Welcome to the The VICI Code, where we unlock real stories of small business owners who've battled chaos, crushed doubt, and conquered their challenges. Faith, family, and finances. No fluff, just raw, honest conversations that decode the path to victory, one story at a time. What is up? And thank you for joining us today as we explore our latest purpose-driven journey, AMRAP Life, maxing out on purpose, where we navigate the ultimate test of resilience, translating CrossFit's discipline into leadership, advocacy, and family breakthroughs. Today's guest's pediatric cancer advocacy was sparked by his daughter's leukemia diagnosis in 2016, and his leadership philosophy is captured in his book, As Many Reps As Possible, which you guys know as AMRAP. Jason Khalipa is the founder and CEO of NC Fit Gyms and Train Hard Online Training. He is a CrossFit Games champion, three-time Team USA CrossFit member, host of the Jason Khalipa podcast, and somehow he finds time to have his Brazilian jiu-jitsu brown belt. Now, Jason and I connected a few months ago after a couple friends and I started meeting up at the Syracuse Inner Harbor at 5.45 a.m. for a Saturday morning workout. This wasn't just any workout. This was Jason Khalipa's train hard workout. What started out as just three guys getting together, doing hard things, and connecting over a post-coffee workout has evolved to nearly two dozen guys in a short matter of time. What's most amazing is our numbers have grown despite the single-digit temperatures and snow. This is Jason's vision, and we hope to host Jason and his team on a train hard 315 men's club workout before it gets too warm in the spring. His journey from elite athlete to successful gym owner only to have his world reshaped by his daughter's cancer diagnosis provides a rich material for discussing profound personal and business breakthroughs. His book titled as many reps as possible serves as a perfect metaphor for life and Jason, welcome to the show, man. Oh man, that was a great, that was an awesome monologue. I love my homework, dude. I came correct. That was really good. I mean, I've, I've had a lot of, uh, intros or whatever you want to call it. That was solid. Um, yeah, thanks for having me. I'm, I'm, I'm, uh, I'm excited to be here. I'm ready to dive into whatever you want to talk about. I'm ready to rock and roll. I I like to talk about the tough stuff, the breakthroughs, you know, defining crisis and purpose breakthrough. You know, you went through what I consider the ultimate test, Jason. You spent years mastering fitness and discipline to win CrossFit games, but nothing prepares you for a pediatric cancer diagnosis. When your daughter was diagnosed with leukemia, what was the most significant challenge that forced you to reevaluate your Oh, man. You know, when you get news like that, it's really... I'd say for any dad, right? They, they, they sit back, they take this news in. It's very, very, very difficult. And you start saying, okay, what's the mission? What's the, what's the goal. And the goal is to win. And there was no other option, but to go beat the leukemia. Like that's, that's the only thing on your mind is like, there's this enemy and we need to address it immediately. And so. The goal originally, or the, the, you know, when you talk about strength, it's removing all distractions that take you away from that mission, right? All distractions. So I retired from the sport of CrossFit. I delegated out our business. I just sent an email saying, Hey, I'm out. And I put all my time in to try and educate myself and be as present as folks as I could to be there to support our family and my daughter in particular. And so I think when you think about strength, it's like removing all distractions. So you could be focused. And then you realize what real strength is. You know, like for a decade plus, I was around a lot of strong people. I traveled the world teaching seminars. I got to meet with a lot of really cool people and they were on paper very, very strong. But man, you spend time in oncology. you spend time in oncology for long enough and you see some people that are mentally resilient, physically strong and overcoming true levels of adversity you can't even comprehend. And that was really inspiring for me to see other families, and then obviously heartbreaking at the same time. So I'd say that for me, strength was removing all distractions that took me away from my purpose and what we needed to accomplish at the moment, while simultaneously, I never felt pulled to be stronger in my life, because you had to be strong physically, but developing strength mentally was really what I think that experience did for me. Because you had to, you had no other option. You had to develop what that was. And then the way that connected me with my wife, I mean, you think for me, strength, dude, she was the rock. I mean, the rock. And seeing that occur just was really something, I don't wish our experience on anybody, but I do think that we learned a lot going through it, in particular about perspective and about Yeah, I agree with that definition, and I like that you mentioned resilience, and I would also add in discipline. Those pieces, they speak to that mental fortitude, callous the mind, callous the body mentality that we hear from David Goggins and stuff. Again, no one wants to go through that, but sometimes you find out what you're really made of in those toughest times. What was a profound personal breakthrough that allowed you to redirect the competitive drive into pediatric cancer advocacy Well, I mean, my wife hosts the annual fundraiser called Ava's Kitchen, which is just absolutely incredible. I think ultimately what it was, was when we got diagnosed, it took me a couple of days. And then I was sitting there and I just reflected, I just said, Hey, if anybody was going to get this, you know, let us take this on, meaning we were as locked in as you could get from a, you know, my wife and I, we've been together since we were 15 on our, our, we had the financial means we had the physical means we were, we were ready for a challenge. And I, I would, I would encourage any of your listeners to to try and lock in, uh, in your fitness, your business, your, your friendships, your, your family, because you never know when you're going to get struck by adversity and you want to be as prepared as you possibly can be. And that was, that was kind of what drove us to support others is that we said to ourselves, wow, this was really, really hard, really hard. And I wish this on nobody, but if it was this hard on us, we would watch people who couldn't get to the cancer center for chemo because it couldn't pay for gas. You know, we would watch people broken because the husband had to be gone away from the hospital while the mom was there. And it created this divide. The mom is going through a lot of stress herself and the dad saying, hey, I'm out here trying to provide and this and that. And so it's like, what can we do ahead of time? We could try and prepare ourselves for life's adversity by working hard in our relationships, our fitness and with our family. So that's kind of what inspired us to get into philanthropic efforts is not only to write a book about trying to level this up and all the things I'm doing through the men's club. But more important or just as important is aligning with a great organization called Neegu, which is never, ever give up and supporting families that Yeah, I couldn't imagine. And as we mentioned before, there was so many other things going on in your life that this just popped up and took primary focus. But those other things couldn't just, they didn't just go away, right? You were doing business from the bedside. You had other people that relied on you, other families that were making a living off of the pieces that you put together. You were running NC Fit and Train Hard when your daughter got sick. How did you maintain and even grow your businesses while simultaneously being a full-time advocate Yeah. So at the time when my daughter was diagnosed in, in 2016, um, we had at the time, um, we had about 30 locations for NC fit that we either owned or operated. Some of those were corporate wellness with Western digital. Some of them were our own train hard came later based on pursuits that I felt deeply called to almost a decade later. But anyways, um, at the time, you know, I wrote an email the night that Abel was diagnosed and I just wrote it to, you know, he's, he's my best friend and business partner. I, and along with a group of people, I just said, look, effective immediately. I I'm out. And I don't know if it's going to be for a day, a week, a month, a year, but like, I'm out, I'm done. Like, and like, basically I just said, like, don't, don't email me. Don't call me unless it has to do with, uh, you know, my daughter. Right. And, That was very liberating because first off, we had a really great team that was able to step up and run while I was, you know, focus. And so I'm super grateful for that group and. I would encourage anybody who owns a company to try and develop your team in such a way that you could send that email and that they would run with it. And if you don't own a company, that's okay. But how can you be such a great contributor to your team that they would support you 10 times out of 10, if you were going through something the same way, right? You might not own a company, but if you work for a company and you've busted your ass for years, they're gonna do anything for you because you've put in your dues. But I would say that. The business definitely came second, far, far second for a long time. When you're in the hospital, it takes full mental focus. We spent two and a half years in the hospital. I would say on average, we were in for about a week out for a week in for two weeks out for two weeks in for a month out for a few months, like in general for two and a half years. So it was very difficult for me to commit to certain things, right? Imagine if you were trying to set up business meetings and you don't know if your daughter's going to be in the hospital or not, and you're going to be at every one of those things. So it taught me a lot at an early age on how to delegate. And it also showed me that like, I can step back a little bit and the business isn't going to crumble. It might not thrive in the way it could with me as a, you know, leading it towards new ventures, but you have to, at some point, rest assured that you've done your Yeah. And I think what we see with a lot of athletes, especially athletes that perform at, you know, some of the higher levels, highest levels in your case, you walk the walk, you talk the talk. So when you, you've, you created a culture, to me, it sounds like that permeated your leadership, your captains, that when you were able to walk away, they already knew what to do, right? You set that foundation, you created that culture. Can you tell us a little bit, how do you teach the train hard ethos to your team, ensuring the discipline is about sustainability and passion, but not Yeah, I would say that, you know, at the time, so I started NC fit in 2008. We still own and operate gyms. And I still, um, and the founder of that company train hard started about two years ago and, or yeah, two years ago. And the spirit of that was to pull men up. I started hosting free weekly workouts in a parking lot about three years ago. And I started recognizing that men needed an outlet and fitness is such a great tool. So we just, you know, between that, my jujitsu background, I'm very interested in supporting law enforcement. We, I do a lot of work in that space. I just felt deeply drawn to this. And so now with train hard, it's like, I think what the mentality of train hard is, is that I don't want to look back on my life and be like, damn, I was slipping. So what train hard teaches me is every day to evaluate how am I doing as a husband, a father in my business, in my fitness, and just do a micro check-in. And wherever I'm at in those areas, I can make small little, you know, small little adjustments the next day to get back on course. Otherwise, if you're not training hard in the gym and then kind of, if you let yourself, if you let momentum get to zero, I think you're in a lot of trouble. You got to keep your workouts going and you got to be able to show up present for the other things that matter to you. And doing those daily check-ins I find are really helpful because no one's perfect. But at least you can make changes on a micro scale, so you don't look back five years from now and think you're a crappy dad, you know? So that's where we're kind of at with Train Hard. We're on a mission to level men up. At NC Fit, we own and operate gyms that are super successful, but I feel like drifting is the most common slow killer for all men. If you don't have purpose, what do you have? This is the segment where I like to get into purpose, pillars, and leadership, so it's a great segue. You know, let's talk about discipline and versatility. You successfully transferred from CrossFit to achieving a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Both require immense discipline and a growth mindset. How does your personal dedication to fitness and martial arts serve your faith and mental clarity? Yeah, I mean, I actually just got word yesterday from my professor that I'm getting a belt promotion, so that's a pretty big deal. Took me 10 years. I don't have it yet, but I've been told I have my black belt January 10th, so that's pretty exciting. That's what's up, man. Congrats, dude. Thank you. I would say that, you know, whether you're trying to achieve to be the fittest on earth through the CrossFit Games or whether you're trying to get a black belt in jujitsu, both of those just require consistency more than anything else. You don't have to, you know, I don't consider myself to be the most gifted physically. I don't think that I'm the most athletic guy in the room. But I do think that I am prepared to work hard and I'm prepared to work hard consistently for many, many, many, many years. And I've been doing that since I was very young and I don't see that changing. I do it because I feel drawn to it, but I also do it because I know it allows me to show up as the best husband and the best father I could possibly be. You know, every day, every morning, I start my morning off with BCB Bible coffee burpees. And then I go and I train hard in the morning. And the reason why I do that is because I want to put points on the scoreboard early so I could kind of know that I crushed it and then enjoy the rest of the day. Training early allows me to approach the day with a sense of calm. And I think that whether it's jujitsu, CrossFit games, I think it's really important to be purpose-driven in the sense of like, you are dedicated and committed to being your best version of yourself. And the tool set I'm gonna use to get there is my fitness. It's so funny because people think, oh, you're addicted to working out. It's like, well, not really. I mean, yes, maybe. There's areas of my life that other people are probably way more disciplined in, obviously. But I'm disciplined when it comes to fitness because I know that when I train hard, I show up as the best version of myself. And that, to me, is the number one thing that I use it for. In particular, jujitsu. If guys haven't tried jujitsu, it is the most humbling, mind-altering sport I've ever been a part of, because it requires that you're just locked in in that moment. You're so present, so focused, and it requires you to be humble enough to recognize that some guy could do whatever they want with you. And once you learn that, you can break through that, something special happens to you where your ego really starts to diminish, and you look at it more like we're pulling each other up because we have to have training partners to get to our next level. Anyways, that was a long-winded answer, but I just love, I love fitness for what it does for me. No, it's a great answer. And I, I take exception to like, you know, the addiction to fit. I mean, it's a part in your operating system, right? It's what makes everything go. Like we, I tell my kids, you know, I got kids from 16, 14 to six to five. And, um, with the younger ones, I'm always coaching them on, you got to eat, you know, dad can't drive the car without putting fuel in it. You got to put fuel in it. You know, working out is another type of fuel. Right. And I like my workouts. I get, uh, more of a, a low key workout in the morning, like a walk, and I'm going to start doing your burpees in the morning too. But I like to, I peak like in the afternoon. Can I make my own hours? And that just works. I don't take time away from the family. And it's not, it gives me more time to be more reflective in the morning. And that's just in my operating system. But I I couldn't do what I do without fitness, so I think that's a great answer. What's the biggest lesson about leadership and strategy you learned on the mat that I mean, you can never get good at jujitsu if you didn't have training partners, period, like full stop. If you don't have a good instructor and if you don't have a good team, the instructor is important for sure, but it's all about your training partners. If you don't have good training partners, who are there to truly lift you up, you're in a lot of trouble. And so that's been the most impactful thing for me about jujitsu is that you learn what it takes to build yourself up. And what it takes is great training partners. Same thing in business, right? You need to have a great team around you. And you need to appropriately, obviously, like, you know, set expectations, all kinds of stuff. I've made a lot of mistakes over the years. You know, when I started the company when I was 21 and at our largest thing, we had 150 employees. And as we scaled, I just learned a lot. I didn't have mentors there who had done that for me around me that have grown to that level. And so I made a lot of mistakes in particular, not setting out what success looks like, I think was the number one lesson I learned where You say, Hey, just go out there and go do a good job, but a good job for you and a good job for me and a good job for John might be, you know, or whoever might be completely different. Right. Like, but if you say, Hey, these are the expectations. This is how you're going to be, you know, like, I think that I could have done that better early on was set up. What X, what, what does success look like? And how do I, how do I help you achieve that is Yeah. And that's good advice. So a lot of our audience are small business owners at various levels. Uh, and some of them are, are, you know, curious of what it looks like to be an owner and are really maybe one episode away from jumping in. And, and I, and I, I think it's the best thing you can do is, is to have your own business or, or, or some sort of side hustle. What is your advice for a busy entrepreneur who claims they don't have time for their fitness? What's the biggest mistake they're One thing I would have your audience reflect on is if you want to be an owner, you need to act like an owner. And you could own act like an owner today. You know, I was, I was 16 years old working at a traditional health club. I told the owner of the gym at the time I was actually on a call with him this morning. I said, Hey man, I said, Hey Joe, I want to be an owner one day. And he looks at me. He goes, if you want to be an owner, start acting like an owner. And I didn't get what that meant until later on in that day, I watched him clean up the locker room. Like there was a janitor or whatever, but he acted like an owner. And I started saying to myself, well, if I want to be an owner one day, why am I going to wait until I get that title to start acting in a certain way? What, what does it mean that all of a sudden I, I put CEO next to my name and I should start acting like one? Like, well, that's, you can't just like, it's not a title. It's, it's a way of life. It's a way of thinking. It's a way of doing things. And so I'd encourage people if they have a desire to be an owner, Start asking yourself, like, how can I start acting that way today? Because if someone anoints you as like a manager or whatever, like you could start embodying those things today. And then the last piece on this, and then I, I don't even know that I'll have to go back to your question, but the last piece that's on my mind here is that. There are many people in this world that make phenomenal number twos, number threes. I would make a terrible number one there. They're like for sure. There are people out there who they don't have the vision or they don't want the stress or whatever. But if they were number two, where do they're great at executing? They're great at ops. They're great at this. They're great at that. I think it's really important to understand where your strengths, where your weaknesses, and maybe you go into business with somebody, or maybe you say, hey, look, I know that I'm really good at all of these things, but I'm super risk adverse. If you're super risk adverse, being an entrepreneur is probably not the best option for you. And so if that's the case, be a great number two, and you'll be much more happy than if you try and be a number one, but you're not prepared to take risk. Because if you want to be an entrepreneur, that's pretty much Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. Um, now I didn't, I didn't want, I wasn't going to go back to it, but it go for it, man. Like if, if, if our entrepreneurs, if our listeners are saying, I don't have time for fitness, you know, what's, what are the, what is, what are they leaving on the table? What's the biggest mistake they're making by neglecting that? If your audience says they don't have time to work out, really what they're saying is they should reframe every time they say that to themselves with, I'm not prioritizing my fitness. And that's okay. That's okay. If you said to me, you know, uh, Do you have time to read? I'm like, no, I don't have time to read. And you said to me back, Hey Jay, I think you do have time to read. You're just not prioritizing it. And maybe that's the truth. And I'll be like, you know what, Joe, I, I don't want to prioritize reading. I don't like doing it. Okay. Well, at least you're being honest with yourself, but to say you don't have time to work out is such a, for lack of a better term, a bullshit excuse. It is terrible because what you're telling me that in throughout your day, you don't have 30 minutes to do something to self improve. What? Like, I don't care who you are. Everybody has 30 minutes. And if you don't, then you got to reevaluate your calendar because there's no way from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep, you don't have 30 minutes dedicated towards doing something for self-improvement. And if you don't today, I would encourage you to wake up 30 minutes earlier and Yeah. I mean, millions of people across the entire world. work out as an important part of their day. Some of the most busiest people, the most productive people find time. Some of the people who are just a cog in the system, they find time. There's no such thing as you don't have enough time. But like you said, you just haven't prioritized it. But we caution you that If you become a business owner, it is in your best interest to incorporate that. It is definitely something where you may think like, oh, I don't got the energy. It will give you more energy. It will give you more structure. And enforcing that time in there really, like you said, forces you to evaluate your schedule and make sure you make time. And quite honestly, everyone should be really doing that, you know, really being deliberate and intentional with the Yeah, I 100% agree. Some would argue, some would say, I don't have time to exercise. And I would make the argument that if, if you are going through something hard in your life right now, I don't care what it is, your relationships, your job, you name it. I don't care. The number one thing you could do for yourself immediately is go exercise immediately. I don't care what it is. It doesn't matter what you're going through. The best thing you can do for yourself is go exercise because when you come out the other side of that workout, the other side of that walk, the other side of that burpee, when you come out the other side, you're going to feel better than you did when you walked in. So. And that's why a lot of times I think that my 12 o'clock workouts are, are clutch because the mornings are always what happened last night. What do we got to dress? It's oh, it's a lot of times it's putting out fires. And a lot of times I'm like, you know what? I don't want to work out. I'm just so stressed out, but I do it. It's a part of my operating system. I come out of that workout refreshed, renewed. I've thought about things. I've taken out that negative energy out on the iron, and I come back to the office with a clear mind, like, all right, let's go. And you know what? I feel like the emotions are taken out, and I'm a lot more objective with my decision-making in the afternoon. You just got to figure out what works best for you, for your operating system, but working out doesn't hurt you. It can only make things better. So good advice. Let's, let's shift our focus towards the future, you know, legacy and that next rep, right? The Vici Code is about impactful purpose-driven leadership. What's the biggest challenge you are faced overcoming right now in scaling your fit business while maintaining the high standards of The biggest challenge I'm currently facing is that I have delegated out parts of our NC FIT business so that I could be really mission focused with TrainHard. The biggest problem I'm facing right now is that train hard. I want to treat it as a nonprofit for as long as I can, but it isn't a nonprofit. So the biggest problem I'm facing right now, and one that I'm gonna have to lean on is how does, how do I grow this mission for me to be fully focused on it and really grow this thing to something special to help a bunch of men with parking lot workouts all around the world, virtual calls every Thursday and you know, programs to help support them. How do I do that as my full-time gig? while simultaneously I'm treating it purely as a mission, right? So you have to make money to live. But you can't get blinded by it because it's all about the mission. So that's what I'm currently balancing is how do I grow and be mission forward and ask myself with every single question about train hard. And as we grow it, I'm approaching it in a way where would I make this same, um, would I make this same decision? If I had half a billion dollars in the bank today, would I still make this same decision? And if, and if the answer is yes, then I would do it. Is it serving men? Um, but that's what I'm currently like kind of reflecting a lot about is how do you become mission focused and really stay true to what you want to accomplish when it is kind of like this long-term trajectory, right? Like it's growing, but you got to stay consistent with it. And I think the way that you do that, at least for me. is having men or people around you that hold you accountable to stay the course. When they feel like you're getting drifted, how do you have anchors in your community that pull you back in? And I think that goes for everything in life. But I think having weekly anchors is so important where you surround yourself with like-minded men, where you have collaborative calls, and you start discussing things like this, and then every single week, you're talking about these things, whatever it is in your life, chances are No, you got that support group. And it's funny, in my men's group, in my church men's group, we were talking and defining patience, you know, always being patient with God, patient with ourselves, patient with his greater plan, and we talked about how Patience is also defined as long-suffering, and to embrace that, embrace that long-suffering, because on the other side of that pain, of that challenge, is something special. And you kind of hit on that earlier in a different answer, but there really is something special about Embracing those challenges, because a lot of times, a lot of people get stuck in that victim mentality and woe is me. But if you can change your mindset and realize that there's more purpose out there, that you have a purpose and that God has a greater purpose for you, and that these challenges like the story of Joseph are in place for us to come through to the other side stronger and harder for that next challenge, for that next level up. So I completely agree with you on that one. And I think the hardship I think just makes it worth it to, you know, the other day I was talking to a young lady who's getting ready for a basketball game and like my friend's daughter and she's like nine and She's like, Hey, I'm nervous about the game. And I was like, dude, like, it just means that you care. Like how often do people go through life and there's nothing that makes them feel a little nerves. Right. It's like, dude, that's just means you care about something. And like, that's awesome. And like now, like, don't look at that as a negative channel that into a positive, you care enough about something that you feel nervous about it instead of just being a guy who just sits on the couch all the time. Right. It's like the man in the arena, same thing applies, like this mission kind of approach. It's like, It's like, if it came easy, if tomorrow we had a hundred thousand men as part of what we're doing at train hard, I don't know if it would mean as much as when we're actually growing it. So when we do get to that, that state, you could, you could really sit back and be like, dude, that was a cool journey. You That's what it's all about, right? The journey. That's where everything's really built. That's where the real true excitement is. We're wrapping things up here. What's one final piece of tough, purpose-driven advice you would give any listener who is struggling with a failure? All right, Jason, be it financial, health-related, personal. their next rep needs to be a pushup. Like, their next rep should be something physical because momentum is contagious and it's like pushing a sled. As soon as you stop pushing it, it's very hard to start it back up again. But if you just kept going a little bit at a time, you're good to go. It's the same thing. If you're finding that you're stalled out, you're struggling to the number one thing you could do is build your confidence. And a great way to build your confidence is by looking at things that are in your control. And one of the most valuable things that's in your control is waking up early and doing some burpees, waking up early and going for a walk. And when you come out from the other side of that, it's going to have earning. You've earned your confidence to feel like, damn. I chose to do something hard today. Hell yeah. Let me now go choose to make the next tough decision that's going to put me in the direction of Absolutely. Absolutely. cheap, easy win, but really good results with that next trap. Um, Jason, where, where can our listeners find your podcast and connect with you? Uh, NC fit, you know, what are your handles, your websites? Can you tell us a little bit on how we can, uh, stay in touch with you and Yeah. I mean, I think if, look, if you live in the Bay area, California come by one of our gyms. Um, but in general, if you're a guy out there, you're like, Hey, I, I, you know, I want to see what these guys are doing with their men's clubs, with the virtual calls, go to th dot fit, th dot fit. That'll have everything you need to join in on the mission to support the mission and help us impact more men. It's a, it's a positive energy. That's all I want to put out. Um, you get enough of the negativity everywhere else in the world. So if you jump on there Love it. Yeah. And I've got, a whole list of links that we will have in the show notes from Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, your personal website, TH Fit, NC Fit, even your Wikipedia we're gonna throw up there just so people can check you out, man. But yeah, so just a few key takeaways. The definition of strength is measured in resilience, not reps. The power of the AMREP mindset applied to life is just keep moving and keep going. And if you haven't started yet, start today. There is no tomorrow, right? And personal crisis can be the catalyst for profound purpose in business and family. Thank you so much, Jason, for your time, your vulnerability, and your enduring commitment to inspiring others. We look forward to watching TrainHard grow and more that you have come. Love to have you on again sometime soon. But until then, thank you for listening to The Vici Code. Join us next time as we continue to explore the journey of purpose-driven leaders. Let's go. Thanks for tuning in to The Vici Code, where the underdogs rise and the numbers finally make sense. If today's story hit home, share it. And remember, faith fuels a fight and