stage for what seems to be shaping up as a pretty interesting, pivotal year in 2017. Like a lot of transitions happening in our business. Also in my personal life in terms of how I orient myself to business. And it seems to be paralleling some of the things that are going on in our country and the world. It’s like a moment of transformation. Or transition at least.
Mike: Yeah, I think when we’re in transition we’re encountering things that we’ve never encountered before. So we don’t know what to expect, and that can be really confusing. And I think that when that’s happening as a whole, it’s more likely to happen in our personal lives too. Cause we’re getting hit with new stuff.
And I do think that’s what’s happening. We had a big transition in our nation for sure, and to think that that’s not going to have an impact on the individual… If you’re paying attention to what’s going on, it has to.
Mark: Yeah. And some people more than others. I mean, it’s kind of interesting… one of the things that we’ve talked about in the past and that we teach is that you’re real life is on the inside, and don’t let external events control you or buffet you like that. It’s always going to change. It’s kind of the yogic philosophy. That’s the illusion of reality. The real reality is inside.
And yet there are people who were literally just freaking out about this election and the results. And trying to overturn the whole thing. It’s just interesting…
Mike: Doesn’t that happen every 4 years?
Mark: (laughing) It does seem to.
Mike: People who aren’t happy with the results are trying to overturn the results…
Mark: It seemed a little bit more vocal this time. Except for 2000 I guess.
Mike: 8 years ago… I don’t know…
Mark: Yeah, you’re right. It’s just the pendulum swing…
Mike: It’s the pendulum swinging and I think it’s swinging really, really hard.
Mark: Pretty hard, yeah.
Mike: If you look at the 2 candidates that were available…
Mark: From one far extreme to the other far extreme. A lot of people are trying to hang on and they’re just getting flung off.
Mike: Yeah, are we getting further away from the middle way, you think?
Mark: (laughing) I think that’s probably accurate. Maybe that’s what needs to happen. The extremes need to be explored in all their glory and all their disasters, in order to people to really appreciate so the next swing… maybe the next generational swing will be back toward the middle way.
Mike: Well I think that, when it comes to politics specifically, I’m looking forward to a new system to emerge. And so I do think that’s happening. And that’s one thing that makes it easier for me to not be so attached to the outcome of…
Mark: Oh for sure.
Mike: So this is a game over here. And what I’m focused on is playing a completely different game. And so there’s so many people that aren’t even playing the game over here that are caught up in it. It’s like, “Well what game are you playing? That’s the one–if you are going to get emotionally attached–that’s the one to get emotionally attached to.”
However, I prefer to just to try not to be emotionally attached at all.
Mark: I’m with you on that. I agree. I think I share similar viewpoint there. What needs to emerge is going to emerge. And it’ll emerge on its own timeline. And any attempts to kind of short-change that emergence is just part of the drama, right?
I remember someone called me about the Hamilton electors–involved in that and trying to get the Hamilton electors and get them to… the Hamilton electors were the electoral college folks thinking they could get… he told me they had 50 who were going to swing. And I was like… and he was asking my opinion, and I said, “Well, since you’re asking my opinion. Normally I wouldn’t provide it, but since you’re asking my opinion, I think it’s frankly a bad idea. Because you’re still…”
Mike: Bad precedents…
Mark: Yeah. The system is chosen. It’s the system we have. Let it play out. There is a new system, another system that’ll emerge. But trying to manipulate the system because you don’t like the results is just gonna add more drama.
Mike: I think it was Bucky Fuller? He was talking about, if you’re not happy with the system, build another system.
Mark: Yeah. Build another system. But that takes time.
Mike: Little bit.
Mark: Could happen quickly, though, right? When the conditions are right.
Mike: Yeah, but I gotta question for you then. In regard to… throughout human history we’ve been able to identify a few different worldviews. Do you think that we’re going to have a worldview shift in the next century? Like a global worldview.
Mark: Oh for sure. Like, from Galileo’s… what is it earth-centric…I don’t even know, what’s the word? For the earth revolves around the sun? Or the sun revolves around the earth? Which one was it? (laughing).
Mike: (laughing) I don’t know. I don’t know what it’s called.
Mark: (laughing) Scientific genius here.
Mike: But we also have different worldviews of… like we had kingships, like kings and lords and serfs and then we had…
Mark: I think we’re heading toward a massive shift in global consciousness, and there’s several forces at play.
One is everything that we’re involved with. You know, 7 years ago… 10 years ago when I started teaching yoga to SEALs, I couldn’t even use the word “yoga.” They would’ve laughed me out of the room. And now it’s prevalent. And so there’s already–especially in the West and California being the epi-center– a massive shift about development, and the ability for a human being to take control of their destiny and to evolve. And that’s new language, right? Our parents did not grow up with that language, or any sort of that in their lives. Or very few.
Mike: The language didn’t exist because being in power and being in control of your own destiny was not a thing.
Mark: Wasn’t a thing. So that’s a shift in consciousness and world view. And then the technology. So the artificial intelligence and some of the movement toward brain/AI interface?
Mike: (laughing)
Trump and Political Evolution
[10:36]Mark: It’s really…it’s very hard to appreciate… for most people to appreciate what impact that’s going to have on what it means to be human. And so I think that’s… and then this whole… both of these and then some other factors, namely the pace of change, are leading to this push against… you know, this anti-globalism… push against the one world order, global kind of construct which had been brewing in the liberal mindset for the last 20-30 years. So now you see Brexit and the EU starting to splinter. And the United States electing Donald Trump and whatnot. And so that is a shift, but it’s like we were saying earlier… I believe that’s a shift, that’s a prelude to an evolution. And so evolution happens from holocarchical point-of-view. Transcend but include. So whatever we evolve to will include what happens on the right and what happens on the left. The best of. And it’ll shed what doesn’t work.
So like I said earlier, we need to explore. We explored some beautiful things that worked really well over the past 8 years, and then some things that were really, really, didn’t work well. At all.
Mike: Yeah. It’s been both.
Mark: Yeah. It’s been both. And so we’re about to explore the opposite. Like Trump’ll be a disaster and he will be brilliant in certain ways. And people will remember him based on which one they want to remember. And something else will emerge.
So that was a long-winded answer. It’s almost like you’re interviewing me for this podcast.
Mike: (laughing) I think we are…
Mark: And I do think that we are… and it’s not 100 years, this is like 20 years.
Mike: Your listeners wanna know. With technology and the way things are moving, I think people are going to be shocked at how quick things are going.
Mark: We’re not going to need the rigid structures of government that we have right now in any country or at a World Order stage. We’re going much back to local, to peer-to-peer, to technology enabled ecosystems or tribal systems. So like, even though we geographically will still have borders and protections adn stuff like that, most people will identify in a different way.
Mike: I think over time the borders will kind of dissolve and because of that the tribal nature that isn’t going to be geographically confined and then… yeah, I see emerging in a way that the hierarchy’s not as necessary. Like, so many things are automated as far as what’s the best decision for the whole.
Mark: A great example of that is block chain, bit coin, and what’s happening with financial transactions. I mean, the banks are jumping on board because they have to, cause they’re going to be irrelevant and so they need to be part of that system.
Mike: I think people get upset too. I was having a conversation with Daniel Schmachtenberger and it was like…
Mark: We did a podcast with him. He’s a smart guy. He’s great.
Mike: Sweet. And so people are still arguing like communist vs. capitalist. Well neither one of these things… these are like old ideas that had to exist…
Mark: Communism and capitalism in their pure form do not exist anywhere in the world today.
Mike: That’s true. And the concepts that build those things are, like, just having those mindsets around those are necessary for the world to operate as it is now, or was. But technology…
Mark: And to keep the institutions alive that are still operating today.
Mike: And technology is what’s going to allow it to change. So it doesn’t make communism or capitalism wrong or anything like that. It’s just that now that we have technology available we have the opportunity to go way beyond that.
Mark: So what do you think a post-capitalistic world would look like from a business environment?
Mike: From a business environment? Oh, interesting. I think everyone would be much more entrepreneurial. I think a lot of things are going to be localized when it comes to physical items. Food, and we’re already seeing some of it happen…
Mark: Mm-hmm. Farm to table movement…
Mike: Well you have that and then you have Amazon who in order to get something to your doorstep immediately is they gotta have warehouses close to your physical location. And so something like that.
And I also envision there being a lot of the forming… I see cities spreading out…
Mark: And then the farming going vertical…
Mike: Yeah. And then like maybe between here and my house we have a big patch of land. Or there’s containers, there’s hydroponics going on.
Mark: I met a guy yesterday involved in hydroponics and they’re working on these big shipping containers and you could grow a shite ton of food on these things. They’re still some details, obviously, to work out, but…
Mike: Well they’re putting them in LA, like so I know that they’re putting these big shipping containers in LA. They’re stacking them. Hydroponics. And so a restaurant literally walks across the street to get their produce now, and comes right back.
So that’s happening…
Mark: And a lot of the cost structure’s there. So the entrepreneurs have created the efficiency to do that local again. So that it’s very inefficient to ship food across the ocean. The whole shipping industry is doomed. I would not be investing in that sector.
Mike: I hope so. In the first… but I think this is like the first steps to people feeling like… people condense themselves into a city. LA, you go out there and everyone’s just on top of each other. New York and they had to do this because you had to show up to an office to do your job, and that’s gonna become less necessary with augmented reality. And so with augmented reality, I think people are gonna then realize they wanna be in nature more, so we’ll be doing work. We’re all becoming more like Peter Drucker talks about: you have the… I’m gonna mess up the exact term he was using… but we work with our minds. We never stop working. I’m in the shower and I’m working, whereas rewind a hundred years ago, well if you’re not in a butcher shop cutting up meat, you’re not working, you know? You’re at home, you’re at home. You’re working, you’re working.
We’re working with our minds now and we have these actually what I think will be fairly primitive tools. “Oh my gosh. You had to carry that box around called a laptop?” And that’ll be really funny. Cause now, you know, I’ve got this contact lens, or something’s embedded where I’m actually working with my mind, and my ability to communicate isn’t going to be based on how well I can even speak. I can send how I feel about something potentially, which would be… anyways…
So how much of the business sector revolves around communication? Trying to enhance our words and thoughts so we can just get things done? And now I know exactly what it is that you want to accomplish and the things that you need. I think a lot of the things that exist today are going to shut away… we’re going to have less stuff. We’ll become less materialistic, because…
Mark: There’ll be less material things. Peter Diamandis calls that “dematerialization.” Isn’t that a great term? iPhone is a great example, I don’t have mine with me, but it dematerialized the camera, it dematerialized for a lot of people the laptop, because it… I even use it as my laptop 80% of the time. Dematerialized a hundred different devices.
Mike: And I guess what I’m thinking about that’s a little bit different is I think that when we’re in more of a survival mode, we’re more focused on material items.
Mark: For sure. From a Maslowian hierarchy of needs, we’re all in self-actualization. At least here in the West. If you were in Syria, Aleppo, you have some very serious survival instinctual needs, you know?
Mike: That’s true. And I think we’re going to move more out of survival mode into creative mode, and it’s going to cause more creations like the iPhone where we’ll have less physical stuff, and we’ll have more access to the things we actually need and we desire, and it’s gonna be a less cluttered world, I think.
Mark: Yeah, I agree with that. I think the challenge that’s facing the world is in the transition from now to that utopian view where everyone’s an entrepreneur, and their business is on their holodeck or whatever you want to call their virtual device. And everyone has their basic sustenance need, maybe even a basic universal income, which is now being tested around the world. And so, don’t need to go to the office, you know?
I don’t know why Elon Musk is thinking about boring tunnels for traffic, because in 15 years traffic’s gonna be pretty much a non-issue, know what I mean?
So the question is what happens in the disruption? Because we have 8 billion people. I think population will start to probably decrease over time, but wow… we got some serious strife coming in this transition.
Jobs and technology
[19:28]Mike: Jobs will…
Mark: Jobs are gonna disappear.
Mike: There’s a lot of people they have this… they’ve decided or they’ve chosen and they’ve been taught, “Okay, I’m gonna learn how to do this one thing. I’m gonna do this thing really well. If I do this thing really well, then there’s a 401K, and there’s a retirement waiting for me.”
Mark: That world has already changed.
Mike: So after I’ve lived my life I can then live my life. And these are the mindsets that people are living in. And yeah, things are gonna get flipped and what are we gonna do just leave those people out in the cold? Because I used to be of the mindset, “Oh, we don’t really need welfare.” I didn’t really grasp it. And now that I see how quickly the world is changing, you have to.
Mark: Yeah, cause we can’t change the entire educational system and retool the entire world.
Mike: Uber now has a truck delivering things. How many truck drivers will be out of jobs in 5 years?
Mark: Yeah, and those’ll be autonomous.
Mike: Yeah, it’s all autonomous. Now you’ve got how many thousands or truck drivers that aren’t gonna have to work. We’re gonna need less fuel because everything’s going to be delivered more efficiently. So we’ll be burning less fuel to deliver things. Things’ll be made and stored more locally. So just from the transportation perspective and transport is going to change.
I think people are going to want to travel the world more though.
Mark: I think so too, yeah. Assuming it’s safe.
Mike: Yeah.
Mark: Cause here’s the other part of that, right…
Mike: I’m an optimist. I think everything’ll be safe.
Mark: People will have a lot more time on their hands to be mischievous, you know what I mean?
Mike: That’s true.
Mark: At any rate, I’m not sure how the heck we went down this road, but it’s pretty cool.
Mike: (laughing) What are we supposed to be talking about?
Mark: (laughing) I don’t know. I forgot.
Mike: I feel like this is okay.
Mark: Yeah, this is awesome. This is the way we want it to go. Let me ask you, though, some practical questions.
Getting started and “Barbell Shrugged“
[22:27]Mark: How and why did you start… let’s talk about “Barbell Shrugged”. Cause all of this is going to lead us back to where we are. So the journey through the practical for us, if I could take that liberty to say so, is to bring us more freedom so that we can learn and think and grow. So the whole point of the entrepreneurial journey is, in my opinion–an urge or drive toward freedom.
Mike: Yeah. I would say that’s been my number one value, most in my life. In my youth I externalized that freedom and over time I’ve internalized that. That value. And it actually means something different to me now than it did then.
Mark: The “why” for me was physical and financial freedom, and now it’s more freedom of thought, freedom of movement and freedom to explore.
So you were in the Navy for a while. When you got out of the Navy, is that when you went into the fitness business?
Mike: What’s interesting is I was always interested in fitness from the age of 15. So I started picking up magazines, going to the gym. My first client was my mom.
Mark: Is that right? Cool.
Mike: Yeah. Started training her. I didn’t charge her though. She got away with murder.
And I ended up… Yeah, so I went in the Navy. I was in the Navy from 19 to 24. I got out. I had no idea what I wanted to do, as most people who get out of the military are operating. I got out. I was like, “I guess I’ll go to school.” I start with a business degree. And I was doing the business degree program. Did one semester. About 6 weeks into an accounting course, I decided that business was not for me. Business is dumb, because of accounting. (laughing)
Mark: I can kind of back that up…
Mike: Most entrepreneurs don’t know anything about accounting.
Mark: Accounting is not business.
Mike: But for a college student… somebody who’d gone from high school to military and then you go to a college course that’s wrapped in this “business” name, of course that’s what you’ve been told. That’s how it is.
So I remember dropping that class and then the only class I ever dropped. And then I found out there were these courses called “exercise science.” And I thought, “Oh, I like exercise. This is dope.” So I signed up for a bunch of those classes.
And it ended up being… that kind of set my trajectory at that point. I’d already been practicing health and fitness. And I… Yeah, I was a weird kid. I’d downloaded research and studies and I was reading about endocrinology and stuff when I was in the Navy. And I didn’t even consider it to be… I didn’t recognize it for what it is now.
Mark: Were you a bodybuilder at that stage?
Mike: yeah, I did a lot of bodybuilding, swimming, running. Yeah, I was just like, “How do we get muscles bigger? How do we improve the cardio vascular system?” All these things.
And so I started going to class and I really enjoyed the exercise science courses. And I do remember my parents asking, “What are you going to do with that degree?”
And other people were like, “Are you going to be like gym coach at a school?” And I’m like, “I don’t know. All I know is I’m enjoying this right now. I’m doing a little personal training on the side.” And then one of my buddies who’s a Navy SEAL comes and visits and over Christmas break, he’s like, “Hey, can you show me the Olympic lift stuff better?” I’m like, “Phew. Why do you gotta do that? You guys just swim and run and stuff.” He goes… and I’d been studying Olympic lifting at this point, and so I showed him, and he does this Crossfit workout at the gym and I was like, “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.” (laughing)
Mark: (laughing) Little did you know that was a billion dollar industry about to be spawned.
Mike: Yeah. And so 6 months go by, I’m competing in Jiu Jitsu. I’m doing weight-lifting. I’m basically playing at the different ends of the spectrum of what Crossfit might fill in the middle. And then I was like, “I’ll try one of those Crossfit workouts.” I was thinking about opening a gym. I was going to open a weight-lifting gym. Who knows? I wasn’t thinking straight.
You never are when you start your first business; no one ever thinks their first business all the way through. They think they have, but they really haven’t. So I try this… I was like, “I’m just going to do a Crossfit workout one day.”I was hanging out with a guy who ended up being my business partner. His name is Rob.
And we do this workout. It is Fran or Diane or one of those girl-name workouts. And I fell in love with it…
Mark: Cause it kicked your ass.
Mike: It kicked my ass, and I also thought to myself, “I’m opening a gym and this is way more fun than what I was thinking of doing. People are actually going to do this. So if I can open a gym, what I’ll do is I’ll do Crossfit, and I’ll have weight-lifting and I’ll have power-lifting and I’ll have these components.
So that’s kind of how I got started. I was going to open a gym anyway. Crossfit just kind of popped up at the right time. So it came into my consciousness in ’06, you know…
Mark: That’s exactly when I basically went to my cert and opened US Crossfit. Same exact time-frame. Crossfit was just hitting its stride, you know, and…
Mike: Yeah. It was just… you could go download the pdfs online, and “What is fitness? What is Crossfit?” I was like, “Aw, this is brilliant!” And so yeah, we found ’em at about the same time. And that’s actually funny.
So I opened the gym in ’07.
Mark: Yeah, me too.
Mike: Terribly.
Mark: Me too.
Mike: (laughing) Terribly, terribly.
Mark: (laughing) I don’t think we’ve ever made money.
Mike: That’s also like the nature of an entrepreneur. I’ll start 5 things. 1 of them will make money. So I opened a gym. It takes me like a year, year and a half to even figure out that I’m running a business. I was just running it like it was a club. And then I started taking it seriously. I brought in another business partner, Doug Larson. Who’s my co-host on “Barbell Shrugged” now. And he ripped off these videos from Eben Pagan on Pirate Bay.
Mark: (laughing) I’m sure Eben would appreciate that you told him about it.
Mike: (laughing) I’ve already talked to him about it. Once of the first times I met Eben, I was like, “Thank you so much. I just want to let you know, that I ripped off all your shit initially.”
Mark: I think that’s where we met. Meta-mind. Didn’t we meet at Meta-mind?
Mike: Yeah. It was at Eben’s event. I let him know, “I’ll do everything you say. Or every event you put on I’m gonna like pay for it now, because I definitely ripped off a lot, before that.” It wasn’t me, it was my business partner. I don’t do that. But when you’re like fresh out of college, you’ve got no money. You’re just scrambling to figure out how does this even work?
And… but it was about a year and a half in. I remember going to the SEALFIT website… this is what I wanted to mention… and we would have SEALFIT Sundays.
Mark: Oh, no kidding?
Mike: So we would pick out the hardest SEALFIT workout of the week and we would do that on Sunday. And we called it SEALFIT Sundays. No matter how much we had drank on Saturday night.
Mark: Of course. That’s pretty cool. (laughing) Yeah, I’ll send you a bill. So you still have that gym, but you’re not really involved anymore, right?
Mike: Right, yeah. My involvement is a phone call once or twice a month, checking in on the manager and just seeing if there’s anything that he needs that I can help him out with.
Podcasting and the “Next Thing”
[30:26]Mark: So did “Barbell Shrugged” kind of come out of that as an idea? Or did you actually, like you said earlier, scope it out and say, “This is the business.” Or did you just start doing some podcasting?
Mike: Yeah, we started off by just playing around with some podcasts, and after I’d say we did 5 or 6 practice shows, I thought, “Okay, this is going to be a good show. And we’re going to be able to build a business around it.” So it was at the very beginning especially for Doug and I, we definitely had our mind about us that we were going to sell something online. And we wanted to create a business that was going to be much better than we could do with brick and mortar.
So we were doing the brick and mortar thing. The gym was just a… for me was, “I see that this is a necessity. It’s something that I wanted to do.” And over a 5 year period, I had done it. It was like, “Okay, I wanna do the next thing. Podcasting. I think this is going to help me get into the next iteration of the thing that I want to do.” And it did. It allowed us to do that.
So, you know, we started running the podcast. Gained an audience. Surveyed the audience. “What would you like to see? What do you wanna know more about?” So we built products that suited the audience we’d already built.
What was cool about that… it’s the coolest business ever. Because we built a show where we were just talking about the stuff we wanted to talk about. Which means we built an audience of people who liked what we were doing, which was just the easiest thing ever, cause we were just doing what we naturally were supposed to be doing. And we go, “What do you want? Oh. That’s right in line with the kind of stuff we like to do. Here you go.”
Mark: So you built them training programs and nutrition programs and stuff like that. That’s terrific. Awesome.
Mike: Yeah. Just online training programs and…
Mark: And then you learn that a lot of these listeners actually are in business and struggling just like you did, and so you thought maybe you’d provide some business advice.
Mike: Yeah. Yeah, and I was getting questions about business. And one of the things that we recognized was that the majority of our audience was not business owners. And we were going to do 1 episode about the gym business. And during the show, it had become apparent to me that this should be an entirely different show. So I announced on the show that we were going to start a second podcast. And Doug was going “shit.”
Mark: Yeah. “Ruh-roh.” Interesting.
Mike: No, I mean, he was excited about it too. And so we did. We spun off another show again. Not knowing… I had some ideas about what kind of products we could sell that would make sense… You know, if I put my effort into something I want there to be… there should be a return. I’m gonna give, and I’m going to receive. So we started that show and we had some ideas. We definitely built some business tools for gym owners over the years, and then over the last year and a half… so we did that for many years, and then over the last year and a half, we’ve really honed in on the business tool. Software.
Mark: It’s a platform tool?
Mike: It’s a platform for Crossfit gym specifically. For inbound marketing automation to a degree I don’t think… what people are getting as a Crossfit gym owner is unlike what anyone is getting in any industry right now.
Mark: Mm-hmm. What’s unique about it? Not to get into the weeds. How’s it different from Infusion software…
Mike: So it’s built on the Infusionsoft backbone. Like Infusionsoft is the backbone, and what is different is everything’s done for you. So from your website, all the email automation. Over 40 campaigns are built-in. It’s customized to your specific business. We have lead generation and lead nurturing built into the system, to where the idea is we look at your business as a whole and go, “Okay, this is what your client experience to be from the moment they think about your business to the moment that they leave your business.” They’re no longer a member.
And there’s several different pipelines they could go down. Maybe they never become a member. We have an entire pipeline for that person. We have a pipeline for the person who wants to lose weight. A pipeline for the person who wants to improve performance. We have all these different pipelines and we have really cool ways of finding out what that person’s interested in. So we automatically build marketing campaigns that target exactly what that person desires. And then, not only that, it allows to even do that with Facebook ads. And what’s cool about it is it’s all done for… not only… business owners can buy these tools and then build them up themselves. And if you were to hire somebody to build it out, like all the copy and all the things you would need, it’d be about a hundred grand for the system. And we’re able to lease it out at a fraction of the cost. At 1% of that per month. At basically about 1000 bucks a month. And because we’re able to build it modularly, and then when we pull someone in, we go, “Oh, we got this piece, this piece, this piece.”
Mark: So what’s the implementation look like? For a new owner?
Mike: Basically we interview them about their current business. And then we also advise them on what they might want to change about their model. Because what’s really cool about what we’re doing is we are collecting information about the industry constantly. Like it’s part of the way we do business. And so we know what’s working and what’s not working. Someone’s like, “Oh, I’m not doing this.” We’re like, “You have to do this.”
And then we’re just building it as we go. So it’s like, it’s evolving. The system evolves all the time. It’s continually getting better. So we interview them, find out how they run their business. How they prefer it. Because some gym owners don’t want to do personal training. And some only want to do group training. I’m not the one to say this is how you should live your life, or run your business. But we’re going to like, “Oh, maybe you should implement this type of strategy. If you’re going to run your business like this, here’s a bunch of strategies that work for that style.” And so we have that. And we build that into the system for them.
So we interview them, and then we make suggestions along the way. They become very educated about business as a whole, primarily around total client experience. So they learn how to create a client experience that is going to be phenomenal.
Mark: So once this is… I imagine this is… just like anything else, a software solution like this. You’re not just selling them the system. You’re going to help them set it up, and then once it’s set up, your time is…
Mike: Yeah, it’s a couple phone calls to get them set up.
Mark: Okay. That’s it, hunh?
Mike: Couple phone calls, and then they have access to coaches after that. Once a month, just checking up. “Hey, do you know how to use the system?” If we notice they’re not logging in to the system.
Mark: Is this called “Barbell Business?” Or what do you call this?
Mike: “Barbell Logic,” is the product.
Mark: “Barbell Logic.”
Mike: Yup. “Barbell Business” is the podcast. And the “Barbell Logic” is the platform.
Mark: That’s cool. Need to learn more about that. So where can folks find out about “Barbell Logic?”
Mike: If you just go to barbellbusiness.com/logic it’ll be there. Yeah, I mean, if you go to barbellbusiness.com all arrows are pointing to that. You can hang out, listen to a podcast. We’ll get you in the funnel eventually.
Mark: Gotcha. That’s cool. Yeah, I wanna talk further about that. I’m not looking for a gym application but that sounds really valuable for multiple applications actually.
Mike: Yeah, I think one of two things happen. Either all of a sudden the gym owner’s got all this time on their hands, cause a lot of things they were doing of manually are now taken care of. Or a lot of things that just weren’t happening, are now happening and more people are walking in the door. It’s nice.
Mark: That’s cool. So this is gonna… this is your main focus I assume? For the next year? You said that there’s some transitioning happening in 2017. You wanna get out of day-to-day management. What’s next for you?
Mike: More shows.
Mark: More shows? So you like the creative side. That’s where you wanna be.
Mike: Yeah. Very big on the creative side. I like being the face of the brand. I like being in charge of the message.
Mark: Last time I saw you you were moving away from that. What happened?
Mike: I was crazy. I was losing my mind. No, I was, and it was out of necessity. I had to…
Mark: You just had to dial in and focus on the business side.
Mike: Cause if I kept working on the creative side then we were going to keep on making dozens of dollars. And working really hard to… again, going to the financial freedom piece. Looking at the freedom piece…
Mark: You had to take care of the structure first before you could get back…
Mike: Yeah. So I basically had to step away from that. Get all the pieces… which everything always takes longer in business than you think it’s going to. So I stepped out. I thought it was going to be for a few months. Ended up being a year, from the show. And then just kind of building everything in the background. Putting other people in place. And now that all the structure is in place, I’m diving deep into doing “Barbell Shrugged” again. “Barbell Business,” that podcast is better than ever. And I’m launching a 3rd podcast, cause two’s not enough.
Mark: Course not, no.
Mike: Yeah. And that’ll be… that launches in 2 weeks, or 3 weeks. I’ll be launching that in January. I don’t know when this posts, but it’ll be the “Bledsoe Show.” So that is the ultimate creative outlet for me. I get to do whatever I want. Whatever the Internet will let me do, I’ll do it. Or whatever I feel like doing anyway.
Entrepreneurial Ayahuasca
[42:04]Mark: So, let’s shift focus a little bit and talk about entrepreneurial creativity. In particular how something like ayahuasca could stimulate that creativity. Cause we had some discussions about that when you went on a entrepreneurial journey down to Peru?
Mike: Peru.
Mark: Peru. With a guy Michael Costuros. And Michael was just written up in… so I’ll give him a shout out… he was just written up in the Wall Street Journal. Or referenced in the Wall Street Journal in an article about entrepreneurs seeking the plant… psychedelic plants as a way to stimulate creativity and accelerate…
Mike: Yeah, he’s blowing up. So I think it’s Business Insider, maybe Wall Street Journal and then… I don’t know if I’m supposed to be mentioning, but there’s a major, popular magazine. Like, one of the more popular magazines in the whole world will be publishing an article soon. Which’ll be really cool.
Mark: That’s going to blow him up then. I better get enrolled before that happens.
Mike: You better. There won’t be any spots left for you.
Mark: (laughing) But you and Doug went down.
Mike: Yeah.
Mark: Tell us about that experience.
Mike: So when people think about psychedelics, they talk about ayahuasca’s the ultimate this or that. I think most people when they think about Silicon Valley, they think about LSD or something. And people think that, “Oh, you’re going to take this thing, and then you’ll just be creative.” And I think most people who have that consideration maybe don’t really grasp what creativity is, anyway. So when I went to Peru for ayahuasca, I went in with the idea that I’m gonna go in to optimize. I’m already good to go, got everything taken care of. And I heard that this stuff can help me optimize.
When we got down there far from… I definitely optimized. But I didn’t really understand how it worked. And after going down there… yeah, I guess I’ll just share what my experience was. I really dug into who I was. And what shaped me to be the person I am today. And I think up to that point, I did a really good job of leaving pieces of my life behind. “Oh, I had this experience. I didn’t like it.” Everything that’s associated with that experience, I push it away. Suppress it. Lots of suppression.
And then, so when I went into the… my first ayahuasca journey…
Mark: Over an 8 day period, how many ayahuasca experiences would you have?
Mike: I only did 2. 2 over a 10 day period. What we did….
Mark: Cause these are big deals. It’s not just like every day you’re going to pop some ayahuasca buttons or whatever, or drink the tea.
Mike: No, it’s funny and people’s ayahuasca experiences are so different. And so sometimes people are like, “I’m gonna go down, I’m going to drink the brew 6 times in 10 days.” I’m going, “Not sure it’s the same brew I was drinking.” Some are more powerful than others. Some shamans or ayahuasqueros are a little more intense than others, and there’s just so many different variations. And there’s nothing wrong with one that’s more intense or less intense. From what I’ve gathered, that 1st experience was a more intense experience for me, and for a lot of the people that were there. And it’s a 3 to 5 hour journey. Although, when you’re in it, time has no meaning. So it might as well have been a thousand years, or an instant.
Mark: And so, what do you mean by journey? How is it a journey? Are you going physically from one place to another?
Mike: (laughing) I just remember we were in a dark domed room, and we go up there and there’s this big ceremony. I drink the brew, and then it tastes terrible. And then I sit and lay down. Of course, my worry before going down there is I’m going to throw up and I’m going to shit myself.
Mark: (laughing) Of course. We’re all worried about those things.
Mike: (laughing) That’s the number one concern. And then I drink the brew and then after I taste it, I’m thinking, “I hope I got enough, because I don’t wanna taste that again.”
And then I’m worried. I’m sitting there worrying. It was like “Oh, I’m gonna need more. I’m gonna need more. I’m gonna need more.” And everyone’s drinking and I don’t feel it yet. Within 20 minutes, all of a sudden, I’m like, “Oh, I don’t feel so good.” And I laid down, and it just wants me to close my eyes. Ayahuasca just like makes me wanna close my eyes. As I close my eyes, I hear a “zzzz.” Just a buzz. It’s called DMT buzz.
And DMT is dimethyltryptamine, and it’s produced by your pineal gland, which is a gland and it sits right in the middle of your brain. And DMT is produced in mass amounts when you’re born, when you die and small amounts when you dream.
And… but ayahuasca’s got plenty of DMT in it. So you’re drinking what it is that your pineal gland normally produces. And it’s from a plant, which is really cool. So what is normally an endogenous neurotransmitter, you’re now consuming exogenously. And from a plant not from an animal, cause you’re an animal, right? You’re a mammal. And so I’m getting this plant DMT versus this mammalian DMT, which I think is a fascinating concept. So you go on this… so I close my eyes and then I actually feel like I’m dying. You know, I go, “Oh, I’ve been poisoned.” Because it is such a different experience than anything I have experienced in the 30 years of being on earth. This must be death. Like, my body just didn’t exist anymore. Felt as if my spirit was leaving.
And yeah, I dealt with a lot of things in my childhood. I would say that was… I did 2 journeys while I was down there and I dealt a lot with religion specifically for me. Which was where my… where I had pretty much gotten away from religion. I was raised in a religious context. And then as I got older, I didn’t really associate with it so much. And then…
Mark: This reconnected you with a spiritual path?
Mike: It definitely reconnected me. Yeah, I would say I was almost like anti-spiritual up to this point. I have tried Magic Mushrooms and stuff, and it… the mushrooms helped me see things more clearly, and definitely helped me out in a creative space, and it helped me work through old things and integrate things. But ayahuasca actually went down to the core of what was happening with me personally.
And so I basically got to see my entire childhood, and all the things that were good about it.
And all the things that don’t serve me anymore. I hesitate to say “bad,” but all that things that don’t serve me as a human being now and help me move forward. And I’m able to go, “You know what? I’m gonna keep all these good experiences; I’m going to take all those experiences that don’t serve me anymore. Trash.”
And then before that… and there’s a lot of visions in this. I saw… I had this huge, like, good/evil battle going on inside, where I then realized there’s no such thing as good and evil. There’s only what is. And it was this religious context that kind of created the God, Devil characters.
And so I was able to basically shut the door on this box called religion. So I take my whole life, from the age of 15 and younger, and I end up closing this box. And on top of the box is written “religion.” I go “What’s going on here?” And I’m in space-nothing. I was like, “There’s nothing else to do. We’ll open this box.” Open it up. That’s when I took all the stuff that doesn’t serve me anymore, threw it away, and took all the good stuff.
And I actually got to relive a lot of really amazing times from my youth, which was really cool. Times with my dad… and he had passed… and so I got to relive even those really great times with him.
And when I went in for my 2nd journey… I was just really confused, after this, you know? There was a lot of processing…
Mark: Understandable. Now does Michael help process? Or is that the ayahuasquero? Or are you just left to your own devices?
Mike: Both. While we’re down there, the ayahuasquero’s really helping make meaning of things. He’s usually asking questions. He’s not leading you to a place.
Mark: Mm-hmm. Is that done in a group context or individual?
Mike: In a group. So beforehand there’s a setting of intention. Like, “What do I want to get out of this?” And on the back-end, the next morning, there’s a group conversation where it’s an integration. How does this apply to my everyday life? Yeah, I had this crazy experience, but how does this help me be here in 3D? Be a good thing?”
So when I went on the 2nd night, I went into this spirit world and I was looking for God, and he kept disappearing on me as I was looking for him. And then I finally put eyes on him behind a mountain. And he looked a lot like me. It was… (laughing)
But the message I got there was, you know, you’re divine and… not Mark Divine, but I’m a divine creature. And I am tied to the divine. And to me that’s what being in God’s image is. I was like, “Okay, got the lesson…”
Mark: You did tell me that I showed up in your journey.
Mike: You actually did. On the 2nd night.
Mark: So what was that all about? Did you ever figure that out?
Mike: Actually, I’m gonna go back to… I’ll hit that, but I’m like, “Oh, the spirit worlds cool. I’m gonna leave.” And I try to take the… I take the spirit world and I try to put it in this box. The same box I had put religion in. So I’m trying to put spirituality in a box, the religious box. And then I’m like stomping on it, all of a sudden it pops out. And it’s everything. It’s the entire Universe. Got it. That was like a big lesson for me, is these are not the same things. Religion and spirituality aren’t necessarily as tied… because as a child as I was growing up, religion is spirituality. The same exact thing. And so that’s really when I… my spiritual journey definitely started before that, but that was a huge leap in understanding. And things accelerated quickly after that.
During that, I was hitting like the big spiritual points during the journeys. During both journeys a lot of… you know, 3 to 5 hours of visions. And I remember one of the things… of course, you make meaning of everything, and I remember seeing the face of a wolf, and then it was your face.
Mark: No shit.
Mike: Yeah, yeah. And so it was really, really interesting. The message I got from that was kinda like… I was, I think… even today, like, I’m seeking people out who can teach me something. And you definitely… you were one of the few people… I don’t really think there were any other faces that popped up. And then it was just, “Yeah, keep connecting with Mark. That’s a good idea.”
Mark: That’s a good idea. (laughing) That’s fascinating, cause that’s the second time that’s come up today, cause last night I had this wickedly intense dream and I was basically fighting the fear wolf. In real time. Like, I was fighting this nasty energy of a wolf.
Mike: Interesting.
Mark: Isn’t that interesting? And it was not a pretty fight.
Mike: I know a woman out in the desert. Her spirit animal’s a wolf, so maybe she could help you out.
Mark: (laughing) Yeah. Maybe we should go talk to her. She do ayahuasca?
Mike: (laughing) Mm-hmm.
Micro-dosing for Cognitive Health
[55:15]Mark: All right, let’s plan that. Also, let’s talk about micro-dosing. Cause I’ve heard now from some really, really credible… like, Ben Greenfield at our recent retreat was talking about micro-dosing with mushrooms as being a really effective way to stimulate cognition. And also to help the blood-brain barrier. One of his topics was just like your gut-blood barrier… what do you call that? Gut health? At any rate, the membrane around our brain… you can get a leaky brain. Leaky membrane. And so the mushrooms apparently help your membrane be strong and heal. Amongst other benefits.
Mike: Yeah, I have found psilocybin specifically can help neuroplasticity and that just means help the brain and the neurons. Part of what the brain’s made of is neurons, and a few other things. And it allows neurons to break off and reconnect. And so things that are normally super-hard-wired so the more you think and feel about a thing, the more connected those neurons become. And psilocybin is a very…
Mark: Psilocybin is a mushroom.
Mike: Psilocybin comes from the mushroom, and it’s very similar to DMT. Like they’re like brother and sister. And so it allows that more neural-plasticity, so neurons be able to connect and disconnect. And there’s been evidence that psilocybin also increases gray matter density. So it can improve the physiological health of your brain. So what he was saying I think is accurate. And I think there’s a few things out there that do that. It was only 10, 20 years ago that we thought, “Okay, if you experience nerve or brain damage of any sort, it’s permanent.” This whole idea of neuroplasticity is very, very new. And the more that we believe that it’s true, the more neuroplastic the mind and the brain becomes. It’s really, really funny. What the mind believes will be produced in its environment. Including the hardware that is the brain, that consciousness resides on. The software impacts the hardware. It’s not a computer and an operating system. The Operating system can change the hardware and vice versa. The hardware can change the software. It’s one system, and so…
Mark: And you could argue that consciousness and the software are arguably not the same thing.
Mike: You could argue that, yeah.
Mark: So, consciousness or your spiritual self influences the software which then influences the hardware.
Mike: Yeah, and if you’ve ever had the experience of stepping outside of yourself and then observing your mind at work, that would be easy to accept to be true. And then from that perspective you can then have shifts. Make very conscious shifts in awareness.
So anyways… yeah, I’m like, “Which rabbit-hole could we go down now?” But yeah, psilocybin, I found that… There’s just a few really simple things that people should be considering if they want to increase… improve their brain health. Simple things like DHA which is found in fish oil. So you have DHA and EPA. EPA is the anti-inflammatory part of an Omega-3. DHA you can also find it in some plant-based supplements, but your brain has building blocks, just like your muscles have building blocks. We can impact those. Some things are going to stimulate growth and some things are going to retard growth. And a lot of what’s happening with micro-dosing with psilocybin, with LSD…
Mark: So do you think these are going to be legal soon? Enough to where you could go into a Bulletproof store and get some?
Mike: So what’s happened is the DEA has done a really fantastic job of classifying these things as schedule 1 drugs, which makes no sense at all when you look at the definition of what schedule 1 is. In fact, they just scheduled CBD, cannabidiol as a schedule 1. Which I think they’re pendulum swung really hard. They’re reaching, they’re trying to regain control.
Mark: Mm-hmm. What is CBD?
Mike: Cannabidiol. It’s the non-psychoactive part of the cannabis plant. It also has… so the endocannabinoid system in the body is the most prominent so you can… you’re body produces cannabinoids. And you can also consume it exogenously. And the cannabis plant has a lot of these. So we can get oils out of these certain things. There’s about 30 or 40 different oils that we can extract at this point and have health benefits that are not psychoactive. THC is the one compound in cannabis… that’s the psychoactive part, that’s the part you smoke it you get high. Everything else, not necessarily. And when you consume these things they bind to the cell receptors and really amazing things happen. Like cancer goes away.
I’m not going to make too many wild claims, because the research is limited due to the fact that it’s band.
Mark: You can’t research it.
Mike: It’s banned schedule 1 drugs. So anyways… a lot of the things that people would be micro-dosing with are not allowed to be. What’s really interesting is its… so, because we’ve banned these plants and we say, “Okay, this fungus or this plant, you can’t consume these, you can’t grow these.” So what’s happening now is in labs in different places… at universities they are now creating things that are… I don’t know if I would call it better, but I would call it more powerful. And so what we’re seeing emerge is… there’s definitely… what we’re going to see is what happened when say LSD was discovered in the ’30s or ’40s and started being used recreationally, and so it got banned. And so what you’re going to see is you’re going to see these compounds being created and used exclusively for micro-dosing. They’re not going to do any mega-dosing at all, because they don’t want to risk it getting banned. And so things that are much more powerful than psilocybin or LSD are already available if you’re in the right study.
So there’s some very interesting things out there that are highly beneficial, and they’re not that well researched. So if someone is playing around with and using these things that are more powerful that are being created right now, they are doing studies on it, they’re doing research, but you’re playing with a research chemical at this point. And what’s really sad to me is psilocybin coming from a fungus is not a research chemical. We know that it’s extremely safe, helpful and effective, and a group of people have decided that it’s not a good idea. So now people are going to… human nature, you know? Take this away so now we’re going to go to this. Now we’re going to more synthetic research chemicals that are a little bit harder to predict on what the potential side-effects might be.
But overall, I think micro-dosing can be really beneficial.
Nootropics
[1:03:16]Mark: So since… you know, for the average listener who’s not going to go to Peru, or not going to risk buying a bag of buds, nootropics is another area that’s kind of emerged as a way to kind of affect cognition and improve brain health. And you and I have both experimented with Qualia. Tell us out your experience…
Mike: Yeah, I actually was playing with nootropics before I even like thought about eating a mushroom or going to Peru for ayahuasca.
Mark: So they’ve been around for a while. I thought it was a relatively new field.
Mike: It is… I would say… I started using the term… I started hearing the term nootropic in maybe 2012, 2013. I then I realized that I had been buying some stuff online that would fall into that category. So I was buying things that were trying to clear the fog, so I could get more work done. Because I didn’t want to take Adderall. A lot of my friends, entrepreneurs would take Adderall to get shit done, and there was just something going off in my head saying, “That’s not a good idea.”
And it’s not a good idea. We’ve definitely found since then that Adderall can really screw you up. Reduce your ability to learn in the future. So the longer you’re on it, the harder it is to learn new things. Forever. Which kinda sucks. Which if you’re trying to get an edge, it’s not a good idea.
Now nootropics come in, and now we’re getting some of the benefits without the downside. But then I start finding out, “Oh, if I take this, then I’m depleting this.” And so now I’m having to supplement with this other thing. Next thing you know I’m supplementing with 5 things trying to like balance everything out.
Mark: Is that what the term “stacking” is about?
Mike: Stacking. Yeah. And at some point I kinda gave up. I was like, “You know what? I’m just gonna eat real healthy.”
Mark: Yeah, you can go nuts with all this stuff, so why not just get the nutrients?
Mike: Yeah, it was like, “You know what? I’m just gonna get real healthy and so I actually stopped playing around with them for a while, maybe a year. And then I met Daniel Schmachtenberger who designed Qualia. He goes, “Hey, you might want to give this a shot.”
I look at it; it already has a lot of stuff I was already taking. I’d kinda come up with a very natural supplementation stack that helped with my mental cognition. That wasn’t super-nootropic crazy. I’m not supplementing with modafinil which is a pharmaceutical drug. But I’m already doing this and I’m like, “Man, half the ingredients that you have in this, I’m already taking.” And I can just throw this shit away and stop hording 5 different things. I can just take this. I’ll give it a shot, and I started taking Qualia and my experience has been really fantastic.
In fact, the first week I took it, it really reminded me of micro-dosing. And I was like… it wasn’t quite the same. Nothing’s ever the same as anything. You micro-dose one type of psychedelic versus another type of psychedelic they’re different.
Mark: Now Qualia obviously has no… obviously, no psychedelics in it, cause that’s all controlled substances. It’s all natural and pretty high quality.
Mike: Yeah, from what I understand about is, due to the stack the synergistic effects of the different materials, and how it interacts in your body, it produces a similar effect. And that is increased cognition, increased focus, increased creativity. What I’m super-excited about is I’m a better listener with it. I have more empathy. And I find that things that… places I go when I meditate don’t take me as long to get there.
So I find… which for me is if we can make everything as quiet as possible then we can see the effect of anything that’s going on in your life. Let’s see how sensitive we can become. And a state of meditation is when we can really notice. And so if I’m taking something, I wanna know how it impacts me when I’m meditating.
And if I find that my mind is going all over the place, and I’m thinking all these random thoughts, I’m like “Ooh. Probably don’t want to touch that again.” But if I take it and find peace and it’s quiet, then it’s like “Okay. I now notice that this helps me be more calm. Now does it help me do…?” Cause that’s not the whole picture.
So what I do like about Qualia its the broadest spectrum of improving like the human experience that I’ve had so far.
Mark: (laughing) In a pill form.
Mike: Yeah. (laughing) In some pills.
Mark: Without having to go to Peru.
Mike: It makes me operational. Even if I go to Peru, it doesn’t… I’m laying on the floor not doing anything.
Mark: Right. Not doing a whole lot of podcasting while you’re down there.
Mike: Highly contemplative. Inner contemplation is all that’s happening there. But with this… 5 days a week, that’s what I’m rocking now. I definitely do that, and then you could also stack things on top of Qualia. I would definitely be paying attention. My big thing is is about being sensitive and meditating and noticing what happens and how you’re feeling.
One thing as I get older is how sensitive can I become to stimulae? I how little do I need to take of anything to feel a difference?
Because so many people just are like running their head through walls and like the same guy that needs to drink 20 beers to get drunk, you know, and they’re like “Oh, I gotta take all these supplements to get this effect.” And it’s like, “You’re just doing a lot to get a little.” I wanna do a little and get a lot.
And so as I get older, one of the things that I don’t want to do is overload my cells. Because there’s a lifespan on all these things. Your cells are gonna replicate so many times, and the genes gonna wear out, and things are going to stop replicating and you’re going to die. And death is not necessarily something I fear anymore. I could die now happy. And I’d like to live a long, healthy life if possible as well. I’d like to see us land on Mars, possibly.
And I want to… every day of this life; I want it to be the fullest. So when I’m 80, I don’t want to have someone else wipe my ass. I wanna wipe my own ass.
Mark: (laughing) Have a robot for that.
Mike: Definitely have a robot… that’ll be automated by then. Don’t be ridiculous. So, yeah, I wanna be as sensitive to things as possible because if I can get more with less, then everything will last longer and be healthier. It’s kinda like your knees for squatting… it’s like, if I can get stronger and squat less, it’ll be better.
Mark: Yeah, exactly. The same principles for physical training and nutrition apply to nootropics and micro-dosing. Do it, but do it with periods of recovery…
Mike: Have you heard of the term “minimum effective dose?”
Mark: Yeah. Find the minimum effective dose, do it, and then take a break and give your body time to recover from it.
Mike: Whether that’s squats or running, conditioning or mental performance. How little do you need to get to the next level? Don’t be in a hurry.
Mark: Don’t be in a hurry. Yeah, I love that. So that kinda brings us full circle to where we started and that really interesting philosophical journey. Which for some people felt like an ayahuasca journey.
Mike: (laughing) I hope so. That’s what I was shooting for.
Mark: So the point is to upgrade our experience, right? And this notion that you asked me is do I see us shifting into a whole new worldview, point-of-view, like what does it mean to be human. Yes. And all of this stuff is part of that, right? Changing our internal structures, or helping to accelerate and optimize our internal structure, whether that be brain, gut, heart. And then simultaneously changing the meaning structures. Like, how does our mind work and what you alluded to as software. So software, hardware… upgrading that. And then connecting with source so that that experience is infused with the spirit that you couldn’t put back in that box, right? And then all those… optimizing, that’s a daily journey. Then the experience of life is radically different and much more interconnected and blissful and…
Mike: Cooler. It’s way cooler.
Mark: Cooler and more creative. And like you said, creativity comes from source. And so it’s just about channeling that. Get out of your own way and let it come through.
Mike: That’s when the Genius really can come out.
Mark: Hooyah. Awesome.
Mike’s Podcasts
[1:12:14]So, “Bledsoe Show.” We’re going to look forward to that. “Barbell Shrugged” and “Barbell Business.”
Mike: Yeah, so if you’re interested in strength and conditioning, “Barbell Shrugged.” If you’re a gym owner “Barbell Business.” And if you just want to listen to me shoot the shit with awesome people–which, I wanna bring you on that one, and we can just talk philosophy again. We can get way out in the weeds.
Mark: We should do micro-dosing.
Mike: We should do something.
Mark: (laughing) I’m afraid some of the cops’ll show up when we do it.
Mike: (laughing) We’ll be in Mexico. It won’t matter.
Mark: All right. Lest you think I’ve lost my mind we’ll…
Mike: (laughing) Losing your mind’s a good thing.
Mark: This is Mark Divine’s Unbeatable Mind. I’m gonna recreate my mind tomorrow. It’s one day, one lifetime. Hooyah.
Mike: Hooyah.
Mark: Mike, you’re awesome. Thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it. So check Mike out and let’s have fun watching his progress as he uncovers the secrets of the universe.
That’s it folks. Train hard, stay focused. Keep working on developing that Unbeatable Mind and evolving your consciousness so that we can keep pace with the world and with technology and with Mike.
Mike: (laughing) Good luck.
Mark: Coach Divine out. (laughing)
