§ 01 · The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Most brands chase acquirers. Brian Mazza built something a corporate giant could not manufacture — so they had to buy it instead. On the one-year anniversary of selling HPLT to Life Time Fitness, he walks through exactly how that happened, and why the brand was impossible to replicate from the inside.
Who's talking.
00:07guestBrian Mazza
00:00hostAlex Garcia
00:00cohostBrian Blum
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 00:56
01 · Cold open + intro
Pull-quote hook before guest intro, promise of what the episode covers.
00:56 – 05:30
02 · Selling HPLT to Life Time
How a VP attending the 10,000-person summit kicked off a 4-5 month acquisition conversation. The Boca trip that became an interview. The deal close.
05:30 – 08:50
03 · Post-acquisition: scaling with Life Time
What changed (finance, marketing, club access) and what Lifetime is positioned to do in fitness innovation with content and events.
08:50 – 11:05
04 · Fitness landscape: CrossFit, Hyrox, the gap
CrossFit declining, Hyrox growing but lacking spectator appeal, the untapped middle ground combining strength-power with endurance.
11:05 – 16:03
05 · LT Games and making fitness mainstream
What the LT Games do right, the Jordan shoe analogy for how major brands making gear legitimizes a sport, what is needed to get fitness on TV.
16:03 – 18:40
06 · The problem with fitness culture
Extremism as algorithmic demand vs. societal toxicity, performative suffering, sub-3 marathon gate-keeping, being authentic vs. chasing novelty.
18:40 – 25:06
07 · Personal brand origin story
Building from Men's Health covers to Instagram 2012, the Nike Tone House shoot, posting before consensus formed, how brand deals compound.
25:06 – 27:04
08 · Mazza's advice and the Kane Footwear launch
Confidence despite judgment, faking the deck to get David Goggins, how Kane Footwear launched through HPLT network in 2021.
27:04 – 30:03
09 · Content effectiveness: 2021 vs. 2026
Whether the brand-seeding playbook still works, why trust in the people behind the brand is the durable variable.
30:03 – 32:17
10 · Making experiences memorable
Why the brand cannot be about the founder, how the network becomes the brand, why community loyalty creates a referral engine that barely needs marketing.
32:17 – 36:05
11 · The Navy SEAL activation as opening hook
Why the first experience at a summit is the most important design decision. Cold-water trauma bonding at midnight in Antigua. People leave feeling like superheroes.
36:05 – 39:12
12 · The right environment as leadership
Water bottle analogy — same product, different price, different context. LeBron to Miami, Harry Kane to Bayern Munich. Put people in the right room.
39:12 – 42:40
13 · What's next for the hospitality industry
The bar industry crisis: wellness culture, reduced drinking, high rents. Pop-ups, roving experiences, and social-viral food challenges as the prescription.
42:40 – 45:55
14 · Members-only clubs and experiential boom
The exclusivity paradox — VIP cards destroy the illusion. High-end members clubs work in wealth-dense cities only.
45:55 – 48:58
15 · The cheat code: content turnaround
Getting branded content back to attendees within hours of an activation so they post immediately while the emotion is highest.
48:58 – 53:00
16 · Balancing personal life and business
Starting with the homies, wives joining, women being tougher than men during Navy SEAL activations, growing to co-ed summits.
53:00 – 55:45
17 · Fatherhood as a performance standard
Sobriety as a parenting decision not a wellness trend, never wanting kids to see him tired, coach hat vs. dad hat, accountability calendars, TST soccer tournament.
Lines you could clip.
00:03
"People are going to judge you no matter what, and 99% of the people want you to fail. But I love that shit."
29:11
"I never wanted it to be about me when they go to the events. I want the brand and the network to speak for itself."
37:37
"A water bottle at CVS is $2. A water bottle at the airport is $7. A water bottle at the Met game is $12. Same water bottle, just different environment."
50:57
"I need them to see me intentionally suffering every single day."
23:57
"I didn't have a company really. I made it up. I was like, I have a company. I wanna do an event in May."
Things they pointed at.
00:56productHPLT (Human Performance Lab Training)
00:56productLife Time Fitness
06:05productBPN Ultra
14:03productLT Games
18:40productTone House NYC
23:57channelDavid Goggins
26:13productKane Footwear
27:05productAthletic Brewing
53:55productTST (Tournament of Soccer Teams)
Word for word.
HOOK opening / re-engagementCTA the pitch
00:00HOOKPeople are going to judge you no matter what, and 99% of the people want you to fail. But I love that shit.
00:07HOOKBrian Mazza is a lifestyle entrepreneur who recently sold his company, HPLT, to Lifetime Fitness last year. He's a master of building hospitality companies and world class experiences,
00:16HOOKnot to mention being a creator with over 800,000 followers on social media. I have had people leave the summits and within an hour be like, I just quit my job for fifteen years. Thank you.
00:25HOOKAlright, dude. I don't know you, but I have to hold your arm right now and we're gonna get smacked in a 40 degree wave together. I can let you go.
00:31HOOKYou just immediately make them trauma bond. You're immediately hooked. We talked to him about what it takes to build a world class experience, Lifetime's goal of becoming the go to third space in communities across America, and something I think y'all will love is how he'd save the struggling bar industry.
00:45HOOKYou're gonna learn a ton in this one about the future of experiential marketing. But first, we gotta get into the story that he told at the beginning episode. We'll see y'all there.
00:56Alright. So we're on the one year anniversary Yes.
00:58Of you selling HPLT to Lifetime. I'd love to just kinda hear how that deal came together. Talk a little bit about the background of the business as well.
01:05You know, Lifetime came to the table, all that stuff. Yeah. So
01:09well thanks for having me here. Yeah. Of course.
01:11See you guys. Thanks for having us in the facility. Yeah.
01:13Know. Great great facility here. Yeah.
01:14So, I I really had no intention of ever selling HVLT. The business wasn't built to really do that. It was more of a incubator
01:23accelerator for me personally, as well as building a community and just chasing something that I've missed my whole life as being an athlete. Right? So I created this brand so I can continue to grow my network, continue to be around people that are gonna sharpen my tool throughout all the summits,
01:38and kind of play both sides. Right? So I can do my personal branding stuff,
01:43but leverage HPLT, and HPLT can leverage my personal branding stuff as well. Right? So we can all dance in the same pot.
01:48But we had a summit for 10,000 in September the previous year, and they had a a VP from Lifetime attended.
01:58I didn't know them. I didn't really know much about Lifetime prior to that. I was an Equinox guy.
02:04And then when I moved to the suburbs, I didn't go to Lifetime. I had my gym, so I just trained out of my own facility there Yeah. Which we still have, which is great.
02:10And then this guy, Jason Love, who's been at Lifetime, a wonderful guy. We hit it off all weekend, and he was like, man, this could be something really cool for attention tool internally at Lifetime.
02:23So maybe you could throw some summits for us internally and we can bring our top talent, top instructors or
02:30personal, you know, training employees in. And it could be just a really cool reset weekend or
02:36offer tools to to get them to to perform a little bit better. And we were into it. And it's it was so turnkey for us at this point that we could have done this.
02:45I I mean, I could do one tomorrow if I need to. And then he was like, hey, I want you to speak to this other my boss, this this awesome guy, Yufanda.
02:54And we hit it off on a on a call, and we were very aligned. And he was like, hey, actually, can you come to Boca? I wanna just spend some time with you.
03:01I wanna show you the Boca clubs. And I was like, no problem. I'll fly out tomorrow.
03:05So I went out there. And this again was just Always get on the jet. I've always been that my that way my whole life.
03:10Right? I've always been a yes man in that sense of if there's any opportunity that I feel like I can just meet new people and continue to grow, I'll travel where I need to go.
03:20Yeah. It goes back to when I was in the hospitality days as a bottle runner. You know, I was that 22 year old kid when all these mega nightlife people needed iced coffees in the morning.
03:29Even though I was hungover as hell, I would still go get the iced coffees and the bagels for everyone. Yes, they had nice cars for me to drive in the Hamptons, but I was like, if I go do all this stuff, pick up their laundry, do all these things, they'll they'll know that I'm reliable, and they'll always keep me around until there's opportunities.
03:44Right? So I got on that plane, went to Boca for twenty four hours. And I I felt like it was kind of an interview for me.
03:50And I spent about three hours in the car with this man I've never met before. And we talked everything but Lifetime and HVLT. We talked about family.
03:56We talked about, you know, just how we wanna continue through life and what means a lot to me. And and then after that he was like, hey, you know, you kinda passed the test.
04:06And I was like, what are you talking about? He's like, you know, we're really interested in your business. I need you to speak to this woman, Jesse, who I think you've met.
04:14And she, you know, runs New York at the time. And I met her and we hit it off right away, and and she was like, dude, I think we really need to have this internally. But I think we could do a lot more with it where we can help you reach more people.
04:27We can bring this summit to the masses and utilize our clubs and shoot content and all of that. And the conversation continued for about four or five months. And then I finally met the big man, BA, who who was the boss and runs everything.
04:40And, you know, we hit it off and it just came to, hey, we wanna acquire your business. Let's see how it goes for the year, and we're rocking and rolling.
04:48So that kind of accelerated really quickly, and then we sold it a year ago. Yeah. Is this the same Boca trip where you got recognized?
04:55No. It's a different Boca trip. But so funny, right?
04:57I I need to move to Boca. It's a different trip. I was like, you gotta attribute that.
05:00That's like good social proof that this is the Boca thinking about it. Wow. Good things happen in Boca, so I need to like move.
05:06You might actually have to move down there. Wow. Didn't I think about that.
05:08That's that's fascinating. So, they they wanted to almost use it as a professional development internally tool. Yeah.
05:14That's what I was told, and I was like, oh, that's really neat. Yeah. And then, I was speaking to Melissa who runs the business, and I said, hey, this could be, you know, maybe five, six, seven, eight events per year that we can just add as revenue.
05:25Yeah. So let's let's do it. Why not?
05:27It'll be very easy for us to And so have they have they kind of amplified the scale of the business thus far? Like So, yeah. I mean, it's great that we get to utilize all of their resources internally that I didn't have previously.
05:38Right? It was just me and Melissa running the business.
05:41But now, you know, I get the finance side of the things, I get help there, the marketing as well, and just the resources within all the clubs. And Yeah. The members get to have access to come.
05:51So that's been great. Right. But we still have such a big network of our own Mhmm.
05:55That we utilize a lot of our members still. But it's a great amenity for the lifetime member. Yeah.
06:01And I just look at I look at overall what what does the future of fitness look like? And if you look at Nike and what they're doing with, like, Training After Dark, you look at Bandit running in their run clubs, you look at the different lifting programs that all these facilities are having in this
06:15idea of creating a space where people can interact with each other and truly build a community where it's more of a horizontal relationship than vertical and top down. It's an interesting play from Lifetime to see that, know that come to you because you've already built it and be like, okay, how do we integrate this into
06:32what we have, the infrastructure that we have, the the the audience that we have, and then be able to take it, make it even bigger. What does that look like in the future for them on like Yeah. Mean, I don't even think we scratched the surface yet with them.
06:45I think there's so much more that we can contribute to what Lifetime wants to do on the innovation side of things. Mhmm. You know, Lifetime is is the best of what they do.
06:53Right? It's these athletic country clubs and no one can really touch them in that space. I like that positioning too.
06:58I mean, my kid we we go to a country club in my town. Right?
07:02My kids don't even wanna go to the one that I pay for. They're like, can we just go to Lifetime in Westchester? There's slides, there's rock climbing, there's basketball, there's pickleball, there's tennis.
07:11I mean, there's everything that you could do for a kid. And as a parent, you have childcare too. Not that my kids would go to that, but you have you have built in childcare.
07:19I mean, who does that? Yeah. Everyone wins there.
07:22Right? You can but when we go to Lifetime in Westchester, it's the pools are awesome, the amenities are sick, I get to relax, my kids run around, they know so many people there. But in terms of back to your question, you know, I think I would love to be tasked with more opportunity to innovate for them on these special projects.
07:38Right? Because content is king, and just look what BPN just did with their Ultra. Right?
07:42I mean, I can't even imagine how many eyeballs. Lifetime could do five different series like that. Without it?
07:47And Without a problem. They could do a pickleball niche, they could do like Biggest. A swimming niche, they could do anything.
07:52Right? It's just a matter of allocating resources having
07:56a change agent in the organization. Yeah. Exactly.
07:58So I think we're like, you know, kind of that that stallion group that can do it. You know Your acquisition to me is the signal that they know what they're doing.
08:06They do. Right? Oh, 100%.
08:08Between the Lifetime Awesome build out which for context for people is like this entire, you know, childcare with a wet suite like which is sauna cold plunge all in one. It's this massive gym.
08:18They got a they have a bar in there, you know? Like that's even counterintuitive. Yeah.
08:22You can you can turn up. You can turn up and I'll tell you it's so crazy. We were just
08:26No. I haven't been I haven't. He hasn't.
08:28Maybe he will. But we were just at Coral Gables. We did our our micro summit, is our one day summit.
08:33And the pool was I thought it was a it was a nightclub. Yeah. I was people are like, dude, what are we doing?
08:38I'm like, I have no clue. It was crazy. No.
08:40Sometimes it gets going. It gets going. Yeah.
08:43But, yeah, I think, you know, they they definitely know what they're doing. Right? They're on top of the game.
08:46I just think there's more opportunity for us to really do something really incredible. I think there's a huge opportunity just because I think about if we look at the fitness landscape and we look at, like, the competition, quote unquote, landscape.
08:57You have CrossFit here, which is slowly dying or losing its reach, sucks because I enjoy watching it, but overall as a sport,
09:07kinda dying. Then you have High Rocks, which is built for more so the endurance athlete. Right?
09:13Like And it's democratized. Like, anyone can really do that. Anybody can do it.
09:16And to me, there's no, like I'm not saying the guys that aren't winning aren't specimens, but you look at CrossFit or, like, football players or basketball players, and there's, like, elements that make them freak athletes that are the thing that you wanna watch. Like, you can't be one of them. Yeah.
09:30Like, no one here is One of the best guys. Jumping 40 inches. No one here is benching probably Oh.
09:34Three fifteen. I mean, you've been on camera saying you have 40 inch work. No.
09:3736. I just got I've seen you training lately, bro. Good stuff.
09:40Thank you. Thank you. 36.
09:41See? Goddamn, Brian. I've seen the sprints.
09:43I've seen the sprints. I haven't seen the jumping. I've seen the sprints.
09:45Yeah. It's it's all he's he's got it on video. Don't feed the ego.
09:48You've got Hyrox over here that's very very endurance based, but there's nothing and I know you guys are are working on something, but, like, there's nothing in the middle that has the strength and power while maybe still adding some of the elements of endurance, but it's not the sole focus. Because I think this is, like, fun to do one time,
10:05and unless you're competing, it doesn't have, like, the addictive factor that something that's like, hey, I I go from benching
10:12to twenty five ten times to, you know, 20 times, or I go from a 30 inch vert to a 36 inch vert, or whatever the case may be. But like, the more the power explosive factors, and I think there's nothing that gets a crowd like more pumped up than seeing, you know, like a three fifteen clean.
10:27Yeah. Well, mean, I think the LT games is has been a great way to kind of blend everything there, you know. With the high rock stuff, listen, I think just fitness in general, if you're getting after it, awesome.
10:36Right? And that's the whole MO there. Don't think you're gonna me personally, I've never done High Rocks.
10:41I've really no desire to do it. And I know a lot of brands are like, we need you to get into High Rocks. I'm just like, it's not my thing.
10:47It's just really not don't I have no desire to do it. I'll go and like celebrate the homies and stuff. Alright.
10:51But with High Rocks, think it's like maybe four or five times max. How much better are you really gonna get? Unless you're dedicating
10:58your whole life to that. Few minutes.
11:01Right? So if you're doing your thing sick. The LT games, it's it's really technical.
11:05You have to be super strong. Talk about the LT Games a little bit. Yeah.
11:08The LT Games is sick. Mean, you have like think Noah Olsen won the first one who was a CrossFit legend Uh-huh. You know, competing there.
11:14And he was like, it was pretty tough. So, I know they also do high rocks and stuff. But when you see them do high rocks, it's really, in my opinion,
11:21I think they're just going through the motions of it. They're still crushing times. Yeah.
11:25But the LT games is very difficult. And I think when you watch that, you see real athletes, you see real strength and power, and what, you know, games should be.
11:35It's like when you used to watch I was talking about it with my trainer Tommy today. I don't know if you guys remember during the CrossFit Games when they had to race through all of those like dummies, and that was real athleticism.
11:44And Matt Frazier showed that he could do Cooked them. Cooked them.
11:48He like did it. It was like you training, right? Yeah.
11:50He could beat anybody, right? Quick feet. I like to see when people have to be real Yes.
11:56Deal athletes. Same. Totally.
11:58Now, I'm not taking away from High Rocks. It's great the community is is pretty wild. Their growth is insane from when it first came here.
12:04I would be down to get canceled by the High Rocks community on this podcast though. Like, if we started saying some controversial shit, they could come for us. You know?
12:10Yeah. It's fine.
12:12But I don't have any desire to, like, really watch like, if they if it was on TV I think it's just I would never watch it. It's done such a good job with modern branding and social That's the thing where it just seems like the CrossFit games and even like the Lifetime games to an extent.
12:27Like I think the model from High Rocks is there. Right?
12:31It is. Incredible photos of everybody. You look sick when you And we all look the same too.
12:35That's another reason why I don't wanna go is because we all we all have the same leg sleeve. We're all the same lines. Everyone's like black on black on yeah.
12:41All the same people and it's like, I don't wanna go and be my like, be with everyone like myself. I wanna do other stuff. Yeah.
12:49But we always joke about it. It's like, you'd just be like looking in the mirror for for three hours. Yeah.
12:53Yeah. But the homies that do it, I have a lot of friends that do it and they do do it really well. Yeah.
12:58And I applaud them and I think that's great. It's a it's a mission, know. It's like a good thing to go pursue.
13:02I do think the opportunities in that in that middle ground of like what CrossFit couldn't be with like what with what High Rocks did. Because like you guys said, they they modernized the branding of sport and of fitness. Yes.
13:15Because you still look at CrossFit branding overall like it's very 2001.
13:21You know what mean? But also impossible for the normal Joe to do. Yes.
13:24Right. Like if you can't Olympic lift Yeah.
13:27You're done. You're you're compete. Yeah.
13:29And I think that middle ground is is such an opportunity. And the other thing I think about too is, like, what do you think is needed
13:38to almost, like, transcend these these games or these competitions. Right?
13:43And what I'll reference is Michael Jordan transcended basketball.
13:48OBJ, in many ways, like, transcended football. Noah Lyles is trying to transcend track. Right?
13:54With like being bigger personalities outside of the sport, where do you think you have to go to be able to like transcend and make something like this mainstream? Well, think now with High Rocks, it's pretty incredible that these major brands are finally I'm talking about like major major brands, Adidas, Puma, the Nikes,
14:10they're finally buying into it with creating a shoe. I think it starts there.
14:16Right? Like, when Michael Jordan created his his Jordan Ones, right, they like they created that for him for basketball. I don't think they knew how big that was gonna eventually get.
14:27I think they knew he was gonna be wonderful, but I think he's the highest paid athlete still. On residuals.
14:32It's crazy. So I think now, you know, especially with Adidas when they're coming out with this new shoe that looks great. Right?
14:39You know, when Reebok was doing CrossFit, they never made a good looking shoe. No. Right.
14:43It was never a good looking shoe. You tell me you didn't have 10 pairs of the Nano? No one made a really cool CrossFit shoe.
14:49Yeah. Now, Puma is making a cool High Rock shoe.
14:54Adidas now is finally jumping on board and making a cool High Rocks or hybrid shoe. Right? They're not gonna say High Rocks, hybrid shoe.
15:01So I think that's the first start. And then once you have those big brands and big money behind it, they could start really getting the right athletes in there.
15:09Now, if High Rocks really wants to go to the next level, they're gonna have to get it on TV. They're gonna have to get real deal partnerships and athletes in there to have a league. Mhmm.
15:19Now, don't know. Is anyone gonna really watch High Rocks on a Sunday? Probably not.
15:22I don't know. But listen, the Premier League was able to do it and look at them now and they did that big monster deal with Peacock and NBC.
15:29No one I'm a big soccer guy. No one watched the Premier League back in the day. Right.
15:33CTAIt was like, we watched Italian league. Alright. So over the last two years of building Nibble, shipping nearly 8,000 UGC ads and getting performance data on every single one of them, it became super clear.
15:43CTAThere are two types of brands, those that understand creative volume and those that don't. The core difference was what they focused on. Brands that focused on volume plus hit rate were never complaining that Meta changed the algorithm.
15:52CTATheir stuff just worked. And anytime we did work with one of those savvy brands, it was always on the same platform, Motion. Motion is by far the best tool to optimize your creative pipeline.
16:01HOOKCTAProvides structure, visibility, and insights that your creative team needs to make better decisions. I like to think of it as like what Meta would actually show you if they cared about your success. All the key metrics like three second stop rate, winning angles, formats, competitor research, it's all built into their platform so you can make quicker and better decisions.
16:16HOOKThey even just launched their new AI agent Runneth which functions as a twenty four seven creative strategist providing recommendations to your ad account. Y'all make sure to go check them out at motionapp.com.
16:25HOOKAlright. Let's get back to the episode. I think the challenge will I always be mean, it's just not really like that much of a spectator sport.
16:32And it's kind of cringe. Yeah. Right?
16:34Watching the same person who looks the same continue to do Right. Right. Yeah.
16:38It's hard to like really stand out. There's a there's a world where if you kinda did it like the BPN Ultra, people would tap in a little bit.
16:46If you like x y z thing works because it is extreme. Right?
16:51And I think like with content in particular, you have to have some sort of extreme or maximalist concept. You have to have some reason where you're like, alright, is someone gonna die at this ultra marathon? Like like the last I think that's the problem with fitness too a little bit.
17:04Yeah. And it like everything has to be extreme. Everything has to be extreme to stick.
17:08The challenge is that's just sort of like what the algorithms I get it. Desire. But I I think that
17:14is unfortunate sometimes extremely it's societally toxic. It's it kinda is.
17:20Right? It's like It's terrible. I hear people in certain gyms if your high rocks time isn't good enough that they don't talk to you.
17:25Yeah. That's actually like the entire city of Austin, Texas. Yeah.
17:28It's like, what are you doing? And it's like that it was I think running went through that too. Right?
17:32It was like if you didn't run a sub three, you're not cool. Totally.
17:35Like, I'm not gonna change my whole life to run a sub three. No. It's a lot I of care enough
17:41to do that. I'm Yeah. I've made more money not going sub three.
17:45Right. Exactly. Exactly.
17:47If I go sub three, it's not like I'm gonna make another million dollars. Like, it's just not gonna happen.
17:51Right? So, listen. I think people getting after it's great.
17:54Do your hard feats. It's amazing. Right.
17:56But also, people have to stop training for the craziest stuff just to be seen. Right.
18:01Like, be authentic in yourself. Be cool. Have some style.
18:06Yeah. And you should be okay. Yeah.
18:08I think everyone's fallen into the trap of trying to do the most extreme novel thing. Yeah.
18:14And you see it where it's like I'm the first man to run it'd like the crazy like the first man to run from here to Florida taking this route. And it's like what are we doing?
18:24No. Listen, if you have a charity component to it, awesome. Right?
18:27But I think I would like to see people get back to, I'm training to be like a really healthy fit dad. Right.
18:34Right. Yeah. Like being a good role model.
18:36Yeah. Being I mean, I'm not saying these people are bad role models, but let's tone it down a bit. Mhmm.
18:41It's become very performative. Let's talk a little bit about like content strategy and positioning because you've actually done a really good job building your personal brand and then now you've worked with Ro, you're launching your own brand, Cacio e Pepe. Yeah.
18:52Cacio Pepe. Yeah. And I just wanna hear about like, a, how you kinda went about positioning your personal brand.
18:58Right? Because it clearly resonated with hundreds of thousands of people. And b, was there a goal to make that fit with certain brands or did the brands come after?
19:07So when I first started dabbling in this world, I don't know how old you guys are but 30. 30?
19:12Yeah. Wow. Okay.
19:13I'm 41. So when I was doing Kinda mocking us right now. Yeah.
19:16You guys are young. But when I was doing this in, you know, in 2011
19:21when we had the Ainsworth and the club in the Hamptons and all that. Mhmm. You know, this is when it was Page Six was super important to get into in in the New Yorkers.
19:29Yeah. Like PR was still a thing. So important.
19:31Right? Getting into GQ, getting into Esquire. I got on the cover of Men's Health twice.
19:36So that was kind of the game, and that's how I was always known like, oh, that's the restaurant guy who was on Men's Health, right, cover. And I always had this belief that I could do more than I was doing in the restaurant space. Even though we were the premier spot, I just felt, you know, as an athlete I had a lot more to give and I wanted to be challenged.
19:54And when you start getting those PR opportunities in New York City at the time, that was the Instagram. Right?
20:00That was the content play. Read the magazine and then whatever. You put it on Facebook.
20:05Right? Yeah. And then once Instagram came out, I said, okay, wow.
20:09Let me see if I can position myself as the fit restaurateur. I didn't wanna just be the restaurateur.
20:15I wanted to I was getting really fit, and I was training at Tone House. I don't know if you guys ever heard of that place. It's probably the hardest workout spot
20:21in New York. It's insane. It's
20:24wild. And if you trained at Tone House and you wore the hat in the street in New York during that time, people would be like, oh, word?
20:32Yeah, yeah. Totally. This guy gets it.
20:34This guy trains. Yeah. And that's when we were talking about before we started filming, there
20:38was no real fitness in New York then. I mean, people, you went to a big box gym and that's it. You didn't have all these boutique studios.
20:44Yeah, yeah, had Crunch Fitness probably and And stuff like Toenails sparked that, and Barry's came into play. So I went to a Nike event where they were super smart when we started doing this in 2012, maybe '11.
20:56They would bring a bunch of people together at Pier 40 on the rooftop, and they would shoot a whole turf workout with Tone House. But they'd have drones and photographers on-site.
21:05And they would get you that those pictures. You couldn't post videos, and there was no stories at the time. Alright?
21:10This is crazy. This is crazy. This is OG stuff.
21:12Like terrible filter stuff. This is like really bare bones Bare bones IG. No carousels either.
21:16No carousel. One photo, and that's it.
21:19Grainy with a filter. Yeah. Grainy and you hoped your hashtag worked.
21:22Yeah. I don't even know if they did work. Yeah.
21:23But whatever. So they would give you the content that night with hopes that people would post. Now, don't know if people did, but I was like, fuck, I'm in incredible shape right now.
21:31And I was like the OG guy to wear tights with no shorts back in the day, no shirt, and people were like, who is this guy? And I was just always very comfortable and confident that I was like, fuck it. I'm gonna roll like this cause more people that are gonna hate are gonna be following and whatever.
21:45Smart. So we went to this shoot or this this workout and I did a like a a jump in the air and I was higher than everyone and they snapped it perfectly. I And was like, fuck, this is a dope photo.
21:57I'm gonna post it on Instagram in the morning and I'm gonna put some cheesy caption and say, rule number one, don't be number two. And I got like maybe 300 likes. And I was like, oh, shit.
22:07300 people like this? This is really cool. So I called up my best friend Chris Carrow, who's a photographer.
22:12I was like, meet me on the East Side. I have all these tights, bro. We're gonna do a corny workout shoot on the turf, running the track, playing soccer.
22:20I love that. Right? And he was like, really, bro?
22:22And I was like, don't make fun of Yeah. Just fucking meet me there Just support it. At the sunrise Uh-huh.
22:27And you're gonna shoot me running around. Yeah. And he's like, okay.
22:30Told him no questions. Yeah. You just have to meet me.
22:32Telling your boy like meet me, I got seven pairs of tights is crazy. Yeah, know. Right?
22:35So he was like, I'm down, bro. Let's do it. Yeah.
22:38Yeah. The group chat, everyone's making fun of me. But we
22:41did it, and then I started posting more of those quotes on top of these photos, like, you couldn't even do any of that, like, in the captions, and it started picking up, started picking up. Nike started liking it. All these things.
22:51Next you know, I'm getting invited to a Nike event, an Adidas event. All these different pop ups. And then next thing you know, men's health
22:59hits me up from someone who saw this and was like, hey, can you be on a cover? Come to this shoot. And once that happened, I was like, oh, this is for real.
23:06Right. And then that men's health cover turned into meeting the CEO of MX who then did a hospitality
23:14Christmas event at my bar. Then I was like, oh my god, dude. I can get all these fitness people to come to the bar and do their parties.
23:21And then I was getting more press and more press and more press. And then Instagram slowly developed.
23:27Right? And then everyone was getting involved Yeah. In And then it was like, okay, I have a five year Volvo deal.
23:31That's And when like the new XC 90 came out, when the new body style. And they let me wrap it in green, and then I did that. And
23:39all these things started popping up. And then that's when I, you know, I ended up leaving in 2018, the restaurant business.
23:45But we did events better than anybody, and I was on the forefront of doing that. So then I was like, dude, can create a fitness company and learn I learned so much on that five year journey of Instagram that I could just replicate it now with HBOT.
23:59Right. And we got David Goggins to our first summit, and then I was like, I could just crush so much content UGC wise Mhmm. And all these brands are gonna wanna dance with us because we were the first people to do it.
24:09And that's peak David Goggins era too. Yeah. That was the first, like, you could DM him and he would DM you back.
24:14Yeah. That was like Oh. First Rogan episode.
24:16Yeah. So I DM'd him. He got back to me and he was like, hey, speak to my
24:20manager who was his fiancee. And funny story, like, we got on a call
24:26and I didn't have a company really. I made it up. I was like, I have a company.
24:29I wanna do an event in May. And she was like, alright, send me your deck. So I
24:33immediately when I left the restaurant Go make the deck. I called my girl. I was like, yo, please make me a deck.
24:38She made me a deck. I sent it over. She's like, he'll do it.
24:40It's gonna be $50 for him to speak for an hour, which is like insane now.
24:46I would do that all day now. He's probably like, what, 500? Think $1.50 or $1.75 for an hour.
24:50And she's like, yeah, he'll do it. Hop on a call with you and talk through it with him.
24:54I was like, what the fuck is going on? Yeah. And then I wired the money and my wife didn't
24:59know I started a new business and that's a whole another story, but Yeah. Yeah. We did it.
25:02HOOKSo I I think It's for me gone. You know, any advice I could give people is like, you know, you have to be as confident as you possibly can and people are going to judge you no matter what. And 99
25:16HOOKSo I'd rather have everyone thinks they want me to fail and not do well. People almost never punch down. Right?
25:30HOOKsee what we were able to do on the HPLT side and the reach side, and kinda just took off from there. Yeah.
25:36Because I mean, that's actually one of the first times that I saw your stuff was when you did the the collab with Kane. Yeah. And so
25:43So we launched Kane. Right. Like, my we launched Kane at HPLT in 2021.
25:48Oh, wow. Rob Pinnell, the best lacrosse player ever, who's my best friend, was like, hey, you gotta meet this guy, John Gags. Yeah.
25:55He's a legend. Meet him at The OG. We met at a diner in Westchester.
25:59Oh. And he was like, dude, I have this shoe. What do you think about it?
26:02Was like, it reminds me of Crocs. And he's like, yeah, exactly. But we're better than Crocs.
26:06And I was like, I can help you do this. He's like, really? I'm like, yeah, dude.
26:09Have a summit coming up in May in Miami. Uh-huh. And I'll have all the right people there.
26:14I have Eric Hinman there, all these right people. Give everyone pairs of shoes. You're gonna speak with your designer,
26:21and I'm gonna blow this up for you. Yeah. He's like, really?
26:22I'm like, yep. So, he came. We blew it up for him.
26:25So, pretty much every athlete I brought to the table for them. Matt Choi, Nick Baer,
26:32Eric Hinman Yeah. The list goes on. That all came through HPLT and our network, and these are all friends.
26:37And John's a very good friend of mine, and Yeah. I was like, dude, if you trust me, I will funnel you the right people, then you take it from here and I don't need to, like Yeah. Do anything from there.
26:44Do you think I'm curious if you think that playbook is like as effective in 2026 as it was in 2021. I think it will always be effective.
26:53Yeah. Because people need to trust the people behind the brand. If you can build that brand loyalty, you'll always do well.
27:00Yeah. And that's why I think HPLT has been so successful over the past eight years is the amount of speakers we bring in, the brands that we bring in, people know that we really believe in them and we trust them. Yeah.
27:09I do agree. And they come and like, look what we we did the same thing with athletic brewing, you know, in 2018 when we we launched in
27:16LA with Seal Team Six and stuff, like, they were the logo on the shorts. Right. And then, I'm not saying we helped them take off, but they believed in us to get that content out right away.
27:26Yeah. Looking at where the space is going from from the event side, what have you learned over the last, what has it been, eight years roughly?
27:34Putting on events, putting on experiences, putting on things that that have, like, these die hard followings. Because looking at where the landscape's going, all the brands are are starting to try to put in, like, these these in person experiences. Yeah.
27:46Especially everybody's talking about like this analog era and and we wanna like use digital to bring people together. Especially in the luxury side too. Brands
27:53now are doing experiential. They're getting away from strategic PR that they used to do. And you have like Moncler going on a ski trip.
27:59Yeah. Right? Like, does that all the time.
28:01Right? They they work with those brands and they do really cool stuff, which is brilliant. But what are some of the mistakes that you make that you can tell people now so that they don't make the same mistakes as they're trying to lean into this?
28:11Yeah. Because those mistakes probably could cost $50,100,000 dollars. It costs so much money, and and you can ask my partner Melissa on this shit.
28:17I'm the cheapest guy ever with this stuff, so I'm very strategic with it. But I think no matter what, our brains now are so wired to consume consume consume consume. Right?
28:26It could be good, it could be bad, and people's attention span is is shot. I mean, mine's shot. I can even, like, what did I just look at?
28:33I forget. Right? For sure.
28:34So brands have to understand that people are gonna consume the info no matter what, but that just that just means that they're digesting it. They're just taking it in, what are they gonna do with that?
28:44What we've done a very good job that I had to learn along the way is people need to really be impacted by the surrounding network and people that are part of the event. I never wanted it to be about me when they go to the events.
28:58If you ask anyone, I'm actually kind of standoffish at the events because I want the brand and the network to speak for itself. When you make it too much about the founder, it's only gonna have a I believe it's gonna have a shorter shelf life because
29:13what happens if something goes wrong with the founder? Doesn't interact. Doesn't interact, or there's gonna be something or whatever.
29:20So if the brand has that loyalty and the network of the people are really the brand, I think it will go super far. Now, we just spoke about Moncler.
29:28They're gonna be fine. They have so much more money than I have in this stuff. Right?
29:33But when they do their events, it's not about the founder of Moncler. It's about the experience and what they're doing and the people that are going to the summit.
29:41So we're very intentional with who comes to the summit because we want people to have no ego. We want people to really interact with each other. And there's so many people that have become best friends, have invested in each other's businesses together
29:55by coming to our summits. And I think that is where they're consuming the information, but they're also have an action plan to do something with it after.
30:03What what are some of those ways you go about making an experience more memorable for your guests? Well, no matter what we always do, whenever we're by a body of water, we bring in Navy SEALs. And I think no matter what,
30:15I always have to do that, a, because I love doing it. I love to suffer in the cold water with everyone. Okay.
30:19But there is nothing like that in these summits or experiences that are people doing. Right.
30:24Right? So it's two hours. You're getting waterboarded.
30:28You're doing everything as a group. You are with Navy SEALs that have been in the craziest situations. Willingly getting waterboarded.
30:34Willingly getting waterboarded. And it's really uncomfortable for two hours. But I think it gives you a huge reality check
30:41when you're done. You're like, oh my god. Yeah.
30:43There's so much more I can give. Life isn't that bad. Exactly.
30:46And that really sets the tone for the weekend because the camaraderie between everyone is just so on fire. And then we take them through, you know, a mind body soul journey throughout the whole weekend, but that sets off the tone. So you do that at the beginning of the event?
30:57We do it right away. So people don't know each other yet.
31:01They're still a little standoffish, but then it's like, alright dude, I don't know you, but I have to hold your arm right now and we're gonna get smacked in a 40 degree wave together. I can let you go. Yeah.
31:10And by the end of that session, I'm like, dude, when am I coming to visit you in Austin? You just saved your life.
31:16Yeah. Basically. It's so crazy.
31:18You're like, dude, you're my man. You're my man now. Right?
31:20So, I think it's super unique and You just immediately make them trauma bond? Yeah. It's like, you're immediately hooked.
31:26That sounds brilliant. Right? And then you go throughout the next couple hours, and then you do breath work, and you're tapping into your inner child issues Yeah.
31:34And you're crying together. Do y'all do Hof?
31:37We don't do Wim Hof. We do hypno breath work with Francesca. This this woman out in LA who's wonderful, who's been to all of our summits.
31:44So we try try to make every experience inside of the summits where you have to second guess your life at some point, where you're like, maybe I should do that, maybe I shouldn't do that.
31:56I mean, I've I've had people leave the summits and within an hour be like, I just quit my job for fifteen years. Thank you. And I'm like or guys like,
32:05I'm not getting married now. I just bought a I just rented a new home and I literally just texted my fiance that it's over. And now, I'm not saying that's what we try to do, but it's so impactful for people that they're like It's a mindset shift.
32:18It's a it's totally They see life through completely different lines yeah. You're getting the dopest gear as well. Right?
32:24Like, you're getting the new Solomon Run shoes, you're getting all this stuff, you're you're feeling fly, you're doing all these different activations. Come out that motherfucker a new man. Yeah.
32:32You're like never looked so good. You gotta start giving haircuts while they're I know. I can't.
32:36Give them a pair of tights. So I think that's what we really try to do.
32:39It's worked really well, and the brands that come in, the founders that speak really We always tell the founders, we we want you to kinda be here for the whole summit so you can really get close to the people because then they'll be lifers. Now, you already know we are super skeptical on this show about most AI tools promising the world.
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33:35I've never thought about that where the very interesting point to think about the first thing that you do almost as like a hook. Something that gets everybody very connected because like I don't know if you guys listened to the Rogan and it was Ben Affleck, Matt Damon episode Yes. Where he's talking about like it's Hollywood has shifted, how they film has shifted, how they come up with movies.
33:52Because they know people's attention speeds are cut. So they have to make Yeah. They were talking about the movie, the new movie that they just put out, don't know why I can't remember the name.
33:59On J. K. Merriman?
34:00The first five seconds, right, somebody gets popped right in the first five seconds. Every show right now, someone just gets shot in the head immediately. And then it goes into like storyline, and then they break it down on the Rogan episode
34:11where it's like, well, Netflix has to do that now because if not, they they got the data that people are gonna be scrolling, they're trying to find something else to watch. Not that that could happen at an event, but if you think about the first event where not the Shoot them in the fucking face immediately. Yeah.
34:26But you think about the first event as, okay, we need to get them to buy in and be Yes. Completely submerged and immersed into this experience.
34:35Through the first event, the first thing that we do, that's a very interesting Yeah. And we
34:40did yeah. And we did that in Antigua, so we did a summit overseas. And
34:45Kaj Larsen, who's an incredible Navy SEAL, I was like, dude, I honestly wanna do the Navy SEAL activation after dinner the first night. He's like, really?
34:54In the dark? I'm like, yeah. He's like, okay.
34:57Say no more. So he he ate quickly and went out in the ocean and was like floating by the boats.
35:05And we had everyone eat and we're like, okay. First activation starts now. Go to your room, change.
35:08We're down here in five minutes. And I saw grown men extremely extremely nervous to get into the ocean in the middle of the night.
35:16I mean, I I was hurt actually, so I didn't have to do it, thank God. And I do all the activations with everyone, so I still love this. That's why I really do it, because I get to just fucking train with awesome people.
35:25And
35:27he was at the boats floating, and people are on the beach lined up, and he comes out of the water. He swims in his Speedo, comes out in flippers. He's like, I'm Lieutenant Kaj Larson,
35:38blah blah blah blah. And people are like, oh my God. He's like, get in the water, swim around those boats, and come back.
35:42And people are like but again, after that moment Yeah.
35:47People feel like superheroes. And then the weekend flows so perfectly because people are bought in. People see that the leaders are bought in, and they're like, I can't let you down.
35:56I can't let you down. I have to train hard this week, and I have to be dialed in throughout all the seminars. Yeah.
36:01And it's really incredible that the it's you become a team. I was just saying, you made me think of a complete other side of it where there's probably so much affinity built into HPLT because of
36:13how you make them feel at the end of, you know, how however many days you guys put them through through the ringer where if they come in feeling like, oh, I'm anxious or I deal with, you know, I don't have confidence in the work area. But then, like you said, they leave that experience feeling like a superhero.
36:29That changes their whole life, but it also is they're gonna know the friend that's dealing with something and go right to like, Yo, Brian. Yeah. You can do it.
36:35You should definitely do this. And like, you have this word-of-mouth engine referral is huge us.
36:40Like, we don't even market really that much. Yeah. I put almost kinda has to come in through a referral.
36:45Yeah. Because, you know, if if you're new to this and I post the Navy SEAL workout and you see Ray Cash screaming at you to get in the water, you're gonna be like, I don't I don't know if I'm gonna do that.
36:55Yeah. Then I have to convince you to do it, right, on a call Which is which I don't want. So I'm like, hey, dude.
37:00Reach out to your homie. I know you you told me he's going through some stuff. I'll even discount him $500 till he comes.
37:05Yeah. Right? And he's like, really?
37:07And they come and like, you saved my life. I've I've heard that so many times and I'm like, I didn't do anything, dude. The Navy SEALs did that.
37:13I just put you in that room. And I think that's the key of real leadership, especially for coaches and and anyone in this world is if you want anything to be successful that you are part of with a bunch of different people, you have as a leader, you have to put them in the right room.
37:28Yeah. Totally. I wrote about this in the newsletter the other day.
37:31It's like a water bottle. Right? A water bottle at CVS is $2.
37:34A water bottle at the airport is $7. A water bottle at the Met game is $12. Same water bottle, just different prices, but different environments.
37:42Right? Look at I don't know if you guys watch soccer or Champions League, Elise and Harry Kane and Diaz right now at Bayern Munich.
37:50Harry Kane didn't win anything at Tottenham, nothing. Left, now he just won back to back and he might probably win Ballon d'Or. Wow.
37:58Michael Elyse, Crystal Palace, didn't really value him. Man City cut him as a kid. Now he's on Bayern Munich and arguably the best player or winger in the world.
38:06Yeah. I like him better than Yamal. I mean, Sam You could fight fight me on that.
38:10Sam Darnold. Sam Darnold just won a Super Bowl after being And look at Diaz, who's on Liverpool, left and went to Bayern Munich. Now, these guys are gonna probably win Champions League.
38:17They're all gonna crush in the World Cup. Same players. Same exact style of players, different environment, different coach.
38:25Right? So as a leader, you have to put people in the right room for them to be successful. Yeah.
38:30So I would actually like all the CEOs that of their their employees that come to my summit, send me a nice thank you because I make them so much sharper. Right? Because they're around steak knives all day for those three weekends.
38:40They're not around butter knives. They're around steak knives. They're getting sharp, and they're learning how to be weapons,
38:45and they go back and apply those tools with confidence. And confidence is the best tool in order to be successful in my opinion.
38:50You can even say the same thing about LeBron. Right? Like LeBron going from
38:54Cleveland to Miami, getting in the right room with Wade and Pat Riley Of course. Completely shifts who he was as a player then comes right back to Cleveland, wins it. Right?
39:02It's a complete shift. And the way he did it might have not been For sure. Awesome.
39:07Questionable rollout. Questionable rollout. Well, he wasn't in the room yet.
39:09But he was in the room, man. He got real sharp. They got sharp.
39:13You were a hospitality entrepreneur. Yeah. You got your start in the bar space.
39:16That's obviously struggling quite a bit. And then now you're a fitness kinda experiential entrepreneur. Like,
39:24what do you think happens next in this bar industry? Like, how does a bar or a member's club or some sort of hospitality experience replicate what you just said, which is like that first interaction is so strong that they build massive affinity
39:39for your establishment. Like, how does someone do that? Well, first and foremost, back in the day when we were doing the restaurant world, like,
39:47you could drink and do drugs and it was fine. Yeah. Yeah.
39:49Right? Like, there was Societally. Societally.
39:52It was like totally fine. Now, I think in the in the space of all all of these podcasts and information that people are getting Yeah.
40:00The wellness industrial complex. It's kind of like forcing it down your throat now in a way of saying like, wow, I shouldn't have a glass of wine or I shouldn't be drinking.
40:09Look at look what it's doing to my life. Huberman told me it'll kill me. Exactly.
40:12So we were at a we were at a over in Little Italy yesterday, we were having dinner and the guy's just like the wait the waiter's just like playing with my daughter the whole night and like being really sweet with her.
40:22At the end of the night, brings shots and He was like, hey, you guys drink? Was like, yeah, I'll take like a shot. Well, the first thing Tommy said is like, I can't take a shot.
40:28It'll ruin my sleep score. I was like, no, dude. Right?
40:31So now, in a way it's like, in a way that's good, but then in a way it's also not good, right, because you kinda have to live a little and you're over optimizing So I I understand that. But I think people are more hyper aware now of everything that they're doing Yeah.
40:44And how it can affect your sleep score and your longevity and how you look and how you act. And again, people wanna be cultish and be a certain way, right, so they follow the wave. Of course.
40:52Now, restaurants, you know, when we did Ainsworth, we created experiences. Right?
40:57We were the Sunday fun day kings. We were the first people to really have a DJ during Sunday football.
41:03Right. We had bottle service at noon on Sunday.
41:06Electric. On it was crazy. So we we created that experience for people.
41:09We had celebrities and athletes and all of that stuff all around. So, again, restaurants now are still they're gonna have to get creative and they're gonna have to create experiences within the restaurants.
41:20Now, New York City is crazy because rents are so high, and especially the new mayor and everything is kind of wild. It's the Wild Wild West now.
41:28I don't know if restaurants are gonna be able to get that creative on their their budget and their cash flow. Yeah. Because you have rainy days, you have bad days, it crushes you Yeah.
41:36As a restaurateur. Yeah. But then you look at it like
41:40I think Vegas is even getting affected by all of this. Right? Vegas is the poster child.
41:44Yeah. Now now look what they're doing. You're to Aspen, you're going to ski resorts,
41:47and you have a not Avicii, I just saw him. He just passed away. The anniversary.
41:52You get David Guetta Right. Coming to Aspen Yeah.
41:56To perform on a ski weekend. Gamble on your never happened. So people are seeking different locations
42:02for experiences. Right? But that's where the restaurants need to get really creative
42:07and follow to these different locations and do pop ups and do all these things to stay relevant. Because they're not gonna be able to hang along in these environments anymore because people aren't drinking as much.
42:17People are training more and people are buying into their health. So especially with like seed oils and all of these things, like, does this have seed oils on it? Like, dude, you you did cocaine like Yeah.
42:28Weeks a week You worry about seed oils. Right? It's nuts.
42:31So I think people need to kind of slow down with that. But restaurants, I feel like, definitely have to change their environment and their landscape people aren't eating out the way they used to be and they're not drinking the way they used to be.
42:41Do you think members clubs, like there's this massive bubble here. Yeah. You know, and and you're in New York City, right?
42:48So the amount of wealth is Yeah. Unmatched. Right.
42:51So you can do that here. But in other cities, maybe one or two max. Right.
42:56Maybe one. Yeah. But people wanna be exclusive.
42:59People wanna show again their experiences on their phone and I'm cooler than you. I could go to this I could do that. I got access to this.
43:05I got access, you don't. Right? And that's just the that's the world we live in.
43:09Dave Grumman was on a podcast recently and he said He's on Mark was he on Mark Brazil's podcast? Yeah.
43:15And he he came out and said, the quickest way to make sure someone never comes back to your bar is to give them a VIP card because then they don't have like the illusion that I might not be able to get Right? The Yeah.
43:27Like if if I don't know if I can get the place then like I probably wanna go more rather than, oh, that's my like default. That's my go to.
43:36And he said he keeps that exact mentality through all of his different restaurants. Yeah. And then, you know, you have these run clubs that are super popular.
43:42Right? Especially in Austin and New York and here. And it's like, I can't drink tonight because I have to
43:47super fly for my run club tomorrow. Yeah. I get it.
43:51But I think restaurants are in for a rude awakening. Yeah. I mean, they they barely survived COVID.
43:56Right? That landscape changed everything now. People drank a lot during COVID and they were like, oh my god, I have a drinking problem now.
44:02And they got out of it. But restaurants are it's gonna be tough. I think a restaurant could solve its problems by just reverse engineering what works on social media.
44:10Right? So, like, if you have we talked about extremism earlier. Like, if you have an extreme steak.
44:15I used to do the mac and cheeseburger challenge. Don't even know if you guys know Like, dude, this is crazy. So I created a burger called the mac and cheeseburger.
44:21So it's a burger, panko mac and cheese that was frozen, then got fried, so then you had that mac and cheese on top. Yeah.
44:28And then mac and cheese on top of that. I But was like, oh, this is dope.
44:31It's going viral on like infatuation and all these things. But was like, fuck. It's not enough.
44:36So let's do three burgers on top of each other. And whoever can eat this burger in forty five minutes without throwing up gets like $750. Yeah.
44:42It's like man versus yeah. Yeah. Kobayashi came and did three of them Oh my in a row and didn't throw up.
44:49So was that nine total burgers? That was nine total burgers. It was Eight pounds of mac and cheese.
44:53Eight pounds of mac and cheese. Was this big. What does it call?
44:55He ate all of it, so he was dipping it in water and eating it, but it was a huge social moment. Then, the food god who I've known forever through the hospitality industry, Jonathan Chebbin, I saw him out when my my son was like one.
45:06He was passing my bar and he was like, yo dude, let's do something together. Yeah. So we created 24 karat gold wings.
45:11Do you guys remember that? So I created that with him, and then that went viral. I think we won like the PR awards during that time because
45:18we had 24 karat gold wings that were a thousand dollars and you got a bottle of Ace of Spades with it. Right? So we partnered with that and we and people were like, dude.
45:27So we were doing this stuff. It's I remember it's so crazy. Casey Nystat Yeah.
45:31Right? The OG YouTuber, calls my phone one day.
45:34I'm like, hello? He's like, it's Casey. I'm like, Casey who?
45:37And he's like, he tells me, and I'm like, oh, what's up? He's like, dude, heard you got those wings. He's like, I got a drone flying out of your bar on 3rd On 3rd Avenue right now.
45:45Can I come in? I'm like, yeah. Cops come because there's a drone.
45:47You can't have drones in New York City. And then he shot this whole thing on YouTube for us for free. Yeah.
45:53And it went nuts. Was this when he was blogging everything everything. And he's in there eating the the 24 cow gold wings, wants to know how that's made, and all that stuff.
46:02I mean, were terrible, but it was a they were brutal. Yeah.
46:06But it was a huge PR. So, yeah, you have to do things that are wild Yeah. Right, to get people indoors.
46:13Just like when you're creating a clothing brand, right? You need to is short lived, but your other products and your foundation have to be gnarly.
46:19Right. They gotta work. But it's like now the low is higher.
46:22Yeah. Right? Like you go to an extreme high, the low is here, you're now like right in here.
46:26Yeah. You can like Right? We're we're a t shirt brand.
46:30That's our, you know, simple pleasures. All of our t shirts are made in The US. That's our bread and butter.
46:34We sell the most of But we're we're doing like really cool novelty pieces which get traffic into the site. Totally.
46:41You gotta do the we're doing a cool jean jacket. Like, we would never really make that. But people are like, dude, that's I we did these shorts for the World Cup.
46:48I posted it the other day on social. I mean, was the most I've ever received from people regarding the clothing brand. But,
46:55now our t shirts are selling more because people are going to the site. Yeah. You gotta bring the traffic up.
46:58So It's like if you're gonna buy the denim, you're gonna look for the thing that matches, and you might as well look for where you're already searching. Yep. Like, clubs are cool.
47:06Right? If you wanna be a runner, it's awesome. You get good fitness because there's hot chicks at it, the guys are gonna go.
47:10Yeah. It definitely helps. Definitely.
47:12But I think, like, everything you've kinda touched on so far is you you truly understand how to, like, make whether it's macro experiences or micro experiences like the 24 carat wings, to get people to talk about it and to get buzz about it and to almost like understand the infrastructure that people wanna pull out their phones and and and put that out there, show that they can do that.
47:31Whether it's a status symbol of like, hey, I completed the mac and cheeseburger challenge, or b, you know, 24 carat wings, or even like down to the Navy Seals, like I was water bordered by a Navy Seal at night. Yeah. And like, you know, the most wild part is like the mothers and the women that come and do the Navy Seal stuff are they love it.
47:47I feel like they get more out of it because their kids see, wow, mom just did this. Mhmm.
47:52And that's what they talk about. Yeah. Like my kids think I'm cool now.
47:55My kids know I'm strong. My my kids know I can do this. So for me, that's a huge win.
47:59Right? So anyone who does an AV seal activation is immediately on social right after.
48:04And we turn around content within hours. That's our other thing. I've and I've always done that for brands.
48:09We shoot and we get it to you. Yeah. And that's cheat code.
48:11Right? If anyone's listening out there. If you could do that with good people mean, he knows a lot of the people that we worked with back in the day.
48:17Boom boom boom, content out. So if you can get people to go to content right away that's edited and easy for them to post Yeah. They feel so cool and they say they just did the names.
48:24Of course. Yeah. Wasn't that a big transition for you on the growth of HBOT?
48:28Because it started just as mostly males. Right? Yeah.
48:30And then you added in females and them being able to do it as well. Was that like a big growth spurt for you? Yeah.
48:36Was hard because my wife's like, women are not gonna wanna do the Navy SEAL stuff. And I'm like, I don't know if that's necessarily true. Women are actually tougher than men with this stuff.
48:43They don't complain. The men complain the most during the Navy SEAL. Women just deal with it.
48:48We have to introduce it to them. Right? So that was you know, in the beginning when you start a business, you rely on the homies.
48:53Right. I told all my friends, you have to come buy a ticket. Yeah.
48:55Like, support my business. And they did that, and then it turned into, oh my god, this is real. This is really impactful.
49:01And then it's like, hey, can I bring my wife? My wife wants to join in. And then that's how it really started with with people bringing their spouses,
49:07and then their spouses bringing their friends. Yeah. Something you've talked about a lot is like being a dad and just like you're very family oriented.
49:15Yeah. Like, has that kind of been a superpower for you in growing your business? Yeah.
49:19I think so because first and foremost, like, stopped drinking ten years ago because I'd never wanted my kids to see me have a drink.
49:25And I was like, I don't I always wanna be in control and not that drinking is terrible, but I just don't want them to know that's how I I roll. And I always never want them to see me tired and I never want them to outwork me. Right?
49:36I like, I will will die on the track when my son beats me in a in a mile. Like, it's just not gonna happen.
49:43Like Okay. Right? And we and my son's eight years old, and he runs a six twenty, and I'm like, alright, bro.
49:46Like, we're gonna That's disgusting. We're gonna cook. That's great.
49:49And he's not in a run club. Yeah. And he doesn't do high rocks.
49:51Don't need one. Don't need any one of those.
49:53Yeah. Me and him are the run club. Yeah.
49:54But fatherhood for me allows me to check myself in saying, okay, how good can I really get as a human being?
50:03And how what what line can I ride there of being as strong as I could be, as fit as I could be, as emotionally supportive for them, be their dad and best friend? How can I juggle all of that?
50:13So I think for me it's it's been a really fun ride in that sense of, okay, you know, you want your kids to be good athletes. I have two boys, and I want them to fall in love with sport because not that they're gonna go pro with it, but sports are so important for their professional life.
50:28Mhmm. Right? If I want them to learn how to fail, learn how to win, learn what grit really means.
50:32Working with people. Work with people. Be a good teammate, because when you go get your job, I need you to be liked here.
50:38Like, likability is huge. And I find what I do is super important for them to see me do it. So I'm going for a run.
50:47It's gonna be 10 miles, I'll be back. Wow, you ran 10 miles, you're dripping wet. I'm going for a lift, I'll be back.
50:53Daddy, your muscles, your arms. Yeah, guys, you can look like this if you do this. I need them to see me intentionally suffering every single day.
51:01That has transcended them into understanding. They're six and eight, and we have accountability calendars.
51:07They're doing their push ups. They're making their bed. They're doing all these things which are structure
51:12for them so when they get when they don't need daddy anymore, they could thrive. And
51:17I think for me that's my greatest it's always gonna be my greatest work. When I see them performing in sport and doing really well, I'm just like, dude, it's it's incredible. You know, when my we we test our mile four times a year in our soccer club,
51:30and my son went from an eight sixteen to a six twenty one in like seven months. And we film it, I film it, and yeah, it's cool content, but it's
51:40the internal dialogue with him of him believing in himself is so crazy. Yeah.
51:45It's pretty cool to see too. It's so cool. Like, dude, you can do look what you just did.
51:49Yeah. It hurts. It's gonna hurt.
51:50Right? I always talk about it, like, I need you to taste a little blood today. Like, you're gonna taste the blood.
51:54You taste the blood, dude, it's gonna be fine. Taste too much blood, it's not gonna be good. Yeah.
51:58So I I have them taste the blood a little bit often Yeah.
52:02So they can continue to go. I'm curious to to hear your POV from this because like when I was younger and I was playing football, like, the NFL was my singular goal.
52:10I'm guessing you had very similar, like you had a goal playing professionally, etcetera, and you
52:16didn't probably think you could be more driven than that scenario. And then you have kids and you're like, wow, I'm doing everything times 10. Like, I'm more driven because of Yeah.
52:25This little human being that I Like you said, I never want them to see me tired. I
52:30always gonna do things like they're watching me as I I do. Has your mindset or even like intensity
52:38has shifted because of your kids? Yeah. I I just feel like I never wanna turn off for them.
52:44I'll never say no to them when they wanna do anything outside, ever. My dad never said no to me.
52:49Dad, I wanna run routes. Okay. Let's go.
52:51I wanna take ground balls. Okay. I wanna do pop ups.
52:53Okay. Okay. Okay.
52:54Yo, let's go. I take them everywhere I go. You wanna go to Europe?
52:57Let's go to Europe for a game. You wanna go to the grocery store? Let's go to the grocery store.
52:59And we always roll like that because I feel like it's so important to have this type of relationship with your kids, boy or girl. Because they need to know that they're in a safe space, but they also and and my kids are really great at this and I don't know why. But I talked to them with coach hat and dad hat.
53:14So when we ran that six twenty one mile, I said, you could do better. I'm not happy with your time as a coach.
53:23Hold on a second. Let me put my dad hat. I am so proud of you, bro.
53:25That was great. You crushed it. But as a coach, you could do better.
53:28Know you He's like, I know I could do better. And then he understood us down, dude, I'm so proud of you. Like, you crushed that.
53:33And if I can live in those both worlds with them, I feel like the sky is the limit for them. And they understand it with schoolwork, they understand it with work ethic, but doing well on things.
53:45So, yeah. I I can't turn off. I don't wanna turn off.
53:47I wanna You know, I'm playing in TST, soccer tournament, the million dollar tournament on May 25. Oh. Is that like TBT?
53:54TST. Yeah. Same guys.
53:55Own it. Yeah. So, that tournament is is really wild.
53:59Yeah. I'm broken in batter, like, my body should not be going out there. Yeah.
54:02But I have they have to see me play. Like, I will Yeah. It's like Take any injury after I'm gonna do it, like Yeah.
54:08I have they have to see me touch a ball Yeah. In real setting. Yeah.
54:12Sign up for Arena Football after this. Right.
54:14I know. Have to see Run through a brick wall. You 35 or whatever Yeah.
54:19They be saying. You know, they have to see you It's do hard so important.
54:22And I think it translates back to why Lifetime wanted to buy HVLT and why HVLT works when parents come so they can look little Johnny, look what I did with these Navy SEALs. You know who the Navy SEALs are? Yeah.
54:32And mommy, you did that? Oh, look, I did a 10 mile run or do it did a trail run. Like, wow.
54:39Yeah. So I think it's way more than the content for the personal person. It's it's it's such a it's such an evolution of what why these people wanna come.
54:49They they just open up and they become so much sharper as human beings. So as long as I can continue to give that to people, I think this brand can go on forever. And I hope Lifetime wants to continue to keep it going as we're doing it.
55:02Yeah. Well, dude, Brian, that was awesome, bro. Thank you.
55:05And I'm a huge fan of you guys. You know, this is first time we met, but I've, you know, we've Yeah, of course. We've kicked it before.
55:10But you guys are doing awesome. Your content is great. Love how you highlight people.
55:13It's very, very cool. Yeah. Well, tell them where to find you, where to support our Yeah.
55:17You guys could just find me on Instagram at brianmaza. Thank you so much for all the support. Come to HPLT if you wanna get water boarded.
55:24It's really not that bad. It's super fun. You're in New York now, you have no excuse.
55:27If you're around here May 14 I need that footage. You might be drowning. I need that video.
55:31I'm gonna be bobbing, dude. I'm so cooked. But keep doing what you guys are doing.
55:34It's super cool, and I know you guys have a ton of fans. Man. Thanks.
55:37Thank you.
— full transcript
§ 05 · For Joe
The room is the product, not the content inside it.
WHAT TO LEARN
Every lesson in this conversation traces back to one principle: the environment you design determines the person someone becomes inside it — and that applies to events, brands, leadership, and parenting.
- A corporate buyer cannot acquire culture — they can only acquire the person who built it. If your community loyalty is strong enough, acquisition becomes the only option available to them.
- The first experience at any gathering is the most consequential design decision. Shared discomfort between strangers creates trust bonds faster than any icebreaker, speaker, or swag bag.
- Keeping a brand bigger than its founder is not humility — it is survival insurance. Brands whose identity lives in the network rather than one person outlast leadership changes, scandals, and burnout.
- The referral engine fires hardest when someone feels like a superhero. People do not refer friends out of loyalty; they refer because they want credit for the transformation they helped create.
- Turning around polished content within hours of an emotional peak — not days later — is the difference between attendees who post and attendees who mean to post.
- Extreme or novel things generate the foot traffic that sells your core product. The food challenge and the $1,000 gold wings drove traffic to everything else on the menu.
- The same player in the wrong environment stagnates; the same player in the right environment wins championships. This is the water bottle principle applied to talent management.
- Personal brand built before the business brand makes the business brand easier to launch — the compounding only works when neither one consumes the other.
- Demonstrating the standard you expect, not just describing it, is the only leadership philosophy that actually transfers. People copy what they see, not what they are told.
- Sobriety made ten years ago as a quiet personal choice and a wellness-trend identity adopted years later are not the same thing — one comes from conviction, the other from aesthetics.
