61 — Taking care of your most valuable assets with Jason Van Camp of Mission Six Zero #DeliberateDiscomfortChallenge
Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum 0:00
Today is a very special episode, we are dealing with our most valuable asset, our people. And to that end, I have Jason VanCamp of mission six zero to tell us about what he’s doing to help everyone stay healthy. Part of this is the deliberate discomfort challenge that Jason his team are putting on. It starts every Monday and it goes for 60 days, the first 10 listeners of cybersecurity amplified and intensified who sign up for Jason’s challenge will get their entry paid by us. And Jason is also running a buy one get one free. So grab a buddy, get started. And now our episode with Jason VanCamp. Admission six, zero. Jason, tell us about yourself.
Jason Van Camp 0:43
Well, hello, thanks for having me on. Good morning to keep it’s it’s a great day. It’s great day, great to be on the show. What do you want to know about me I’m, I’m originally from Virginia, grew up right outside Washington, DC. And I grew up in an environment where there were two enemies. One, the Russians, went to the Dallas Cowboys. And so that’s kind of how I grew up. In the 80s. I attended the United States Military Academy at West Point. While I was there, I served a mission a religious mission for my church. For two years I served in Russia. So I was in St. Petersburg, Russia, and in the northwest area there, she was awesome, was a great time, learn to speak Russian was pretty good. While I was there, and immediately after my Russian skills have diminished a little bit since then, he get it back pretty quickly. There’s no doubt. When I graduated from West Point, I joined the military, officially 911 hit, you know, a few months after I graduated. And so it changed like our perspective of, of the world of what we were getting ourselves into. In the military, we’re now going to combat you know, it was a more intense sort of purpose driven, you know, sort of environment. So, I became a ranger, then I became a Greenbrae, deployed three times in Middle East, spent a year in Korea spent some time in Africa as well retired about 15 years, so medically retired early, and because of a tonic clonic seizure disorder I developed, which is really tough situation. And, and I met my wife, we moved to Utah. And we have two kids now, five year old Claire and a two year old named Jack,
Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum 2:41
Oracle. How did you start up in your current role?
Jason Van Camp 2:45
So when, whenever you get out of the military, or whenever you transition from one position to the next in life, or something happens to you, well, you have to rediscover yourself, or redefine yourself or reinvent yourself, you always ask yourself, now what, what am I going to do, and you kind of weigh your options. And something my mother always used to tell me was show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future. And so that’s where I looked, I looked at my friends, the people I was closest with and what they did, when they transition when they left the military, when they decided to do something different with their lives. And a lot of these individuals had started businesses, and then different, you know, cybersecurity, government contracting, you know, the oil, industry, logistics, things like that. And I thought they could do it, the biggest sort of business, I can as well. And so I thought about what I would want to do, you know, I thought about my experiences in life and what I was good at what I was passionate about what I enjoyed spending time doing what I thought about when I didn’t have to think and I realized that I was pretty passionate about, about people that the people that I served with people that I surround myself with my friends that the men on my team is served under me, the the my peers, my commanders, people I worked for. And I realized that they were pretty special. Some of the best leaders I’ve ever met in my life, some of those people and I thought, you know, I’d like my kids just to be around these individuals and soak up every day that they are. And so I created a leadership development firms, anything about business, not knowing anything about, you know, how to succeed. And that sort of thing. I just knew that if we got these people together, we could do something special. And so that was the genesis for my leadership development company, Mission Zero. And we were lucky enough to, to go after National Football League clients right away. And we landed a client, the New York Jets, you know, within a few months of our creation. And since then, we’ve worked with nearly half of the NFL. We were a major league baseball teams and And right now our, our focus our clientele is is corporate. You know,
Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum 4:58
are you doing anything with the data cowboys
Jason Van Camp 5:01
know nothing with the Cowboys never done anything with the Cowboys. If they came knockin, I certainly wouldn’t say no, they don’t.
Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum 5:08
So one of the things that got me to your website and to you is your deliberate discomfort challenge. And I found that very interesting. Can you go into that, what that entails and what it’s about?
Jason Van Camp 5:22
almost definitely. So you see behind me, I guess over my, my left shoulder, as you look in a book, deliver discomfort. And so it’s, it’s a book about my experiences as a leader. And so it starts out with me, after I earned my Greenbrae joining my unit, my group for the first time, and I walk into my boss’s office, and he says, Jason, we’re going to combat in a few weeks, in order for you to not only survive, but thrive, you know, and succeed in this environment, you have to adopt the mindset that we have, you have to understand the culture that I’ve established in order for you to do that. There are people in this company that I want you to speak with, and ask them questions and find out what makes them tick. You know, because I need you to adopt similar mindset, you know, so each chapter, the book is me speaking to a different, you know, operator, and some of these guys are Navy SEALs, Green Berets, you know, Medal of Honor recipients, Rangers, Marines, I mean, amazing people. And after we talk about that experience, we break it down scientifically, you know, what’s the so what now? What behind that experience? And then we have a practical application? What does this mean to me? How can I apply to smile life? What are some examples of our case studies of our clients using this particular theme of this chapter, under the umbrella of deliver discomfort in order to succeed in life. And so I wrote the book, and I published it in February of 2020, a few weeks later, COVID hit. And so it was a weird situation, because everything that we did, admissions, zero was in person, we did keynote presentations. In person, we did workshops in person, we did team building exercises in person. And so my company’s business model was destroyed. And so we said, well, what are we going to do are we going to give up and, you know, are we going to accept the deliberate discomfort and do something about it, so we decided to do something about it. And so what we did was we transitioned from in person, to a virtual company. And one of the first ideas that had was to create a deliberate discomfort challenge. And this was sort of born out of the idea that during COVID, the gyms were closed, I wasn’t working out, you know, I was behind the computer a lot, you know, stressed out trying to figure out how to survive, I gained a lot of weight, you know, I wasn’t happy. You know, things just seem to be chaotic and, and we’re spinning out of control. And so I said, you know, what, like, I’m going to do something about this. And so I developed a program where I could get my self back on track, you know, I could develop the habits that I needed in order to succeed in life, consistently. And so I thought it takes, it’s different for everybody how long it takes to develop a habit, but I thought 60 days was a good amount of time, two months, Mission six, zero kind of made sense, the 60 days. And I said, All right, in the book we talked about our total warrior model is something we learned in the Special Forces its focus mentally, physically, spiritually, socially, emotionally, and professionally. So I added a few components there. That meant something to me. And I thought to myself, if you could balance those six domains, if you could focus on the six domains every day, you know, and build something, then you could have something really, really special and powerful in your life. So all we said was 60 days from start to finish, no excuses, no mercy. Mentally we want you to read a book from start to finish. You know, if you digest books through you know, audio book, that’s okay, too. We created a library of books that you can choose from, and the first book during the first week is delivered discomfort. So we send you that book and you read it, we all read it together. The second is physical. He said all right, well,
let’s do sort of a gym based workout. You know, so kind of a something that you can use for strength building, you know, use weights, that sort of thing. Still cardio program, something you do outside, you know, we’re talking Sprint’s runs, jogs, hikes, ruck marches, and let’s give people a nutrition plan. And if they want to have a professional personal nutritionist, we can deliver that for you. If you want to have meals delivered to your door, prepared meals specifically for you and your body type. We can do that as well. Spiritually, we have a mindfulness exercise and Navy SEAL Commander John McCaskill, recently retired naval academy guy, we became friends over the course the last few years. And he was always talking to me about mindfulness. And previously, I’d looked up mindfulness I Google that, you know, and I looked into it, and I tried it. And it didn’t work for me. And I didn’t really understand it. And I said, whatever. It was only until John told me, you know, Jason, I’ve been doing it and it works. And here’s how you do it. It was only until somebody with credibility, sat me down, and explained to me how to do this. And to give it a shot that I really accepted and try it. And you know, the first week, you’re thinking, Okay, I’m just breathing. I’m just thinking, I’m just doing this stuff. Is it really helping? And the more you do it, the more you actually see a change in your life, the more you actually see, like, things becoming more clear for you, things becoming better for you. And so I’m, I’m hooked. I’m a believer, man. Yeah, mindfulness works. So we have a mindfulness practice, you practice every single day. It starts out with five, two minute exercises during the first week. And it finishes up with a 40 minute exercise. During the last week of the challenge. Socially, we have a request that you reached out to a family member, a friend, a past friend, somebody you’ve had a falling out with, and have a meaningful conversation with this person. Now, this social piece, for most people, it’s the reason why they don’t do the challenge. Because when they see this social piece, you’re like, oh, hell, no, I’m too afraid of that. I don’t want to do that. I’m not gonna do it. But the people that accept the challenge, and they do this every single day, and they report back to us, and the after action review, they say that was the most powerful part for me, was the social component. They’ve reconnected with people they lost touch with, they’ve made amends, you know, that sort of thing, which is, it’s pretty powerful. Emotionally, we have a gratitude journal. So you write in your gratitude journal every single day. And professionally, we’ve developed a masterclass mission six, zero. It’s a 66 video masterclass, and you watch a video every single day, and it takes you through the book, deliberate discomfort. So we have me a number of scientists, a number of veterans, talking about specific themes. And the videos are, you know, sometimes six minutes, sometimes 15 minutes long, kind of depends on the topic we’re talking about. So you do all that every single day for 60 days. And then, you know, the last request for me is you post something on social media, social media platform of your choice, it made an impact. Post something that made an impact to you during the challenge that day. So maybe it was something you read, maybe it was, you know, a conversation you had or whatever, you post something on social media. And, and that’s all you do. And so we’ve had over 1000 people go through it in the past year. And I did it again in January, I finished up on March 3, so earlier this month. And that’s pretty special. It really is. It’s a good program.
Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum 13:06
How did you find the transition of going from in person doing these types of events to going online or net? And are you guys still predominantly online? Or have you gone back to in person?
Jason Van Camp 13:18
So your last question first, it’s interesting because things are starting to flip around. Meaning people are asking less of the virtual stuff, and more of the in person stuff now. So we just started doing the keynotes in person again, and we’re we’ve got some programs this summer, we’re reaching out to parents, and we want to have them, we want to give them the opportunity to have their kids come out to Utah for a week with my team. And we’re going to do like a deliberative comfort, mini course, slash treasure hunt. So think the Goonies or Indiana Jones, you know, that’s kind of in survived, you
Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum 14:02
got you got entire generations who don’t know what the Goonies are at this point.
Jason Van Camp 14:06
So it’s gonna be fun. We’re gonna do that July with the kids. So we’re going more towards the person again. And my experiences in both, we’ll start with keynotes. It’s 5000 times easier to do a virtual keynote. You know, like, you walk down the stairs to your office, and you turn on your camera, and you speak. Whereas if you do in person, it’s a two day process, you know, you have to fly out the day before travel, go to the airport, do all that second hotel, you know, have dinner with the client the night before. Wake up, you know, go work out, go have breakfast, get set up, you know, get your mic on, and then do the presentation. And then you know, whatever you do after the fact and then you get on a flight and you go back home. So it’s it’s an ordeal. It’s a process, you know, it’s a two day process, whereas the virtual stuff I mean, it legitimately takes an hour, you walk downstairs, turn the camera, you do it, you turn the camera off when you leave. So it’s much easier. You don’t get paid as much, certainly, but that’s to be expected, you know, because you don’t have to put as much effort in, there’s something about doing a person that scares you, it makes you a little bit more uncomfortable, you know. And then also, you can connect with the people in the audience, you can see who’s who’s vibing, with you who’s really paying attention and excited. And you kind of feel that you’re doing well, or you’re not doing well, like while you’re in person, virtually, you have no sense. If anybody’s paying attention, you have no sense if you’re, if you’re crushing it, if people are excited, and you’re really vibing, or people are completely checked out. So it’s, it’s kind of weird like that, you make a guess, or like, I feel like that went pretty well. But hopefully it did, you know, the, the team building stuff is really only only able to be kind of done in person, you know, we have a workshop, that sort of a virtual team building thing. But it’s so just wildly different. You know, it’s a lot of talking rather than interacting and Vonti.
Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum 16:21
You know, in the, in the last week, I would say I spent the last two plus years in what I now call my global headquarters, which is my house because, yeah, COVID shut us down. And we never went back to the office. And I hit that inflection point where I miss the in person interaction, because even if you’re with someone and working with them, at least in my field, which is, you know, tech, and it, there’s a shorthand and body language communication that you can have with someone without having a verbal conversation. I think that’s right. And one of the, one of the things that really interested me in what you guys are doing, we service a lot of companies with 1000s of employees, and a lot of them are staying remote. And I thought that, I guess what you guys do could, if you’re doing it online, because I didn’t know till we just had this conversation, you are able to scale that and help a lot of people. And this is something you know that. So I’ve been putting it up on the podcast website and everything else that I’ll be I want to email directly to all my clients and say, Hey, can you share this with your teams? Because after after two years of COVID lifestyle, and for those of you watching it at some air quotes up? I think a deliberate discomfort challenge is something that can help anyone that does it
Jason Van Camp 17:46
through absolutely correct. It really helps everyone and it’s primarily a b2c, you know, platform. But we also have worked with companies, big companies that have offered this to their employees. And again, you can’t force it, because it’s very difficult. So you have to volunteer to do it has to be intentional, has to be deliberate, if you’re going to do this challenge, but they’ve offered it to their employees, and they’ve done it some of these groups together. And they’ve bonded like never before. You know, they’ve seen their profits increased like never before, because we’re learning how to manage their time better. And they have much more relatedness in the company, meaning they understand each other, they feel like they’re connected. They feel like they’re actually a part of a team. And, and that sort of been a byproduct of what we developed.
Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum 18:36
One of the things that I picked up from your description of it is it’s a pretty well rounded offering. Because you’re dealing with physical, you’re dealing with the mentally dealing with the spiritual. And I guess is the social aspect. Is that more of the emotional side, say, or is it all just so interrelated that it would be unfair to put them in separate categories?
Jason Van Camp 18:59
We’ve had this discussion with our scientists before. And so with Dr. Sarah Spradlin on my team, she’s a Marine now, and she is our emotional strength science officer. So she put together an argument that every domain is a part of emotional intelligence. And I can see that, you know, but essentially, what we want to do is focus on those six domains separately, meaning that social is separate from emotional, but they’re related. Mental is separate from physical, but they’re related, you know, professional is separate from social, but they’re definitely related. So they’re all kind of intertwined. But in order to lay out our thoughts clearly, and kind of focus on what we want to attain, we broke them down into those six kind of hexagonal domains.
Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum 19:53
What so what has been the number one or the top three benefits that people have gone through? Each challenge I’ve seen, personally, I guess, and professionally,
Jason Van Camp 20:04
I can speak to my own experiences, because, you know, not only am I the founder, but I’m also a client, right? So I, mentally, I have a stack of books, you know, on my nightstand, I do I take a picture, I’ll show it to you. Um, and as life kind of progresses, you get tired, you make excuses. And you just don’t read those books, you just don’t find the time to read the books. And you kind of wish that you were doing that, but you don’t do it. And the challenge kind of forced me, I volunteered to do it, but it forced me to read those books. And so it’s a habit that I want, I want to half I want to read a book a week, you know, moving forward, every time I read these books, like I, I learned something new, my mind opens up, I think about something differently. Physically, you know, you can’t just say, Oh, I’m going to go work out or whatever, you need a plan. You know, and so this is the plan. We give it to you, whenever you’re working, walk into the gym, you don’t have to think what do I feel like doing today? We already figured that out for you. And here’s what you do. And here’s, here’s the reps and the sets. And here’s what we expect out of you. And you’re going to post this. So we’re going to know like how you performed cardio stuff. If you work out in the gym, a lot. You sometimes neglect the cardio stuff running, hiking, sprinting, when’s the last time you did sprints, you know, when I was in when I was in college was last time related sprints, right. And so that helps me to get in shape, and helped me to lose weight. And for a lot of people, that’s the impetus behind sign up for the challenge is they want to lose weight. Well, the first time I did it, I lost 34 pounds. You know, I lost all that bad weight, I lost all that gut weight, and I felt phenomenal, was down under 100. And I was down under 200 pounds, I wasn’t 190 was awesome. Spiritually, like we talked about mindfulness. You know, I didn’t have that in my life. I didn’t know I needed it. I didn’t know I needed it until I did it. And so once you get it, you realize how critical it is for your life. And when we talk spiritual strength, we’re not talking religion. You know, we’re talking about that sort of inner strength that helps you to drive on when things are dark. Socially, we connect with a lot of people in the day to day, but how often do we actually have a meaningful conversation with them? You know, how, how often do we get, we get over the superficial greetings, and really ask somebody how they’re doing. That’s what people need. And that’s what you know, you’ll find that you need as well, emotionally, I’ve always wanted to be a journal guy. You know, I’ve never been that guy. I’m not
Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum 22:55
the reference on the type of journal.
Jason Van Camp 22:57
You know, we say it’s a gratitude journal. And the first time I went through it, it was it was a gratitude journal for me, you know, I wrote down things I was grateful for in my life. Then I transitioned it to being an actual journal, where I wrote down what I did during the day and what I remembered from this day, and different things like that, that I incorporated things I was grateful for, in that day’s post, you know, and that is what works better. For me. That’s what I want to have, you know, the professional stuff, it’s kind of weird, because I created the videos. And so I know what I’m talking about. But every time I hear one of the videos, where I read the book, deliver discomfort, it’s sort of like, it’s reminding me, you know, six things that I forgot that so it’s powerful like that. And one thing I didn’t mention is, you’re not doing this by yourself. You’re doing this with a tribe of people. And I think that’s probably the most powerful part of it. How many? Well, it depends on the class. So you go through it with a class. The first class this year was 388 people. The fewest we’ve had this year is nine in one class. And so you’re doing it with a group of people, they’re doing the exact same thing you’re doing during the exact same days. And so rely on each other. You know, and when you’re when you’re like, you know what, I’ve been doing this for 20 days, I’m exhausted, everything’s sore. I don’t want to wake up in the morning. And then you read a post from, for example, Tommy Parker, who is in your class, and he’s a Marine, former Marine, and he’s a triple amputee, you know, he stepped on a bomb in Afghanistan. And he’s doing the exercises, and he’s going out there and doing everything that we asked him to do. You say to yourself, I don’t have an excuse. Like, who am I to complain about being sore who might it? Alright, I’m gonna go out and do it. You know, and then other people were looking at you, you know, you’re inspiring other people to continue on their journey because they’re seeing You push through your discomfort and exceed
Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum 25:05
what? What’s the schedule like for this in terms of when did the classes start?
Jason Van Camp 25:10
We start every Monday. So this is a weekly class. And I guess it’s 60 days, you know, from start to finish, you can recycle. So like, let’s say you’re on day 10. And you forgot to do a workout or life got away from you, or whatever. Well, you can do one of two things. One, you can continue in your class, knowing that you’re not going to be an official graduate, or you can recycle to day one. And you can start over again, with the new class, starting Monday. So most people recycle once or twice during the program. And, and like I said, it’s a weekly thing. So every Monday we start a new class. And we’ll be doing that until the end of the year.
Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum 25:54
couples do you get a lot of couples signing up. Because I’m thinking my wife, I know she has some goals. And
Jason Van Camp 26:00
so we have right now we transitioned to a Bogo, buy one, get one free, because we found that people want to do this with somebody else. We haven’t seen a lot of couples, we do have some couples, what we see more of his parents, and, and son or daughter, how to get with it. Um, you know, I think the youngest we’ve had is 12 years old, you know, but the, the the teenage kind of age group is definitely able to do this. And it’s interesting, because a lot of these moms and dads that are doing it, their kids will give them a hard time, you know, in the beginning. And then when they see their parents continuing and not quitting, then they become proud. And then they want their parent to succeed. So they push them they say, Hey, did you remember to do your reading today? Hey, did you remember to do your Hey, how’d you do your? How is it cardio today for you, hey, don’t forget the gratitude journal. And then all of a sudden, you’ll find that the kids are like, looking over the shoulder paying attention, and then participating. And then all of a sudden, that kid wants to do it as well. And so it’s a powerful thing with with the parents and the kids doing it together. Spouses do it together as well. We haven’t seen as much of that as the kids. And then friends and siblings, you know, two sisters doing it together. You know, bunch of buddies decided to sign up together, things like that. You see a lot of that too.
Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum 27:32
Would you guys allow me to bring my six year old into this?
Jason Van Camp 27:35
Ah, yeah, it’s up to you. You know,
Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum 27:39
I’m serious, by the way.
Jason Van Camp 27:40
So I have a five year old girl and I take her on my runs with me. And I put her in the stroller though, you know, and we ride together. Your six year old would certainly be able to, like hang with you to be around you, you know, but some of the exercises and runs and things like that they they wouldn’t be able to keep up with you. But they’d be able to be there for you.
Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum 28:02
The reason I ask is because you know, we do the journaling thing here in the house. I journal my daughter journals, my wife will meditate. So I feel like you know, we’re doing bits and pieces of it. And everything you’ve described as you know, building that type of discipline I’d love to instill in my kid because I think that’s the best thing I can give her. You know, forget the toys, forget, you know, the iPad, the shows the TV all the pseudo fun stuff. This is these are life lessons that I think I would much prefer she enjoy. I love how much is the if is the program, the program
Jason Van Camp 28:37
is 297. And then it’s a buy one get one, right? It’s how we do it. And if you want to upgrade to a nutritionist that could be 199 or 399, depending on what you want, the interest is to do for you. And then the meals delivered to your doors also an upgrade as well, depending on how many deals you want. And you know what you want to be able to consist of? Yeah.
Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum 29:01
Are you doing the meals nationwide?
Jason Van Camp 29:02
Nationwide? Yeah, we deliver door to door,
Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum 29:06
same company or you’re just finding different companies in different states.
Jason Van Camp 29:09
And now we’ve partnered with a company called trifecta. Okay, so they deliver the meals for us, and they’re pretty classic. Yeah. Okay.
Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum 29:17
Now, you tell me if I’m allowed to do this, I am so inspired by what you guys are doing and your platform. I’d like to offer my listeners the first 10 listeners either get in touch with me or Jason’s team because of this podcast will pay for the first 10 slots all that want to come
Jason Van Camp 29:37
over. Thank you can certainly do that. Thank you. So
Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum 29:40
I guess the question they know how to get in touch with me info at Amplified intensify.com How would they get in touch with you guys if they just wanted to sign up direct and then I can see Bill me?
Jason Van Camp 29:50
Hell yeah. All right. That’s amazing. Thank you. A couple ways one, go to mission six zero.com Am I SS IO N S is zero comm or you can go to challenge dot deliberate discomfort.com and you can sign up there, you can email me directly Jason at Mission six zero.com. And I can talk you through it. And we can know, we can work out like that
Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum 30:18
sounds good. Anything else that you want to let the people know?
Jason Van Camp 30:22
Well, this is awesome. Ah, like I said, I’ve done the challenge three times I do it every, every year, I did a bit of test I did in 2021. I did it in 2022. Already, I might do it again, this year. I get excited when there’s a large group of people, you know, that are passionate and excited about this as well. And we can all go through it together. And we can help each other out and inspire each other, you know, and post our challenges online, daring to be vulnerable, you know, and you’ll find that you’re much more confident, you’ll find that you’re much more focused, and you’ll find that you get your edge back, you know, and whatever hope some of us feel that we’ve lost in life. More importantly than anything is you get your hope back.
Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum 31:19
Alright, cool. I’d like to thank Jason for coming on. And we’ll put all the details in the show notes and the description. And as I said, first 10 people to get in touch with either Jason’s team or May. We’ll pay for it for you guys. And if you like it, share it with other people. Let them know where to go for it. Yes, Jason, thank you so much.
Jason Van Camp 31:39
Thanks for having me. This is great. Appreciate it.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
