[00:00:00] I have like an expectation of performance. So if you’re not hitting that expectation. Then I, I think I let you know by not being interested, you know, rather than, you know, because most of the athletes have worked with my career, I would say that’s kind of a common thread amongst them. Like you don’t need to beat them up because as soon as they sense that they’re off-targets, like they are already mad at themselves. So getting like bringing that further is never productive or hasn’t been a strategy for me.
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Jesse: [00:01:28] Welcome to the Smart Athlete Podcast. I’m your host Jesse Funk. My guest today is the founder and CEO of REPerformance. He’s been a strength coach for nearly 20 years, working at the Olympic level, the NHL level, that’s hockey. If you can’t hear me pronounce things right. He’s been with youth. He’s worked on Team Canada’s Special Olympics Powerlifting Coach. Welcome to the show Callen McGibbon.
Callen: [00:01:57] Hey, Jesse, thanks very much for having me.
Jesse: [00:01:58] Yeah, thanks for coming on. I can imagine. I’ve had a number of coaches over my lifetime of training and a number of coaches when I was in school. And you kind of remind me a little bit of one of my first coaches, just as it’s very cool demeanor. You know, those are some coaches that are like real high energy all the time and that’s one coaching style. But I remember he was just a cool customer, I guess I would say. Like it would take a lot for him to say, get excited or like to yell at you.
[00:02:38] It would just be like, I’m a distance runner, so we would be like doing laps or whatever and just run around and be like, “Good job.” Just so you got to give me that those vibes, that demeanor, and I liked it very much. So I feel like you probably have maybe a similar presence with the youth that you work with.
Callen: [00:03:02] Yeah, I guess so. I very much. I have like an expectation of performance. So if you’re not hitting that expectation. Then I think I let you know by not being interested, you know, rather than, you know, because most of the athletes I’ve worked with in my career, I would say that’s kind of a common thread amongst them. Like you don’t need to beat them up because as soon as they sense that they’re off-targets, like they are already mad at themselves. So getting like bringing that further is never productive or hasn’t been a strategy for me. So I’ve always been just kind of like a cool, kind of calm, collective type presence.
[00:03:54] And then if there’s something that’s great, I’m like, Good job. I don’t get overly excited at times I do when there’s like big achievements. But I also don’t like to over-celebrate because it’s I always tell the athletes I work with, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. And what I mean by that is, is your career. You know, obviously there are certain sports that are distant sports in certain sports that are power sports and so on.
[00:04:18] But the career itself is a marathon, not a sprint. And if you get excited about little achievements or like everyday things, you know, you’ll quickly burn out because it doesn’t. It takes years. So I kind of just keep this kind of level spot and I like to be a level spot for the athlete or whoever I’m coaching. I like to be kind of on the level so that if things are going off-site in their lives, like I’m not all over the map, so they’re able to kind of bring stuff to me and know that I’m level-headed and I can talk about something that might be happening completely outside of the training session, right?
[00:05:00] Like at home, or maybe they’re new to parenthood or whatever, you know, maybe they’re thinking they’re going to lose their spot on a team or something, right? Like there’s all kinds of emotions. So if I’m pretty stable, then they’ll talk, right?
Jesse: [00:05:15] Yeah. You know, it makes me think about, like you mentioned, the kind of lack of negativity as a necessity for many of the athletes you’ve worked with and many athletes I’ve spoken with, from amateurs to Olympians, kind of say the same thing is like there’s plenty of self-motivation and I don’t know specifically with my show, it may be a matter of just like self-selection on who I’m able to talk to or invite to talk to me, I guess. But it seems like there’s plenty of motivation to perform. So it’s like you don’t you already knew you screwed up. You don’t need the piling on.
[00:05:59] But like it makes me think about the contrast between that and I’ll say like the mainstream idea about like a coach, I think. I don’t know. A whole lot about the inner workings of like hockey culture, but with the US. Football is a big thing and there’s this. There’s this like almost like iconoclastic figure of a football coach who’s just like berating his players about how horrible they are. And that’s the way to motivate them, like to get basically to get the coach to shut up.
[00:06:40] It’s like you’ve got to work hard enough for him to, like, stop telling you that you’re a piece of shit. And it’s like, is that — I just think about that the dichotomy between that right, is like it’s an entire shift between motivation by like cessation of that negativity versus positive reinforcement. Even just a little liquid with my coach, a little good job if you just get the lap right or whatever. And it just makes me wonder — Is it even possible to shift our cultural attitude? Towards your direction versus that more I guess common or thought of trait like tearing people down to make to build them back up.
Callen: [00:07:36] I think it’s a necessary shift in society. So as. You know, you watch generation to generation and their behaviors and trends and the way they deal with like challenges and and obstacles. I personally see that the generations coming are much more aware of their feelings. And they’ve been raised in that way because, you know, their parents were very like, you know, they were put in scenarios where they were maybe berated or torn down to be built up. And they didn’t like how it felt a lot of times, so and some maybe did, but I think the majority necessarily didn’t. And if I’m wrong, then this next generation, I don’t know where that behavior is coming from.
[00:08:30] So I don’t believe that I’m wrong from the standpoint of saying that, you know, I think 80% of youth involved in sports or athletics or whatever that are parents now are older now and like, let’s say the 40 to 55-year in range, I don’t think a lot of them felt like that was really beneficial, whether it would be in the home, in a parenting standpoint or in a coaching sports standpoint. So we raised kids that are much more aware of their feelings and we raise them by being aware of their feelings, ask them more questions about how they feel.
[00:09:03] And if you stay in that old guard coaching style, you’re not moving with the times and the kids are coming up and they’re much more aware of how they’re feeling and how they’re the way they act impacts those around them. And I would say that they’re much more just naturally anxious and they’re more prone to anxiety than my generation was.
[00:09:34] And, you know, and that’s their challenge when my generation had challenges, right? Their generation has challenges. And so as a coach, I want to try to adapt to that. And as a business leader, I want to try to adapt that as younger people come in through the company like you can’t I just lead them way different than I would have 15, 20 years ago. Now I’m maturing, but also they’re just different. They’re just they’re changing.
[00:10:01] So if the goal is to have for the people you’re with to achieve whatever they’ve come to you to achieve, whether it be somebody on Olympic team or somebody who’s coming to kind of just get in better shape, whatever the case may be, they’re already motivated, which you’ve alluded to. So you don’t want to turn that off ever. You want to keep that going strong, right? So you have to adapt and be able to speak to them in a way that they stay that way. Right? That they don’t get down. And that’s hard to hard to change. So for some people, like in coaching, it’s hard for them to think about doing it a different way.
Jesse: [00:10:42] You know, I hear this sentiment and. You know, there’s two sides to this thought. So like you’re talking about the generation coming up being more aware that feelings. It makes me think about in a broader sense like the kind of cause and effect of how each generation is raised and how they adapt, how the world changes, how that affects how they raise their children in these shifts that happen over generations of people.
[00:11:19] What I think is difficult is, number one, being aware enough on a kind of macro-scale to see maybe why that’s happening, why these changes are happening if they’re positive or negative. Because I think you often get this pushback from older generation to the younger generations. You always hear like, it’s not a new thing. It’s not going to go anywhere. You always hear things like, “oh, the young people don’t want to work, they’re lazy, they’re this or that.”
[00:11:51] Because they’re unlike me. Like I mean, you go back through newspapers for decades and it’s the same story over and over and over again and again. It’s not unique to this day and age. So you see that. But then clearly things are changing. And you hope, I guess I hope as an optimist, things are improving for each generation. Like that’s our goal, I guess, right, is we want successive generations to be doing better than the previous one.
[00:12:29] So I wonder about our ability to adapt to the changes, but also to recognize our place in the cycle of change, I guess, and then be able to adapt ourselves. Like you said sometimes it’s hard for like I’ll say old guard, which is always changing itself, old guard coaching or whatever, to adapt to new employees, new athletes, new mindsets and figure out how to bring them to the place where they want to go.
Callen: [00:13:09] Yeah. That’s the — Well, that’s the trick to championships, right? Can you get them, can you find a way to unlock every single member of your team’s 100% potential all the time? They believe in themselves. They want to do it for you, and they want to do it for their teammates. And there’s nothing in the world that’s going to stop them or distract them from that focus. So and negative thoughts or the whatever — the garlic to a vampire, right? Like negative thoughts or like they’re they crush all that —
Jesse: [00:13:48] They’re kryptonite to their motivation.
Callen: [00:13:51] Yeah, yeah, yeah. They’re kryptonite to motivation. Well articulated. So thanks for saving me on that one.
Jesse: [00:13:58] I saw where you’re going.
Callen: [00:14:00] Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. So good team. So that’s. That’s the thing. You got to keep it. You got to keep that going, that positivity. And it’s hard. I read the daily Stoic and I mean, there’s quotes in there from Socrates and stuff from like 500 years ago. And it’s the same thing. It’s the same, you know, talking about they’re just talking about the human condition back then.
[00:14:22] So it’s like you said, it’s been going on forever. Right? And how do you how you take the best of what? From my generation, the way I was brought up, and you bring the positive things forward and then but you got to make sure you get rid of the things that we’ve learned there’s a better way. You got to adapt into those better ways. So that’s a cool part of coaching. Yeah, it’s neat. Leading companies, whatever. It’s the same thing.
Jesse: [00:14:54] You’re right. They’re pretty analogous. One critique from one of my friend’s business mentors. Thinking about you turn about the “kids”, today. Be more aware of the feelings. He suggests or asks the question, not necessarily suggests, but asks the question, “Is it possible to be too aware of your feelings too wrapped up in exactly how I feel?” And I’ll give an example. Using myself is a running example, and I’ve talked about this before. One of my coaches in college, I used to be like, I’m a big proponent of rate of perceived exertion, like “How hard am I working?”, “How do I feel using that to pace yourself,” all those kind of things.
[00:15:46] And I got very, very good at it when I was in kind of a peak in my running fitness. I could you tell me to run whatever split. I could do it almost within a 10th of a second, sometimes, usually more like closer to a second. But anyway, so very intent on how do I feel? And I got really wrapped up in this and just talking about all these nuances. This feels this way and this feels so. And then my coach looked at me and said, “Jesse, do you know why stupid people run faster than you?” Like “What? Like, what are you talking about right now?”
[00:16:25] Because they don’t think about how much it hurts. They just run. And it makes me think about like. I think it’s important to know how you feel, but there is potentially a limit. So I guess I’d like your thoughts on do you agree with my coach in that thought? Is there a limit to being too involved in your feelings or is there like a breakthrough side where you become this kind of like master of your feelings and then you’re kind of like a master of this new domain?
Callen: [00:16:59] I think there’s a different scheme like training and maybe competing. And so for me to interpret that would be when you train. I think it’s very important to understand, like what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, how it’s feeling. Like I’m a big proponent of RPEs like our software. Like in our company, like it uses RPEs to progress kids. So like, I’m a big, huge proponent of it, but when there’s like, that’s different than like a competitive like environment where I’m doing something to win.
[00:17:36] When I’m doing something to win, I’m not thinking or feeling anything like I’m so into the moment that like, that’s all that matters and nothing is going to distract me from doing whatever it takes to accomplish the goal, which would be winning. So I think those are I interpret them a little different. I like it when people are aware of how they’re feeling in a training environment and when it’s time to perform, then that’s what the training gave you the ability to confidently know you can just go as hard as you want and you’ll be fine, you know, like you just go, don’t worry about anything.
[00:18:14] You’ve done all the work. Now it’s time to go. Just unleash yourself. So that’s where I see it. But I think there can be a time when you’re too aware for sure. Depending on the context.
Jesse: [00:18:25] Yeah, right. Right. Well, that’s I mean, that’s the whole point of all this content is. I do a show where I just talk about running comes out in the YouTube channel where this will be. So if you’re not on the YouTube channel or YouTube.com/Solpri, you check out the other stuff as well. But, you know, I answer a lot of questions about like, is this good, is that bad? Is this it’s like every video is basically it depends what — you know, like it depends “what’s your situation?”, “Where are you at?”, “What’s this thing?”, “What’s that thing?”
[00:19:05] It depends. You know, it’s like saying, “is chocolate cake bad?” Well, it depends. You know, it might actually be good if you’ve been like — So if you’re like in a super calorie deficit and you’ve been so hard on yourself, you’re super stressed, you might just need like a piece of chocolate cake. Might be a pick-me-up. You need to help you just relax and that can help bring you back to a good place. Like there’s an example of where chocolate cake might be good, but then if you only eat chocolate cake, that’s all your diet is. Well, that would clearly be bad. So, like, it depends.
[00:19:42] And that’s off on a tangent now the chocolate cake. But that’s kind of the interesting thing about like coaching or helping people write it’s like. You can sometimes you can suss out the answers, but like. There’s no way to quite just, like, replace yourself with a piece of software or automation, like, just. Go go clicking the things in the software. It’ll tell you what to do.
Callen: [00:20:13] Yeah. That part is not possible. You just gotta. You gotta feel and learn. Well, that’s kind of like learning, right? Like that’s the process, that’s the education of growth, and that’s you moving forward. Yeah, just that’s a great definition of growth, right? Movement. So I mean, you’re that’s growth. You’re learning, you’re figuring things out. You’re trying to understand what works for you. And each. You know, silo of your life and you’re trying to apply more things that work so that you continually grow and move and forward direction.
Jesse: [00:20:51] Yeah.
Callen: [00:20:53] Sometimes they’re hard decisions, sometimes they’re easy, but that’s learning.
Jesse: [00:21:00] Yeah. I do realize I’m missed a little bit. I do want to back up. We’re on about 15, 20 minutes and something like that should we should have started with I got off on my own tangent. We just start with me asking you what does REPerformance actually do? Because we’ve kind of been dancing around what it is that you do. But we didn’t cover that for the listener because I already had the background. So just to give you, I guess, a moment to stump for what it is you guys do and what you spend your time on.
Callen: [00:21:33] So. Well, I’ve been like a strength conditioning coach in Canada for I guess almost two decades now. And I’ve worked with a bunch of different levels in the Olympics, and I do some NHL player contract training as well in the off-season. And about five years ago I started a company where, I got addicted early on in the training industry to like the fact that no matter what state, someone came into a workout. Because I also own like another high-performance training company.
[00:22:11] And no matter what state someone came in, they always left happy. And for me it was like that addiction over like I’m very fortunate. I’ve been able to achieve like a couple of Olympic gold medals and stuff with Team Canada and some cool stuff. But what’s the addiction for me? Wasn’t necessarily the performance indicators or that high athlete level. I was just good at math and a good coach, so I was able to get myself to that level. But I was I really was passionate about just that, the energy shift in people when they would exercise.
[00:22:46] So like, you know what, I want to make a bigger impact. So like I started a company that provides software to phys ed programs in education that gives kids an individualized fitness pathway.
[00:23:03] So it meets them wherever they are in their athletic development. And then it matches their current skill sets and it provides them programing for them to develop at their own speeds. Because I just we’re coming out of school and we have all these skills and I’ve made a massive amount of my career through athletics. Right? But it’s such a finite percent of the population. Like it doesn’t really represent the people. Right? It’s this thing that we look at and we kind of idolize.
[00:23:35] We may get inspired by in some ways, but their work volume and what they’re doing is not not relatable to a regular human being who might work as an accountant or a construction worker or a teacher or whatever. Right? An IT person, you name it. So like and if you think about phys ed, right? Like I think right now because of coming out of a pandemic, only 19% of North Americans are participating in recreational activities more than once per week.
[00:24:07] And that’s not enough to even stay healthy. I think that’s not enough movement to stay healthy. So that means that this education that we’re getting in schools, this, you know, learn how to play sports is really not equipping kids with any skills to understand how to be healthy for life.
[00:24:27] So what our software does is gives teachers this ability to use an assessment and use our AI to then design fitness programing for kids individualized to their skill levels, and then they can learn and grow at their own speeds and try things that they would like to try. You know, maybe it’s a piece of equipment they’d like to check out or an exercise they want to try.
[00:24:52] And they can learn and explore and build the skills to actually understand how to make their own programing and take care of their health. And that’s a skill that’s transferable for the rest of their lives. You don’t need a basketball court and ten friends to stay in shape, right? You need your living room floor. And so that’s what our company does. And it’s pretty exciting. It’s pretty cool stuff. I get to talk to lots of teachers all over the friggin place and get lots of kids working out every day, which is a huge impact. Way more than training one person an hour. It’s like training thousands of people an hour right through the software, so it’s pretty cool. That’s what it is anyways.
Jesse: [00:25:33] Yeah, I think it’s a really cool initiative. I hope it has the impact you’re looking for because clearly, societally, I’ll say North America as a whole, the US, Canada, probably Mexico as well, though I don’t know the stats on Mexico very well. You know, obesity rates keep rising. So clearly something is amiss.
[00:26:00] To say something I think is a little disingenuous because I think it’s there are lots of co-factors. I don’t think it’s just, “oh, the soda industry is destroying America’s health” or “McDonald’s is to blame” or, you know, or “Tim Hortons is making everybody fat” or whatever. Like, it’s not just there’s no one single thing.
[00:26:25] But yeah, I. I often think about — Friends or acquaintances who played team sports growing up or even collegiately. And then you go post-collegiate. And I have this conversation about like, what do you do after sport with people sometimes because there’s this like drop off know Olympians, collegiate athletes, high school athletes, they all kind of go through the same thing to different degrees. Obviously, if you’re if you’re an Olympian, you’ve probably spent a fair more amount of time doing your thing.
[00:27:01] But it’s you get this drop off, I think in part just like its lack of infrastructure, which I think is what you’re speaking to the like. The ability to not need infrastructure to continue your fitness journey is, like you said, you just need your living room floor. Like if you don’t have your living room floor, like there’s a ground outside or whatever, like there’s, you know, you have a floor somewhere.
[00:27:32] So I think it’s an interesting angle. I hope it pans out. Obviously early days, you’re only five years in to see what the longitudinal effect is on all the lives you get to impact. But. I think it’s probably a pretty worthwhile effort.
Callen: [00:27:55] Oh, for sure. Like we get some pretty wicked data out of the platform already that we’re seeing. So like 33% of kids work out outside of school hours now. They enter the platform and, you know, maybe do a yoga video with the parents at home or maybe access a workout plan at home. So, I mean, there’s that we’re seeing a much larger ratio of students impacted per teacher.
[00:28:21] So teachers that are using the platform are generally impacting, I think, depending on what categorization of user they are. But it’s around like our champion users are around like 42 students per teacher ratio, the standard classes, you know, 25 to 30 kids. Right? So that means that and what that means real-time in the schools is that kids are staying in the program even when phys ed is done and the teacher’s just, you know, pressing a button to generate their new workout plans. Right?
[00:28:53] Or support them, even if they’re not in their class still. So teachers are that teachers are using it or impacting more students. Right? And we’re seeing a huge number of growth in the number of students in the platform for school. We have schools that have over 50% of student body exercising routinely. So these kids are not all in phys ed. Phys ed teachers is just using the platform in order to support the kids and get them fitness training. And they’re not even in their classes. You know, they’re maybe going to a like an open gym time at lunch and using the school fitness center or an after school fitness center time rate or before school.
[00:29:31] So we’re seeing. We’re seeing it already. We’re seeing the fitness center in a high school turning into a almost like a community center that that’s supporting this community of a school that’s going there and exercising, as opposed to this spot for the athletes to go and train for sport because there’s such a small percentage of student body. The attrition rate in Canada from grade nine, which is the last year of mandatory phys ed degree ten, is 63%. Right?
[00:30:09] So you’ve got 37% of kids that are staying in phys ed after it’s mandatory in Canada. And the majority of those are in a high percentage of that’s made up by athletes. So you just stirred something in my head earlier, a thought where it was like literacy levels in North America are on the like for people to be illiterate rate. That’s on the decline. Right?
[00:30:37] Average household income is on the increase. These are results of high-quality education, but obesity is on the increase. So the phys ed (physical education) that kids are being exposed to is obviously not working because the basic things that we’re getting out of education are making a difference. So we have to get to that level. It’s hard. It’s a challenge to get into that space and to make a difference at that level. But that’s the spot where the real impact is going to be, is we need because then the barriers to entry are all gone. Right. Every kid, no matter what lifestyle they come from. Like one, like mine, where I came from. Like my barriers to entry were gigantic.
[00:31:21] So, like every kid, no matter what the barrier to entry is, no matter where they’re coming from. Education, quality, physical education can at least equip them with the skills to be able to take care of their health for life. And then we’ve got John Ratey that wrote the book Spark, where he’s proven time and time again that obviously high levels of physical activity produce better academic results.
[00:31:42] So, I mean, that side of the conversation is already done. You can’t even come near someone and say, “oh, yeah, physical activity and being healthy doesn’t that doesn’t make a difference to your academic scores.” It’s proven. Done. End of a conversation. It’s even proven that physical activity and high health improve your personal income. So. It’s over. The conversation is done.
[00:32:06] So let’s just do something about it. Let’s equip them with the skills they need, you know? So that’s what we’re doing. And it’s and it’s working. We’re watching it work now. So and like you said, we’re in we’re two years into the year, three years in beta building platform and now we’re two years is our third year of releasing it into the commercially like into the education landscape. Right?
[00:32:30] And teachers are looking like that teachers are their coaches, you know, and they’re very much aware of the shift like a lot of schools have in Canada. They’re called PF personal fitness classes and they’re like outpacing registration wise, like the standard people up here, like standard phys ed class. Like they’re just there’s no comparison. Kids are signing up like they want to learn how to because they see their parents doing it.
[00:33:01] They don’t see their parents playing soccer five nights a week to stay fit. They watch it on TV. That’s what athletes do. That’s not what your mom does. If she, you know, runs her own, you know, retail store, like she probably works out. So you have a kid looking at a parent doing exercise and are like, “okay, well, that’s how you take your health” and then you go to school and you learn how to play dodgeball and you’re like, “Well, that’s not what my mom does to stay fit. She goes to the gym, she goes to the YMCA, or she follows a class on YouTube.”
[00:33:34] So there’s this huge gap like of and kids understand why Math is important. Because if your parents are talking about the budget at the dining room table, they’re talking about numbers. The kids understand that there’s a reason to take chemistry because maybe their parents are working a medical industry and they use those skills or they’re engineers. So there’s a sightline for me as a kid to see, okay, this is why this is important. I see it. I can see my parents use this later in life. Maybe this course I feel like is dumb because I can’t see myself using that later in life.
[00:34:05] What we need to get that they need to be able to we need to align what they see their parents doing into phys ed. So they’re like, okay, well this makes sense. I see my mom do it. I see my dad do it. Yeah, I’m going to do this, too, you know, so. That’s the mission.
Jesse: [00:34:23] So then, I mean, you kind of touched on it, but is it motivated like we were talking about before we got recording? Is it motivated by where you grew up? We talked about you grew up in a rural area. Really there was just there was no infrastructure for sport because I asked you, would you have a sport background? You’re like, “No, no, I don’t.”
[00:34:44] And so, I mean, is that because so are you I mean, this is so one of my undergrad majors in psychology. And often there’s the joke about psychology majors get into psychology because they need to, like, heal themselves. So as that what you’re trying to do here, are you trying to like Coach Young Callum?
Callen: [00:35:03] Well, maybe for sure. Like that’s a cool perspective on it. I mean I didn’t I definitely grew up in a so like I’m pretty transparent about my life. So I grew up in a trailer park and in Northern Ontario, which I mean, trailer parks are great, there’s nothing wrong with them in Northern Ontario. There’s lots wrong with them though, because like, you know, it goes 30 below.
[00:35:25] So all the water freezes in the wintertime. My mom used to have to crawl underneath it and try to thaw them out with candles and travel lights and stuff. And it was not it wasn’t easy. You know, I never felt like it was hard, though, like my mom was never super optimistic, positive person. Like I ever felt like I was gone without anything. But she always believed in exercise. You know, we would go and get, like, stuff people were throwing in the garbage, like, at the end of their driveways or whatever. Right?
[00:35:52] Like, I remember we got like the twister. I don’t know if anyone’s old enough. Remember that thing? It was like a little disk and you stood on it and you were like this. It was for like like the stepper. When it first came out, it had no handles, no nothing. It was just two hydraulic pistons on like a two paddles, like we had, like the AB, the ThighMaster to put this thing between your knees and you squeezed it.
[00:36:14] Like, we just get all these things that people would chuck in the garbage, right? And we would just use them. And she just somehow intuitively knew like her health was important and it was her responsibility. And I grew up kind of watching her, you know, like we cross-country skier, we’d hike or do things like that that we had access to because there was nothing we — our trailer park was like in a very rural area was in the middle of nowhere.
[00:36:38] So there was no anything like there was no basketball courts, there’s no pools. There’s is like zero nothing very, very low income poverty. So I guess just I and I think because I, I was healthy, I was able to make qualify very good decisions as a kid when I was in an environment where it would have been easy to make, not necessarily great choices. But I was in and I was such in a good state. I was able to think rationally about what the outcomes would be based off, what the decisions I was making.
[00:37:15] And I was able to kind of say like get out because I mean, there was nothing it was great. I thought it was great. So but I was able to kind of excel in and reach pretty cool spots for me in my career. Like, I train some pretty famous NHL hockey players, like, so they trained some this morning, like, and you don’t make it to that level unless you’re operating at their level, right? You have to be that good to be there.
[00:37:46] So I was able to make it and I’ve always been happy and really enjoyed life and I’ve always really enjoyed seeing other people like be happy and get better. I think it’s just a product of just a lot of it’s a product of where I came from. And, and so why would I not want that for more kids? You know, so because I’m obviously not normal to a certain extent, right? Like I’m right now, I’m a like a rare percentage of kids that come from my upbringing to where I am today, you know, multiple companies and I’m successful.
[00:38:36] So I — but we should have more of them. You know, it doesn’t have to be an anomaly. So and I honestly think that there’s a fundamental piece to it which is like human health, because it just aligns your mental abilities. Right?
Jesse: [00:38:54] Right. Callen. So we could probably keep going for a while, which I say to a lot of my guests, but we always run down on time, which is just kind of the nature of the beast. An unfortunate reality of life sometimes, I guess. Anyway, so I have a question that I ask every single guest for a particular season. Each season has a different question for you. I think I always hear a reason for answers because. You have this singular question yet everybody has either slight variations or sometimes surprising answers in for you because you’re this pretty cool, relaxed, chill guy. I’ll be interested to see this question. This season’s question is, how do you celebrate your wins?
Callen: [00:39:50] So. How do I celebrate my wins eh? Probably not very well. Truthfully, probably not very well. I have extremely massive goals and I hope I’m not misinterpreting. I really like the Andrew Huberman podcast. I spend I listen to it quite a bit.
Jesse: [00:40:21] And I was just talking with my physical therapist about that yesterday.
Callen: [00:40:26] So and I watched the ones about dopamine quite a bit and I kind of naturally like don’t get I don’t get overly celebratory just because there’s more to do. And so, I mean, I think I put a lot of work into just being happy with life every day and not looking for, like, this one thing that’s going to make me like satisfied with life, like, because I don’t really want to live like that. Like I want to be happy every day and I want to grow every day.
[00:41:05] So how do I celebrate? I think I celebrate by just. You know, being happy for the people around me. It’s probably how I probably celebrate. I try to be happy for those around me. And then that kind of makes me feel good. And it’s great. You know, we hit a big milestone with the company pretty excited because, you know, it’s pretty cool to see the team achieve that stuff. That’s in a nutshell. I think I probably don’t do it well. And the reason is, is because I don’t want to lose my drive for what I want to accomplish in life. And even when I accomplish all the big, huge, lofty goals I have, I will feel great about it because I will look around and see how happy everyone else is around me. And that’s like, okay. Good job, Cal. Way to go, you know? That’s kind of it.
Jesse: [00:42:06] Yeah. Callen, if people want to get in touch you’re up to any of that kind of stuff. Where can they find you?
Callen: [00:42:12] Pretty, pretty simple. I think like the best ways to find me are either through LinkedIn’s pretty much the only social platform that I use. I don’t use any of the other ones. You could just go to our company website REPerformanceapp.com There’s like a community email there. You could just send a question or anything you really want. It’s cool you can talk about and you know, you want to kind of reach out and support us in any way. I mean, my team works really hard.
[00:42:43] So, you know, if you’re not in physical education, but — what I shared today struck a chord with you. I mean, just going on to any of our social platforms and just giving us a, “hey, great job, keep going.” That would obviously mean the world to the team. So that kind of stuff goes a long way.
Jesse: [00:43:02] Awesome. Thanks for hanging out with me.
Callen: [00:43:06] Yeah, man. Thanks for having me on. It was fun.