Introduction

Feed the Cows

If you don’t feed the cows, the cows die.

It’s a great metaphor for building a company, or a life, or a dream. If you don’t feed those things, they die, too.

I learned the lesson young, mainly from my father, who’d grown up on the family farm. Every morning at 4 a.m., before the sun even thought about rising in the sky, my father headed out to the barn for the first of two daily milkings. The weather didn’t matter. There was never a question of wanting to milk the cows. You had to, he’d point out. You just did it. No excuses.

There were never any days off. If you didn’t milk and feed the cows, they died. This work ethic was one of the first things I learned as a child.

I grew up in Central Pennsylvania, in a small town near Hershey called Palmyra. We were surrounded by miles and miles of rolling farmland. I had amazing role models on both sides of my family. I always knew that. It wasn’t until recently, though, that I started to think about why they were such great role models.

My father’s side of the family were all dairy farmers. Incredibly hardworking people, my father himself had been making the 4 a.m. trek to the milking shed since he was a boy. Every single day, and then every single night after dinner. Before the sun rose and after it descended. Day after day.

From them I learned discipline, and the ability to work even when work was the last thing my body or mind wanted to do.

I’m often asked why I decided to join the army. The military had always interested me, but the moment I decided on that course for myself remains vivid in my memory. It was the time my cousin Matt returned home on leave in the middle of a tour of duty in Afghanistan, where he served with the famed 101st Airborne Division.

I remember distinctly the pride and honor he took in his service. During dinner, my grandmother asked him, “Do you like what you’re doing? Are you happy?”

He didn’t hesitate. “I’m extremely proud of what we’re doing overseas. Somebody has to do it.”

I realized he was right. Someone has to volunteer. We live in a country where our military is all volunteer, and every year, young men and women show up to serve. No one has a draft number; no one is rounding them up as soon as they turn eighteen and pressing them into military service. Our defense is based completely on the willingness of volunteers to step up, raise their hands, and vow to defend America, and it is an awesome thing to behold.

Matt’s visit convinced me that I needed to serve at least four years, that I had a duty as an American citizen to show up for my country.

Both sides of my family taught me the value of discipline and hard work in what I now know to be a really unique atmosphere. They were not super strict, but there was never any doubt when they told me I would or would not do something, that that was exactly what was going to happen.

Humble Beginnings

By any measure, I’ve been a success, but at every turn, I worked really hard for that success. I graduated college and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the US Army. I served overseas as an infantry platoon leader, and gutted out Ranger School, one of the most grueling and demanding courses in the entire American military.

A fitness enthusiast, I started a thriving multimillion-dollar sports nutrition company, Bare Performance Nutrition, from its beginnings in a small college apartment, to its growth in a one-room army barracks in South Korea. After my discharge, that one room in military housing became one room in central Texas, and has now expanded to a huge warehouse and rocket-fueled internet presence. I’ve grown from discovering a burning passion in the fitness industry to building a large social presence online through documenting, educating, and inspiring thousands around the world.

I live in a world with twenty-five hours in a day, and I use each of those hours to the maximum.

People often ask me what that means: that I live a twenty-five-hour day.

It’s about maximizing your day, your week, your year, or your entire life to its fullest. For me, it meant building my brand after working a full day for the army, often while others were asleep. It meant delaying vacations, putting aside luxuries, and focusing on winning back each and every day (which is also something else we will discuss later in the book).

Conventional wisdom tells you to live as if you have fewer hours in a day. They say to cram everything in as if you only had twenty-three hours in which to get it done. This never made sense to me. It gave you less actual time, and often results in rushing to failure.

I’ll never forget the moment I learned to stop rushing toward failure. I was a student in the Infantry Officer Basic Course at Fort Benning, Georgia, working with some captains from the hard-core 75th Ranger Regiment.

I asked one of them for advice on how to be the best leader possible when I arrived at my platoon at Fort Hood, Texas. He pointed to another captain across the room.

“You see that guy right there? When the shit hits the fan, when chaos strikes, that guy stays as cool as the other side of the pillow. He doesn’t rush to failure, but takes the time to assess the situation, develop a plan quickly, and executes it on demand. That is the guy you want to be.”

I realized that the goal isn’t to rush, but to slow things down as much as possible, even time itself. We all have twenty-four hours in a day, but it’s how you choose to live those twenty-four hours that makes the difference. When I started my business, I sacrificed sleep in order to find extra time. Bottom line, I was in control of the day. I controlled my time, and in the end, I controlled what it was I was about to create.

There was nothing in my background—unless you really knew me—to suggest a future of accomplishment like this. I was an above-average guy, but I didn’t stand out as someone who would survive a Spartan test of will and endurance like Ranger School, or start a wildly successful entrepreneurial venture like Bare Performance Nutrition.

I got good grades in school, but never saw myself as super smart. I wasn’t valedictorian. I was athletic, but never the stud in sports. I blended in and had a solid group of friends.

I was just a normal dude.

Signs

There are many words to describe the trait that has contributed most to my success. Words like passion. Focus. Drive. Tenacity.

Whatever you want to call it, for those who had the inclination to look, it was there from an early age. Anytime I took on a new hobby, I dedicated myself to it with an impressive ferocity. When I became interested in something, I took it to obsessive levels of devotion. I committed to these hobbies wholly, and cleared every other interest out of my life.

For a while when I was really young, it was cooking.

Now when I say cooking, I mean that I would gather my friends over and spend hours researching, experimenting and creating these masterpieces of dishes—usually being some sort of exotic cheeseburger loaded with every topping I could fit between two buns.

At twelve, I discovered construction and all I wanted for Christmas was power tools.

I remember ripping open presents that year and pulling out a table saw, jigsaw, and an electric drill. I built a quarter pipe for skateboarding, wine rack for my mom, treehouses for my friends and—the biggest of all—a boat, which didn’t end up floating and is probably still sitting alongside the Swatara Creek.

From there, it was lawn care.

I hung posters all around town and picked up about ten yards. I would push my parents’ mower for miles to yards that I cared for during the summer. It was my first “business,” if you will, and I was in love.

Looking back now I realize that of all the things I became obsessed with over the years, it was creating that I was in love with feeling—whether it was a product for friends, something I crafted with my hands, or a “business” pushing a lawnmower miles across town for thirty dollars.

The one constant, though, was change. These hobbies and passions came and went over the years. My focus would burn white hot, until it didn’t. Then I would be on to the next obsession.

This pattern was a kind of training until I found the one passion that has stuck, unlike all the others. When I discovered nutrition and fitness, everything clicked, and I’ve never looked back.

Being Tested

Once I discovered fitness and nutrition, it all fell into place. I decided to study nutrition in school, to ensure I learned everything I could about it. I sought out discipline and adopted a strict routine for myself. I even decided to join the army, knowing that would help get my mindset where it needed to be.

I was twenty-two, and I haven’t looked back since I returned from a fateful trip to Fort Lewis, in Washington State.

It was the summer after my junior year, and as a member of the campus Army Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) unit, I’d been sent to Fort Lewis to take part in the Leadership Development and Assessment Course (LDAC). Known among the troops as “Advance Camp,”...