Mindset is a key factor in succeeding at your goals. For professional MMA fighter Josh Tyler, the mentality, flexibility, and toughness help you to find moment to moment solutions. On today’s show, he joins Robert "Fireman Rob" Verhelst to talk about his life on the cage and narrates a lesson-filled outdoor adventure experience that proves that faith over fear is real. Josh believes that men have two sides and can fall on the savage and gentleman side. With this concept, he co-founded Savage Gentleman with the goal of inspiring and guiding the modern male. Tune in to this episode to discover the fun side of MMA and the perks of being a gentleman.
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Listen to the podcast here:
The Savage Gentleman: Rediscovering The Balance Of Manhood With Josh Tyler
This show is about inspiring and motivating individuals and I am talking to an inspiring, motivating individual, Josh Tyler. How are you doing?
I’m doing great. I’m happy to be hanging out and chatting with you.
Josh and I go way back to the Discovery show, The Ultimate Ninja Challenge and surviving in the wilderness of British Columbia. It was a challenging time, wasn't it, Josh?
It was definitely the opposite of easy to be sure.
You and I got the first episode up on the rocks and you had to deal with me and not being able to be content in the quiet. You're a great motivator to figure out how to be content.
Honestly, my only regret or the only downside that I look back on that was us having to take such a long pause in the middle of our checkers game and then when we came back, I had forgotten what my strategy was all together and you ended up winning. I was butt hurt about that. Aside from that, the interaction and everything, it wasn't that big of a deal. We had good dudes, we had an amazing view, and we could sit in nature and talk about stuff that we needed to talk about which I thought was cool. It was cold. There was nothing to eat. It was this dark, barren rock that we were left on to try and not die. It was still cool.
When we went swimming in the glacial lake up there, it wasn't brought out but you and I decided to take a little dip in that glacial. That was probably some of the coldest water I've ever been in. What about you?
Easily, that was the kind of water that takes your breath away. It's involuntary. You have this idea of like, “I'm going to paddle around and hang out in this water and enjoy.” No. It was getting in and then self-preservation kicking. It’s like, “I have to be out of this immediately.”
There were no towels.
It was a calculated risk. It was warm, the sun was out and we figured, “Good enough daylight, then we can warm back up.” When else on this adventure are we going to have the opportunity to jump into this pristine glacial lake? We went ahead and went for it and it was cool.
It was when you see everything back on TV and they have to fit everything into a short period. For me, the biggest struggle was that 24 hours is a long time and that was the craziest part of it. I never realized that until being out in that cold. How about you? Did you feel that same thing?
I’m somewhat accustomed to that. That wasn't a huge shock for me. The hardest part for me was the unknown. Having no idea how long we were going to be out there, that was the hardest part. I can imagine on your side, as per our discussion where you're busy, you're active, you're constantly working and doing things, your mind is occupied every minute of the day. All of a sudden, you're thrown in this situation where you have nothing to do but think. That could be hard for anybody. Thankfully, that mission wasn't long. Being out there indefinitely with nothing to do and nowhere to go, that wears on you. For 24 hours, I was okay. If we had extended that to 3 or 4 days, we all would have been going nutty by then.
Going back to your roots, you are an MMA fighter and the mindset to go into a ring and compete at that level, in essence, it's like bare-knuckles boxing with a little padding.
There's not much there. That's only there to protect a little bit. The knuckles are more likely to cut because it's a harder surface. It's minimal padding. It's brutal. It's violent. It’s probably 90% mental.
The mindset is amazing.
The mindset carries over and transcends the activity. If you have the capability and the mindset to do an IRONMAN, you can take that and conform it in such a way that you can apply that to the cage or survival or going through the rigors of starting your own business or whatever that challenge is. Mindset is mindset. It all comes down to how we frame it for the task that we need and recognizing where the common themes are. We look at different things as being dissimilar. Stepping into the cage and fist fighting is completely different than starting your own business. There are a lot of similarities if we could distill it down to its essence.
It’s the little things.
It comes all down to mindset.
To give people an idea, I've never wanted to be an MMA fighter or never even thought about going, if you had to break it down to three things before you step into that ring, not the training aspects or anything like that. When you're going into a fight, when you're stepping into that cage, what are three things that are going through your mind that calms you, that puts you in that place where you can step into that ring?
It's interesting because the hardest moments to deal with for me are probably the hours before the fight. The days leading up to the fight, not a big deal. Once I'm stepping into the cage and the fight starts, it’s not a big deal. The 3 or 4 hours prior, backstage getting ready for the fight tend to be the hardest ones. That's where for me, it makes or breaks the fight. I've had ones where I've been able to keep it together well and had outstanding performance. I've had other fights where I lost it. It got off the rails for whatever reason. I thought I was going to fight at this time and then they shifted it and I was mentally prepared to then have to sit and wait a couple more hours. For me, that was hard to come back from. In fact, I wasn't able to come back from and win those fights even though they were probably winnable contests.
What were the biggest things about those three hours before? What was the hurdle, the obstacle?
Expectation and attachment. The thing that I realized in hindsight is I set a certain expectation. I'm expecting to fight at this time and therefore, I have to do the warm-up in this sequence so that I can be mentally, physically, prepared to go out and do this thing, which is great when everything goes according to plan. When they call you out to walk down out to the cage and you're going down the hallway and then they turn you around and send you back in the locker room because they're going to put you at the end show, then all of a sudden that game plan falls way. You've got another two hours to try and get ready for, even though you already got ready. I realized I was putting way too much emphasis on this routine and this illusion of control. The reality is that none of that matters. There are circumstances that are beyond our control. Yes, we have to care about the outcome but we have to somewhat detach from the sequence leading up to it, if that makes sense.
That makes sense. When I asked you about which one of the seven catalysts aligned with you and faith over fear and it's exactly what you're talking about of the ability to have faith and your training was there, everything was there and don't have the fear that if something comes in the way, you can accomplish it. The amount of training that you do for MMA fighting is unreal.
It's substantial. You have to have that confidence that what you did will be good enough. Even if it wasn't, you have to have confidence in your ability to figure it out at the moment. It doesn't matter how much you train or how much time you put in, you cannot be prepared for every contingency in anything you do. It is impossible. What you have to do is have faith that you have the flexibility and the toughness and mentality to find a solution at that moment. People that have these weird superstitions with sports, that are a fear-based thing are trying to enact a measure of control onto something that is inherently uncontrollable. They wear certain socks and the right underwear. This particular séance before they step out onto the field or whatever their thing is. We do that a lot in life where we're not confident, we're fearful, we're not faithful. We create this illusion of control to try and ease our minds so that we can have that confidence to go that thing but it is all an illusion.
I'm watching on your Facebook and your Instagram and I see this commercial that you do for Xinsurance. For any of you that want to watch this, go to Josh's Facebook page or his Instagram and watch this ad that you got paid to punch somebody in the face and not have a fear of that person coming back at you.
It was fantastic. I was like, “I should have been doing this all along. This is way less stressful. I'll pretend to fight and get paid close to the same amount with a fraction of the work and then there's no danger of me getting hurt.” It was a win-win. To be fair, the guy who was getting punched is a stud fighter his own self. The guy is accomplished. He's retired. He and I have fought on some of the same cards. It's one of those things where we were both like, “It would have been fun to have fought each other, but it would have been a hell of a night. Neither one of us would have walked away feeling peachy keen.” That dude is tough as an ox.
Did you guys play rock, paper, scissors to see who would punch and who would be the punchee?
No. The production company decided because he was clean-shaven and I had the beard. That automatically made me the bad guy and he was the good guy. Since it was an insurance thing, then the good guy was the one who's getting punched which I was fine with. The fun part and what you didn't get to see was they wanted some B-roll footage of an actual fight and they're like, “Can you, guys, fight for a little bit? Not 100% but make it look good.” We were like, “Sure.” For ten minutes, we stand in the pocket because we're filming and you can't move anywhere, otherwise, you're off-camera. We're standing toe to toe, chucking knuckles at each other as realistically as you can without it being a fight. He clipped me with a couple. I ended up with a little bit of a cut under my eye. I bloodied up his nose. Honestly, it was a lot of fun. No one got hurt.
You got a warped sense of fun.
People's definitions of fun probably may vary a little bit but for us, it was cool and we’re like, “We should do that again sometime.”
Josh, not only were you an MMA fighter but you're with Savage Gentleman. This is a cool brand that you started. The objective of Savage Gentleman, can you explain more to our followers what it's about?
It's this idea that we, as men are complex, believe it or not. There are two sides to us. We're not just this one-dimensional thing. We're multifaceted. To oversimplify it, we have a savage and the gentleman's side. Ideally, we should be cultivating both of them simultaneously to reach our best version of ourselves. This idea that if we pick one category and we spend all of our time living in that realm, you end up missing out on a lot of what we're designed to do. If you're a gentleman and everything you do is focused around that gentleman's side and you never tap into your savage side of going out in the wilderness or doing something physical, personally, you're missing out quite a bit. I've seen a lot of guys that have done that. They spent their whole life in this sector and they check all the boxes, they've got a house, car, wife, kids, job, everything that they're supposed to have and yet they're still unhappy, they can't figure out why and it's like “Maybe you spent too far on this side of the pendulum. Maybe you need to let it swing the other way a little bit.” If what you're doing consistently isn't working, maybe it's time to look elsewhere and do something different.
Conversely, if you're 100% on the savage side and shun cultural norms and you're this raw, unrefined, primal beast, that's cool. However, that is limited. You're only going to make it so far in life if you don't have the ability to have some refinement and tap it to your creative side that we all have. I wouldn't say it's about finding that balance because balance is a bit of an illusion. Balance is a moment to pause. We're either on one side or the other. Trying to bounce back and forth as evenly as we can with the objective of getting better on both aspects is what we should be all striving for.
That’s such a great and novel idea. It's not only beneficial to the men, but I can also hear some people going, “How does it benefit the women in those men's lives?” It's making a more well-rounded man. That's what it comes down to.
If you're not the best version of yourself, we're not as well equipped to impact those around us positively. Let's say you're only operating 50% of your potential, you can only give 50% effort or get a 50% return on whatever it is you're doing. If we can fill in those gaps, wherever they may be, then that should hopefully have positive impacts on the people around us and in our relationship with our wife and our kids and whoever else. That sounds like a strange thing for a company especially because we sell leather wallets and all these other things. The selling of the products is a way to keep lights on. We use those products to serve as a general reminder of this overarching idea of being a savage gentleman in the pursuit of trying to make ourselves as complete and well-rounded and the best version that we could.
I have one of the wallets. Honestly, I have to say, every time I bring out my wallet, the cool part is it makes you feel the empowerment. That's one of the words that I say, every time I bring it out, I'm proud of representing that savage gentleman. One of those things is trying to be the best person and that’s a lot of times what I talk about on this podcast and bring on individuals like yourself that are well-rounded and bring so much to individuals through your messaging and through your storytelling. It's powerful to have something like that. Besides that MMA fighting and Savage Gentleman, what else brings you to continue to move forward? We talked on the show about you ending your MMA career and that was one of the big reasons that you went on that show to see where your life was going. What's driving you now?
That show went to a lot of perspectives. Sometimes we can all be lacking. It can become difficult to see the forest through the trees. We need the experience to allow us to look at things from a different viewpoint and that can be both literally and figuratively. If I'm standing at the bottom of a mountain looking up, my perspective is different from when I'm on the top looking down and then I can see everything across the valley. When I'm looking at that mountain, all I see is rocks and trees and potentially this imposing obstacle in my way.
Once I'm at the top, once I've accomplished something and I've gained some experience, I can look around and see things from a different viewpoint and hopefully get a better understanding. The show serves that purpose for me and probably for all of us because it was this daunting challenge to go out and survive with the clothes on your back. Coming back into the real world, you were able to look at things quite differently. For me, what's driving me is following that model where I'm looking for new and different experiences to enhance my perspective so that I can look at things from a different viewpoint. Hopefully, attack them with new vigor and find solutions to problems that otherwise I couldn't find and push myself.
A lot of times, when we think about pushing ourselves, people look at that in a physical capacity, “I’m pushing myself.” Running hard on a treadmill or I'm working out hard and that is an aspect but there's much more to physical exertion than just running hard. There's much more to pushing ourselves than sweating more. That is an aspect and there's value there but there are a lot of other ways that we can push and stretch and grow that is valuable. That's where I'm at. For the business, for Savage Gentleman, this is an example. We opened up our first retail space. We've been primarily eCommerce.
Where's that at?
It's here in Salt Lake City in an old early 1940s trolley station. They converted it into a shopping mall and we've got a space in there. I know nothing about retail. We've been doing eCommerce and we've been figuring that out, making it up as we go along. That started to be comfortable. This opportunity came along to open up a physical store. That was out of my wheelhouse but I knew it was a great opportunity to learn and grow. It would be uncomfortable, certainly, but it was necessary not only for myself but for the business as well.
In hindsight, maybe we were a little overzealous. We signed the lease the Monday before Black Friday and we had everything built out and moved in by that Friday so there was a lot of work. I spent there putting up doing the demo, moving things in. Me and my business partner, the two of us, we did what we had to do to get that. We’re not trying to do all our marketing campaigns for Black Friday. It was an absolute nightmare of a week. However, it pushed us, it challenged us and we're better for it on the other side. For me, finding new and different ways to challenge myself and see where I can spur the growth.
Following your Instagram, it's fun to watch the different things that you do. Is that all in Utah, all the photo-shoots?
For the most part. The cool thing is Utah is geographically diverse. Within a couple of hours north, south, east or west, you can get Alpine mountain landscapes all the way out to red rock desert. You can be on a snow-capped mountain and then drive a little while and you'd be down to Lake Powell or you could be out in the middle of the desert that looks like you're on Sahara. You've got the Salt Flats. There's so much. From a photography standpoint, if you're trying to get content into photos and that sort of thing, you can get a lot of diverse looks in a relatively small geographic area. Occasionally, when I'm able to, obviously, I like to travel and seeing and experiencing new things. Whenever I can, I try to do that and document it. For the most part, everything is right in our backyard.
I love Utah. It's one of those things where you can go there. I've been to St. George and done IRONMAN there. It's such an amazing place for many different things. Josh, I want to go back when we were on the show and you were probably the calmest individual on the show. I'd have to say, you had the most, almost Zen feeling to you. Anytime anybody was around you, it was calming. What would you say was the hardest or the worst moment on the show for you?
The hardest part, hands down had to be the last challenge at the end where we had been sleep deprived for going on three days. Everything that we did was with a group. We had a group setting. For me, I found that particularly helpful because I'm not that calm and patient in everyday life. Ask my wife, she'd be like, “No.” I can fly off the handle with the best of them. It was one of those things where we're looking around, that was the role that needed to be filled. That was the thing that was lacking and the glue that was necessary to keep everything together. I was able to fall into that because it was what was required. For me, that helps, having other people depend on me, it helps me rise above or rise to the occasion.
When we went to the end, the last thing was by ourselves. It was a solo. No one was there. No one needed you to do anything. No one was dependent on you. It was you versus you and that I found was way more challenging. It's one of those things where it's like, “If somebody needs me to do a task, I will run myself right to the ground. No problem.” If it's just me and no one is counting on me, it's hard for me to find the motivation actually to go and do that. I might push a little bit and then, “I don't feel like doing this.” I'll bail out. One of the things that help is having a team that is there to keep that accountability. Here we are, three days without sleep, little food, little water, and we have to perform a tedious task and each person got their own separate job to do. Mine was to chop wood. I had this massive log and I was given this sledgehammer that someone decided to call an ax in order to chop it and I say that because it was dull. I could have easily been using a sledgehammer and probably got about as far through the log.
Here I am and I have chopped wood non-stop until sundown. Once the sun set then we're supposed to build our shelter, build a fire and survive the night without falling asleep, that's the other thing. At any point, the way the show was set up, you can leave whenever you need to. They have the option to bail out for whatever reason. If you're sick of it or you're injured, you're done. However, this one had the disqualification aspect if you were to fall asleep. That was easily the longest night of my entire life because I spent all my time getting my shelter built. By the time that was done, everything was pitch black. It had been raining for six days straight and was still pouring down rain. The temperatures were above freezing and now I’ve got to try and start a fire, which as you well know, that was the only way to survive through the night. I had to have it. There I was trying to start a fire with nothing but this little Ferro rod and soaking wet branches, twigs, and sticks and whatever nonsense I could gather in the pouring down rain in British Columbia in October.
What were you telling yourself at that point? You said three hours before an MMA fight is the hardest part but now, you're sitting five hours before the MMA fight. What is your mind going through at that point?
For me, I had resigned not to have a fire. I was like, “It gets dark at roughly this time, I've got probably ten hours of the night that I have to suffer through before the sun comes up and then I’ve won.” It's a matter of, “Can I keep warm enough to survive that?” At that point, staying awake was not an issue. It's a matter of warmth. Can I do that without having a fire? Starting a fire in those conditions, I knew it was way outside of my capability. I was like, “There's no chance. This is pointless.”
I know enough about making fires to know that this is not happening. What can I do? I know if I move around, that'll get my blood pumping and it creates some warmth. I'll move around. I get up and move around but then being tired, exhausted, and hungry and out in the wild, trying to survive for three weeks at this point, there’s not a lot of energy to be had. Once I was too tired, I moved then I would squat down and get back underneath my shelter and try and get out of the rain until I started shivering much that I'd have to get back up and start moving again to try and warm-up. I was like, “This is what I'm going to have to do all night until either I make it, I pass out from exhaustion or I keel over from hypothermia. Those were my three options and I was like, “I'll take it.”
It’s an awesome position to be in. The worst part and this was where it got challenging and the darkest point of this was a buddy of mine, a tough, badass dude, a Green Beret, SF guy, also happens to be the Owner and Founder of Black Rifle Coffee. Shout-out to Evan Hafer for giving me this little nugget. I’m talking to him before we even go out there and telling him about what we're going to be doing and he's like, “Don't quit. I've seen some of the toughest dudes I've ever known give up because they've been cold, wet, tired and hungry.” I was like, “That's saying a lot coming from a dude like him.” A guy that's gone through and experienced what he's experienced and he's like, “Being cold and wet and hungry, that can make cowards out of even the toughest man.”
Here I am sitting out there being cold, wet, tired and hungry and those words popped into my head. I realized at that moment, “I could end this with one word. This whole thing could be over and I could be on a plane headed back home to my nice warm house and my daughter and my wife, my dogs. All I got to do is say it.” I started justifying and rationalizing and you can probably relate to this doing the ultra-distance stuff that you do, where that voice creeps into your head like, “You’ve still got a long way to go and this already sucks. You might as well stop now because it's only going to get worse.” I’m sure you've dealt with that plenty of times.
It’s a bad internal conversation.
That's the worst internal conversation. Truthfully, it's one that I've been on the verge of having before. You have that every time you get ready for a fight and you're backstage and you're like, “My body feels like crap and now I’ve got to go and fight this dude. He's going to try and tear my head off. I don't know if I'm up for this.” You have that. Normally, my solution is not to entertain it. I block it out, shut it down and don't even go there. For whatever reason, out there on the show in the cold, I went there and I started rationalizing and justifying it and saying, “You did a great job. You've made it. 99% of the way, you couldn't get the fire going, no one's going to fault you for calling it quits here.”
I went there and I thought about it and I was like, “How am I going to explain that to my wife? She'll probably still love me. How am I going to explain it to my kids? They won't know the difference.” It was like, “No one's going to think any less of you.” I allowed myself to go there. For whatever reason, I don't know where it came from, I was like, “Let's go a little bit longer.” There was a moment, I was like, “I could quit right now, all I’ve got to do is tell them and I'll be done.” I was like, “Let's go a little bit longer. See how that goes.” I had this rotation of sit down until I shiver and then get up and move. I was like, “Let's do another rotation and see where we're at.” I did. The next time I got up moving, I found that if I put my hands down my pants and then jumped around a little bit, that wasn't too unbearable. It gave me this little spark of hope of like, “This might be doable. Maybe I won’t get hypothermia. Maybe it’s just exhaustion.”
I looked like an idiot bouncing around with my hands in my pants. It was fighting through that one moment, like, “Let's extend it a little bit further. If I can make it to the next minute, maybe I can make it to two minutes. Maybe I can make it to five minutes. Maybe 30 minutes, an hour.” All it took was that little spark of hope. The next thing that secured it for me was going back to trying to get the fire started again. One of the people there on site gave me that little bit of encouragement and they're like, “You should try doing that fire again.” From behind the scenes, they’re like, “I think you can do it,” trying to be polite.
At the same time, I’m like, “They're trying to make a TV show. No one wants to see me sitting here doing nothing for the next eight hours or bouncing around with my hands in my pants. Let's at least make an effort of it.” I went back to trying to start the fire. I was feeling good because I found the solution to moving around. That was great. I went back to this other thing and it was a complete failure and it started to take the wind out of my sails a little bit again. I'm facing defeat. I got my hopes up, “Maybe this would work,” and then I remember, “This is stupid. This is impossible.” That's where some of this faith comes into play, where we talked about faith versus fear. Honestly, this is where I sat there and I relinquish, I realized this was beyond my control so I threw up a prayer.
Honestly, talking to the man upstairs, I was like, “I can't do this. I know this is outside of my realm. If this is going to happen, this is all on you. Any help, any little glimmer would be appreciated right now.” I said this out loud. I prayed to God and I was like, “I can't do this by myself. I need some help. It is beyond my mere mortal ability.” I kid you not, the next spark flared up. It didn't go up, it didn't start the fire, but it was enough to give me the hope and the confidence of like, “This might be feasible. This might be doable.” Within a couple of minutes, I had the fire going and I attribute that to nothing other than some divine inner dimension on my path. That was business being given to me to sit there and freeze my ass off.
It’s the little things.
Those small wins can lead to bigger wins and we have to be constantly looking for those. We have to be attempting them. That would have never happened if I hadn't tried it. I had enough hope to continue on that path to then get through the other side. I would be lying to say that was all in my own merit, but it was the willingness and the faith.
That whole journey was about the resilience to find a way to find something within you to withstand. It was an interesting experience and definitely, it was a great experience to have you along there too and to give some of your insight.
I'm going to say likewise. I learned as much from you and your story and your experience.
Josh, it's been great. Your story is well-rounded, I love it and from your experiences with MMA to starting something like Savage Gentleman to help men to find their whole selves. I wanted to end this show all the same way, I’ll give you three questions and then I have a rapid round of questions. None of these are true, false and there's no wrong answer. No worries for you. Here's your first question. What is one thing you haven't done but is outside your comfort zone? If you had to say the biggest thing that you're looking and then you're like, “I don't know if I can do this but I want to try it.”
Where I'm at and this could easily change but where my head is at the moment, it would be taking this business with Savage Gentleman and growing it to the point where it's not just my family that’s depending on it and me. It's my business partner and me so it's the two of us independently working together to provide for our families with this thing which is one level. All of a sudden, it's a different bit of responsibility where you've got a bunch of employees whose livelihood is dependent on the success of this company. That's something that terrifies me that that responsibility rests on my shoulders. At the same time, that would be awesome to create something impactful, that it's providing not only food on the table for my family but the food on the table for other people. Probably the next challenge is building a company up that could sustain.
We’ll hold you to that. Next question, what's your favorite quote and why?
There are many. I spend a lot of time looking at quotes because I like to use them for different things, not only for myself but they're great little bits of nuggets for Savage Gentleman. In keeping with that, one of the ones that stick to mind is a Marcus Aurelius quote, “Spend no more time talking about what a good man should be and simply be one.” I like that for a lot of reasons because at its heart, it’s saying the talk is cheap and it's way better to go out and do which is important. We can spend a lot of time discussing and arguing and pontificating over all these ideas but none of that matters if we're not going out and doing those things. That's probably the biggest thing that I like about it. The other part too is even with Savage Gentleman, the definition of what an ideal man should be is user-dependent. Your definition compared to mine can be different and that's okay. I like it for that reason as well where we don't have to be confined to this rigid box of what is manly, what isn't manly. We can all agree on certain things but I don't think it's worth tying up a bunch of brain space. You should be able to look at someone and clearly discern by their actions whether or not they're a good man or not.
Here's the big one. This could take you a while here. If you could pick to have coffee with three people, they could be living or dead, at a firehouse table, nothing is off the table when you're talking in the firehouse. Who would they be and why?
This probably isn't fair so I'll put an asterisk next to this one. This is like you rub the lamp and the genie gives you three wishes and you ask for more wishes. It's a cop-out. Honestly, to have coffee with Jesus. You can answer a lot of questions in that conversation regardless of what you may or may not believe. Think about it, even if you're a non-believer, even from a secular standpoint, you're like, “What gives? Tell me, what's the deal?” You can answer a ton of questions. If you are a believer, you can get all the answers. I don’t think that one is fair. I'll put that one to the side.
That counts as one. I like that one.
That’s the problem is if you have that one, you don't need anybody else necessarily, but that'll be number one.
I wouldn't expect anything else.
Let’s get weird. I'm going to make it weird. We’ll have Jesus and Hitler because that would be an interesting conversation between the two. One that would also be interesting would be Musashi. There's a lot of insight if you read The Book of Five Rings. There's a lot of interesting stuff with that. Some of the stuff I wonder how much of it is true and how much is hyperbole or exaggeration. When you read the way that guy talks about sword fighting and as a martial artist and as someone who is trying to perfect their craft in different things that they're doing, that guy arguably is one of the best of all times. A guy that in an age where you didn't know much about anybody, it's not like now where you can go and watch fight videos before you sign a contract to fight someone, there's a guy that, “This dude over here in this town has a reputation. I'm going to fight him to see if my style and my training holds up.” By the way, it's generally to death. The balls and confidence to go and do something like that is unbelievable. I'd be curious to see what it was that got him to that level of faith in himself over fear.
That's a firehouse table coffee session. You would definitely have some interesting conversation and you’d much know a lot about the world after you're done.
I don't think it would be possible to retain that much information. You'd have all the information and then there would be no way to do anything with it because your head will explode.
I didn't expect anything less from you, Josh. Here are the rapid round questions. I'm going to give you two things and all you’ve got to do is pick one. Paper or plastic?
Paper.
Soup or salad?
Soup.
McDonald's or Taco Bell?
Taco Bell.
Camping or hotel? This is an easy one for you.
Camping.
Fly or drive?
Fly.
Sleep in late or wake up early?
Sleep.
That I wouldn’t have picked. Run or walk?
How far are we going?
This is you and an insight. I love it.
The details matter. I've spent enough of my life running. I’m going to say walk so I can take things in.
Partly sunny or partly cloudy?
Partly sunny.
Fire or water?
Probably I’ll have to go with water.
This is the best one. Use a Porta-Potty or continue to drive or run to the next physical bathroom?
I’ll use the empty Gatorade bottle and keep driving.
Even better, you're on the other side of a Porta-Potty.
If you don’t have a pee bottle with you on a road trip, you’re messing up. That’s a rookie move.
Coke or Pepsi?
I don’t drink soda but probably Coke.
The last one is to go big or go home?
They seem so simple on the surface. This is going to sound counterintuitive but go home.
They seem simple but they're not. It's one of those things that are all your individual ideas.
Anyone can go big but can you go big and also make it home? Otherwise, it doesn’t matter.
I love the way that you put it because it's interesting. I look at that last one is I go big or go home and go home could be what we did on the rock of being content.
I'm all for taking risks, but if you take the risk and the net gain is that you don't make it home and that wasn't valuable. It depends, outside of sacrifice, sometimes you're like, “I’m not going to make it home.” It’s not that, but I would much rather see someone you know going big and then also making it home as opposed to selling out without thinking it through simply for fame and glory. Maybe this is the older, wiser fighter in me where sometimes you’re like, “I would die in the cage before I lost the fight.” It's like, “Really?”
You’re not going to be immortalized.
That's admirable but it's not like you're fighting a war. You're playing a sport and like, “I admire your commitment but how much more could you do in the world if you were still around being it?” You go back home to your family and enrich their lives. Maybe that's the old washed up fighter in me looking at it from a family perspective.
I love your perspective. We've been talking to Josh Tyler, who’s an amazing man. Your perspective on life is different and it's refreshing to hear. I can't thank you enough for being on this show. If anybody has any questions or comments or wants to check out more about Savage Gentleman, go to SavageGentleman.com and find out more. They've got great products there. They've got great discussion. Josh, you have started something that is valuable and needed. Thank you for doing that and thanks for coming on the show.
It’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me. It’s always a good chat. It might be time we put another adventure together.
I like that, maybe Antarctica this time instead of British Columbia. Thank you, Josh. Thanks for following the show and we'll talk to you again.
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About Josh Tyler
Josh Tyler makes up the other part of Savage Gentleman and heads up the business development and creative side. As a professional fighter and outdoorsman, Josh falls more on the savage side but can still be a gentleman if need be.
Though he is much more comfortable applying his craft in the cage than in a suit, he still appreciates a nice glass of Scotch and the value of a well kempt beard. In his spare time, you can find Josh training at the gym, practicing his survival skills in the wild, or just enjoying some down time with his wife and kids.