G'day all, I'm Jay. And I'm Brett. I'm Jared. And you're listening to For the Wealth of It, the podcast that defines wealth beyond just the numbers in your bank account. We're three certified financial planners set on helping others lead a fulfilling life through mindful investing, thoughtful planning, and discovering what wealth means to you. We'll share real stories of our own, as well as guests who have found harmony in their lives by aligning their money with their personal goals. And we'll teach you how you can do the same. We're excited to have you here, so let's get started.

Hey, good day, everybody, and welcome back to For the Wealth of It podcast. I am your host, Jay Boekeloo, with my co-host, Jared Tanimoto and Brett Maikowski. Today, we are very excited for our guest because he is a man of many talents. We actually had to think about which direction would we want to take this show because he could talk about a lot of things. So a little bit of background. Our guest today is a marketing and fitness professional. He owns two companies, GeForce Nutrition and Next Level Physiques and Training.

in that he also does lifestyle coaching and he is a professional bodybuilder. So he actually is a part of the IFBB circuit. So he's got some clout there as well. He's also a husband, father of two boys, 10 and seven. So ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Devon Grogans. Thank you guys. Glad to be here. Appreciate you having me. Well, Devin, we are super excited. Like I said in the opening here, I mean, there were so many ways that we thought, man, how do we talk to him? Like, what can he?
You have so much knowledge that I think you can bring in. And then also, you know, knowing you personally, I think your optimism and stuff is just really a cool thing. So we're excited for today's show. But to start off before we just jump right into it, would you kind of tell us a little bit about your background as you know, from you said marketing, but then also you now own two businesses. Can you tell us your story a little bit? Yeah. So I've been in sales and marketing for a little over a decade now. I've been bodybuilding for about the same.
And it was something that I really just fell in love with. The two, although they're very different, are similar in the sense as far as helping people on the marketing side and helping people from like a personal training or coach perspective is just the ability to really watch somebody take something from seemingly nothing and be able to grow it. Yeah, as far as background, I kind of stumbled into bodybuilding. I grew up playing.
high school sports as you played college baseball a little bit and then once that kind of fizzled out it was just on to the next competitive thing i could find from snowboarding to traveling slow pitch softball basketball and then i kind of just found my time in the gym and a friend of mine was a competitive bodybuilder coached quite a few people in the area that i knew and
i was like maybe i'll give that a shot and i did and just again fell in love with the process more than anything and i wanted to learn more and more about it understanding how to eat how to train to sculpt your body how to change your body because i always grew up i was very active but i had zero clue on nutrition and so you know the old adage you can't outrun a bad diet was very true in my case because i was not a lazy kid i just didn't know how to eat and
Having the understanding and what I call the power to be able to get the knowledge to understand how to change my body, whether it be for performance or for a specific look, it was just eye opening to me. And it's something that I just completely dove in on. And then on the marketing thing, I really just fell into that. I was working a sales job that I hated.
And a recruiter called me and they wouldn't tell me what the job was for. They just said, hey, we have a job opening. We think you'd be good for it. I thought it was a scam call. So I hung up. And then like two months later, I was just ready to leave my job like any day. And they called back and they said, hey, we still have a position. I was like, I don't care what it is. I'll take it.
And I'd never done marketing in my life. And so I flew out to Southern California, did a two-week training. It ended up being for a company called Hibu, which was like the sister company to the Yellow Book Yellow Pages, but it was the digital aspect of it. So my job was to transition people kind of away from the phone book and into social media, websites, and that sort of thing. And that's kind of where it led into that.
So at that time, are you doing bodybuilding when you're working this job already? Yeah. So I had just started the job and that was around the same time I had just started prep for a couple of different things. What really kicked it off was my wife and I were getting married as 2013. And I remember telling myself once we had the date, we were about three months out. And I was like, I am going to put everything I can into dropping 30 pounds for this wedding.
Cause I was somebody like most people that would yo-yo diet. I would crash diet really hard. And then like three weeks would go by and I'd be like, this isn't working. I'd go right back to my old ways and eating any weight that I lost. And so I was like, all right, I'm just going to stay consistent for three months. I'm going to train five days a week and do cardio four days a week and track all my food. And I ended up going from about 225 pounds down to about 190 pounds when we got married.
And then that was right after we got married. Like the week I got back from my honeymoon was the day that I or the day I got back from my honeymoon was the same day that I left for training and then for the marketing. And then that's kind of roughly within a few months when I started competing for my first bodybuilding show. I was like, oh, I lost 35 pounds on my own. I wonder what I could do with the guidance of somebody else. So then those two did kind of start taking off at the same time.
That's interesting because you said you fell in love with the process. And meanwhile, you had been active. You're doing all these other sports. What was it about the process of bodybuilding that was different from the other things you had done? Like what clicked for you? Structure. It requires structure. That's something that I see lacks with a lot of people that I work with now. And that was something that I lacked. I completely lacked structure. And it wasn't until I started creating structure. And for me, it was little things. I wasn't a big drinker.
But I drank often. So like for me, I would drink a couple of times throughout the week, you know, beer to hear their buddies want to go hit the bar. So we went and it was never like a blackout drink or I didn't remember any. It was never anything like that, but it was just more frequent. And one of the things that I told myself during this three months was I gave myself a two drink maximum three to no more than three times a week. So no more drinking.
Then three times a week and anytime I did go out and drink, I had a maximum of two drinks, whether that was two beers, beer in a shot, two shots, whatever it was, two drinks and I'm done. And just starting to create structure around the things that I did both in the gym and around nutrition. I made sure that regardless of how long I worked or whatever it was, I either went to the gym first thing in the morning or sometimes I'd be there at 11 o'clock at night because I had.
three to four days a week I was training that I made sure I was in the gym. So I just started creating the structure around my lifestyle to get the results that I wanted to see. So it sounds like that may have been something that previously you had felt you were lacking, like didn't even realize it until something that requires structure comes in. You're like, oh, this is kind of nice.
Yeah. And it was something I lacked. I had zero structure around drinking. It was, oh, the boys want to go drink? Sure. Let's go have a beer. I already ate dinner, but they want to go grab appetizers or something at Applebee's. Let's roll. And it just, it was open range on just about anything. So. Yeah. Yeah. Structure. You mentioned earlier, you woke up at four train in the morning and then you transitioned.
to your marketing job in the afternoon. Tell me a little bit about, you know, how that structure played into being able to do marketing the way you do now, where it's only from a certain hour in the afternoon that doesn't take up your whole day. Yeah. So it's funny because I work, I say nine to five, but it's really a six to two thirty. But I work for essentially four tens, like four nines. And then I work about three and a half, four hours on Thursday, like today.
Because I take all of the in-person clients, which I have about five or six, the majority of the clients that I work with are online, but I've stacked all my in-person clients to Thursday. So I wake up at four, I train clients at five o'clock, six o'clock, 7.30, nine and 10. And then if I have time, I'll either train and get my workout in right after and then come into the office or I'll go to the office and then work out shortly after. But Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I'm putting in nine and a half hours.
a flex depending on what needs to get done so i'm working anywhere from seven to seven to eight and a half hours sometimes it's interesting that you're i mean as you're speaking i kind of hear some parallels between finance and just your story with bodybuilding because i hear discipline is required right like you have to be able to stick it out having some structure that you don't deviate too much from a plan but the other thing that you mentioned was
initially it was your wedding that was your why and I think that when you have a why it makes it easier but I'm curious what's your thought on like after the wedding what became your why did you feel like you had to replace it with something to keep going or how do you find that enthusiasm to continue going and be disciplined yeah I mean for me it's constantly changing but my biggest why is I never want to go back I never want to be the person that I was prior to getting in shape
And that is my biggest fear. I know fear is a big driver for a lot of people. And I would say that is my biggest fear, but that is my biggest anchor. That's my why. Yes, I'd love to say, oh, I do it for my kids. And my wife could care less. Like my wife would actually prefer I'd be like 30 pounds less than I am now and not nearly the amount of muscle that I hold. She's like, I don't care if you're soft and squishy. That actually makes it easier to like cuddle.
my kids yeah it's great it's great to have the energy for the kids and to be able to do that and they see the structure that i have and when i do compete they see the dedication and the time that i put in but the fact of the matter is i really i do it for me i don't ever want to go back to the kid that had low self-esteem that was uncomfortable in his own clothes that didn't like the way that he looked even though
Performance was never an issue. And so for me, that's my biggest driver is I never want to feel like I'm going backwards. I'm always moving forward. That is really cool. I love that. I mean, so it's also an interesting concept that I hadn't thought of, right? Because most of the time when we think of a why, I think we're forward thinking. But you're like, no, your why can literally be like retrograde as well. Like, no, I don't want to go back to that. That is what keeps me running forward to get further from that.
Yeah. And it is a direct correlation to in so many ways with finances. Like I remember when my wife and I first got together before we got married, we moved into a townhome in Wilsonville, which for our area is a little bit higher end. The lady actually, we couldn't even afford the place that we were moving into, but she disliked the other candidates that she was interviewing so much. She actually took a hit on the rent for us in the condo that we moved into. And we were literally living paycheck to pay like.
Dinner. Dinner was like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches sometimes or like just whatever it was that we had that was very inefficient and very cheap. And as we progressed, when we purchased our first house and we got better jobs, it was like, OK, we never want to live like that again. And our first house was great. Once I started with the marketing company, I was making really good money. And then we were able to our family started growing and we purchased our second home that was probably twice the size.
And we told ourselves, OK, cool. Like for us, it's always forward, never back. So it's like, well, we never want to be in that position again. Not that it's bad to be in that position, but it's just we don't ever want to regress. So for us, kind of in all aspects of life, it's we're always trying to move forward and we think about it both monetarily and in our health. It's like, OK, like how much can we save? What can we do now to save money that we weren't doing then or all of these different things?
nutrition very much so to a budget. I tell my clients all the time, like if you had a thousand dollars in your bank account and you were budgeting to spend $500 a week and you go out and blow $800, you're going to be pretty, pretty hard pressed on spending that last 200 before you get paid again. The same goes for nutrition. If our macros are, let's say 1500 calories, which is super low, but just to make it easy. And in one day or one meal,
you eat a thousand of those calories well you better be very conscious about what you're eating for the rest of the day or the next day make up for it by dialing back a little bit so there's a lot of similarities between the two but again i think the biggest thing if i had to wrap it all around something would be structure and discipline
Yeah. Devin, when you talk about not going back to where you were from a financial standpoint, have you changed anything about how you handle your finances, any safeguards you've put in place or any proactive things you've done to ensure that our financial situation is improving and not going backwards? Yeah. And that's a great question. So you don't know what you don't know. And so at the beginning, we would try to save money. And I always, I was somebody from an early age. My dad, I was like 10.
And we had to balance a checkbook for our allowance. So he would give us, we had like the old school like sheets where it was like money going out, money coming in. Every time we got paid, I had to put in what the money coming in was. Then I'd have to go deposit it into my bank account that was joint with my parents. I had to get a printed statement from the bank and make sure at the end of each month that my in and out lined up with what was in my bank account.
And I would have to sit down with them and do it. So from an early age, I was talking about handling money, which was really good. I don't think half the people know what reconciling a bank statement means these days. Right. And so I always have personal safeguards. Like even when I worked a full-time job making slightly over minimum wage, I was working at a car stereo place. I had a Subaru. It was, I mean, it was a fully built race car. It sat out front and everybody knew me as the guy with the Subaru.
and everybody would be like how do you afford that car and i'm like well i spend i set aside a certain amount of money every month after i pay off what i pay off but then i also had a floor like if my bank account to me hit less than a certain amount and at the time it was like five thousand dollars i was like the minute my bank account gets to five thousand dollars i treat it as if i have zero and so that was something that i always did then as we grew it was
understanding and learning like, okay, pay myself before I pay everybody else. So as soon as I get paid, let's set aside 10 or 15% of that paycheck, then handle the bills. And then whatever's left goes into a fund where that becomes entertainment or travel or whatever. So I've slowly built a better understanding. And then now we're getting into the point where we have money that we can invest. So it's like, okay, let's look at what we can do to start making our money work for us rather than just saving.
Those are great tips. Yeah, I was going to say, do you think you acquired some of that from your dad as well? Was he the one who was like, pay yourself first? Or did you just kind of learn that through natural attrition? So I learned that from a financial advisor. I was in a networking group and we had a financial advisor. To be in the group, you had...
to at least meet with, I think it was like one person or three people a week. And so I sat down and he filled my financial advisor to this day, but then that was probably six, seven years ago. And he was like, Hey, you know, let's just have a conversation around money. Like, I don't want to know exactly what you have, but he asked me kind of the same questions. What do you have for safeguards? What are you doing to make sure that you're able to build a nest egg? And I have questions. I never even thought about it. 30 years old.
And then he was the one that was like, can I give you a couple of tips? And they had like free weekly courses and some books. And I was like, give me all the information. So I learned a large part from that. My dad taught me a lot about credit, which was funny because when I met my wife, like credit cards were the devil. We went to go buy her first car and she had no credit. And I just remember, cause I would put a bunch of stuff on the credit cards, even all through college. Like I would.
use it to pay my utilities and i would use it and then with the reconciliation i would just make sure like cool i have this money i'm gonna put it on my credit card then i'd immediately pay it off so we were 26 we went to go get our first car and her credit score was just trash from not ever using any form of credit and i think i had at the time like a 735 and the guy was like well you know you can co-sign and so we did all that but it definitely paid off learning from an early age like
the positives to using credit. Whereas she learned from an early age, like, hey, everything in cash, don't do anything on credit. And it's like, well, it's only bad if you don't use it to your advantage. If you use it and don't have the money to back it up, then it's terrible. Right. Yeah, no, you're exactly right. It's the slippery slope, right? So it's the danger of, if I'm talking to the masses, it's almost like, oh, the Safeway is not use them. And I think that's what happens a lot of times with like Dave Ramsey and things. People are like, oh my gosh, he never uses credit. Well, if I'm talking to millions of people,
I can't even afford one of those people to bankrupt themselves because they listened to me say, go get this card. One of the things that stood out there, though, is that essentially your financial advisor that you went to sounds like he also said, here are some processes. Here's some structure without even having to say, well, how much do you have or anything? He's like, OK, let's put some fail safes in place. Let's put some rules in place to follow. I think that's interesting that.
Kind of sounds like it's kind of been an MO that's worked for you. Yeah, I have severe ADD. And so for me, if I don't abide by something that is task oriented, I am all over the place. So like I tell friends, I tell everybody, like, if you want to set something with me, if we're in person and you don't see me pull my phone out of my pocket, tell me to pull my phone out of my pocket. Because the minute we're done with that conversation, I've already forgot about it. We move on to something.
I use an app, funny enough, called Structure and it's like a mix of a calendar and a task list. Structure Daily Planner? What's that? The Structure Daily Planner? Yeah, I got that too. I love it. And so like every morning I'm putting everything in or right before I go to bed, I'm putting everything in for the next day. But as people tell me like, hey, can you drop this off tomorrow? Hey, can you do like, I'm immediately putting it in my phone. And especially when I'm on prep and carbs get low and brain fog gets high.
like like 60 to everything from like feed the dog that it's like well duh but i will literally forget but put your clothes on yeah well you're like the ideal client type like i wish all of our clients abided by more structure because what you mentioned like paying yourself first everyone kind of understands that concept but the amount of people that actually do it is you know very few
And it's funny because it took me a while too. I was like, oh, I'll pay myself first. Okay. And then I would kind of do it. And then when I started doing it, I started looking at how much money we were actually saving. And like the other day I was like, hey, hey, hey, guess how much we have in our savings? I don't know. And then she threw a number out that was like way less than half. And I was like, guess what we have as far as like total.
liquid, I guess, in all accounts. And she was like, I don't know, threw like double the number out first. And I was like, no, like triple that. And she's like, are you serious? You've been setting aside money for like the last eight years, six years. Positive feedback loop. Yeah. And it's the same thing that I do when I work with my clients, especially lifestyle clients, is we work on habit stacking. Like, what are you already doing that we can put something else on top of that takes little to no more additional effort?
but it's going to pay back in dividends. So it could be something like, well, I'm up at 5 a.m. because I have to be to work at 6. Cool. Could you wake up at 4.30 a.m. and get a quick walk-in while getting everything ready and then go to work? Yeah, I can do that. Okay, cool. Well, now that you're doing that, let's incorporate getting up and eating breakfast. So now we're doing three things within the same amount of time and just slowly building on it over time, creating that structure, but building good habits that are sustainable long-term. Yeah.
I want to dig into that a little bit because I think that's an area that is, you know, again, the theme of our show is that you're living a wealthy life, meaning that you feel fulfilled, you feel complete in all areas of your life. And I think that where you can really touch on is that physical side of you need your physical wellness, right? And I think that's a big part because all of this, okay, you have a bunch of money in the bank.
who the heck cares if you're bedridden, right? Like there's a, you need to take care of yourself mentally, emotionally, physically. So on the physical side, would you kind of walk me through like, what is, do you generally find somebody comes to you? What's the most common things they're saying? Here's what I want. And then how would you go? All right, here's step one, two, and three for even listeners out there. Here's what I want you to do to start this process.
Yeah, so I see two. There's kind of like two main types that I see as far as like the lifestyle clients. One is usually the parent that is looking to have more energy and be able to move better for their children. They either just had kids or the kids are getting to the point four, five, six, where they're starting to run around and I can't keep up with them or I'm so tired constantly or I just don't move well.
So that's one. And then the other one is the typical, I want to get stronger and lose weight. Just kind of personal goals, types of things. But they really both carry the same path to get to where they want to be. The first is building a foundation. So I break everything into a three-step approach. I call it the FAP method, ironically enough. The first step, it always gets people to laugh. So I used to call it something else. And I was like, that's pretty funny.
But the first step is fix. So the F is for fix. And what we're doing is fixing their metabolism. Almost everybody that comes to me, regardless of the position they're in, they are exerting a ton of energy and eating very little, right? They think that I need to eat as little as possible and I need to go do all the cardio in the world and that's going to get me to where I'm going to be. So the first thing we do is fix their metabolism. Generally, it's pull back on.
the amount of expenditure and increase the amount of food that they're eating, which seems counterproductive. But from a hormone standpoint, their body actually begins to work with us instead of against us. Anytime you're dieting, your body's in a stressful state. And nine times out of 10, you're fighting against whatever it is that you're trying to do. Your body does not want to lose weight. It wants homeostasis. It wants regularity. It wants everything to be the same. So when we give it food, we give it rest, we make it happy.
We get to a point where we're building strength, we're increasing their metabolic rate, and we're getting them hormonally to a point where their body feels good. So that's the F. The second step in the process is the I. This is the increase, or excuse me, the A, and that's accelerate. So now the body's happy. We're eating more. We're building strength. As somebody carries more muscle.
And it doesn't have to be a ton of muscle, but as you get stronger, your metabolism or your metabolic need is higher. You're now just burning more calories doing nothing. So now we can get to a point where if fat loss is the goal, we can start removing calories. Your body's not angry because it's getting more food than it was before and you're losing weight. And then in this stage, energy is really high. You're starting to see changes. We're building great habits around nutrition, food, sleep.
structure, all of those things. And then the T is for transition. I tell everybody I want to be the last coach you ever have, not because I'm gatekeeping things from you and you need to be with me long term, but because I'm giving you all the information and the tools to be able to do it on your own without the use or need of another coach ever again. They know how to track their food. They've built the habits that it takes to get there. They know what it takes to sustain those habits. They know that if the wife or husband wants to go on a date or they go on a vacation,
This is what my plate should look like to maintain my goals. And then that's kind of the end all be all. Most of my clients continue to stay with me because their goals change, not because they don't have the information. But regardless of whether it's the dad or mom that wants more energy or the person that just wants to build a better foundation, that's kind of the three-step process that I'm taking them through every time. So I imagine just because of human nature, there's going to be...
uh peaks and knolls right so at some point these people are they come in they're invigorated they're like all right let's do this i have a why here we go and then like you said i mean homeostasis i think that is just a human condition right we fall back into whatever is easiest especially our brains it just wants to make the easy decision so now if these people are doing that for a certain amount of time and they either lose motivation or you start picking up like what's going on
How do you reboost it? How do they kind of kick that back into gear? What would you recommend? So motivation is fleeting. That's something that I learned early on bodybuilding. It's an emotion. And sometimes we're not always in control of emotions. You won't always be motivated to do something. However, if you build structure, if you build good habits and you have discipline, which is really what I'm teaching them throughout the course of this.
then you don't necessarily have to worry about motivation. Now, it's not to say that they don't become unmotivated. It happens to everybody. But what I'll try to do is figure out what the cause of that is and then address that. For some people, it's too much structure too soon. They're trying to make so many changes at once that they feel overwhelmed and they shut down. So I say, okay, well, we'll back off. Maybe instead of tracking all of your food, the only thing I want you to track right now is protein. Just make sure you're hitting your protein target for the day.
And then any other food you consume, just make sure it's not coming from a package. Outside of that, track your protein, eat until you're content. Oh, well, I can do that. Okay, cool. Well, then that takes some of that burden off of them. So I really try to dig and find out like, okay, well, where's this roadblock? And then what can we do to circumvent that roadblock or to make sure that we're able to continue moving forward?
I love that. I mean, you're exactly right. Motivation is fleeting. I love that. And like you said, so would you recommend like maybe changing your mindset, even from the beginning of, hey, we're not going to do this for the motivation. You have to kind of wrap your head around, we're going to do this to, I don't know, it sounds so much more boring, but it's like to learn how to be disciplined.
It is exactly what that's so funny enough. That's exactly what I tell every single person that comes to me is I tell them, look, our goals throughout this are to build the, the required, I guess, habits, you know, through this, don't think of it as losing weight. Think of it as you're building habits that byproduct of that is going to be your weight loss or your strength building goal. But in building these habits.
You're going to be disciplined in the fact of knowing what to do every single day, how to make adjustments and how to continue to move forward. That's really cool. I'm going to have to actually try to embrace that myself because I'm a person who I find myself to be really optimistic, positive. And so I have more motivation than I think the average person does. So I'm motivated more often, but I still fall prey.
to if i don't have that motivation i'm very easily like yeah i got a lot to do today i'm gonna go ahead and skip jujitsu you know well next thing you know it's been three months and i'm like i haven't been in jujitsu and i go back and all the guys are kicking my butt you know it's like if i had that discipline to be like i don't i know i don't want to don't even think about the motivation it's like it's 12 i gotta go i'll tell you right now so perfect example was yesterday i had two of my clients cancel on me normally i train at
to like, normally I would be at the gym right now. And then I knew we had this. So I'm like, okay, that gives me one of two options. I either train tonight after I get home after dinner, which I really don't want to do, but I'll do it. Or I train in the morning and take one of the spots that one of my clients that canceled is at 5am, which also don't really want to do, but one of them's got to get done. So last night, my options were either sit on the couch and watch TV for an hour. Now that the kids are asleep or get up.
Go get everything ready. Put it in my bag. And then that right there creates the motivation. The discipline creates the motivation. I got up. I got all my stuff packed. I got my food. I got everything I needed in the morning set out. Coffee cups sitting underneath the coffee thing so that when the timer goes off, I got my coffee as soon as I wake up. But then, now it's 9 o'clock, 9.15. I'm usually in bed or sleep by 9.30. So now I've just utilized the one hour of TV time that I typically have every night with my wife.
to go make sure that I have everything ready today, but I can promise you now that's all done. I can sleep easy and be like, cool. I know as soon as that alarm goes off, all I got to do is get up, grab my stuff, and I'm out the door. There's my motivation. I don't have to wake up and be like, oh, I got to make coffee. Oh, I got to go get my food ready. Oh, I got to do all the... No, I wake up, put my shoes on, I get dressed, grab my coffee, grab my bag that's already got everything, and I get out the door, and now we're moving. I don't have time to stop. I don't have time to think. It's just go.
Yeah, it's just fascinating. All these like tiny little things that you put together. And even if you go back to your finance examples, I think a lot of people get overwhelmed and confused with things like budgeting. And it's kind of like a scary word. But your initial way of tracking your finances was make sure my bank account balance doesn't go below this amount.
whatever that is, $5,000 or whatever. I tell my wife, like, hey, stop spending money. She's not a big spender, but if we get to what I consider our threshold, I'm like, hey, don't spend any more money until one of us gets paid again. Yeah, and then it's just layers from there. It's like, okay, I've mastered that one to a degree. Now I'm going to start.
you know putting away a certain amount paying myself first and then from there now we're like really looking at optimizing investments and so it's just like this progression and it's just it's interesting how that translates to all facets of life and so is that kind of i mean
I guess my question is that you're typically what you're trying to do with clients and do they feel underwhelmed sometimes by, Oh, this is all you're trying to help me do right now. Is this this tiny little habit? Is that even going to work? It's funny. It's a question that I do get often. And I tell them alongside with, I want to be the last coach you ever need is I'm going to make you a better person outside. You know, I'm going to make you a better person outside of your physical looks because like you said, all of these things translate. I had a client reach out to me that.
We had to work together and she hit her goal. Everything was great. We hadn't worked together in probably five or six months.
She sent me a message and it was one of the best messages I ever received. She said, hey, I just want to let you know, like my weight has not budged. I'm still staying on track with all of my eating. I still have a ton of energy to hang out with my kids and tell me all these great things that have led further beyond just what she thought she was coming to me for, which was to drop like 20 pounds. And so it's absolutely something that a lot of times people are like.
Is that really all we're going to do? And I'm like, I promise you it will change your life. Yeah. Yeah. We feel the same thing in our world. It's like, just trust us. You know, this will pay off in the long run. Just got to stick with it. But when you're looking at 30 year timelines and people want that instant result, you know, like a diet. That's why diet books sell. And, you know, habits books, maybe not as much unless it's Atomic Habits. James Clear, I'm sure. Which I see behind you, one of my favorite books. Yep. Yep.
So I assume that's where you get a lot of this information from or part of it, at least. Yeah, I'm a big read. Well, I listen to a lot of audio books driving to and from. It's just easier for me. And most of them I listen to at like 1.5 speed, which I just found out the other day. You actually retain more information because it forces your brain to like really pay attention to be able to capture what they're saying. But I usually go through about two to three books a month. And a lot of them are books like that.
So now do you like really talk really fast when you're talking to all of your clients to make sure that they understand? I try not to. I don't think I do. I might when I get excited sometimes, but it's odd because if I don't, there'll be like a week maybe that'll go by where I'm like, man, I haven't listened to a book in a while and I'll listen to it and it'll kind of throw me off. Like, what the hell are they talking so fast? Yeah. That's a life hack though. I mean, I didn't even know that button existed like until a year or two years ago. And I'm like sitting there going through like.
CE going, man, I have so many things. People are like, why aren't you listening to it one and a half or two times speed? YouTube has it now too. Yeah, it's not bad. Yeah, we don't encourage any listeners to do that right now. Take your time. Enjoy it. I can't do it on podcasts. I cannot, especially if I'm watching it. There's something about like the speed and the, it just, it's off. But if it's an audio book, I can all day. Breaks the conversation up. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, the cadences are off and it doesn't seem natural for somebody that no one's going to talk to each other that way. Yeah. Versus a narrator is just reading to you. So what are tricks that you could create motivation? I feel like I'm the opposite where I have very little motivation, but I just continue in routines that I do and I get myself to the gym. I force myself to go in the ice bath, even though I hate it, but it's hard to kind of create motivation some months. It's like, it's like, it feels like repetitive, but
What are things that you get yourself and your clients to get more excited about the things that you're doing? Because I feel like it's in every aspect, not just working out, but our finances, our health, everything that we do. This is an interesting question, Jared, just because you're like, how can I get more dopamine hits? Because I just do what I do. And Jared's very successful. So I'm really curious what Devin has to say to that. That's why I go in those ice baths because I like that dopamine hit.
Honestly, you're doing it. Discipline is going to lead to more motivation and it's going to kind of fall back to what we talked about at the beginning. And the reason being is the more disciplined, the more structured you are, the less you're going to want to undo where you're at because you've been going. So you don't want to miss that day. You don't want to have that skipped event or whatever it is. I wish I could say, hey, do these things. But the fact of the matter is I'm doing the same things you're doing. It's that it's show up. Like I tell people all the time, I promise you, if you don't want to go to the gym,
Just show up. Even if you say, hey, I'm only going to go in and do 20 minutes. It usually ends up being one of the best workouts that you've ever had. But just showing up day to day is what is going to help you move forward, because especially somebody I'm sure you're similar to somebody like me is you don't want to go backwards. And we know that the opposite of not doing it is regressing. And it's for me, that's not an option. It's building the habits and having the discipline.
when you don't have motivation that are going to be those fail-safes that we talked about that are going to help push the needle forward. Because there's so many days where I literally sit outside the gym. I'm like, God, I just want to go. There's a Burger King in the same parking lot. I just want to go over and get a freaking Whopper or get a milk. But I'm like, no, I'm going to go in here and I usually end up having a good workout or we have a pretty decent home gym now where I'm like, I don't even want to drive to the gym. And I'll go down and I'll just...
speak around in the gym a little bit the shop gym for a little bit and it ends up being pretty good but it's just do something like don't stop yesterday was a prime example like the option was if i would have sat on the couch it would have been game over it would have been i'll grab what i grab and i'll maybe go to the gym today after this but i just i just keep moving the same way you do like you go from the one thing to the next thing and it's that discipline within your daily habits
that are all created by structure that are going to allow you to continue to achieve what it is you're going after. I'm curious for both of you, since it seems that you might be a little bit more of a similar personality where you're like, you're forward looking, you do because you're supposed to. Once you're like, hey, I'm disciplined and I know this is going to achieve my goal so that you lean into it. I wonder if that's a really good point. And Devin, I'm curious if you do this with your people is to
Sometimes when we're so forward looking, we forget to take a moment to see what we've achieved and appreciate right now. And so it's like, do you ever have that? Like I think of Jared saying, well, how do I get more dopamine? Well, maybe it is for just a moment, go against the grain, look at where you've been and go, wow, look at the difference. And maybe that gives you some more like, oh, that is why I'm doing this. So you keep going. Do you ever do that with your clients? Do you ever look at befores and afters? Or you're like, don't worry about it. Just keep moving forward.
No. So it's difficult. It's funny because for my clients, I do that all the time for them. But that is something that intrinsically is difficult for me. I am somebody who it's like, okay, head down, just keep trudging forward. And I do have to have those times. And a lot of times it'll be my wife or a friend that'll be like, dude, look at where you started. And like, look, cause I'll be like, oh, well, you know, it's only this or it's only that. And they're like, what do you mean? You only have 35 clients. Like a year ago, you had 10.
I guess you're right. And then I do take a moment and really appreciate that. And it is really good sometimes. And it is something that I know I need to do more often. But I do that a lot with clients too, which is funny. It's one of those do as I do, not as I do as I say, not as I do type of thing. I had a client the other day who had been with me for six months. And he's like, hey, I got to be honest. I'm not very happy with the way things are going. I'm like, explain to me what you're not happy about.
He's like, well, I just feel like we haven't made any progress. I said, OK, give me a couple of minutes. And so I got his first picture that he sent me when we started. And I got his second picture when we were together. In the six months, we had almost tripled his food intake. He came to me at like 1800 calories. He's at like 3700 calories. He weighs within five pound difference of the two photos. Chest is fuller, stomach smaller. I send him the picture and kind of the highlights on his nutrition from where we were and where we were at.
And I said, this was you six months ago when we started. This is you now. Please let me know what it is that you're upset about. And I'll do my best to make the correction. He just sent a message back that said, never mind. But it is that looking back sometimes where we don't realize how far we really have come. And that's a great point. Yeah, in all things, I think, and we all fall prey to it, but it's just taking a moment.
and giving yourself grace. Because if we're constantly seeking the goal, then we're never appreciating the ones that we met. And it's just so easy. If I could liken it to somebody who's going for, they finally reach a million dollars in their portfolio or something. And then they're like, all right, we need to get more just because I want to leave my kids stuff. It's like, well, hold on. Maybe you should go and treat yourself to that.
really fancy restaurant that you wanted to go to this whole time or yeah but i can't i got to get to my two million dollars why if you're gonna just when you get there you're gonna say i need to get to five million like enjoy it a little bit too the ride is fun absolutely that's a great point yeah so here's what my thought for the little bit that we have left you mentioned your family and so i had some questions around that as far as like you know this takes a lot to be a bodybuilder and so balancing that time so if somebody's out there and gone well
I just worry I'm not going to have family time and stuff. I think there's somebody out there listening who wants to hear how you balance it. So let me ask you about the family first. So you said, hey, your wife is like, hey, I don't even care if you're more cushy. I want to snuggle. And you said you had to take that time to make it easier for the morning. But you were taking some time out of the time you would have been sitting with her. What's that dynamic like? How do you have those conversations with the family so they understand where you're at? And how do you personally go, hey, I can't.
Because I know you, you're a good guy. So you're not going to put your family second, but you are going to balance it out. So how do you do that? How do you make sure that your family's still first? So when it comes to competitive bodybuilding, there's no balance. But that's like when I'm, that's prep. That's getting ready for a show. That's usually like 10 weeks. I mean, prep's usually about 18 weeks, but at about the 10 week mark, that's when balance kind of goes out the window. Don't get me wrong. I'm still showing up for my family.
But it is just heavily leaning towards one side. As soon as the show's over, it swings the complete opposite way where it's like, I'll make it to the gym when I make it to the gym or I'll make it to the gym around anything else we have going on for family stuff. But even last year, like I always I do two things. Number one is I would have weekly check ins with my wife. I would say, hey, where areas that you feel I'm falling short? What areas do you think are going well? And she's like, oh, well, I love you're helping out around the house a ton.
you know coaching the boys and that's great but i feel like we don't spend enough time together okay cool i will make sure that you know every friday or every other friday or whatever it is it looks like like we're spending time alone for whether it's a date night or just a little you and me time so i think checking in with your spouse is something that's very important as far as the balance goes it's difficult it and it's with anything that's a heavy goal
It's all I can say is there's a less balance. Again, the pendulum just swings and I try to be as upfront as I can. Hey, over the next couple of weeks, I need this from you guys. And as soon as this is done, this is where we'll be at. Again, I don't neglect them, but there's just a bigger focus on other areas. I'm still making sure I do the dishes and I'm doing all my stuff to withhold. There's just times where I might have to pull back a little bit from other areas.
But then that all gets reintroduced right after. Yeah, I love that. It makes me think of we had a guest on recently named Dalil Allison. And one of the questions I posed him is like, what did you sacrifice? And he said, I don't think of it as sacrifices. I think of it as trade offs. Yes. And so it's kind of what you're saying here is like, hey, I spend a lot of time with them. But when it comes, it's like, hey, guys, here's that trade off. I have to now kind of focus on here. But then you're communicating so that everybody knows.
what's on and they're saying if they need you or whatnot. That was the biggest problem earlier when I was bodybuilding is I did not have that communication and I did just kind of shut things out and it was not good. It wasn't good on the relationship. It wasn't good for anything. And now it's just being more verbal and communicating. Hey, this is where I'm at. Where are you at? Where do you need me to be? Let's get that figured out. Yeah. No, I love that. I appreciate you being vulnerable and saying that because it is.
Man, relationships are hard because there's two people with two different minds and ideas and you're trying to synthesize them together. No matter who it is. Well, I think we can shoot from the hip unless you guys have anything other. Nope. I want to start. I want to know if you could only do three exercises for the rest of your life, what would those be? Binge press, deadlift, and probably squat.
Those three exercises are going to work collectively. Every muscle in your body, you ideally wouldn't need to do anything else. Okay. I got diet. Everybody says, oh, well, 90% of it is diet. Is that true? Absolutely. I love cookies. So here's the thing. I love cookies. Even through prep, I would eat probably one to two half-pound cookies every Sunday. We're talking like giant baseball size. Yeah.
But I also love Oreos. I have 48 packs of Oreos at home. I collect Oreos. So we'll put it in perspective of Oreos for the audience. Two Oreos is about 200 calories. Most people aren't eating two Oreos. So let's say you eat four Oreos. That's 400 calories. That's probably not the only thing you're eating for the day. But to work off those 400 calories or four Oreos that you just ate, that's about 60 minutes on an incline treadmill. So an hour of walking uphill.
That's about two and a half hours of weight training in the gym or about an hour to an hour and a half vigorous weight training in the gym for the average person. I would probably say it's close to two hours. That's about two and a half to three, if not four miles for the average person. So you've just done all that and that was to work off four Oreos. Which took about 20 seconds to eat. Exactly. Yep. So that's just one. Oh, yes, they are.
That's just one example. But the other thing is fueling your body proper. Making sure you're getting the right amount of protein, which helps with recovery. Making sure you're getting the right amount of carbohydrates, which help with energy. And then making sure you're getting the right amount of fats, which help with hormonal balances and imbalances. So understanding how to eat for your goals, but then just also how to eat to feel better is very important. So nutrition is everything. Yeah. And you got something to say, Brett, but real quick on the Oreo side too.
Sometimes what I think, and I'm not going to speak to nutrition per se, but in life, I would say if they're really important to you, then eat one so you still get that enjoyment. But now you only have to walk 15 minutes uphill as opposed to an hour. Yeah. Yeah. Also, Oreo Reese's collaboration just came out. It's going to be really hard to resist. So I'm super excited for that. I will say, OK, I got to nerd out on Oreos real fast.
The Blueberry Pie just came out. So for anybody that's watching, listening, whatever, go buy those before they go away again. They came out first in 2016. That's when I first had them. Then 2017, Oreo re-released them. That's a big deal because back then Oreo did not do re-releases unless it was very, very popular. 2017 to 2025, they were the most requested Oreo of all time ever. And they just dropped them again. I don't know how much longer they're going to be out. So if you see them, buy them.
And then, yes, I'm super excited for the Reese's collaboration. Buy them and send them to Devin. For the Reese's, then the Oreos. Yeah, exactly. For the everyday person, cardio versus strength training, what does the ideal week look like? Ideal week, strength training, at least three days, three to four days a week.
to go five six seven you actually need breaks our bodies repair we actually do more things at rest than we do in the movement but three days of strength training is a great place to start and then three to four days i mean you could even push it up to five of cardio but the easiest thing to do when it comes to cardio is walk on a treadmill incline of roughly 10 to 12 degrees and then a pace of 2.5 to 3 do that for 20 to 30 minutes
four to five days a week. And I promise you, you're going to hit your fitness goals real quick. If your nutrition is lined up. Is there truth in that? Like your heart rate, there's different areas that this burns fat and this burns all that stuff. Is that true? Yeah. So ideally you want to be in zone two is kind of what it's called. And that's usually like the one 20 to one 35 for most people. It's dependent on age and a few other things, but.
It's usually around the 120 to 135 range. And that is kind of considered the fat burning zone. When you get above that, you're really building your VO2 max or like your actual lung capacity. And then anything below that is great for movement, but it's just not moving the needle enough to really release the lipids or the fat cells to actually start to break down. Okay. And that limit is really, first of all, there you go.
But yeah, zone two, and you'll easily hit that walking. And a lot of times, like for my whole prep, I did the entire prep and got completely ready for the stage, just walking on an incline treadmill, 3.1 to 3.5 in an incline of 10 to 12 degrees. What's the incline for? It just increases the rate of exertion. It makes it harder. Okay.
And here's the other thing. When you're walking uphill, or when you have it set to an angle, don't hold on to the edges because all you're doing is counterbalancing the angle that you're putting it at. If the treadmill's like this and your hands are like this, then you've just negated the whole thing and you might as well walk flat. So it just gets your heart rate up quicker and makes it a little more difficult. Okay. Kind of piggybacking off of Brett's question, what about the length of a workout?
Is it, I've heard like an hour is about perfect. And after that, like your body is just kind of in shock mode at that point. Is that true or? So it varies. It varies on a couple of different things. One being the intensity of the workout. I usually don't work out longer than 50 minutes. And by 50 minutes, I'm actually, I'm absolutely like dumb. I take shorter rest periods in between sets. My exertion is usually very high. I'm moving heavy weight, which again is all relative to the individual, but heavy for me.
I have clients and I have even worked out as short as 15 minutes and actually saw really good strength increases. When I was done with my last competition, I didn't even go to the gym. I worked out at our shop gym that I put together and I did four 15 minute workouts a week. By the time I got back to the gym, that was September, October, around November, all of my lifts had increased substantially from where they were before my squat, my binge.
And I was just moving heavy compounds, doing those movements that Jared had asked about. Going in and focusing on squat, on bench, on clean. I'd have a couple of days right here, deadlifts. And then I'd have a few days. But as far as time, it can be as short as 15 minutes. It could be two hours. I think you're wasting time after an hour in most cases. But 15 minutes to an hour, as long as you have a good level of intensity tied to it. Where do people go to get started?
Yeah. So you can find me on Instagram D grow 39 or the website is NXT level dash training.com. Devin at NXT level dash training.com. All great places.
That's awesome. And then Devin, do you do anything where somebody says, hey, this is kind of what I'm going for? Do you do a free consultation or anything? Absolutely. Yeah. Free consultation. I don't charge to consult with people. I want to make sure I'm a good fit for them just as much as they want to make sure that I'm a good fit or we're a good fit collectively. So I have an extensive library of other trainers that I trust. So in the event somebody doesn't work for me, doesn't work well for me, I have a number of people that I value and trust.
would feel confident in being able to send them their way to make sure that they get the right type of person for them. That's perfect. Well, as always, we'll put all the information down in our show notes. We'll blast it over social media so that people know how to reach out to you. Anybody listening, I really do encourage you to reach out to Devin and just get started because to his point earlier, I mean, it's funny how the physical health will start being better in other areas of your life.
being disciplined in physical health, you start being more disciplined in meditating or writing or whatever you've been wanting to do. So these all really do extend across each other. Discipline is the highest form of self-care. So if you really want to take care of yourself, start developing discipline and it'll bleed throughout your entire structure from finances to health to everything else. Yeah. Well, Devin, thank you so much for everything you've shared with us and taking the time.
Jared, I didn't cut you off there. Did you have something to say? No, I was just saying it's really good information there. Thank you. Yeah. No, it's been awesome, Devin. We'll probably have you on again. So we'll make sure that anybody, again, check out our show notes and reach out to Devin if you have any other questions or reach out to one of us and we're happy to get you guys in contact. Thanks for having me. It's been a blast, guys.
Thanks, David.
Brett Mykowski is an investment advisor representative and registered representative offering advisory services and securities through Cetera Advisor Networks, LLC, member FINRA, CIPC, a broker, dealer, and registered investment advisor. Cetera is under separate ownership from any other named entity. THM Wealth Management is located at 102 S, Goliath Saint, Suite 1003, Rockwall, TX7, Feinfobri, I can send.