
Here All Day
Here All Day: From Clinic to Competition is a sports medicine podcast hosted by Dr. Cassie Warbeck — a sports medicine fellow, lifelong combat sports athlete, and plant-based lifestyle advocate. This podcast is where sport science, performance, and stories collide. Expect engaging conversations with physicians, researchers, coaches, and athletes as we explore the full spectrum of human potential — from evidence-based injury prevention, recovery insights, plant-based nutrition, training strategies, and mental resilience. Whether you're in the gym, on the field, or in the clinic, this is your space to learn, grow, and show up — all day.
Here All Day
Discipline, embracing discomfort, and Living Intentionally: Lessons from ultra endurance athlete Joe Gagnon
This conversation is with Joe Gagnon - endurance athlete, six-time CEO, and author of Living Intentionally. Joe has completed over 90 marathons and ultras, six Ironman triathlons, and recently finished the grueling Badwater 135. In this episode, we explore what it means to show up with purpose, the role of discomfort in growth, and how small, daily actions shape who we become. Joe shares lessons from his book, his extreme endurance challenges, and his mindset for building a life of grit, grace, and groundedness.
We discuss:
- Joe’s experience running Badwater 135
- His wake up call to start living his life more intentionally
- Changing his life one small habit at a time
- Transitioning to a plant-based diet
- The importance of having a strong why
- The five pillars of health - do something for each one intentionally each day
- Embracing discomfort
- Potatoes as an endurance event superfood
- Grit, grace, and groundedness
- Why having a mindfulness practice is of value
- His approach to goal setting
Get the book - out now! Living Intentionally: How intentionality enables success, fulfillment, and growth
Connect:
- Email Joe directly: jgagnon232@gmail.com
- Joe’s website: https://thehighperformancelife.net/
- Substack: @joecurious
- Instagram: @thehighperformancelife
- YouTube: @josephgagnon
- The Chasing Tomorrow Podcast
Shop Nella, The Performance Probiotic: Use code CASS10 at checkout.
Audio editing and processing by Wyatt Pavlik
Theme music by Ievgen Poltavskyi from Pixabay
*Please appreciate that any information discussed is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, always seek the opinion of a physician or qualified healthcare provider.*
This is the here All Day podcast. I'm Dr Cassie Horvath, a sports medicine physician and combat sports athlete. This podcast is all about sharing conversations that break down the science of sports medicine, recovery training and plant-based nutrition to help you perform at your best, stay healthy and show up all day. Hey everyone, I'm really excited to share today's episode because it's all about what it means to live with purpose, resilience and intention every single day. My guest is Joe Gagnon, an adventurer, endurance athlete, ceo and now author of the book Living Intentionally. Joe has completed six Ironman triathlons, over 90 marathons and ultra marathons, and once run six marathons on six continents in six consecutive days. In 2024 alone, he ran 3,000 miles, did 150,000 push-ups and even knocked out 2,000 pull-ups in under 12 hours. Oh, and he just finished Badwater 135, one of the hardest foot races in the world. On the business side, he's also a six-time CEO and he writes a daily blog and hosts the Chasing Tomorrow podcast.
Cassie Warbeck:But what I find most fascinating isn't just what Joe does, it's how he does it. His approach to performance, growth and life itself is deeply rooted in intentionality. His new book, living Intentionally, is part memoir, part playbook, a guide to building a meaningful life through leaning into discomfort, practicing consistency and aligned action. He writes about how the small, deliberate choices we make each day, especially when no one is watching, shape who we become. In this conversation, we discuss his experience running bad water literally four days ago. How he balances the pillars of health, including sleep, his decision to adopt a plant-based diet, what living intentionally means, and embracing discomfort. Throughout the conversation, joe shares practical insights from the book that anyone can apply, whether you're trying to grow as an athlete in your career or just simply want to live with more clarity and consistency. This episode is packed with wisdom, but also grounded in real experience. Joe doesn't just teach intentional living, he lives it. Please enjoy. Welcome to the podcast, joe. It's so good to finally meet you. I've heard many good things from our mutual friend, robert. Thanks for being here.
Joe Gagnon:Oh, Cassie, it's great. I look forward to the conversation. You know, following your background and sort of the progression that you've been making, I think we're going to have a lot of fun together in this conversation.
Cassie Warbeck:I think so too, and we were just talking a little bit back off air and I just there's so many things I want to dive into, so hopefully we'll get to as much as we can with the time we have. But I just have to start out by asking you about Badwater. You just finished arguably the toughest race in the world, literally, I think, four days ago, which is incredible, and I'm very grateful that our podcast lined up right afterwards because I get to ask you about it. How are you feeling? Maybe I'll start with that.
Joe Gagnon:I'm actually feeling much better than I ever could have imagined. I'm not really sure. I think there's this like on one side of me and says you really prepared very well. You know, I did all the heat training, did the miles, all that, but sometimes you still don't feel good afterward. I think that you know this was a dream kind of race, a race that you never expect to be in in your life, no matter how good you are, who you are One, because it's very few people running. You know the claim to fame is that less people have run bad water than climb Mount Everest, and you know it's this 135 miles through Death Valley. When you're there, you know why they call it that Nothing lives there. I saw a couple of scorpions and that was about the life. You know it's 120 degrees.
Joe Gagnon:You've got these three massive mountain passes and you're just trying to figure out you know how much stress your system can endure and continue to move forward, and so you know, of course we can get into the details. I mean, there was, the beginning was great, the middle was tough and was great, uh, but yeah, I've been out running. You know there's this like I'm not a doctor at all, like you are, but I'm learning a lot. You know people talk about like. So there's different parts of my mental state. Phenomenal my muscles are tight but feeling good. I know that my nervous system is going to take two to three weeks to reset. There is that thing that we don't control and no one talks about it, but you can tell there's some parts of it that you're just like okay, I just go a little easier. You know I ran for a run this morning, uh, on one of the mountains here in Colorado and you know I was just sort of loping along and just feeling fine to be outside, um, but there wasn't any speed in me in the. That's going to take a while to go back. Uh, I felt like I hydrated well, I drank an extraordinary amount and I think my nutrition strategy was pretty good.
Joe Gagnon:And then I you know, in this new book that I wrote, living Intentionally, I write about the six marathon challenge I did in 2017. And, similarly, when I finished, I was like I thought it was going to be harder, and I would say bad word, I thought it was going to be harder. I think it's all about mindset. I really think that's what it is. I go in with the right mindset and I never end up in this sort of desperate dark space. So I accept what it is that I take on, and then it's great, you know. And so, yeah, there are feelings, but like wow, yeah I'm. I sort of said to my friend yesterday I'm not sure I really feel like I did it. It's like did I really run this thing? Cause I should feel I think way worse, but I don't.
Cassie Warbeck:Wow, um, yeah, I have so many questions and I I just again to lay the context. You explained the race a little bit, but it's 135 miles through Death Valley, california. I think, from what I was reading, you start at the lowest point in North America and you finish at the trailhead to Mount Whitney.
Cassie Warbeck:And like you mentioned, 120 degrees Fahrenheit up here in Canada, I think that's 49 degrees Celsius, which is crazy, and the elevation is, I think, 4,450 meters is what I read down like the total elevation gain, which is insane. And for you to sit here four days afterwards and tell me it wasn't quite as hard as you were expecting, that's truly a testament to like your mindset going in, and you mentioned your book and you talk a lot about knowing your why and as a part of living intentionally, and I'm curious like what was your why for doing Badwater?
Joe Gagnon:So, oh, there's a couple like, if we go back to my sort of my core, why at this moment in my life? Because I'm not sure you're not right about this and I only have one why in your life journey? But my why now is, you know, I believe I live to serve others, to help them grow and develop, to reach their potential, to feel the kind of sort of blessed life that I have gotten to feel over the past 25 years, and to serve as a role model for a way that we can be intentional about our lives. And if I'm going to do that, if I'm going to sort of be that, then I have to have those experiences. I can't only trade on what happened. You know, yeah, I've had some great successes, but I believe that it has to be contemporary as well, meaning happening today. And so, you know, shooting for these big challenges as I go along and continuing to set goals into the future is really important because it changes my behavior.
Joe Gagnon:You know I did 20 sauna sessions leading up to the prep for this, and average sauna temperature was about 194. Um, and the first one I did was 20 minutes. The last one I did was 45 minutes and I conditioned and I got better and better at accepting what it felt like to be that hot, and so so it all to me like the why is you know a lot of the depth of the representation of what I think I should be as a person showing up in other people's lives. If I'm going to tell you that I could help and support you, just like you would as a doctor, you would want to have done all the studies and have the experience before you would be bold enough to say I could help someone. And I feel the same way, because I try and help people develop and grow and lean into their potential. The other part of the why is that you know, if you think about the opportunity to go out and find out how well you can perform, then you want to find increasingly harder activities you can perform. Then you want to find increasingly harder activities and as we go along, you know you raise the bar, and what bad water is like raising the bar.
Joe Gagnon:When I got in, I was not shocked because I didn't qualify, because I had the qualified criteria. I was sort of shocked a little bit that I got picked, because they only pick 100 people a year and I've had 30 are former runners and they try and pick a lot of people internationally. So it's a small group of people who get selected. But I guess you know it's sort of like it just goes back to like any of your listeners who say, oh, I could never do that. I'm literally that. I could never do that person too.
Joe Gagnon:Okay, we'd have to go back and start, but I was as average as they come. I didn't start running until my mid to late forties. I never expected when I read about bad water 25 years ago that I would be a person doing it or any of these kinds of adventures. So we can build ourselves to this level of resiliency and vitality and strength and power and mindset. This is just about choices. I literally have no better genetics than anyone listening to this show, just maybe a little better discipline. That's what I have going for me.
Cassie Warbeck:Yeah, no, you're so humble and you've accomplished many incredible things and I still have questions on bad water. So maybe I was so excited to ask about bad water, I skipped over, I guess, maybe some of the many incredible things and I still have questions on.
Joe Gagnon:Badwater, so maybe we'll go back to this.
Cassie Warbeck:I kind of. I was so excited to ask about Badwater, I skipped over, I guess, maybe some of the introductions here, and you mentioned that you're an average Joe, in your own words, and when can you take us back to like? When did you make the decision that you wanted to start living more intentionally Like what was your life before compared to how it is now?
Joe Gagnon:Yeah, I grew up just outside New York City um, just sort of lower to middle income family. My dad was a social worker, my mom taught in schools and it was just a good average, loving family. That part was wonderful. That was the power base. I had graduated college at a pretty mediocre start, making just about no money, pretty much in debt, and, uh, you know the story. I was like the first week of work like my car was stolen, my girlfriend broke up with me and I had to move back in my parents' basement and so, you know, that was this auspicious whoa, wow, amazing start. But then I just fell into the white collar world we don't talk about it the same way, you know a blue suit, a white shirt and a red tie, and I just outworked people for the next almost 20 years, traditional kind of software. I got to be a partner in a big firm called Ernst Young, you know, and then I left and went to work at IBM and ran the global retail business for five years and I started thinking like, is this it? This is all I was good at was work, like I was really good at work, made a lot of money in my own language, whatever, you know, uh, and I felt a little bit like I was suffocating because it didn't sort of lost my sense of humor I was. So one dimensional friend of mine challenged me to an arm wrestling match. I couldn't win. Someone said, go for a three mile run. And I barely made it to a mile and I was like whoa, like this thing that I thought I was developing wasn't really developing. I was all in one dimension, one dimension only, and if it was going to be the next 50 years, if you'd even survive that long. And, by the way, I was not plant-based at the time, I was still a guy who alcohol I'm not sure it was to true excess, but it wasn't helping me either. I don't drink alcohol in 20 years, I haven't eaten meat in 20 years, and so I started this like awakening. Now it looks like I was a genius.
Joe Gagnon:I think it was a little bit of desperation at the moment and it was just literally one step in one pushup. It was, and it was just literally one step in one pushup. It was, you know, one little decision that built on another decision and I had so many no's. Like I grew up in an Italian family. We ate meat all the time, right Like years later, my mother still asked me if I wanted to eat chicken, you know, and so that wasn't.
Joe Gagnon:I was fighting the world telling me how to live and I decided I didn't want to live the way the world wanted me to live. Because I didn't want to live the way the world wanted me to live, because I didn't feel good living that way. There was nothing about it that made me strong or have vitality, and it's just fascinating to think about, like the difference, because this and we know these stories, like we see the stories of people at the end of their lives and, like you know, all the money that I had, I'm still unhappy or have regrets or have this. I'm like I didn't want to be that person. I want to have no regrets when I leave this earth and I want to have a positive impact on myself and my family and my community.
Joe Gagnon:And I had to make all those changes, otherwise I think it wasn't going to work out really that well, cause now I'm in my God, I and and and truth be told, cassie, like well would I be have run bad water or done these other things or written this book? Absolutely not, cause what would I have had to say Nothing like yeah, I know how to watch Netflix, work and go to the bar. I don't know. I'm not judging people by it, but that dimensionality is so minimal. It doesn't explore the potential of the human system, right, it just is a survival thing. That's it. We're surviving. It's as if back in the caveman days cave person days if you had found a lot of food and you put it in the cave and you just add it there like you started. That was fine. But that's not thriving, that's surviving. And I got into the thriving mode and man am I happy I woke up that's so crazy.
Cassie Warbeck:Um, how, how old were you when you started making these, these small changes that you?
Joe Gagnon:yeah, like in my early 40s yeah, that's wild.
Cassie Warbeck:Um and what. What did you start with? Um, like, what was the first like? Because you talk again in your book about like, the power of consistency and small steps and and compounding interest over time of all these habits. But what did you start with?
Joe Gagnon:started with. The funny answer to the question is a spreadsheet. This is the ridiculous part, really. I have kept track of what I've done in one spreadsheet for 25 years. Every day I write it down wow, like, like.
Cassie Warbeck:Are we just like a Google Excel sheet?
Joe Gagnon:or Yep, exactly, I can show you at some point. But what it did was it was like I wanted to set some weekly goals and I was a pretty busy guy kind of thing and I'm like, oh, I probably should just put it down in the spreadsheet so I could see what I did at the end of the week. And I did a lot of business travel, so I had to have any activity I was going to do was going to be requiring nothing. So this is like the pushups, pull-ups, sit-ups, running those are things you can do anywhere in the world. Bring your sneakers and your t-shirt, and there's really no excuse. And so that's what it sort of started out with, which was setting a weekly goal to either go to the gym or get outside three days a week.
Joe Gagnon:Uh, and then the other funny part about it was I started writing, um, because some people started getting intrigued by what I was doing, and so, um, they said, let's just have this like group email and I turned it it into a blog. So the first part was like physical activity increased. The second was this blogging happened and then I started getting, let's say, a couple of years into this. I went from doing three days a week to four days a week to five days a week to six days a week to seven days a week.
Joe Gagnon:I just increased every year another day and then I was like I wonder if I could do two days a week. And then I'm writing about it. Then I start seeing that my performance was affected by all the things I was doing. Like I started programming how I ate and so because I found if I just ate almost the same thing, I never get bored, by the way I, for example, many years, but like for five years in a row, I had peanut butter and jelly for lunch every day. Just worked, nothing wrong with that yeah.
Joe Gagnon:And I looked forward to it. I was like so excited, like, oh my God, I get to eat peanut butter and jelly today. This is the most amazing thing. And everyone's like, oh, I want to do that. Like yeah, but it works. Like this is like how you build a high performing system.
Joe Gagnon:And then I realized that the meat was harder to digest and I was like I don't really have any interest in there A lot of other reasons why you could start or stop eating meats, uh, and move to plants. And so I kept writing and I was making these changes and I stopped. Like the alcohol went from you know five days a week to just weekends. To like why am I bothering? Tried to ride my bike faster. I didn't have a beer one night and I went faster the next day. Like, oh, maybe this is where it's like there was a real strong why. In every one of these pieces, decisions made my performance better, I was sleeping better, I'd wake up earlier and I wasn't tired. I was just like so it's not as if, you know, these are just gratuitous changes. You actually will feel the difference. And so, yeah, it was just this incremental build and, truth be told, is in the first five to 10 years of this journey, no one, you know. But my wife knew I was doing any of this. I was just like this guy and he did this thing and didn't say anything. And that was good because I didn't have to compare to anyone. I could just go see, even if I showed up for a short distance triathlon, you know, just invisible until later on, which is another phase, but in that first phase it was this foundation building, building the confidence. And then, you know, I wrote about it.
Joe Gagnon:Now it's the courage to make a commitment to consistency, and because I redefine, you know, a lot of what I've worked on is language that we have gets in our way. So we say consistency is boredom. I say consistency is mastery. You know, I rode my bike 15,000 miles one year and I said to Anthea I think I know how to ride this bike. She's like are you kidding me? I'm like no, I really do. I think like, wow, I'm actually learning. She's like shaking her head. I'm like no, but you don't understand.
Joe Gagnon:It's like it's that repetition and becomes part of who you are like just then, are it? And so you have to be willing to stick with it. I don't know why we wouldn't we have 168 hours in the week. One of the things I ask people to do in my coaching world is let's take a spreadsheet, write Sunday through Saturday on it and write the hours of the day and, just for one week, write down what you do for all those hours and then look at the end of the week how you spent your 168 hours and, if you're of the week, how you spent your 168 hours and if you're really thrilled with how you spent 160 hours, then just keep doing it, and if you're not, then think about what you need to do to change, because that is your currency, like right there that's it.
Joe Gagnon:You don't need any special privilege or anything else in your life. You just need to know how you're going to use that time, and so I spend my time every week. There's always a little bit of slop here and there, but it's very intentional, and then you get different results.
Cassie Warbeck:Yeah, Wow, that's very powerful, that you're like how you explain it like that, and I think like it's just so cool to see like the journey over so many years and how it's not like I think people look at people like you that are like running bad water and six marathons and six continents and six days and all these crazy things, and they don't see all the work and all the small steps that went into it for years and years and years before you got to this point, and I appreciate you sharing that. And then I want to talk a little bit about. You talk about the pillars of health and how it's important to have that foundation. Otherwise you can't achieve all these things. If your sleep isn't proper, if your nutrition isn't proper, all these things. Can you just briefly, I guess, explain what the pillars of health are to you? And then there's a couple I want to dive into a little deeper.
Joe Gagnon:Yes, so I don't think there's any like mystery here. A phd or an md to understand, right, here's just like I like um dr b he talks about. You know you're going to eat 88 000 pounds of food during your lifetime.
Joe Gagnon:If you don't think that matters, then you better rethink that, like literally our system is formed by the food that we take and the oxygen that we breathe, that is, in our entire body. That's the only two things. Of course, whatever our system does is going to do, and so you have to then think about there are a lot of other pieces of how, like I talk about the body as a system, the mind-body as one, and that system, to make us into robotic, but to understand that these inputs and outputs really matter. So, anyway, there's these five pillars. They're really simple and you should think about them every day. It's nutrition, it's sleep, it's exercise, it's mindset and it's community. And if we could think about what are we doing for each of those five pillars every day? Something intentional, you intentional. How did I eat? How much did I sleep? How was my mindset? How was my community? How was my exercise? Did I move? If you just put those, write them on a piece of paper, similar to the 160 hours, you could start to see that you're actually building the strong foundation, because on each of them, it wouldn't be that hard to figure out what to do.
Joe Gagnon:Like you know, ultra-processed foods we all know what they are. We don't need to have a science background, right, if it comes in a package. Let's not even say seven ingredients, which we would love to have everything. Have less than seven ingredients, but let's say less than 15. If there's more than 15 ingredients. Just think if you were cooking tonight, would you put more than 15 ingredients in one dish? Probably not, right. So that means why did we need that many ingredients? It's because it's mostly chemicals. It's not natural. Okay, so how's that going to help us? Why would we want to put so many chemicals in our body? Now, sometimes, look, I have to have a Clif Bar when I'm out on a run and they're probably better than something else. But let's really be thoughtful about that. If we're eating, we know.
Joe Gagnon:So my point there is that we know the difference and I'm not saying people need to eat a whole food, plant-based diet. That's crazy and hard. But we also shouldn't eat everything that's just in a package. So nutrition is like making some conscious choices and just little by little. That's like simple thing, like just read that, don't just put it into your shopping cart, right? Exercise is about movement. It isn't about me telling people to be a runner. This is just about movement. I don't care if it's pickleball running, going to the gym doing yoga movement, why Our system was made to move.
Joe Gagnon:It actually thrives. When we move, the mitochondria start to reproduce. Our muscles rebuild. Our muscles rebuild. Somewhere between 90 and 120 days we rebuild the entire muscular system of our body. Everything we do would then affect that. It's not like what you did today doesn't matter, it's like it rebuilds. This is why we have to keep active.
Joe Gagnon:You know, on the mindset thing oh my gosh, why wouldn't we be our biggest fan? You know, love ourselves, learn to celebrate, laugh at it. I like to call myself a dope every once in a while when I do something silly, but it's in a loving way, you know. You know, don't look in the mirror and not like what you see. Understand what you see and bring a strong mindset even to the word failure, the failure in the gyms. We like failure right Because it makes our muscles stronger. Failure as an entrepreneur that I've been many times over is a way to learn. You know, failure is not the end, it's the beginning, it's a growth path. Discomfort is the same. You know I don't get afraid of. It's the beginning, it's a growth path. Discomfort is the same. You know, I don't get afraid of discomfort. I lean into it. I can tell people, if you are a runner, when the weather is beautiful, run on the treadmill, and when it's really crummy, go outside, like, embrace the discomfort and the difficulty. You'll be like so excited. You'll be like, oh my God, it's pouring rain. This is going to be so much fun. Like why wouldn't we do that? Why would we say, oh, that's going to be terrible. Like this is a mindset shift, right In the community, you know we are.
Joe Gagnon:The serotonin and oxytocin in our bodies are generated so much by the interaction we have with other humans, and when those levels are up, we feel better. We don't know what those levels mean to a regular person. They're uncontrollable, right? It's not like everyone would die. All you turn on, well, just let me say, when you're feeling really great in your community, because serotonin and oxytocin are high, you know, and so these neuromodulators. All it takes, though, is hanging out with people and spending time going to help someone, coach someone, be there in their lives, right, and then sleep. You know, I have had my moments where I didn't sleep a lot Sleep. In 10,000 years of human evolution, we haven't figured out how to eliminate sleep as part of who we are as humans. It's the only time that we rebuild ourselves, and we need to do that every day. And so you know.
Joe Gagnon:I think that If we take these elements, they're not that complicated. You don't even need a coach. Just write the five down, have them on your refrigerator. What did I do for each of these today? And if I didn't do something, you don't have to be mad at yourself. Just explain why. This is always about this ownership, and I think that we have no one to blame and we have only ourselves to be excited about. No one to blame, and we have only ourselves to be excited about. And so you know, for me, those five pillars made it simple for me to think about how I build a strong platform going forward.
Cassie Warbeck:Yeah, it's again these things that are so often overlooked but so important, and I try and preach about all these. I'm very into lifestyle medicine, preventative medicine so you're speaking my language here. Coming back to sleep, because I think this is something that, when I look at someone like you that's doing so much with their day, that's training for these ultra endurance events, like that is not a small commitment there, like there's a lot of hours you need to be spending doing that. How do you still protect time for sleep? Like I know personally, it's something I struggle with. I I could sleep an extra hour or I could get my workout in before work, and and how do? How do you look at that and how does that fit into your, your spreadsheet?
Joe Gagnon:yeah, I probably do sleep a little less than maybe recommended. It's more like the six and a half hours than the eight hours. I find that I get such good sleep like I fall asleep quality yeah between 30 seconds and 60 seconds of laying in a bed.
Joe Gagnon:I'm asleep, and other than maybe if you woke up in the middle of the bathroom with a drink too much during the day water, you know. Uh, I sleep just so well that and I know a lot of people they they might get into bed and they don't sleep as much because they're sort of fussing a lot. I think the reason I sleep well is because I have balanced out all these different demands in my life and I accept what I did for that day, so I'm not working on anything when I go to bed. The the second is that you know you can only go so long. You start to feel it and there's no way to really reconcile. You know, make it, you don't make up for sleep. You have to have it be consistent. Now look during bad water. You know I'm up for two straight days, so that part is an unusual circumstance.
Joe Gagnon:I don't think we need to sleep 10 hours. I think that's sort of a diminishing return that we would get. But I would say between six and seven hours, I think, is probably the optimal for most people If you feel better sleeping a little more. I'm not an expert, I just know that when we're trying to restore, we can restore enough if it's good quality sleep. Sleep trackers can help us know a little bit more about it. But yeah, I think you have to just have cutoff. Times is the key thing. Even if you're getting inspired at 11 pm at night, you know, if you know you have to get up at five, you better get to bed. And so, because we can't sleep, probably sometimes in the morning, it's just accountability, the same way as everything else. This back to intention. Right, intention is different than habits. Habits are just what we do. The intention connects to our why, if we want to build a strong platform, then we have to actually then have the intentionality and then it fits differently into our lives and that's why sleep matters so much.
Cassie Warbeck:Yeah, I really like that. Thank you, that's helpful. Coming back to the nutrition pillar, I'm curious. I know bad water is obviously a snapshot in time here. What you eat and how you feel during bad water was not. It's not a reflection of how you eat and feel day to day, but just from like an athlete perspective, like what did your fueling and your training strategy look like for bad water? Like what was your, your, what were your, I guess, staples?
Joe Gagnon:um for those two days it evolved a little bit. Um, if you, it's so interesting, you know, in under stress we need to process a lot of carbohydrates, um, and so there's sort of some forms that are easy, like these gels, uh, or your hydration that has higher amounts of carbohydrates. So I did use, for the first sort of two-thirds of the race, a lot of gels. They're easy to take in, and so this would be like for someone who doesn't know it's like, imagine something like a jelly or a peanut butter in a packet and you'd squeeze that back into your mouth. I had 25 of those and I started to get really tired of them. Uh, understandably, yeah, they they. At some point, that amount of sugar just starts to like really hurt. Not hurt, hurt, but like, okay, I can't take it anymore.
Joe Gagnon:The the miracle for me was mashed potatoes, um, and that was so simple to eat because they're sort of smooth and easy to swallow. They had salt, they had fat in there. You can make them with olive oil and you know, uh, they didn't. They didn't have to be warm, it could be cold, and there is this one technique that we use a lot is that you put the food in your mouth and you squirt water in and you make it into sort of more of a mush and it's easy to swallow. So I probably had ton. I had ramen noodles um, they're easy to make and you can have, you know, plant ramen noodles. So that was good. Um, I had, uh, what else is? Oh, of course, you just change it up a little bit. There is some of these waffle-like cookies that are made by nutrition companies for these races, and then a lot of fluid that had calories. So I probably had two or 300 calories per hour in my liquid drinks. That also helped. So I was trying to average three to 400 calories per hour. I maybe got up to 500 every once in a while.
Joe Gagnon:And there are times when you're just disinterested in eating and you have a crew with you and they sort of force you to keep eating. They're, like you know, sort of like just one more spoonful. Oh, I did have applesauce. I had some blueberries. That was very helpful because to change the palate profile, you bring a ton of different choices with you and whatever is appealing at the moment is what you're willing to eat. Um, so you know, I I wanted to have some jelly beans. They didn't work. I didn't like the taste. Then there's, like you know, so funny, it's really what you'll eat out. There is anything to survive really at the end of the day. Uh, so you just don't want to end up without enough. Oh, at one point I had tater tots, because one of the people on the crew had a sandwich and they were left over and I was like, oh, those look good. So, yeah, potatoes, high glycemic content, easy to digest and never, ever have an issue and doesn't seem to get tired of them. So that was probably my win this time.
Cassie Warbeck:So funny. Not what I was expecting to hear, but I'm always just curious. I want to talk a little bit more about bad water, I guess, and maybe we can use bad water as an example for one of the other things that you talk about a lot, which is leaning into discomfort and the growth comes from being uncomfortable and that whole like philosophy, I guess, and you've done many hard things, badwater included, so maybe just share why you believe that you have to put yourself in the uncomfortable situations, why this is so important. And then I'm so curious to hear were there any moments during Badwater where, like, did you have any like lows, like did you ever think you weren't going to finish Like I'm just, I'm so curious.
Joe Gagnon:Yeah, so I would. I would say that the reason why the discomfort matters so much is that in some sense we're training ourselves for life in somewhat of a protected world, like there's going to be challenges in one's life, and the more that you normalize how you respond to that stress because this is like we go back to some of the hormones and neuromodulators in our body cortisol spikes under stress. Too much cortisol creates this stress profile that's hard for us to resolve without sleeping. If you can figure out how to manage cortisol flow better, you will then be more balanced in your life and you won't be so stressed. And so discomfort helps you manage cortisol production because you have now normalized that and the body is not hitting the stress response.
Joe Gagnon:It's not like boom, you know, like as if some saber-toothed tiger is chasing you, and so it's a very practical technique to get us ready for any stresses. You know can't pay my bills. You know studying for an exam is too hard. You know I didn't get my promotion, and usually we overreact Like there's nothing to overreact to. This is just part of our journey and, like the Navy SEALs right, they put themselves into very difficult situations during training so that when it happens in real life. In a battle. They don't freak out when the bullet whizzes by their head. So for me, it's the same in all of our lives. And why I'm considered a very calm individual but high intensity is because I have put myself into this situation so many times. I'm like, yeah, this is what happens. It's like that's it, it's okay, you're with it, not. Oh my God, this is ridiculous and I hate it. And now, all of a sudden, what's happened is you've lost control. So that's part of why. And then, in some sort of I guess bizarre way, you almost seek out a little bit of discomfort just to keep reminding your system of it. You know, like, go out in a hurricane and you know it's pouring rain or something, so, um, so that's that just when it's happening, even when it's just uncomfortable, I can respond effectively like, okay, this is crappy. I don't like this feeling. It will resolve itself, like your experience, like when we're in an ultra marathon, and it's typically anything over 30 miles, you would say you're going to at one point. However, I feel now, I'm not going to feel later. Good to bad, bad to good, it just flows. No one feels perfect for any really long period of time.
Joe Gagnon:So in Badwater the start was beautiful, you know, it was like 110, but it was nighttime, it was somewhat, almost comfortable, and I felt so good really, probably for through the first 60 miles of the race of the 135. And then it was the second day in the afternoon and we hit this valley and it was 120 and there's like no shade for this whole race. There's no place to hide and I could start to feel the heat really building up. Then we went to this massive big climb that took all the way through into the night and now I'm up for since Monday morning and it's now Tuesday late night and I started to feel the lack of sleep and I started to. The discomfort was more. I couldn't really stay awake effectively. I couldn't walk a straight line. I was, I had a pacer with me, someone walked behind me and they'd be like stop walking into the middle of the road. You know, stand in straight line. I was, I had a pacer with me, someone walked behind me and they'd be like stop walking into the middle of the road. You know, stand in the line. And so I was having a really tough go. I had to slow down significantly because I couldn't, I was just fighting, you know, the natural urge to fall asleep. I was still doing okay.
Joe Gagnon:On the nutrition side, I started to have a little bit of some GI issues from all of the food and the heat and you know. So I just not in the TMI, but I nearly threw up two times. Um, you know gag reflex kicks in and this is not surprising, that that's going to happen. And get it through, get through that and I would say that I was getting a little bit frustrated, which I couldn't break the need to sleep. So I a couple of times sat in a chair.
Joe Gagnon:So it's a moving aid station. You have a car that goes along with you. They go up the road two miles. You run two miles. They support you. This is the only way you could do it. There's no other way, there's nothing there, and so a few times I tried sleeping for five or ten minutes and I'd wake up and I'd be okay for five or ten minutes and I'd start to be back into this almost stupor and so. But we all agreed that the most important thing to do is to keep moving forward because that's how you get to the finish line before the cutoff.
Joe Gagnon:So I kept moving forward and I was just sort of getting a little tired of how bad I felt. And then I walked off the road into the shoulder and I was like, oh man, I'm really not doing good here. And so my crew chief said, okay, seven minutes, you can sleep for seven minutes. Seven minutes, you can sleep for seven minutes. Sort of hilarious. And I did. And when I woke up it broke. I was like wake.
Joe Gagnon:It was maybe five in the morning, sun was just about to come up, and then from then to the end of the race felt incredible. Like the whole thing just went away and I moved. A lot of people had passed me during the night. I passed them all back during that day. I did the last big climb. I felt strong, I was eating as much as I had eaten during the race and so it was knowing that it would break, but you just never know when. And then you're back to sort of like feeling great. So I like great start, middle, great end. And, yeah, that middle was, yeah, a struggle that's so crazy, so crazy.
Cassie Warbeck:um, one thing that stood out I was looking at your Instagram before this and I saw your bad water picture and I read through your caption and one of the things that you wrote that I really like it just I don't know resonated, was you wrote the real question is never can I it's, will I choose to keep going, and I thought that, just like it sums it up, it's like it's it's this choice that you're making every step forward in this, like in a situation that most people can't even fathom, like how their body, how they would feel in that moment, that you're choosing to just keep moving forward, keep moving forward. And yeah, that's so wild, so wild.
Joe Gagnon:I have a lot of confidence in my ability to keep going because I've done it quite a few times, and so one of the techniques that I use in my coaching is it's a little bit manipulative. So I'm sorry for this, but I do tell people that you really can't use the word can't because that's like you might as well not live anymore, because I don't know. That's stupid, because we should at least try like don't, can't. And then I said, but you can tell me you won't do something. And then people love that because they move from can't to won't like, meaning like yeah, I decide not to. And then move from can't to won't like, meaning like yeah, I decide not to. And then I said, well, how does that make you feel when you say you won't do it and they'll stop? And they're like I'm not sure I like that feeling and I think that's this breakthrough, it's this sort of accountability to yourself. This isn't about anyone else, right? This is just yourself. And how do you want to feel at the end of the day? Do you want to feel like a quitter? Is that what you want to define yourself? As you know, I don't think so. Do you want to think yourself as a victim? What do you want to think of yourself as a thriver? I think these are all the choices that we get to make. No one's telling us this is for us to choose. And so in those moments, I know it's crummy, sure that's fine, that's sort of the journey of life, but I accept it and I know that, if I stick it out, that the feeling on the other side is phenomenal and it's just constant.
Joe Gagnon:You know, I wrote about in my book. You know there was a year I thought I was supposed to make partner and I didn't, and I was so mad. And you know anthea said to me well then, go prove them wrong. Like you know, don't was a year. I thought I was supposed to make partner and I didn't, and I was so mad. And you know Anthea said to me well then, go prove them wrong. Like you know, don't be a victim, prove them wrong. And I did, and I made it the next year. You know I just keep thinking victim versus thriver.
Joe Gagnon:You know that this is up to us and there's no measure. This isn't like some absolute measure that it's a distance or it's a dollar, it's a level or a title. It's just about ourselves representing ourselves in the world. That's an honor to the power that you have in you. That's what I want people to think about. You have this incredible F1 car that you're sitting on and you put it in your garage and you don't do anything with it. Like why? Why not? Like you should? We should Like don't go buy a lottery ticket. Invest in yourself. You got it, you are the lottery ticket. You can just cash it any day you want, and so that's why I like to go out and do these activities. And then what's really clear is I put enough work in. I know the moment is there. Then I can lean into something really hard, and that's why it probably, while it's hard, it's never overwhelming right, it's it's just like yeah, that's what I did all the work for yeah, it's not like you're jumping into these situations not having prepared for it.
Cassie Warbeck:It's like your whole life has been intentionally leading up to these moments so that you can handle these moments when you're in them.
Joe Gagnon:And yeah, Like one thing, Cassie, for the training. I did the sauna work, but for the last five months every day I ran in a turtleneck and two shirts, even when it was 90 degrees, because I wanted to get used to being hot, and you know those are the choices that make a difference, because it was uncomfortable all the time. You know who wants to do that. When it's 80 degrees you're running around with a turtleneck on, but that those choices were what makes the difference.
Cassie Warbeck:Yeah oh, that's so. I, I love this. This is like it's so, so exciting to me, um, and even like you were explaining all there in the book you talk about that you're reframing technique and that's very much. What you're doing is like, do I want to be a victim or a thriver? It's like, how are you viewing yourself and reframing your story that you're telling yourself over and over? Yeah, I think these are, I don't know lessons that people need to like, really embrace and start putting into action. Can you explain your framework?
Joe Gagnon:You talk about grace and grounded groundedness, and I would love to just if you could give an overview of that yeah, I think that, in some sense, right, we almost have to have like this multiple personality component of who we are right, because it needs to show up slightly differently depending on the circumstance.
Joe Gagnon:And so, you know, like those five pillars are around, you know the platform, and then these three elements are sort of around the persona, and so this persona that I've liked to build, you know, it's easy to start off like if you're probably, you know, not to be too picky here, but like a white male says, oh, I should have a lot of grit, you know, you know I'm a tough person, but that's not enough, right, you have to have so grit would be perseverance over time, the willingness to sort of tolerate difficulty. Having grace is really important, because there are some times where things don't go perfectly. Our system is not a designed perfect system. It can work perfectly, but it's not designed to work perfectly right, and so you need to have yourself grace, you need to give others grace, we need to think about you know, we're all sharing in this journey and ourselves, and so it's probably pretty good to just laugh at yourself every once in a while.
Joe Gagnon:Or if someone does something you know, to give them a little bit of grace. Like, imagine if you were a mom and you're raising two kids and it's really tough and the kids are fussing and you're fussing, it's okay. It's okay Like there's not, there's no drama required, just chuckle, laugh, make it into something all right. And then groundedness is about having integrity. It's about holding true to you know, it goes all the way to social systems and having justice and morality and ethics and the rule of law and social constructs, to the integrity of the commitments that we make and following through. It's okay not to do something, but then you know, sort of accept that right and say something about it. But when we commit to something, let's be really sure that the commitment is actually sincere. You know that. We've already considered it. You know we can't make commitments and then sort of just keep making excuses. Then they're not, so we're not grounded.
Joe Gagnon:So if you think about this combination, it's an interesting triangle of, you know, grit, that sort of that toughness and willing to accept how the world works. Grace, knowing that it's not about perfection. This is about acceptance and then being grounded, which is the foundation of all that we do. It really is, and I wrote about a lot in the book and gave some examples. It's an interesting another way of for us to sit back and say, oh, have I given myself grace recently? You know how is my my grit index and am I really grounded? I love these questions because if you sit by yourself like someone says, oh, I don't know how to do mindfulness or meditation, it'd be as simple as asking yourself those three questions. You know what's my joe's grit score? Am I giving myself grace and am I really proving and building groundedness in my life? That would be great mindfulness exercise to do for oneself simple. We don't even need an app to figure these things out, we could just do them ourselves yeah, it's just like checking in.
Cassie Warbeck:I like that actually. It's. It's making sure you're almost like developing aspects of your identity in in a way that they all complement and help support each other, rather than like only building up one, like off it of yourself, I suppose yeah, and I think, like some people might index high on one of the three, and that's a great challenge to say what am I gonna do about the other two?
Joe Gagnon:you know, I can just say oh yeah, I'm really good at grit, but not at grace. Well then, maybe that's what we should work on yeah, no, that's fair.
Cassie Warbeck:Um is like, do you have a, like a, I guess a structured mindfulness practice or a meditation practice, or is this something you try and layer, I guess intentionally, into your day?
Joe Gagnon:you know, there's two things that I do. One actually some of my mindfulness work is to work on thinking about nothing for a while. I do that, well, when I'm running, uh, but like when I did the sauna work, I would. I sat there just thinking about nothing and in that process, um, it's like breath work, it's reset and it's this sort of weird thing. Like you know, the nervous system can reset and when the nervous system resets, you get this massive benefit from the mindfulness work. So sometimes it's a process of questioning, sometimes it's a process of silence, and sitting with the silence is a really important skill. If you can't get there through questions or activity, breath work is probably the best. Simple breath work, like just type into Google or something you know, box breathing, like four breaths in, out, in, out, and do them at you know a good regulatory way and you're like you will feel better, especially if you're in a hyper state, you know. And so those things are about the mindfulness work that I do. I realized this breath work is so powerful, even for a quick reset.
Joe Gagnon:My work on, you know, the silent brain is really important. And then you know the sitting with a question. One of the things I've been working on is can you have a question that you don't try and answer right now? Like, just sit with the question for a little while. This is the fact is, like we're controlling that monkey brain that we get sometimes. That just is in this. You know, um amygdala state. You know where we're now more primitive and we're not using our prefrontal cortex, our judgment part of our brain, and so I wouldn't say I'm a pure expert, but I've mastered, I've truly mastered. You know, sometimes I call it the zombie state, the thinking of nothing. Um, I got on this uh, bad water. I did not listen to music once. The entire nothing in my head, just the footsteps and maybe sometimes people talking to me, and I was, you know, 40 plus hours. It's great because I needed that stay focused and be present, and then you know, yeah.
Cassie Warbeck:And then you find out yeah, it's. I like that You're not shying away from like a feeling, the I don't know, the suffering, the discomfort, everything. You're just embracing it, you're not distracting yourself. Again it's and I think you talk about this too it's like choosing to live again, using your words, live intentionally versus just reactively. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about, I guess, the book as a whole. Here it's called Living Intentionally. And who, I guess? Who do you? From my perspective, I think the book is probably useful for anyone to read, but was there a specific person that you wrote it, like a group of people that you wrote it for, or who is it directed towards? Who should read it?
Joe Gagnon:I think there are two core profiles that I because you know if it's for everyone sort of seems like it's for no one sometimes. That's why the business person in me is you know who your customer is. The two profiles the first profile sort of the the baby boomer who was on autopilot for most of their lives and now they're finding a significant shift. Maybe they're retiring, maybe their health is failing, maybe they're not finding the purpose and joy in life anymore because their kids are gone or their life is different and they're just lost. Health is really a challenge at that point because in some sense we naturally decline, but we can mitigate that by instigating. So I like that group to think about stepping back and starting with what is my purpose? And first chapter is define your why. The second is you know, define these pillars and start to use them. The third would be you know, embrace the challenge. And the fourth is mastering reflection. That first section of the book is the foundation. The second group is sort of the Gen Z 25 to 35-year-olds who are sort of not so excited about the future, who are disappointed with the way society is going, aren't having kids, don't like the way politics are, you know, have lost sort of excitement for the possibilities, but they are our future and they need to build a better world. If they don't like what it is, then I want to give them a framework for them to think about, and so that first section of the book is great foundation.
Joe Gagnon:Second section of the book is really about this whole thing of discomfort.
Joe Gagnon:You know it's from failure to fuel. It's about then, you know, finding meaning through suffering and then go big or go home and in that you start to realize that it's okay to feel this way, um, and I feel, uh, a big responsibility to the next. This is sort of like this is skipping a generation kind of feeling, and to get to that, I think it's really important that some of us spend time role modeling some behavior and providing some structure for them, because I don't know where it comes from. You know, family units are sort of not as well situated as they were at. Work doesn't do anything for us, religion is sort of out the window, seems like community and society are just becoming selfish, like we just need to pull back here, like we can't just let this thing go away, and so I think that group there's a lot of them who would very quickly be intentional and probably have a higher probability than anyone. But they need some support. So those are my two sort of primary audiences for the book.
Cassie Warbeck:Perfect, yeah, no, I think there's quite a few people that would be listening to this podcast. That would fall into either of those categories. When is it released officially?
Joe Gagnon:Yeah, so it's coming out August 4th. It'll be on Amazon everywhere. We'll be out in some small bookstores around the country as well. Us it'll be available in Canada. The cool thing about publishing on Amazon now is it does this on-demand printing, so the book is available in 10 different geographies, which is so cool, and so then it's also if you want to be environmentally conscious, you know, just print when you need it. Of course, there's the Kindle version, so it's an e-book also, so that's another way to get it. You know, after August 4th, it'll be available there and then through my website website, in addition to that which is the highperformancelifenet where I talk about my coaching business.
Joe Gagnon:I have a lot of things going on. I run a software company, I have a coaching business, I do the ultra-marathoning, I'm writing. I actually have my idea for the next book I had written the last one in 2018, and so now I have three ideas coming out of this and I feel really strongly about my responsibility to make information available to people if they want. I believe we all have agency. I don't want to make it hard if you want to seize that agency to live differently. I don't want to make it so hard Like, yeah, I got sort of fortunate, I had 25 years to figure a lot of things out, and maybe everyone doesn't get 25 years.
Joe Gagnon:You know the other part I wrote in the front of the book. I wrote a preface that said you know, in a world of accelerating technological advancements, how should we show up? Does living intentionally really still matter? And I think it matters more than ever, you know. And so um, and then I don't know if video, but you know there's. This is the book. Uh, I have this, yeah, somewhat both peaceful and, uh, you know, evocative image that says you know, this is how we should feel. You know, intentionally enable success, fulfillment and growth. You know, the part that I had the hardest time with is when I tell someone you can feel differently and they say, well, I don't know what that means, and so telling someone what a feeling is like is hard to explain, but what I hope people feel is the enthusiasm.
Joe Gagnon:I wrote a lot of stories in this book and I made a lot of references to other smart people to give sort of support for this journey. What I can tell you for sure is that I didn't know it could happen and it did, and it will happen for everyone who goes on this path. It is no question, because this is the way our human system works, and so you just need to turn these things on that are just sitting there waiting for you to do that. And so you know, whatever magical life you want to have, like it's there, a little bit of patience, yeah, sure, like so what? Where are we rushing to? I can meet a 24 year old. This is want to be a CEO.
Joe Gagnon:I'm like, well then, what then? Like don't, don't define yourself by a title. You know, think about yourself as who you are, right, you know. You know you're an explorer, or you're a creator, or you're something like don't define just by what you have. You know the utility of money declines over time. You know power with people, not power over people. This is the part that I feel I don't know if I could be more blessed to have found myself to this place, because, you know, someone said to me why do you live this way, joe? And I'm like if you could feel this good, why wouldn't you? That is sort of the answer. You know, like, yeah, this is it.
Cassie Warbeck:I like that. Um, I am going to. I would like a request for you. Um, so, everyone listening right now, if they're, and I guess, inspired by what you're saying, they want to start living more intentionally today, like what's one challenge, what's one place to start, where would you, what you tell them to go do? That's uncomfortable, I'm curious.
Joe Gagnon:Yeah, this is the most uncomfortable possible, which is one hour a day for yourself, cause everyone says to me one hour is too much, so I could say 15 minutes. But like, if you want to be uncomfortable, like, just make an hour for yourself every day. Like that is not selfish, right?
Cassie Warbeck:that's about thriving and do what, though, and like anything for yourself?
Joe Gagnon:anything that would be for you. Yeah, maybe five pillars right, but if you thought about that, I meet a lot of people who tell me they can't do that right. They can't why I have all these other obligations. I'm like your obligation is to yourself first, and then to the rest of the world second, and so it is uncomfortable. It actually really forces people to step back and say why can't I do that? Because I had to do that myself. Because I had to do that myself. I had to do that.
Joe Gagnon:I had little kids when I started on this path, and I knew, though, that I wasn't going to show up well if I didn't make that choice, and so, if an hour is too much, start with 15 minutes like 15 minutes. We have to be able to do that, and if people in your life are not supportive of that, then you should wonder why they're in your life. Are they there for you? We're not here to change anyone. We're not here to tell people what to do, and I think that is the start that unlocks everything, because that's the first step towards agency and empowerment and intention, and so I would challenge you all to feel that serious about your own journey that you're willing to make that commitment to your own life improvement.
Cassie Warbeck:Okay, I like that. I have one more kind of, I guess, logistical question about your use of your. This is more of my own curiosity, but the use of your spreadsheet and the way you goal set and do you set goals, like how, how do you approach it? Do you set goals every week, um, is it monthly? Is it a daily reflection, like I'm? I'm just curious. I know maybe your way doesn't apply to everyone, but yeah, it's a good question.
Joe Gagnon:The two things. One is annual goals. I think annual goals are great because they force accountability over a long period of time. They create that consistency. And the second is activity-related goals. You know, like something's going to happen, like it's easy with races to say that, or the book or something else, where you put a time horizon that's a short, somewhat time and then you build a plan to get to that. So I have the, that overarching, and then I have the sort of the, the sub goals that fit underneath it, and so just all of it. Then my behaviors change to align to that, you know, and back to like.
Joe Gagnon:You know, I hadn't done 20 sauna sessions before I signed up for Badwater, so my behavior literally changed for that. You know, with the book it changed my morning routine. I would get up and make a cup of coffee and I would sit and write for an hour and a half, and that was different than what I did otherwise, excuse me. So I think that that's how I do the goal setting. So the mini and the macro, and that way, you know, and it's fun, I'll tell you, if you start writing it down, it really actually does click into. You know, dopamine is a motivator. It's not a goal setter, but it does keep you thinking about that and so it stays focused. And if you weren't to write something down someday, you'd be like huh, wonder why I didn't. It's like all of a sudden you have an accountability partner and they don't need to be at the other end of a text message. But you can have that too. So mine was like came with me everywhere that's cool.
Cassie Warbeck:I might try your approach. Might start a spreadsheet.
Joe Gagnon:I love that no one ever has to see it either. This is just like literally all of the stuff, I think. What's so interesting, cassie? Like I think I'm just a regular guy. I think we all sort of are in a sense right, you know, um, but that spreadsheet created what I am in a sense right. It's not like wasn't um a minor shift, and so whatever I accomplished was related to that, which is another one of these like, wow, I didn't need anything too fancy, I didn't have to spend money on a coach every month or join this, you know, and so I like that idea how much power we really have, uh, in the way that all the systems can work yeah, I think we need to give ourselves more, more credit there.
Cassie Warbeck:Um, yeah, no, that's uh, I love that, thank you. Thank you very much for sharing. Um. I always uh put this out there. If anyone wants to connect with you, if they want to follow you, how where do you um send them to you? I'll put all the links in the show notes yeah, yeah, yeah, I.
Joe Gagnon:And, until it gets too nutty, if anyone even emails me, I actually reply because I care so deeply about people. My email address is j, the letter into my last name, ganyon232 at gmailcom. I'm on Substack. If anyone uses that, it's a great newsletter for free. You can get my daily blog under Joe curious, cause I think we all should be curious. Um, my website is the, you know, high performance lifenet, and then I'm on Instagram at the high performance life. Um, those are the best places to follow me. Uh, I'm on LinkedIn under Joe getting young. Uh, and so I. I am am not the big like. I'm not posting five times a day. I try and post things meaning, but I do write every day. So if you want to read my one paragraph a day, I would love for you to subscribe to the sub stack and then you could see what I write about each day. That was just fun I like that.
Cassie Warbeck:I might do that. Thank you, I'm going. I'll put all those links below everyone you can look and click and follow. Joe um, thank you so much for being here. I've it's been so cool hearing about your experience with bad water. Again, I love that the timing worked out for this. I feel like I was very lucky to schedule you today. Um, and yeah, I'm, I'm inspired. I can't wait to. I've read some of the book. I didn't have a chance to read it all, so I'm excited to like read more of it and actually know who you are to put with it now. So thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.
Joe Gagnon:Yeah, thanks for listening. Thanks to all of your listeners. I hope you find your path to living intentionally and have a magical life and a beautiful time together here.
Cassie Warbeck:That's it for this episode of here All Day. If you found it valuable, the best way to support the show is to subscribe, leave a review or share it with someone else who would enjoy it. Don't forget to check out the show notes for all the resources mentioned and links to connect. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep training hard, eating plants and showing off.