E158 | Johnjay Van Es: Unscripted & Uncommon Roads to Success

HEADS UP! There are only a few days left to register for The Communication and Leadership Strategy Summit! On March 20-21th, 2021 we’re hosting an interactive online event about navigating the messy realities of leadership and communication. Learn tactics and strategies from top professionals in the fields of finance, performance, medical, business and the military. Click here to sign up before it’s too late! 

*Cue late night FM DJ Voice* 

On today’s show we are joined by radio host and broadcasting legend Johnjay Van Es for a conversation where nothing is off-limits. We discuss the magic of radio or what he calls “theater of the mind”, driving Wayne Gretzky around as an intern, navigating cancel culture as a public figure and father, his 3:45 AM wake up call and other “strange rituals.” 

We also cover:

• The danger of Hollywood “cure alls” and one-size fits all leadership models
• Exploring creativity and affordances as a parent and coach 
• Why he doesn’t like interviewing celebrities
• Choosing what to share on air- where do you draw the line?

It’s refreshing to talk to people who candidly share their successes and failures but even more so when they are highly skilled in the art of conversation. Johnjay is the host of the nationally syndicated Johnjay and Rich Radio Show and 2018 inductee into the Arizona Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame. When he’s not covering pop culture, news, music, celebrities and everything in between, he’s the founder of #LovePup Dog Rescue and #LoveUp Foundation. 

Connect with Johnjay: 

Via Instagram: @johnjayvanes or @lovepupfoundation

Via Twitter: @johnjayvanes

Via his website: https://loveupfoundation.org/lovepup/

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Johnjay Van Es  0:01  

I’m going to do that for the women, I’m going to be that for the women audience for our women demographic, I’m going to be as open and as honest as I can about my insecurities about man boobs, about my double chin, about the cut on my lip, about my receding hairline, about every single thing. I think, if I could relate to the lowest common denominator, as far as your insecurity, I can form a connection with everybody. And so what happened was I started getting people saying to me, Oh, my God, you’re saying what I’m thinking, you said, what I’m thinking that’s exactly what I’m thinking. And I was like, Holy crap, this is working, and I was just being as real as I possibly could.

 

Brett Bartholomew  0:44  

Welcome to the Art of coaching podcast, a show aimed at getting to the core of what it takes to change attitudes, behaviors and outcomes in the weight room, boardroom classroom, and everywhere in between. I’m your host, Brett Bartholomew, I’m a performance coach, keynote speaker, and the author of the book conscious coaching. But most importantly, I’m a lifelong student interested in all aspects of human behavior, and communication. I want to thank you for joining me. And now let’s dive into today’s episode.

 

Hey, everybody, it’s Brett, good to have you back. I want you to think about a time where you had a conversation with somebody that didn’t go as well as you had hoped. It started off well enough. But whether you were trying to build trust with them, build rapport with them, make a true connection of any kind, or even solve a problem. You just felt like somewhere you lost your way along the course of the discussion. And then when you reflected on it, you realize, man, if only I knew how to shut up and ask better questions, and listen more effectively, that could have gone a completely different way. Have you ever done that? Have you ever even felt embarrassed about the way a conversation you took part in went when you thought about it later on? Listen, you’re not alone. That’s called being human. But it’s also one of the reasons I wanted to have our guest on today. 

 

He is one of the most socially skilled individuals that I know. And it was a little bit of a tug of war with him because he kept trying over the course of the show to put the focus on me and I want to keep it on him which is shows why he is in the broadcasting Hall of Fame. Johnjay Van Es yes is in the Hall of Fame. And he is the host of a top ranked nationally syndicated radio show called The Johnjay enrich show, and he has interviewed everybody from celebrities, political figures, sports stars, everything in between. And he knows what it’s like to grind as well. He had interned he had aspirations about getting on Saturday Night Live, he had worked on a TV station, he knew he always wanted to be in radio. And eventually he made it to the top and he’s still there to this day. And what I really appreciate about him is he pulls no punches, which is a reminder, if you don’t like adult content, there’s gonna be some swear words here. There’s gonna be some other things that if you’re in the car with kids, listen to this later. But you know, he has to get on and yes, and navigate a wide array of social relationships. And guess what guys, that’s leadership that’s coaching. That’s life. Who better to learn the art of conversation, especially messy conversation, the ones that happen in real life, from a broadcasting legend, and you’re gonna jump right into this episode, we didn’t do a lot of banter. So you need to be ready, because by the time the show starts, we are off and rolling. And he’s just a supremely interesting person. So if you’re a parent, if you are a manager, if you are anybody that’s had to create content, or put yourself in your ideas and center stage, no matter how nervous you might have been about it, you will love this episode, if you just want to hear an interesting conversation between a fascinating individual and a person like me, you will also love it, and I couldn’t be more excited to bring it to you. 

 

Also, in the name of learning from people from a wide variety of fields, I want to remind you, there’s only a few days left to register for our art of coaching, Communication and Leadership Summit. Now, despite what the name may kind of take guys, this is simple. We’ve had experts from every field come in and talk about what they’ve learned from experiences on the messy side of leadership in their domain. I mean, we have people from finance, we have people from the medical world, people who work with the military, and everybody is telling you the things you will not get in the wishy washy leadership books that we often read so much, right? This is the realities, the takeaways, the real world applicable knowledge, the stuff that you’re going to be able to take away did a negotiation goes sour. Why did you offend somebody unintentionally? Why do you need to get through to somebody stubborn? How can you manage it? How do you know how to read the room? These are the things that are going to be covered. And we’re going to have a little devil’s advocate back and forth. So it’s not a boring zoom clinic. So make sure you go to artofcoaching.com/Summit. Again, that’s artofcoaching.com/Summit for that. And if that’s not your bag, and you want on something a little bit more interactive all the way through, you’re craving authentic connection, we got that too. We’ve gotten off of social media. And we’ve created a partnership with an app called channels. And if you go to artofcoaching.com/channels, you are going to be able to enter a community where I go live with content that I don’t share on this podcast or anywhere else. Every single week, we have video based interactions, no more logging into Facebook and having to type a bunch. No more character limits on Twitter, no more, you know, captions that you can only type by phone. Literally, if you have a question about books to read your business, what path you should take how you should deal with somebody with a difficult personality, all these things, I will respond you in real time with a customized video for you. No fluff and you get to interact with other people face to face via video in the community. Just go to artofcoaching.com/channels. I promise if you’re somebody that’s gotten sick of social media and you like actual connection and you want detailed answers instead of fluff. You will love this. Alright, enough of me on to broadcasting legend, Johnjay Van Es

 

now we’re rolling now Johnjay So, no pre interview. You’re on the air. You’re on the air.

 

Johnjay Van Es  6:18  

Good. So let me apologize for this growth on my chin. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  6:20  

Hey, that what do you have there? Break it down for us. The audience can’t see it. But you know, I can maybe 100

 

Johnjay Van Es  6:25  

So this isn’t a video podcast, too. It’s just audio just video for you and me to see each other.

 

Brett Bartholomew  6:29  

You know what it’s going to be now. Now it is going to be full on video. We have it? 

 

Johnjay Van Es  6:33  

No, I’m glad that it’s not video because I was gonna say I was shaving on Friday or so and something happened. But it’s not your normal Nick. It’s like turning into some infection. I wouldn’t actually was at my doctor yesterday, which told us like, I’m gonna jump all over the place. I was that my doctor yesterday. And this doctor I go to also has these hyperbaric chambers. Right. And I was like, I can’t wait to talk to Brett about the hyperbaric  chambers. What’s your take on hyperbaric chambers?

 

Brett Bartholomew  6:59  

Yeah, man, they I’ll get riddled by some listeners on this. But good, in theory, don’t do what they’re they, they claim to the best thing if you really want like altitude, and all that kind of stuff is you want to live high, and train low. So you want to live at high altitude and be able to train at around sea level. Because what happens is it takes so long for the body to truly acclimate to altitude, I mean, you’ll start having some adaptations, immediately, you start producing more red blood cells and what have you, because the oxygen molecule is more dispersed, but like to just go in, let’s say somebody’s like, Hey, I’m gonna for 500 bucks a month, I’m gonna go use an altitude chamber or you know, hyperbaric chamber for a certain amount of time, you’re really not going to get long term benefits out of it. I hate to burst that bubble. But

 

Johnjay Van Es  7:46  

okay, because we take what happened to be what I saw. So have you heard of this? a little background, please. I don’t know much about sports. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  7:55  

You know more than, you know more than the average person 

 

Johnjay Van Es  7:58  

well, I at this at this level of my life in case you know, you have new people who I am, I do a radio show. And I was always into TV and movies and Broadway musicals and West Side Story and you know, that kind of stuff. And then my wife and I have three boys. And God would have It. These three boys are athletes. And so as they grow up, I’m learning about sports. But me being 6’4″ 250 pounds, people always approached me and always thought I knew about the big game, they are all about the game. I knew nothing about March Madness. I knew nothing about football. I knew nothing about basketball, nothing. And somehow my whole life has been surrounded by sports. My first job in radio was at the mighty 6-90 of the first things I ever had to do as an intern was Dr. Wayne Gretzky around and I didn’t know who he was, right. So cut to now years later, I have these three boys. And I’m learning as much as I can about sports, especially with my middle kid who’s a big time basketball player or I mean, not big time, but he’s, you know, an incredible athlete. So I watch I try to watch as much as many documentaries as I can. I’ve been learning so much. And which is funny, because when I first met you at Exos, I was surrounded by all these athletes didn’t have a clue who these people were. And what’s funny is I’ve become friends with a handful of these guys. And still to this day. I talked to them almost all the time. But I’m jumping around a very ADD you’re good. So I watched this documentary on amazon prime a couple of weeks ago, and it’s about this hockey player named Conor McGregor. Have you heard of him? 

 

Brett Bartholomew  9:23  

A hockey player named Conor McGregor? 

 

Johnjay Van Es  9:25  

Ever heard of him? 

 

Brett Bartholomew  9:26  

No, I have not. I’ve heard of that. I’ve heard of obviously the UFC fighter.

 

Johnjay Van Es  9:30  

Conor McGregor. Sorry, Connor McDavid McDavid.

 

Brett Bartholomew  9:33  

I was gonna say that this would be an interest. I thought this was going I haven’t heard of him. But that’s not a surprise, right? I’m not super. I mean, like I have good friends that work in hockey that jersey you see behind me. You know Nate is a great guy. We’ve worked with a lot of hockey players but I don’t follow hockey actively. I have an appreciation of what it takes to get people physically ready to play that sport. But it’s you know growing up in Nebraska, right you got into football and and things like that. So love hockey. Appreciate it, but I don’t follow religiously, right? Know like everybody.

 

Johnjay Van Es  10:02  

Okay, so this guy Connor McDavid it’s a 45 minute documentary came out at Christmas time in December you gotta watch so this guy, so he’s 22 years old. He’s like this superstar athlete and if you’re it was gonna be funny about your listeners listen to and how do they not know who Connor McDavid is like he’s like the Michael Jordan of hockey at this time, he crashes into the goalposts destroys his kneecaps destroys his ACL, his meniscus everything that you hear about athletes destroying, right? And they tell him that he has two doctors opinions, so you’re gonna have to have surgery. But if you have to have surgery, you’re probably not going to skate again. And he’s like, Oh, shit, I guess I can’t do that. And then there’s a third doctor that says, Hold on. Let’s try something else. So one of the things they do is they do all this PT and all the stuff. They put them in the hyperbaric chamber for two hours a day, for 40 days in a row. And they do MRIs on this guy every two weeks to do an MRI. And in the two weeks, they show in the MRIs, the ligaments growing back every two weeks they do and they do updates and updates. So cut to this happened in 2019. Cut to like, a month ago, the guy just signed $100 million deal with the Edmonton Oilers cut two he is stronger than he was before the accident. Cut to. It’s the crazies at the end of the documentary when they show him going back on the skates and skating and the montage. You know, every movie needs a montage the montage of, him scoring goals and getting back on the ice and being insecure about getting back on the ice is incredible. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  11:35  

Now here’s here’s the thing, though, with that, right? So like hyperbaric chambers have been really shown to be effective in, like cognition, and in certain even aspects of like certain aging pieces, right? Like, let’s look at cognitive function now. Right? So like, if you look at some of this stuff, there’s some times where people have some kind of brain damage or what have you. Or even if somebody’s got hypoxia, and they’ve got a, you know, some kind of accident or a drowning or what have you, we’re literally you have to get oxygen to the brain. Otherwise, it’s going to incur a lot of cell death. And it’s going to do it quick. When you look at improvements in some cognition, or the decrease in extreme medical cases, medical cases of like, brain tissue dying, solid, but like, If I lived in LA for a year, right? And they’ll say, hyperbaric chamber, this will cure this and this and they start making 38 on unwarranted claims. Right? And so that’s the thing of like, when people look at these things as a cure all, never right do they have is there something that can be used for it? 100% What’s tricky, though, Johnjay is like when people look at that, and they look at a story like that. And then they think that’s the norm when they really don’t know anything else that guy was doing from a training standpoint, and nutrition standpoint, you know, genetic variances, and what have you, right? And so some people think, like, oh, well, it worked for this dude is gonna work for me, too. You know what I mean?

 

Johnjay Van Es  12:48  

Right? Well, so at the same time, so then, here we are, this year, January, my son rolls his ankle playing basketball. And it’s like, it’s the middle of this incredible tournament this whole season, you know, with COVID has been this weird thing. But in Arizona, where we are, basketballs been, like, untouched with this certain league that he’s in. So he rolls he rolls his ankle, and they tell him to be out like eight weeks that tore a ligament and he cracks something is like, Oh, crap. So I’m like, Let’s go hyperbaric man. At the same time, though. They did this thing called where they injected him with

 

Brett Bartholomew  13:18  

PRP. Yeah,

 

Johnjay Van Es  13:20  

no, the next level, the next level, the stem cell. it’s the stem cell thing. So they injected him in there. And then they said, Let’s do hyperbaric. So we did hyperbaric a couple of three or four times a week. I was doing it with him. He was supposed to be at eight weeks. And the doctors, some doctors said, Oh, that’s hocus pocus. In two and a half weeks, the doctor looked at the MRI was like, oh my god, they were blown away. But is it the hyperbaric or was it the stem cell?

 

Brett Bartholomew  13:45  

Yeah, and for anybody that doesn’t know what we’re nerding out about, like what we’re talking about hyperbaric there, it’s like the administration of pure oxygen, right? pure oxygen and like so like literally and the body typically absorbs 98% Give or take, you know, oxygen in general. So like when somebody breathes in pure oxygen getting that other 2% and this is where it gets tricky. So we don’t go like a physiology rabbit hole. In most things in life, if you have an increase in 1% 2%. Like you’ll still take it right like marginal gains this stuff seems cool. And obviously some increases better than none. But what most research shows is like, literally if the body is naturally uptaking 98%, oxygen saturation, what have you that little 2% generally doesn’t make a big enough like it doesn’t make a huge difference. So when you see athletes a lot of times taking oxygen on the sidelines. I remember growing up watching Nebraska play Miami and Warren Sapp had to get on oxygen. Really what goes on a lot of the times there is it’s less the oxygen because he’s already uptaking 98%. And it’s more the fact that he’s now inhaling deeply exhaling right? He’s controlling his breathing. So like, but when somebody has oxygen levels, or gets oxygen at greater than atmospheric pressure, right, they start thinking alright, well can this help with sports injuries, you know, the, at least as a primary or adjunct treatment? Now, like I said, some results have been proven to be effective, but it’s only as good as everything else you do around it. Right? The issue is when people think that in and of itself is going to solve its problems. And that’s what I thought at the beginning, I thought you’re even talking about altitude training. So the inverse of this right, like, because that’s something that people will do to Johnjay is, they’ll say, we want to mimic the effects of altitude. So we’re gonna go hyperbaric, and it’s just tricky. You have to have a smart kind of thing around that. And then also listen to placebo effect is real. So I’m not saying it’s bunk. I’m saying it won’t solve everything by itself.

 

Johnjay Van Es  15:33  

But okay, so sidenote, or let me just shift gears real quick. You are so smart, dude, your book I mean, you sent me a book right when I think when it came out, right. But what I did the other day, I went through your book, when you first sent it. And I was like, you know, this is a really thick book for someone like me. So I actually downloaded I bought the audio book. And I’m like, first of all, how come you’re not reading it?

 

Brett Bartholomew  15:54  

You want to know the actual answer to that? 

 

Johnjay Van Es  15:56  

Yeah. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  15:56  

So we actually applied to read it, we wanted to do it, Audible, because you gotta remember I self published, right? So I didn’t have a publisher that gave me an advance and hooked you up with the studio and all this. So audible was like, Alright, man, well, here you go. You have to meet these recording studio standards, you have to have the decibel levels at a certain amount. And I once listened to an episode of you on your show, talking about you don’t even know how to work Google Drive, right? So like Google Drive, and Dropbox, you had to have help with that? Well, they’re telling me that I have to have everything perfect audio, I have to edit it, I have to do all these things. I have no access to you know, I have no access to a home recording studio. Like literally, if an airplane went overhead right now, I would have had to have clap to spike the audio. And then I’d have to go back I do all my recording, sound proofing, editing. And dude, I you know, at the time I did that book, you know, I was still just coaching athletes going across the world. I was time poor. So then Audible is like, well, if you can’t afford to do it, you know, and you can’t do it meeting our standards, you have to choose an audible approved editor, which I never knew that man. Like, I didn’t know that your favorite author, my favorite author, generally, their literary agent connects them with a studio. It’s all paid for, you know, they go to a recording studio certain like Kevin Hart, right narrates his own book. Kevin Hart gets hooked up with that that’s part of the process. low level people like me are told like, hey, go buddy, buy a microphone on Amazon. Good luck. And we’ll tell you if we like it or not?

 

Johnjay Van Es  17:15  

Well, I gotta tell you, you when you say low level of reading that book, and the quality of the book, and the content of the book certainly is not low level. I mean, first of all use words like nomenclature and alchemy.

 

Brett Bartholomew  17:26  

Listen, who’s in the broadcasting Hall of Fame between us? Right?

 

Johnjay Van Es  17:30  

But I don’t use words like that. No, seriously, it’s incredible content. And it’s funny because your book, you know, it’s amazing how the universe works and puts us in connects us because I’m literally going through, like, a lot of the stuff that’s in your book about communication and talking to staff into our staffs always change, not always changing. But right now, I’m going through a big change with a lot of crew members and stuff. And so learning how to talk to people communicate, especially with the different generations, you know, I’m Gen X, and then you know, you’re probably you’re a millennial, and I got to deal with Gen Z. It’s just a different world, 

 

Brett Bartholomew  17:59  

Well that leads into something I wanted to ask you, right. So I and we’ve never really got to chat like this, you and I always just kind of crossed paths on the training floor. We got to bullshit a little bit. But I didn’t know you had a background in improv. And you were in the Groundlings. And so where this ties in, and where I’d like to learn a little bit more about that is like within that, right? You’ve got to bounce off of different people improvs. So I some people think it’s just Whose Line Is It Anyway, right, they don’t get what it really is. So if your staff coming in and switching and the dynamics that you guys have to play off of with each other. And guess talk to me a little bit about how like, you’ve managed that over the years, like that’s hard man like to be able to manage the social dynamics, and egos and attitudes and agendas, and I don’t mean those in a bad way. Just everybody kind of has their own way of operating. Talk to me a little bit about that.

 

Johnjay Van Es  18:41  

Well, it’s really hard except for on the radio, we’re on such a time crunch. Now, you know, with Fortunately, the show has been so successful, but we do have a lot more commercials. So we only have a short window to get to stuff. So there’s not a lot of room for that much improv. Sometimes we’ll tape a lot of stuff. But when it comes to the improv with the Groundlings and improv on the radio, the evolution of improv of the radio has changed. So with the Groundlings, they used to say, you do as much as you can , and everyone could improv a scene improv a scene improv a scene. And then when you’re just out of ideas, and it’s the most uncomfortable thing in the world, that’s when the genius happens, that’s when the gold comes up. But with radio, I don’t have time for that. And listeners don’t have time for that listener is not going to sit around and wait 30 seconds for you something to happen. But so if you tape something, a lot of times we’re taping segments and we let the silence hit. And then we can edit out the uncomfortableness later but still, even if uncomfortable. You know, that’s how we the beauty of radio, but with the personalities though, it’s so different to manage personalities, especially the different generations but man, it’s just so that’s actually your book has been helping me a lot, quite frankly, with so it’s amazing that we’re talking to you right now that I’m talking to right now. In fact, I’m one of those guys. We know that I mean, I’m that I’m talking to you right now. I’m actually I I have a guy, actually my strength and conditioning coach, he also has a he does these personality tests and I’m bringing him into to coach our crew to take these tests have to figure out how to talk to one another. You know, you said it’s like the five love languages with personalities. So it still might need more time, might need more words of affirmation, and this person might need more quality time. And this person might need, you know, speak differently to them. So it’s just a, it’s so complicated. And me as a manager, I’m learning how to talk to people because back in the day, you know, I’d be like, hey, I need five copies of this. But now, you got to be like, Hey, you have to keep make five copies this for me, please, I need this. Meanwhile, the song is running out in 10 seconds. Yeah, and I don’t have like back in the day, it’s like, Sondra, I need five copies don’t go now it’s gonna be, hey, I’m gonna be five. Or I gotta really plan ahead and be like, I think you know, I get there. I get to work around for 4:30 

 

Brett Bartholomew  20:52  

in the morning, 

 

Johnjay Van Es  20:52  

and I’ll be and yeah, in the morning. And I have the whole show mapped out. And then I know, you know, shows take a left turn all the time. But I’m trying to think in advance of where things can go. It goes a little bit against improv. But I tried to map I thought to controlled chaos. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  21:08  

Yeah, well, it’s regulated improv like this, you know. And like, here’s the interesting thing, man that’s fascinated me about you is, and you interview a lot of high level celebrities, but you also will talk to average Joe and James and people like myself, and what have you. And like you said, You’ve got to be able to balance this. But you also one thing that I supremely respect about you is you don’t dodge difficult shit. And like, given that the nature of this podcast, like in a lot of coaching and leadership podcasts, it’s a lot of wishy washy stuff, you know, and so I was like, well, if we’re gonna do something, we’re gonna have people on that, don’t go skirt around the edges. I mean, you talk about topics related to sex and bullying and life and finance, and you know, people’s insecurities or arguments with like, you’ll go, you there’s no limit to where you go, like, within how you’ve navigated your career. Was that, like, were you able to kind of make your mark like that from the jump, you know? Or was that something where it’s like, Hey, I know, I gotta craft a persona, obviously, you know, you’re you. But there’s got to be elements of your persona that are amplified. How did you kind of figure out your voice, your identity and your approach, so that you don’t fall flat when you interview these kinds of people?

 

Johnjay Van Es  22:10  

Well, honestly, what I my whole way of doing radio show was the quick little background. So when I was dating my wife back in the day, and we you know, I was in radio sales. So I interned and then I got into promotions. And then I got into radio sales, because that’s where the guys are making all the money. But my entire life, I wanted to be on the radio. That’s what I always want to do. I mean, I have tapes, when I was a little kid, I always wanted to be on radio. But when I got into my early 20s, and I was dating my wife, and I was unhappy, being a radio sales guy, she said to me, she’s like, what do you want to do? I said, Well, there’s two things I’d like to do. I’d like to have my own radio show. And I go, but that’s impossible, because I’m already 23 24 years old, and to have my own radio show. I gotta go to Kentucky and I gotta go do overnights midnight to five. And then I got to get promoted to the midday job. And for me the job to get afternoon some afternoons. And then once you’re, you know, 35 you get the morning show in a city that you got to be successful there. Then you get maybe LA or New York. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  23:05  

Yeah, 

 

Johnjay Van Es  23:06  

I didn’t go that route. So with her, she said she was what was the other option? I go, I like that maybe, write. I’d like to write and perform for Saturday Night Live. Oh, that’s my dream, man. So she’s like, how do you go about that? So we backtracked from my wife sat there with a pen and pencil backtrack. Sign alive. And we went backwards. How do you get there and that’s how I got to the Groundlings. So like Will Ferrell was a groundling Qudra was a groundling Conan O’Brien was the Groundlings, you know, or you go to Chicago, New Second City, so I wouldn’t I auditioned for the Groundlings. Now, long story short, my old boss, the one that had me drive Wayne Gretzky around, he moved to Cincinnati, and he was running to top 40 show a top 40 radio stations Cincinnati. I was now doing improv with the Groundlings on the weekends. And I was doing a local troupe in San Diego is doing local stuff almost every day. And he calls me he says, Hey, this is gonna sound crazy. But we are looking to blow up our morning show. And we want someone funny, who’s never been in radio on the radio, would you come out and audition? And I was like, I mean, it’s like I just told you about the universal work. So. Long story short, I got the job at Cincinnati. And I got my own morning show. Never being on the radio. I got my own morning show at the age of 27. So that’s how I started all because of my wife saying, what’s your goal? Let’s go backwards from there. And what I thought I was writing out my goal to be a writer for sound I live. I ended up getting my own morning show, which is the ultimate goal for me. Right so that’s how I started getting my own show that from Cincinnati i with a Houston from Houston, I went back to Arizona. And so from there So your question was I hope I answered it somewhere.

 

Brett Bartholomew  24:42  

But you’re on a great stream of consciousness here. I am not going to interrupt you so it was kind of yes how you got started within that and then how you manage to be able to you know play like the people that you have to interview so many dynamic but yeah, go ahead you go oh, 

 

Johnjay Van Es  24:54  

here’s how I’m getting here saying how do I how to Okay, so in that time, it’s never been my own having my own never been on Radio before I had to study and I had to research everybody. So who’s the greatest radio personality of all time? That’s Howard Stern. Howard Stern. So at that time when I got my own show, I’m sitting there trying to figure out how to do a radio show. And my dad was living in San Diego, my dad’s taping the top 40 show on cassettes, and he’s sending me these cassettes every day. And I’m trying to listen to Howard Stern. And meanwhile, Howard drops his movie, private parts. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  25:26  

I love that Movie. 

 

Johnjay Van Es  25:27  

Yeah, I love that movie. And I read the book, private parts. And in the movie, there’s this scene where Howard’s at the gas station with his wife. And he says, he goes, Listen, Allison, for me to be successful for me to really win. Because I have to be open and honest about everything. I have to be authentic about everything. This is like 1996 1997. That’s just when I started. And so I said to my wife, I said, you see this, I go, this is what I have to do. I have to do this, but he’s in rock’n’roll. I’m in top 40, I’m going to do that for the women. I’m going to be that for the women audience for our women demographic, I’m going to be as open and as honest as I can about my insecurities about man boobs, about my double chin, about the cut on my lip, about my receding hairline, about every single thing. I think, if I could relate to the lowest common denominator, as far as your insecurity, I can form a connection with everybody. And so what happened was I started getting people saying to me, Oh, my God, you’re saying what I’m thinking, you said, what I’m thinking, that’s exactly what I’m thinking. And I was like, Holy crap, this is working. And I was just being as real as I possibly could. That’s, was always my theory. So I got it from Howard Stern.

 

Brett Bartholomew  26:36  

And the piece of that I like is That’s true differentiation, right? Differentiation isn’t like, Oh, I’m going to be different. I’m going to go and try to outdo this, or I’m going to try to compete with Howard Stern. It’s saying, Hey, I see what’s worked here. I’m going to take elements of that and fuse that with who I really am. And exactly serve an unserved audience.

 

Johnjay Van Es  26:52  

And also, it’s funny because I hear this word a lot right now. This is like the buzzword right now, in 2020 2021. But it’s been my buzzword forever is being as authentic as possible. to be as authentic as you can people can read. I listen to other radio shows now. And when you see that guy’s lying, that’s not true. This person is not telling the true story.

 

Brett Bartholomew  27:12  

What’s the tell? Tell me how? What’s the tell? 

 

Johnjay Van Es  27:15  

Because there’s not a follow up. When you when someone says they say something and you ask a question, and there’s no, there’s just more you can tell they’re not painting the radio theater of the mind. And when someone’s telling the story on the radio, and they don’t paint enough of the picture, I don’t believe them. And I think the audience is the same way.

 

Brett Bartholomew  27:33  

Yeah, well, listen, that ship was the case with athletes, right? Like, and it’s been forever since you and I have talked, but just like kind of you talked about, you know, how you started and then how you evolved and what have you. It’s the same thing you knew me when I just trained athletes. And now we do work with corporations, we do work with the military, we do work with all these things. And we actually use elements of improv in teaching people how to coach because coaching like, you know, like human interaction, there’s, you may have an idea of where certain things are gonna go. But you never know how somebody’s going to respond, right? Like you’d see me lead these groups of guys, that they couldn’t look more different than me. They’re from different places. Like, it’s constantly trying to figure out what makes them tick. What does this but there’s a lot of people that just want a structured way. So to your point, it is funny when people talk about being authentic, but they’re just giving a scripted version of what the audience want to know, that’s not being authentic. That’s like regulated disclosure, like I’m giving you this, I’m not going to tell you the rest. And I think Do you think a lot of it now too, is I mean, inherently people are scared to be a judge and they want to belong and be liked and bullshit, but like, do you think people are even more frightened of that now because of like canceled culture and everything? They’re kind of freaked out at what might come back?

 

Johnjay Van Es  28:33  

Absolutely, man, and sometimes I get scared. I don’t get scared when I’m sharing my honest thoughts. But I get scared sometimes on what I’m posting on social media sometimes that’s where they come out. Yeah, those keyboard bullies come at you 

 

Brett Bartholomew  28:44  

brutal. It’s brutal. But I know what you manage. Go ahead. I cut you off.

 

Johnjay Van Es  28:49  

No, no, no, I was just gonna say just the keyboard bullies come out. Yeah, and those are the ones like I had. In fact I’m actually dealing with this still to this day a couple years ago I got into the keyboard bullies came at me and they still evade an army of them came after me because of a band. I got to fight with a fan base of the band. And I thought it was funny and it turned into a disaster and now they’ve red flagged every single one of my posts and I got shadow banned from Instagram and I’ve had to had I heart hasn’t had that talk to Instagram. I mean, it’s been two years it’s crazy. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  29:19  

Yeah, that if I remember correctly, and literally call me out on the air if it’s not your wife’s name is Blake. 

 

Johnjay Van Es  29:25  

Right 

 

Brett Bartholomew  29:25  

Okay. And so like with that you obviously disclose a lot on the air you got three boys right? I have three boys three boys right so you Blake three boys. You’re we’re going to talk about everything you do with love pup and rescues and dogs and everything too. But like you have to disclose a lot. Where do you draw the line if at all, like what you’ll share about you versus what you share about your family like how much you let your audience in on the family life. I know on social media, I always see the posts of your kids playing basketball. I love that especially when you go at Crazy parents. Oh my god. That’s my favorite post when you go batshit crazy parents by the way. 

 

Johnjay Van Es  29:57  

It’s amazing. Parents basketball Parents are crazy. I draw the line now, like my oldest son, he wants almost no part of anything posted on social media. You know,  he doesn’t want he changes his Instagram account all the time, because listeners reach out to him and stuff. And so I gotta respect his privacy. My two younger kids don’t really care. My wife. She hasn’t gotten mad at me in a long time. Sometimes I’ve crossed line. I can’t remember the last time but she’d be like, hey, that’s private. Usually the rule I have or do we have my family. So we everything’s fair game on the air unless my wife says, Okay, this isn’t for the radio. And then if she says that, then I respect that. I don’t do it. You know, but that hasn’t happened on time. I think 

 

Brett Bartholomew  30:36  

yeah, man. Well, and anybody that’s listened to your show, I mean, I want to know what Blake would be like, this isn’t for radio, because you push some boundaries. Like 

 

Johnjay Van Es  30:43  

I do. She texts me today. As a matter of fact, she text me this morning,  she’s on our we have a vacation cabin up north, my kids have been skiing my oldest, my youngest with her. And she texts me today. And she’s like, Hey, I’m really excited to come home. I missed you. I missed her hugs. And she goes on about something. She goes, I really liked some sex tonight. And I was like, right, and I thought I should screenshot that and post it. And I’m like, No, she’s gonna get mad. And I was like, I don’t want my kids to read that. You want me? So that’s where my brain goes. Now. That’s not really what am I getting out of that? So people gonna go, Oh, I love the way you guys love each other. And I thought I don’t need that. So I just didn’t. My brain already went through the whole process. And I thought I’m not gonna post it. So I didn’t post it. But hopefully, I’ll get sex tonight. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  31:22  

Yeah, I hope so as well. Yeah, It is a delicate balance, that’s for sure. Because like, I found I mean, the evolution here. And I don’t know, who knows if I’ve done a good job of it or not, but like, a lot of how I got my following initially was, you know, just through athlete training, and people like seeing that stuff on Instagram, right? But then eventually, like, as we switch gears, and we went more into psychology, behavior, change, communication, you know, Instagram, it’s gonna take a hit. And you can be like, Oh, well, I need to start posting this. And it’s like, no, that’s not where we’re going with that direction. You know, and so we try to stay in our lane. And then I also show some aspects of my personal life. But like, sometimes people will be like, Hey, what are your thoughts on this? And then I’ll go 99% of places, but there’s some things like I’m not, you know, I’m not going to show my house, you know, I’m not gonna show like the outside of my house. And that’s just because there’s creepy people out there. You know, like, I’ll show Bronson I’ll show her you know, we got a 14 month old and what have you. But there’s, a mix, because Liz sometimes will like Judo kick me, if I’m like, hey, this would be a good picture. But you’re right, man, It is a unique thing. But at the same time, relationships make like what you go through in life. It’s all content, right? It’s all content. And you want to share those things. Because people can’t say, oh, my God, Johnjay, you know what’s going on in my head, if you are so closed off about the whole range of who you are, because they don’t want to just know you, as the morning show host. They want to know like, who are you as a family guy, right?

 

Johnjay Van Es  32:36  

Well, you’re right. And plus radio is so competitive now. So a lot of shows and what I realized about a lot of my competitors, their shows over 10. And they’re done. They put their headphones up, they’re done. I tried to keep my show going after 10 on social media. So I have a different way of looking at it. You know what I mean? So my radio show was over 10. But then what, get on social media, and you can see what else is going on. And then I might recap that tomorrow on the air. But I have a whole other story going. So when you say you don’t show your house, I totally get that. But for me, I got I’m competing with a guy in New York, I’m competing with a guy in Portland, I’m competing with a guy in LA, I got, you know, I’m all over the country. And I’ve got it’s crazy. So I’m trying to show as much as I can to give. I’m trying to show content that can’t be duplicated. Because there’s so many people out there that are taking our ideas and using and repackaging them and it kills me. So I’m trying to show stuff that nobody else can do. If that makes sense.

 

Brett Bartholomew  33:30  

No, yeah, it makes total sense. And I’ll and again, I’ll show aspects of my house, I just don’t show like, Hey, here’s outside what it looks like in case you’re crazy. And you want to roll by and try to go me. You know what I mean?

 

Johnjay Van Es  33:38  

I try not to do that either. Because I’ve already had I the crazies are crazy. They are crazy. But well, let’s talk about you for a second because I’d say something. I’m so proud. I don’t know if you remember this. But like the first day I met you the first day I remember laying on the ground, we were stretching talking to you. And I said to you, I go dude. You’re gonna be huge. There’s something very special about you. You remember that?

 

Brett Bartholomew  33:56  

I yeah, I do. And by the way, I’m still not huge. So  you’re not right in that regard. But you’re one of the first ones to believe in me without a doubt when everybody was telling me kind of like, all just stay here say you got a good thing and whatever, you You were very much like, What the hell are you still doing here? You know, in a respectful way, you know,

 

Johnjay Van Es  34:12  

I remember dude. And then I remember when you said hey, let me get your opinion on something. You were like, I got this offer to go to the Miami Dolphins or I got this offer to maybe on my own be part of the owner of a gym in LA. Yeah. And I was like, if I were you, I’d go to LA because then you own part of the gym. And then I know you went to LA and not only that was for a little bit and then you went to then you end up go are you in Atlanta is that we are

 

Brett Bartholomew  34:30  

Yeah, we want you to Atlanta after the book after the book took off. You know, we moved to Atlanta to kind of start our own thing and, and this you know, we LA is great place, but that’s not where you want to raise a family, right? Like, at least for me. And so Atlanta was a strategic move based on a lot of speaking and what have you huge international airport kind of Midwest tea, whatever. So yeah.

 

Johnjay Van Es  34:47  

So are you still there? 

 

Brett Bartholomew  34:49  

Yeah, I mean, I live in our outside of the city. So we live in a small town called Woodstock. We lived in the city of Atlanta. Like literally if you landed where like we would have been 15 minutes from the airport. Now we live out in the cut because we had to rescue You’re right bleeding into something I know you’re super passionate about, we have  a rescue pit bull rescue Vizsla, my wife is a soldier and she kind of put up with a lot of different moves. And so she was like, Yo, I want a yard again, I want this and then, you know, to not lose my mind. I wanted a garage gym that I’ve been trying to build for, like 12 years. And so you got more bang for your buck got out in the country. And plus man like, I don’t know, if you’re like this, I’d love to know, is you I don’t mind being on when we’re doing this or when I’m speaking or what have you. But there’s got to be a time of day where I’m just off. And so I got to get out of the city where like, nobody knows me and I’m not bothered and so yeah, we live outside of the city of Atlanta now.

 

Johnjay Van Es  35:35  

That’s great. That’s great. I remember. Didn’t you propose in Australia on a bridge?

 

Brett Bartholomew  35:39  

You got to good memory? You’ve done see I don’t mind you’ve done research. I heard in one of your interviews, you don’t do research you do.

 

Johnjay Van Es  35:44  

I don’t do any research. That’s is that the book you put on your book? 

 

Brett Bartholomew  35:47  

No It’s on my Instagram. 

 

Johnjay Van Es  35:48  

And I swear to God, I swear to God on my life, in fact, okay. Is this your book for you said or Instagram where you were gonna invite me to the bachelor party in Vegas and you forgot to because that didn’t happen, you know?

 

Brett Bartholomew  35:57  

And that is so full of shit. You’re extremely hard to how long it was. I texted you to get on this show or even me to come on your podcast until you’re like, you

 

Johnjay Van Es  36:03  

your bachelor party in Vegas. Remember that? you even said, hey, it was in February. Am I right? 

 

Brett Bartholomew  36:09  

I should I’d have to ask Pat Chung. He was the one that threw it. You know, he’s

 

Johnjay Van Es  36:12  

you were like, hey, it was me. It was that dude. It was me supposed to be me. That huge football guy we should work out with 

 

Brett Bartholomew  36:18  

you decided not to come. You decided not to go. But yeah, no, it’s good. Like, listen, I think of you often with that is it can get tough. And I imagine this is it’s interesting. When you talk about your new staff and what have you, I’d be interested to see what you look for. But it gets tough when you go out and you do something that you perceive as bold, whether other people do or not like to find people that appreciate that sense of risk, or that sense of openness, that sense of these things. And you were one of the first ones that did that man. And so you know, I value you and that’s why I’ve continued to kind of follow what you do. I listen to Johnjay and rich on demand. And and I’m not a pop culture guy, but I listened because just the way you interact and you’re such a master of it. You have this balance of like, you’re obviously very savvy, you’re a great communicator. But you also bring this kind of self deprecating aloofness that gets people to open up and not in a disingenuous way, right, in a way that just kind of like there’s this sense of comfort? And yeah, you’re an interesting person to study who’s influenced me in many ways?

 

Johnjay Van Es  37:15  

Oh, well, thank you very much. Thanks. Yeah. Well, you know, it’s funny, it’s like I told you that, for some reason, sports has been around my whole life, right. And I’m a non athlete, but you know, working out with you. I remember working on many of these groups with you where with pro athletes, right. And I’m not a pro athlete. But I remember I got so into it. I got so involved. And it was so much fun for me to go work out in your groups. I don’t remember how many times I worked out in your groups, but it was, in fact, I’m still friends with a handful of these guys. From your group. You know,

 

Brett Bartholomew  37:43  

go train with you go to Vegas with them. You go train with them what? They’ve been on the show.

 

Johnjay Van Es  37:47  

I’ve had I’ve gone I mean, to go to dinner with them. I’ve gone out a couple. I don’t really like to go out. You know, I’m not that big of a social guy. And this is a big thing I do. I’m like, excited I get these moments of excitement. Like, yeah, let’s go Friday night. Let’s go and make plans to go out Friday night. And then Friday night, it’d be like, Hey, man, looks like it might rain. And then I don’t go, you know, but I like the vibe of wanting to go out with everybody. But then I don’t go well, no, but

 

Brett Bartholomew  38:09  

this is what I want to know is because and you mentioned a little bit of radio magic, right? And I don’t have I admittedly peek behind the curtains like we don’t have a producer that like can do a lot of magic. This is pretty raw, unfiltered. We have a guy that generally will help if there’s a huge audio noise or what have you, but it’s not like Guy Roz NPR where they have 15 people on staff or like Rogan, where they have like 20 people that can cut splice and do this and what have you. We keep this pretty raw. But like with that radio magic, have you ever just bombed on the air? Have you ever just blown an interview or somebody just like, they Oh, yeah, talk to me about one of those times?

 

Johnjay Van Es  38:44  

Yeah, we bomb all the time. But like, I will ask I like I said, I don’t like to do research, I there’s something to me this the best way to describe my interviews. And this is maybe this is bad. But like I look at it, like let’s say I was flying to Los Angeles, and I’m sitting on the Southwest Airlines flight. And I’m sitting next to the person I look at. And by the time I land in LA, which is an hour flight, I have an hour to learn as much as I can about this person. So I start talking to this person. And that’s, I don’t have a book on this person before I get on the plane. Right? So that’s my own philosophy. That’s nobody else’s philosophy. So when but it’s bitten me in the ass a few times. Like I remember one time we were I was in Vegas. We were doing our show from Vegas, and they bring by all these people they brought by the Goo Goo Dolls just to give you the timeframes like 2004 The Goo Goo Dolls, they brought back all these artists were coming by and they kept making some comment about Yeah, you know, we sing our music live, you know, our music is live and I was like, Okay, great. The next artist came by and they were like, I think I was like Snoop Dogg. She was like, Yeah, you know? Yeah, I do myself live, you know, it’s not taped. And I’m like, Alright, I get it. And after a while, I was like, What the hell’s going on? Why is he would keep doing that. And I get on online. And that’s, it was like Sunday morning and it was right after Ashley Simpson got busted lipstick. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  39:56  

Oh I remember that. And that thing was massive. 

 

Johnjay Van Es  39:59  

And I was so mad at myself for not opening up a computer not and I was so mad at my crew for not nobody knew how like how do you not tell the hosts of the show that the biggest thing in the world is actually Simpsons got caught lip syncing, performing live on certain alive and she was alive. So some a lot of times that’s, you know, or I will say I remember interviewing Queen Latifah and I said some bomb. Hey, that was so great. We had Danny DeVito on your video lipstick. And he she’s like Danny DeVito. She’s like what you talked about. And I got in this whole argument with her about and I argued with Puff Daddy, I could have swore Puff Daddy was a backup dancer on O’Brien on a who’s Bobby Brown video.

 

Brett Bartholomew  40:37  

That’s a legitimate thing, Puff Daddy, anybody that knows hip hop, that dude does not quit dancing in his videos that he might as well be a backup dancer.

 

Johnjay Van Es  40:44  

I said, What’s that, like? You’re a backup dancer and the Bobby Brown video back in the day. He was like, No, it wasn’t. I’m like, Yeah, you were and I get in this argument with him. And I was wrong. Right? I will maybe I was wrong. I don’t know. But that’s the thing is if I would have done the research, but at the same time that I wouldn’t have these golden nuggets of audio to play, where we can make fun of me. I’m not doing it on purpose. It’s honest, you know, these are real, real honest flubs on our show that happen all the time. But I also now I can’t You can’t escape information now. So everywhere you go, like, you know, like Selena Gomez today. So she’s not taken seriously, the more she can get out of music. So if I had Selena Gomez on the show, I would know what to ask her. But now nowadays, quite frankly, just to get to talk about celebrities. I actually don’t like interviewing celebrities anymore. So we try not to, if we do any interviews of celebrities, I usually push them out on the podcast, I just don’t find celebrity. I think celebrities are full of it. Now I believe they tell the truth. When you asked me about being authentic, I don’t think hardly almost none of these celebrities are authentic on the interviews. They give you five minutes to talk to a celebrity. And you can ask them these questions. And that’s it. Don’t ask him about this. Don’t ask him about that. And I’m like, well, then I don’t need to talk to you know what I mean? I can have the number one show in the country without talking to celebrity.

 

Brett Bartholomew  41:53  

Yeah. Well, I mean, to piggyback off that, I’d say the same thing about coaches, you know, like you hear all the time coaches be like, Ah, I’m in it. For the athlete. I’m in it for this. And it’s like, they have this script of things that they do. And I’m like, Alright, dude, give me the real person. Give me the real person give me the real person. But like, they all think they need to be John Wooden, or they all think they need to be a servant, bass leader, and what have you. And it’s like, well, first of all, people don’t relate to that, you know, all the time, like, people need some different shit, you know, and you have to be attuned to stuff. Now, here’s the thing that trips me up about the researching because I thought about this with you, right? Whether you want to admit it on air or not, you’re kind of a big deal. I mean, You’re a legend. In many respects. Nobody has a lifetime free access to Chipotle card. And it’s not a big deal. Yeah, you didn’t think I forgot about that shit, didn’t you? 

 

Johnjay Van Es  42:33  

That’s good. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  42:34  

Yeah, I remember everything. But like, here’s the thing. You know, I always want a guest that comes on the show to be a little bit surprised and be like, Damn, dude, you asked some good questions. You had some things that I didn’t see come in, and you actually took an interest in me, which I did. But then I went back and forth a lot with you, Johnjay, there’s things that I knew just because I knew right, like your everything with what you do for rescues and your charities and your foundations and what have you. But I felt like, man, it’s a thin line, I want to ask him, I just want to be able to go back and forth with him. Because I think we can banter well, so we are like, we’re bantering. I didn’t structure this. But now I run the risk of if I didn’t ask anything original, did I blow my shot with a good friend that I highly respect, you know, and so there’s that piece. And then there’s also the piece of this right? Like you have to think about when you when you engage with somebody, there’s always going to be this question that you wish they wish you ask them and maybe they don’t even know what it is yet. It’s kind of in this subconscious or what have you. But you do a lot of interviews, you’re on the air a lot. There’s some things you don’t get to talk about. I want to know what those things are. And I’d rather hear it from you then read it in your bio or do this or do you have like, what is the one question people wish to ask you like you wish people asked you more? And what makes somebody conversationally stand out to you? Where you as an experienced broadcaster like that person gets it that person has something

 

Johnjay Van Es  43:50  

What do I wish someone like so what question I wish you would ask me 

 

Brett Bartholomew  43:54  

Yeah, it doesn’t have to be me man. Like there’s something that you wish like literally like I wish people would this would be a refreshing friggin question. Right like this would be something that I’d like to rap about a little bit what is that topic whatever 

 

Johnjay Van Es  44:10  

it’s topically is probably about fatherhood okay probably like to talk about that more than that’s the greatest thing of all time but that to me but that’s not I don’t know I just love I can talk about being a dad all day long. That’s the greatest thing of all time but that’s about it probably. you know what I mean, I also think I don’t know if that’s a to not to people you know, because I love I just think being a dad every single day is a complete joy 

 

Brett Bartholomew  44:37  

that’s not a tune out man. That’s not a tune out to anybody you know especially this audience not at all

 

Johnjay Van Es  44:42  

like for me I you know I write down daily goals. I write down you know, like a weekly goal. I have yearly goals I have I have emotional goals and I have you know, every I write down what I’m grateful for every day, and then I have strange rituals, like I drive in the morning. to work in the dark at four o’clock in the morning, in silence, but out loud, I kind of pray. But I also out loud go over what I’m grateful for. So out loud, I say the things that I’m grateful from a certain point in my house, from when I pull out of the driveway, actually go over these numbers I have these numbers that if you say these numbers in a certain order, they bring you joy, it opens up the universe to bring you joy, then I drive to a certain point. And I go, I say out loud, all the things I’m grateful for my wife, Blake, my sons, J camp, and Dutch. And I go over other things that I’m grateful for my listeners, my audience, my health, you know these things, and I say all these things out loud, then I go over the great things that I would like to happen today. Then I give myself these words of affirmation. And I talked about, you know, my ranking, I have I’m the number one show in this city. I’m the number one show I’ve never told anybody this. I’m the number one show in this city. I’m the number one show and you know, I say these affirmations out loud to make them true. And then as I parked the car, I go over my competence. And I tell myself that I’m funny that I’m talented, that I’m creative, that I’m a leader, that I’m a good husband that I’m a good father. So those are some of the things I do. Those are my absolutely daily rituals, no matter what happens Monday through Friday,

 

Brett Bartholomew  46:16  

every day without fail.

 

Johnjay Van Es  46:19  

It actually starts when I get up in the morning that I gave you part two, part one happens. I have a hot tub. And In the morning I get up and I do a little workout on the peloton at 3am I do the either 20 minute or 30 minute workout on the peloton. Then I sit in the hot tub outside in the darkness. And I meditate it’s like my, it’s like a cleansing of Buddhist it’s my own little thing about I’m just in peace, absolute peace. And there I pray. And there I thank God for grateful for all the great things in my life. And then I pray for other people. And there are certain specific people I know that have lost kids or that are very close to me that have gone through tragedies, I pray for them, then I get out of there. And I have a cold plunge like the one at Exos. But I keep my colder. I had it built about three, four years ago and I keep it at 40 degrees. And I jump in the cold plunge for probably a minute, maybe two minutes I sit in that cold plunge for a while.

 

Brett Bartholomew  47:10  

And this is all in the morning.

 

Johnjay Van Es  47:11  

This is all before for before 3:45 in the morning. And then I and then on the drive is at 4am I get dressed between 3:45 and four. And then at 4am is when I started the second ritual I told you I’m gonna pull out the driveway.

 

Brett Bartholomew  47:23  

So within that, first of all what time I’m going to ask the obvious what time you go to bed. 

 

Johnjay Van Es  47:29  

That’s my problem. That’s why I have this thing right here. I know. I have this aura ring someone told me to track my sleep. I have horrible sleep patterns. I have sleep apnea for one. So two, I go to sleep around 10 and I wake up at 2:45 and I tried to even back in the extra those days with Joel Joel used to say you need to sleep more go to bed at six. I’m like dude, I got a little kids, I can’t go to sleep. So I tried to go to bed. I tried to go to bed at last night at seven. And then I got this text somebody sent me a video of my son, my son had 22 points in the basketball in the second half of a basketball game the other night on the video. And I was like this is amazing video and I got it. I had to edit it. I put music to it. And I was like all excited. You know? So mixing those 9:15 You know, and then I wanted to jerk off. And then I was asleep.

 

Brett Bartholomew  48:14  

Hey, man, listen, you have better health habits, sans asleep than probably 90% of the athletes that I’ve worked with and even myself, right. Like I’ve even learned over the past few years, my life is my job has changed and the business has grown or we’ve met different circumstances with COVID like sleep and stress management are my number one and two worst things, you know, and I try to have certain routines or what have you, but I kind of have to every day is so radically different. But like you said you have to have some anchors, right? 

 

Johnjay Van Es  48:41  

Yeah man you got to meditate you got to you got to the mental health thing I’ve been. That’s another thing why I like I do the hyperbaric chamber whenever I can just for myself, because what I do in that hyperbaric 90 minutes is I take a nap, you know, it’s a solid 90 minutes and if it’s puppet somehow some anti aging stuff in me I’ll take it

 

Brett Bartholomew  48:56  

100% And then how many dogs you have.

 

Johnjay Van Es  48:59  

We have eight dogs of our own. They’re called foster failures. They were all dogs. They were supposed to go somewhere else. But we all fell in love with them. So we kept them. Yeah, we have a dog rescue. It’s called Love pup Foundation. And we have right we about three years ago, I bought a building. And we started to remodel it all by volunteers and people volunteering, you know, construction workers, builders, architects, and we’re literally about three years ago, and it’s literally opening maybe in five days or less. You know, I’ve taken that long

 

Brett Bartholomew  49:27  

within that, like how many days and I know it’s an estimate, right? Like you probably there’s no way to like probably keep track to the point or maybe there is I don’t know, how many dogs have you helped find like, quote unquote, forever homes through love pup?

 

Johnjay Van Es  49:39  

I would say 1000s I did an interview with People magazine, the first year or two that we did it and at that time it was 500. And that was five years ago, I think. So I would say we’re at 1000s. I wanted to again, make sure you knew that I did an interview with People magazine.

 

Brett Bartholomew  49:53  

Yeah, noted and we’ll make sure that we have that in the intro. I’ll make sure To impress upon everybody that this guy did an interview with People magazine we have entered like, 

 

Johnjay Van Es  50:05  

it was only aligned. But I think that’s more important than magazine. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  50:08  

I think that’s what and by the way, you thought I was gonna miss this. What the hell were you talking about when he used to drive Wayne Gretzky around? You thought I missed that? 

 

Johnjay Van Es  50:14  

Oh, I didn’t I was an intern. So okay, so I’m in college, and I get an internship at a TV station. And that sucked. TV was so boring. And then I get an internship at an alternative radio station. And that was incredible. So like, I’m there at six o’clock at night and night DJ goes, Hey, can you go somebody at the door, and I go go to the door, and it’s like Nirvana. There’s Kurt Cobain. He’s comes out of a blue van. And I’m like, What’s up? And he was, hey, I’m here to see Mike. My Cool. You guys we’re nirvana. And I’m like, Alright, so I bring these guys they eat pizza. And they play this like 1990. Right. And then, I got my first job. At in the same building was the sports station. It was called the mighty 690. And so my first job I was getting paid. They paid me $16,000 $500 a year, and they gave me coupons for dinner, free coupons. And so one of the first things I got to do is I’ll never forget, it was Wayne Gretzky, and it says Mighty 6 90, who was also in it was in San Diego, but was also carried in Los Angeles. And they had the kings and I had and there was an actor by the name of Kirk Cameron was in town. He was though he was in a TV show called Growing Pains. And they were both in town doing some charity thing. And they’re like, alright, we need someone to drive around Kirk Cameron and I frickin love growing pains. I’ll do it. I’ll take Kirk Cameron around. I thought him and I would be best friends. And they’re like, Sorry, dude, because I was too excited. You’re gonna take Wayne Gretzky around and I’m like, so I’ll drive it around in a Ford Escort that said the mighty 6 90 on it. I’m driving Wayne Gretzky to and he’s in the back. He was cool. I mean, I don’t even know if he remembers. I’ve seen him. I’ve met him a few times since then. In fact, I introduced him to Miley Cyrus at an event here one time, but I never told him payment remember that time. But he was very cool. So I drove him I drove him around. And and that was the one of the first times that’s where I’d like sports just always been in my life. Yeah, always. I can’t get out of it. Like why couldn’t be friends with friends with the cast of wheeling grace. I become become great friends with Kurt Warner. You know what I mean? It’s like, it’s great

 

Brett Bartholomew  52:11  

that hey, that’s how that works. Sometimes  I wish Kurt Warner son would not have transferred out in Nebraska. That’s a different story. I do want to keep going with what you said about here’s a topic that I’d be interested in your take on is you help a lot of people you obviously involved with everything you do with love pup, you know a lot of people your Rolodex has to be ridiculous. Where do you draw boundaries, though, when inevitably, like any of us, right? people reach out to you for help? Or maybe it’s an introduction, or they have a question, or hey, can you do this? Can you do that? And you want to help people? You’re a giver? I know this because I know you. But where? how do you address boundaries? Like how do you kind of handle when it’s like, Hey, man, like, I know, I either can’t do that. Or I kind of off the clock right now. Or? Yeah, not so much. Where do you draw the line there?

 

Johnjay Van Es  52:52  

You know, I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, usually, I don’t think I’m off the clock when it comes to if people can get a hold of me, I usually try to do everything I can. I mean, there’s something that sticks in my head just from Christmas time there were this woman born with a massive birth defect on her face, and she wanted to get it removed. And I pulled every string I could to trick she didn’t have the money to get it removed. And it’s just still bothering me that I couldn’t help her do it. But there’s too many legal issues with that, you know, for us to pay for it. This is I’m still trying to figure that out. But there’s no I mean, today I was trying to help a woman get a job I’m trying to you know, earlier today there’s I’m just rescuing dogs just helping people as much as I can we try to pay rent we try to do by car for somebody I’m interest trying to do. You know, my wife says to me, she’s always said our entire relationship goes, you know, you want to leave an impact to chase the impact A B, make sure that when your community misses you when you’re gone. you know, live our life.

 

Brett Bartholomew  53:52  

Good. Well, what you’ve just told me is in case I ever move back to Phoenix, you know, I’ll go to you for advice on that. I’ll reach out to you about 20 other things as well. I might move out to Phoenix at some point by the way, I love Phoenix and maybe I want to be an intern at your show someday you know maybe I decide all this is for the birds and I want to be an intern or I mean when is Rich’s contract up Can I come after his job?

 

Johnjay Van Es  54:13  

Dude, you could do your own show you’re superstar you’re superstar one hundred percent you don’t need me

 

Brett Bartholomew  54:19  

I’d have to start like listen but you told me how I’d have to start what  I’d have to move to Pittsburgh right I’d have to move

 

Johnjay Van Es  54:24  

That’s how I started bro. You can start you’re already on your path. Yeah, but he’s gonna I would tell my son this yesterday. I was like everybody has their own path man. I was telling him you know, I and you know again, I don’t know what’s that guy’s name that he plays for Miami. He went to a d3 school and then he went and now he’s like this great three point shooter. He went d3 that he went D1 and then he went, you know got my Dunkin Is that his name?

 

Brett Bartholomew  54:43  

I don’t know. And I don’t want to lie on the air. So I don’t 

 

Johnjay Van Es  54:46  

no don’t lie. But anyway, there’s this guy. There’s his basketball player who’s like a superstar basketball player. like he had a different path and be like, you know, right now when you watch the suit. I’ve been learning so much about this stuff like this high school basketball. It’s so competitive. And there’s these guys at the top 50 guys, they’re on the cover all the magazines on the all the Instagram stuff and I’m like, No, that stuff matters and my son’s the one telling me to know that stuff matters. But as a dad, it’s still like kills me. When I see players that I don’t think are as good as my son and they get all the hype. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  55:13  

Do all your sons basketball. Do all your sons play basketball or is it just is it 

 

Johnjay Van Es  55:18  

my two youngest, my oldest one is in the MMA, and he’s Eagle Scout, and he’s, you know, he’s in the cars and guns and that stuff. And that’s all great. My middle one is in the basketball. My youngest ones in the basketball too. But you know,  it’s just, you know, when you talk about coaching, one of things I like about your book whenever, and I don’t know, if you ever get into high school coaching, it’s all coaching. But it’s like, what I’ve noticed about high school coaching is sometimes like, oh, by the way, I have this Bible. Have you heard of the coach’s Bible? 

 

Brett Bartholomew  55:44  

Yeah, yeah. 

 

Johnjay Van Es  55:45  

Oh, I read those things. Every I read that passage every day. I think the coaches Bible is literally it’s amazing. It’s a gift. So I read this passage, and I think it was on, I think it was February 4 February 2 passage of I don’t really call it a passenger, or a devotional 

 

Brett Bartholomew  55:59  

We’ll call it a passage. 

 

Johnjay Van Es  56:01  

Okay. And it says on there, it was about coaches. And there’s so many coaches that don’t coach with love. They coach with a like assemble teams. They’re more about assembling a team, than they are about working with a team and coaching with love and then versus winning. And I see that all the time. And that bothers me so much. You know, you talk about these coaches, I want to be like John Wooden, I think that’s okay, give me a John Wooden versus somebody who assembles a team.

 

Brett Bartholomew  56:27  

Yeah. But you can’t like the thing is the mistake there were all fireback is when people think that’s the only way to coach Right? Like, My argument is you have to be more of like what you are like if you just try to mimic we talked about this with authenticity. The issue is is most coaches think they have to be and also they miss attribute this they see what they know about John Wooden John Wooden also lost his temper, John Wooden, you know, cost and what have you Johnjay, I’ve had people literally call and email me after a show that say, Hey, man, there was a cuss word on your show, I expect more given your background in coaching, right. So like, what I mean is people think being a coach is squeaky clean. And that has nothing to do with it. You know, now you don’t need to be some avant garde super edgy do like that’s not the point, either. The point is, is that there’s a gray area, just like being a parent, man, you talked about being a parent, I look at it this way, who’s going to tell you or me the absolute 100% Best way to parent our children. They’re not man, like there’s a gray area there. And there’s, of course, things that are morally and ethically wrong. But even that varies across cultures. But the point is when people want to tell like everybody what a good coach is, and what a bad coach is, somebody gets a static idea in their mind, and then they just try to mimic some coach that they read about, you know, as opposed to just understanding who the hell they are as a person, then you can’t do that you can’t figure out your coaching methodology until you have some form of self awareness, and you’re ready to own up to your own shit.

 

Johnjay Van Es  57:48  

That’s a really good statement. By the way, I gotta tell you, when you talk about giving back and stuff, there was a kid. There was a kid back, I’m talking 20 years ago, when I was my show was just on in Tucson. And you know who Lute Olson is? 

 

Brett Bartholomew  58:00  

Yeah, 

 

Johnjay Van Es  58:01  

so lute Olson was the UVA basketball coach and they in the radio station wanted me to have him on all the time. And I was like, okay, he’s a legend. I put them on everyone. So he was great. And he was so kind to me, always. But there was a guy on his team. He was a walk on. And he had this incredible personality. And he was just he was he wanted to be a coach. He was an assistant to the assistant to the assistant. He was nobody, but he had a personality like crazy. So I put him on my show for what saw and I’d say how was the game last night he has so much personality. You became a fixture on my show. Once a week after the Wildcats played, I put this kid on my show. And he’d gotten he had every day above ground is a great day. Johnjay, how are you? And his family was from Houston. He was all alone in Tucson. So I took him to my house. We’d have Thanksgiving in my house. And then as time went on, he moved up the ranks and he was like an assistant to the assistant coach. He wasn’t Lute’s assistant, but he was an assistant. And I saw so much potential in him. And I would like I you know, like Norman Vincent Peale the power of positive thinking it’s a great book. I say to him, I go, Hey, man, take this book. I want you to read this book. And he read the book. He’s like, thank you so much, you know, and then I gave him Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and we got to read his book and he read that book. I gave him a couple other books. I believe Coco’s book. I was like, this is a really good book. I know. It’s, so he read that book. And so time goes on that guy. Let me tell you where he is right now. Oh, I actually set him up on a date with a girl. He’s now married to her 

 

Brett Bartholomew  59:21  

really? 

 

Johnjay Van Es  59:21  

And he has Yeah, he’s got three kids with her. And he is a coach in Atlanta. I think he’s where he lives by you. You should connect with him. Yeah. Josh, pastor.

 

Brett Bartholomew  59:29  

I mean, I’m pissed that you didn’t Give him my book. Can we talk about that for a second? 

 

Johnjay Van Es  59:31  

I want to give him your book. I’ll give him your book. He is he’s the coach basketball coach at Georgia Tech. Isn’t that by you?

 

Brett Bartholomew  59:36  

Yeah, but yeah, just an hour away you know like what their traffic here is definitely not like it is in Phoenix man Phoenix, right like I don’t know if you feel this way. But like, I felt like you go and you drive in Phoenix and you’re like, it’s just open highway like you’re good to go 

 

Johnjay Van Es  59:49  

no away. No, you haven’t been here in a while then 

 

Brett Bartholomew  59:51  

Dude. Nothing compares to Atlanta. La doesn’t compare to Atlanta. But you made a good point about the assembling a team versus coaching or what have you like I don’t know if you like Here’s the thing, right? Like, I don’t know if you remember this, you remember when, like Isaiah, Thomas, who hired him, it was like the New York Knicks, right? 2003. They, made Isaiah Thomas, the president of basketball operations. And this is kind of what I mean by one dimensional thinking and people thinking they have to be one thing and can’t be authentic and what have you. And what have you is Isaiah Thomas had this idea of basically saying, I want to assemble a team, where everybody that we acquire, is the, like, has the highest scoring average for their position, right? So he was looking, no matter what their position was, he was looking for people that ranked highest in terms of scoring average, because, you know, they thought like, that’s how you win a basketball game, right? You score more points than the other team. And so they did this. There’s this big experiment, they won, I think they had, you know, they won one year, and then the next four or five years, they have losing seasons that did not go well. And what they realized, you know, when they started to pull this apart is, you know, basketball is not one dimensional. Just like coaching isn’t just like broadcasting is it just like life isn’t right? There’s at least like five major factors critical to success when you look at you know, in basketball like, and again goes back to improv, right? It’s not about the one liner. You don’t, you’re not good at improv, the one liner, you got to pass the ball to your partner, you got to know when to do this, you got to play different positions. So the thing is, you got to put together a complimentary profile, and he didn’t do that. And so it’s tricky when people think this is just what a good coach is a good broadcaster is a good parent is a good whatever is it’s like, no, it’s just a little bit more complex in that I know you have an affinity for basketball. So I thought you might at least you might appreciate that story and put that one in the handbook sometime.

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:01:33  

I think that’s a great story. I think it’s powerful. I think that says, I say that your story reminds me. I’m going through this kick right now. A Tom Brady kick. because I didn’t know a lot about Tom Brady. There’s this. Have you seen that documentary called? The greatest insert of greatness?

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:01:50  

So yeah. Oh, love it. I’ve watched it three times. 100 Yeah, greatness can’t be planned in many ways. Right? They talked about this in a lie. Wayne Gretzky’s in that. 

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:01:57  

Yeah, Wayne Gretzky. I became obsessed with a documentary I reached out to the director and the director and I became friends.

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:02:02  

I want him on the podcast. Usually there’s no connection. There’s no boundaries. I want him on the podcast

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:02:06  

His name is Gabe. He’s unbelievable. He’s and he also did another one another hockey documentary called The Red Red something he’s unbelievable this guy. But so that document when I saw Tom Brady in that documentary, someone there’s a longer documentary on YouTube about Tom Brady. And when I see that it’s like an hour long but I see that in 11th grade nobody knew who he was he didn’t know he how they say he’s the slowest he’s out of shape at the combine. He’s all this he’s all in and I’m like, I mean, this what I’m just talking to you about right now in basketball, they just talking about all the guys that are phenomenal athletes at 17 years old. When there’s a basketball Tom Brady out there, there’s somebody who has heart can be measured, you know? Yeah. And then there’s Steph Curry, I learned about Steph Curry who plays for Golden State. Same thing, the guys in 11th grade, nobody knows who he is. Right? Then he goes to Davis, nobody knows who he is. And he I don’t know that the rest of the story, but he’s the best three point shooter like in the country. So I love those stories.

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:03:02  

And that’s what’s scary about it though, right? Like when we talked about like, leadership or coaching or what have you or any domain when people think that it’s trait based, right. Like you said, Tom Brady, like Tom Brady didn’t have a lot of the classic base traits that made people fawn over him at the combine is I mean, anybody watch that video? And so it freaks me out. When we live in a time where again, canceled culture is rampant. All this stuff is rampid. You know, like, what kind of leaders do we want? Right? Are we just hoping that everybody’s squeaky clean has all the perfect traits, like greatness cannot be planned? In many ways, it comes in different format, shapes, sizes, you know, whatever. And it gets tricky. It gets scary when I literally think society has one clear idea of what is success, and I think they gotta be careful what they wish for, because then people that are unscrupulous are just going to reflect back at him, right? Like people are gonna get better at bullshitting you. And they’re gonna get better at faking all these things like how do you manage that as a father? Like, what do you tell your boys about that? Like, you have three boys that are gonna grow up in today’s culture, or literally anything they say or do now? Especially because a you’re a public figure, it can derail their lives. 20 years from now, 

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:04:03  

I talk about them every day. Especially. I mean, I don’t like there to be restrictions on their thinking. And on comedy. You know, I grew up my mom taking me to go see Richard Pryor movies and stand up specials and Eddie Murphy and I love I just love comedy so much. And I don’t like there to be rules on comedy. So my kids watch Family Guy and South Park. And sometimes that stuff is just so off the charts, but I tell them you cannot repeat that you cannot say that in front of somebody else I go, something’s gonna happen to you or something’s gonna happen to me because you said something. So I work with him on that all the time. It just happened this weekend. I can’t even repeat the story to you because it’s so awful. But because you know, it’s like you can’t really can’t say that. You can’t say that. Like that was a family guy thing you can’t say that So yeah, I’m very cautious with my kids about that kind of stuff.

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:04:54  

But you feel like they fully even like you know, like they fully grasp it because there’s things we all you’re like Yes, I’ve sent it into their soul.

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:05:02  

I don’t think you get the it’s been. That’s a big big thing in my house. Big thing in my house. Yeah. Where there were some cells. Oh, I was talking about what do you think Tim Grover and you read his stuff?

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:05:12  

No, I haven’t. I haven’t I’ll do some research right now

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:05:15  

His book is called relentless. He was Michael Jordan’s coach.

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:05:18  

oh you know what it’s On my bookshelf. I’ve just never I’ve never had a chance to read it yet. It’s on my bookshelf right now.

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:05:23  

Oh, and he’s reachable. You shoot him a DM he’ll get back to you like he’s phenomenal. His book is pretty, I’d like to know what you think of his book. But by the way, what you know as I so you know, here I am having these kids that are athletes. So, for me to learn stuff. I’ve tried to watch every documentary I’ve tried to read books that I think are that can help me connect with my kids. That’s a big thing for me. So with through sports, I’ve been watching as many documentaries I can. What you because we talked about in search of greatness. What what documentary would you say? Would you recommend that I watch

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:05:51  

man in terms of the sport context in particular,

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:05:55  

or movie not? Not even like it? Yeah, like I have this friend of mine. Who Phil Beckner is 

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:06:00  

No I don’t

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:06:01  

I gotta connect with him too. He is Damian Lillard shooting coach. And he’s a he does like to be called shooting coach. What does he call the guy player development guys a lot of pro guys in the NBA. And he has his players that he makes them watch. I think it’s five movies before he’ll train with them. One of the movies is Will Smith Pursuit of Happiness 

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:06:21  

great movie. 

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:06:22  

So I sat down with my son and watch that movie. And it’s like, because the message in that movie is you got a gold you got a dream? No matter you don’t stop like that. Will Smith did not stop. Yeah, you know, another guy’s worth $60 million. The character he played, you know? So it’s like, so are there any movies that you recommend to your athletes, or that you watch? And you’re like, This is a great, but this movie inspired me.

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:06:43  

Yeah, man. But the reality is much like in search of happiness in pursuit of happiness. They’re not sport related, necessarily, right? Like I’m a big. Yeah, so one, let me just say this. And you can choose if this is I don’t make people watch this. But I do encourage it the best documentary I’ve ever seen of any genre. And I’ll get a lot of hate for this. Because people will be like all the first two you got to get through. But episodes three and fours when it comes together and you’ll get goose bumps is the Defiant Ones on HBO. And you’ve seen it unbelievable, like phenomenal. I mean, for people that can really pick up on what that’s about huge. But for people that just get bored on Episode One and two, you know, I got nothing to say to you, but that is the best and then insert if you wouldn’t have told me that you watch in search of greatness, without a doubt that and again, I’m 100% biased man we run. And you don’t know this because we haven’t talked in a long time. We run workshops that are based off this principle of helping coaches I believe it or not, man like coaches get no training on interaction, social skills, anything to do with ethical like persuade, knowing how to deal with the art of coaching, right? Like a coach, whether Sport Coach, training conditioning coach, they can throw a pen and hit 8 million workshops that teach them how to lift weights, run, do agility, do this nothing. There’s nothing out there for the art of coaching. And so we started the first one on that we call them the apprenticeship. And we use several clips from pursuit of greatness. Because when they talk about like, you know, the biggest thing you can know as a dad of children, right is you don’t want to teach them how to do things in a mechanistic fashion. Look at Patrick mahomes. He’s a great example of this, that dude does not throw a football, the way that any classic kind of like quarterback coach would be like, This is how you throw a football. That guy because of some unique advantages he has with what’s called thoracic mobility, he can throw balls that he should not be able to throw. Now imagine if he grew up and somebody was like, No, this is how you throw a ball. This is how you do it. So the number one thing I try to get kids to understand, or parents or what have you is like there needs to be exploration. There needs to be this idea of think about it this way. There’s something called an affordance. Right? We won’t get too nerdy about this. But like an affordance. Johnjay is something that like, it’s this thing that basically tells you how to interact with something. So a light switch, you know, that’s for flicking a doorknob, you know, that’s for turning. Well, let’s say you saw a puddle, that puddle in the street is an affordance. Now, what you do to get over that puddle depends on the properties of it. If it’s a small puddle, what are you going to do to get over that puddle? I mean, maybe you can walk around it, you can step over it. If it’s a large puddle, then you’re going to jump leap you might have to run or what have you. So the thing you want kids to do is you want them to explore within simplicity, right? It’s like hey, man, like I’m gonna give you I saw this guy trying to teach his son yesterday we were walking around the neighborhood, you’ll appreciate this and nobody can see it. But he was teaching his son how to hold a bat. And his kid just looked rigid. He looked tight. He looked like he was choking somebody out. And if you’ve watched baseball man, I mean, there’s Hall of Famers that whole bats up here, you know, like the Barry Bonds shed Ken Griffey Jr. is got a very different swing than Mickey Mantle, you have to have this range of exploration. So one movie that I think does that really well, in terms of just this idea of curiosity, this idea of always looking up and asking why and trying to explore and it’ll be contentious, but I loved Interstellar. I liked that, you know, and I’m not a huge McConaughey fan, to be honest. I’d love to hang out with him. He’s got a lot of whiskey wisdom, but the whole movie is about like, you know, looking up and wondering like he says, you know, we now look at the ground and wonder, you know, like we have our feet in the dirt, we used to look up and wonder where our place was in the stars. And I think curiosity does more for athletic development than just about anything else. So if you have a coach, it’s very rigid. That’s tricky, man, because people aren’t going to move the same. They’re not you didn’t see Don Terry Poe, when you watch me train, those guys move the same as kapernick. You didn’t see, you know, Odell or any of those guys, like they all kind of accomplish a task in different ways. And that’s the thing I’d encourage parents to do. Does that answer your question? I gave you the Defiant Ones interstellar in search of greatness. I’m sure there’s others. I think everybody should watch the hurricane with Denzel Washington, because that teaches you that’s a movie I saw at 14. And that shit taught me how to manage my emotions a little bit better, which I still struggle with. But world champion boxer wrongfully imprisoned due to racial issues. And this guy was like, had to deal with his own demons in solitary confinement for I think over 20 years and then came out was able to do some positive with his life. I blacked out I answered a lot there.

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:06:46  

No, that was great. What about so my friend Phil, again that the player development coach also has his players watch warrior, which I’m sure you watch 

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:10:37  

Tom Hardy 

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:10:38  

yeah, 

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:10:39  

Tom Hardy is like Tom Hardy and Robert Downey Jr, my two favorite actors so warrior 

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:11:14  

but then I never saw warrior because I think it’s about two brothers that fight each other at the finals and I just didn’t I have this problem watching brothers fight Kenobi having a twin boys 

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:11:23  

you wouldn’t like my household 

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:11:24  

the message of that movies, this is just powerful. So but 

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:11:27  

I thought warriors was good. I don’t know if it’d be on my list. I think it’s a good movie to watch. But I think my list would be and I’ll have to shoot you some more because now you got me thinking but yeah, I mean, the fatherhood thing. It’s interesting man because there’s just so many ways to trip up and especially do any of your kids jay Dutch or camp, are any of them just overthinkers inside their own heads a lot. Like do any of them just kind of get, you know, perfectionistic to 

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:11:49  

Yes

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:11:50  

which one?

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:11:51  

My oldest one. I mean, he’s the Eagle Scout. And he’s the guy that will clean his car over and over and over again to make sure it’s spotless and he’s the guy that makes sure everything is perfect. You know, my youngest one doesn’t care. He’ll take off his clothes in the kitchen and his whole house is our closet.

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:12:04  

Yeah, how do you and by the way, I want to know did you named Dutch after the movie Dutch you remember that movie?

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:12:09  

I named him Dutch after I remember that movie. But I named him Dutch because my father my father who passed away he’s from the Netherlands and his language is Dutch. So I wanted to I wanted to honor my dad 

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:12:19  

very simple man. Very simple. Well this I got one more for you and then I know your time is valuable and I don’t want to get invoice for this shit. So 

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:12:25  

hey man, are you kidding me? 

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:12:27  

You know I’ll get on next thing you know I’ll get some from the Johnjay and rich show that hey, you He took our best content you know all that kind of stuff. So what are the demons you’re still struggling with right now? Because when we met man, first of all, you train like a madman, but an intelligent way you always got after you’d like to learning but you train with a kind of a different kind of purpose. Right? And nobody does that with that level of consistency and tenacity and focus without kind of having  you got a little and it’s darkness I think people think is bad. Darkness can be good. You need darkness to get to the gray area. Right? But like we’re some demons you’re still trying to overcome personally and professionally.

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:13:01  

It’s funny you say darkness in that Tim Grover’s book he talks about the top of the top the top athletes the top people in the world they have to deal with he calls the dark side. If you’re really the best of the best, you have a dark side. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:13:14  

We have to. I’m big believer in that.

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:13:16  

Yeah. For me, I mean, it’s a What am I battling is you know, my weight? My binging issues, which I was blown away I was glued to your book bro. Your story in the hospital glued to it? 

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:13:30  

You didn’t know that 

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:13:31  

I did not know that about you and I was freaking I remember your back surgery

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:13:36  

Did you ever see the picture? Yeah.

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:13:37  

I saw the picture today? Let me get this feedback. Do you hear that word feedback?

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:13:41  

No, you’re good. 

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:13:42  

Okay. I saw the picture today but that story was so it’s like it was like a movie bro. It’s a movie it was just so riveting but I just want to hear your voice 

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:13:55  

you can you can relate though. Like talk to me about like you said you’re like 

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:13:58  

Not like that my issue is this like and I’m 250 pounds and I want to you know I want to be 220 And every once in awhile, you’re like I just started that fasting thing and my doctor put me on she was like you need to fast so I’m on an 18 hour fast but what I’m dealing with now is like so my window is one to seven so I eat I try to eat as much as I can between one to seven and I go doing it wrong.

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:14:19  

So like but with your routine Johnjay like how I mean listen like I follow you you’re always doing yoga you’re doing training you’re doing this like so what trips you Is it the diet the trip like what’s your what’s your 

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:14:30  

food, it’s always the food like I’ll go today’s not the day Today’s I remember it for some reason. I just learned just that Exos but today was the you know, they’re always Wednesday was always a rest day. But today’s the day that I’m chilling but tomorrow I’ll take my son to his trainer and you know who I told him I gave him I told him all about you got to meet this trainer at some point. His name’s Chuck Howard. His son is Marcus Howard who plays for the nuggets. And he was over at Marquette. He was a superstar at Marquette. But Chuck is this amazing human being he’s the one that gave me the coach’s Bible as a gift a couple of years ago. So we’ll go train. I’ll train with Chuck and I you know He works with my body. And then he trains my son camp as a basketball player. But I’ll train three or four times a week with him and then I do the peloton in the morning. But for me, it’s always diet. I just can’t get that done. That’s my biggest demon. Man. I just cannot. It’s been so fun to work. I need to rephrase that. I don’t want to put that out and the energy of that and the universe that it can I get it? I’m, working on my diet.

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:15:19  

Well, we have we there’s definitely an episode and I’ll send it to you after the show. But there is an episode I’m trying to look it up as we’re going through it. There is a really good episode that we did with Angie ash. She’s a dietitian and one that’s like, super realistic, right? We talked about all the stuff out there that kind of people promote like at the time game changers was a documentary. Everybody was getting into 

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:15:39  

I saw it. Yeah. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:15:40  

And so we talked about some of the, you know, the hype versus the BS and stuff like that, you should definitely look into that. But man, like, I just want to tell you, like, I have a ton of respect. And I got asked a question the other day, I have a ton of respect for you. And I get asked the question, like, if you weren’t doing this, what would you do? And I don’t think it was until I was really exposed to you that I was like, You know what, like, I would probably I could totally see myself trying to pursue like a radio show or whatever, like podcasting and mission is just like, therapeutic, you know? And the answer before that was always all being I’d be an FBI criminal profiler, because I like dealing kind of with people and, figuring out kind of what makes him tick. But you’re you’ve been a huge kind of metric and barometer of how to keep things direct, informed, but also casual and comfortable on the air. And I fail at it tremendously. But I want you to know that I definitely admire that about you. And I’m, just glad to give me the time of the day to even come on the show for a little bit. 

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:16:31  

Oh, that was my pleasure. It was great talking to you. I’m sorry that it’s taking so long. I wanted to give you. I you know, because we talked a while ago about doing it, but I wanted to give the right equipment and have the right setup. And I hate these zooms these zoom interviews, or they have that weird audio. So I wanted to make sure I hope that I sounded crystal clear today. You know, I listened to one of your podcasts and there’s just something about the Zoom sound that is a turn off for me.

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:16:55  

Well, here’s me. Yeah. And I was gonna I was gonna let you go. But here’s the thing since you went there, and I think it’s good to put out on the air, the thing that we try to get people to understand, and it’s tricky, and I didn’t understand it either. Right. So I’m laughing at myself too. And I did podcasts in the past, is I don’t think people understand how important audio quality is. And you know, we can’t force our guests to have anything you know, and we’re not going to you know, we always suggest, hey, try to have some headphones or microphone, the clear, the better try to have a room where there’s not a lot of, you know, bullshit around you. And there’s the all of our guests are super smart, talented people. But I’m constantly surprised when sometimes people will come on and it’s like, literally just buy a 40 or $70 or a $30 Anything like microphone, like buy a microphone and a $5 pop filter, because it’s kind of your resume to the world a little bit. And I cringe at my old interviews because we’re trying to figure it out. And I don’t have you know, I don’t have a guy you know, like, I was like, I want to do a podcast and we hired some people. A guy who’s like use this use that the audio is shit, man. We didn’t figure it out for a while. And I still am going to have some reverb because you can see the jerseys behind me. I’d love to be able to call somebody in Atlanta and be like, make me a studio. I ain’t there yet. But the audio.

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:18:04  

It sounds good right now what you have now sounds really good. I mean, you asked me about mistakes. So one of the things I’m sorry to cut you off, but 

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:18:10  

you’re fine.

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:18:11  

But I would. I started my own podcast. I call it riding the bench. And it’s where I started because my son learning about basketball. I didn’t know anything about basketball. So I thought I got this frickin radio station here. You know, I got a pretty good reputation. Let me pull some strings. And let me start interviewing people that can help me understand basketball. So I started this podcast called riding the bench, right? Because I didn’t play sports. And if I did, I was on the bench. I mean, my dad was my soccer coach in 12th grade and in sixth grade and I prayed to God, he wouldn’t play me. Right. I was like, please don’t put me in dad. So I started this podcast, and I would interview people to learn about basketball, but it was learning about what my son was going through. I want to learn about recovery. wondered about training. I want to learn more about like, I wanted to interview the biggest basketball player in the world. But I didn’t care about his stats on last night’s game. I want to know about when he was in high school and how he trained I wanted to know about did he put his knees in ice. I wanted to learn about how his dad trained him what time they wake up that kind of stuff, right? So I started interviewing, I interviewed a guy from the trailblazers, I interviewed a bunch of people that I thought I want to interview these guys dads forget about 

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:19:15  

it’s interesting. 

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:19:16  

II don’t really care about  mean the players. That’s cool. I’m going to talk to you too, but to me, it was more about the dad. So I had this opportunity to interview Devin Booker’s dad Melvin. So Melvin and I became pretty friendly. The sons game so I invited him in the studio. He sat down with me. I did this. I thought it was an incredible interview with this guy with an hour interview. And I learned so much about DEVIN BOOKER and how his dad trained him and how they got it. I mean, it was just blew my mind, especially when you tell stories about playing in a tournament and nobody knew who he was. And he was like, Dad, look, there’s Kelly Oubre over there. There’s so much over there. Meanwhile, now he was playing with those guys in the pros, right? So anyway, the interview is over. And he leaves and I’ve seen him 10 times since then. And I post interview and have it Turns out the back of the microphone wasn’t connected his microphone. Yeah. So you hear his interview through my microphone. Oh, that’s brutal. Yeah. Right. So I can easily do it again. But I don’t want to do it again, because I already asked those questions. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:20:13  

I don’t want to. Yeah, man, that moment. Like, it’s tricky. Sometimes when we interview people, we tell them, hey, hit the record, in case there’s an audio issue hit record on your phone. And even if we get shit audio, at least we have something.

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:20:24  

Right. Like, you can hear the metal you can hear the interview, and it’s a great interview. It’s still up there. But it’s like, to me, it’s like, okay, the content was there. But, you know, I learned a lot for me when I was in the interview, but suck, man, I was bummed out

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:20:36  

Here’s where you’re spot on about that it was approach we took with this show. And maybe I’m an idiot, you mentioned a while back, like, you don’t really like interviewing celebrities. And what have you is when we started the podcast, you know, we had this guy that was like, Hey, your podcast isn’t gonna blow up unless you start reaching out to like, you know, people that are super established and this and that. I said, Yeah, man, but like, here’s the thing, I kind of want to an episode podcast were underdogs. Like, there’s certain people that they’ve been passed around, they do every frickin show, you know, they do every show. And so I’m like, I want to give a platform to people that like haven’t had a voice, and maybe have some shit to say, these are people in all different professions that some of them have never been on on a podcast. And I’m like, I want it to be unique content, because it’s cool. Like, they come out with a chip on their shoulder, right, and they want to share something. Whereas I could, I know, I could reach out to certain people, and it’s always a pain in the ass, because like, you have to go through six levels. But it’s tricky. And I think it cost me on some side of things. Because there’s gonna be people that are like, hey, you know, you’re not, somebody will share, but these celebrities aren’t gonna share it. So what I’m going to try to get, let’s say, you know, I’m going to try to get so and so on this and think that they’re going to share it on their Instagram, and then I’m going to get on now all of a sudden, I got hundreds of 1000s of subscribers, it doesn’t work that way. Contents got to come first. Right?

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:21:48  

 Right. Right. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:21:48  

And so that It’s hard to get people to like, do you ever interview people? On the other hand, though, like, when you have them on and they’re not celebrities, or they haven’t been interviewed a lot? How do you coach somebody if you’re kind of like, Alright, I need your ass to open up a little bit be a little bit more natural. Do you have any tactics that you use for kind of getting people out of their own heads, getting them interacting more organically?

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:22:08  

If they’re not a celebrity, I’m interviewing them. I mean, like, so that’s, there’s the like, if they’re like something happens in the community, and I put them on the air, that kind of deal.

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:22:16  

Yeah. Or just like you do. I mean, you do a lot of Colin, and I’m sure some of that is, you know, scripted or at least orchestrated to a degree but okay, it’s not 

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:22:23  

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no everything. Like when people call into the show, I mean, our phone producer might go our phone screen would be like, what do you call it about? Yeah, just see that fight at the minute, you know, okay, I need you to amp it up, have a lot of energy. We’re gonna patch it through Johnjay is gonna say, what’s up, Francine and you say, Hey, I’m calling about the fight that happened yesterday, like, you know, cut the the Hey, how are you? I’m good. How are you? Yeah, what’s going on? How much what’s going on you? Like, I gotta keep the show moving. You know what I mean? So I don’t, but we don’t do that stuff. It’s a we’re 100%. I make sure that happens. There’s a lot of people that don’t do that. That’s why our calls are taped, so that we can eliminate crap. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:23:00  

Yeah, yeah. 

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:23:01  

And sometimes, like I was telling you about silence, we got to cut silence out. So make things move a little bit faster. But when you talk to somebody in the community, sometimes they’re just real people. Yeah. So I got a I got today, we took a call from a girl. And she was telling the story about a bar fight that she was in with her sisters. And it was it should have been a 45 second phone call. It was a nine minute phone call. live on the radio 

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:23:23  

Your producers like Like wrap it up, wrap it up, wrap it up. 

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:23:26  

The producers mad at me because I saw him put her name on the screen. And I was live and I was like, I went hey, Victoria. What’s your story? He’s like, I’m still talking to her. But I saw her name on the screen. And I’m like, just put it through, put it through like that, like put it through, put it through. So he puts it through. And that’s my bad because he wasn’t done screening her. And it was a nine minute phone call. And then my sister walked in and ordered beer. And this girl said there was a birthday party going on. And the birthday party was obnoxious and there was a game bangers in the bar. And then I’m like, oh, no, you want me so I gotta try to go. Oh, man. Okay, and then I look at something I look for a spot sometimes with rich I’ll be like, I’ll go cut that line out. But I can’t look like an a-hole. Yeah, I mean so yeah, so there’s a fine line.

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:24:09  

I’ll tell you what, man you didn’t give us any moments of silence or non incredible content I want to thank you again i Yeah, this is just been really cathartic. I think just to catch up I mean it’s been six seven years and again we didn’t script this right like this you and me rapping  so thank you for even coming on. Give me the time of day if people want to support love pup or anything you do. And obviously we’ll include the links in the show notes and all that but where can they go right now because we got a lot of dog lovers a lot of dog people on the show or if there’s another charity or foundation or some more or where can we direct

 

Johnjay Van Es  1:24:39  

i’ve got 2 foundations I got love pup foundation on Instagram. That’s the best way love pup foundation and that’s a rescue and we help dog rescues all around the country. I mean, my wife has done so much of that rescue. where literally I mean we are helping dog rescues around the country, not just our own dog rescue. And then we have love Up Foundation love up is a foster kid helping kids in foster care and, you know the best love Up Foundation? And those are the two best ways. That’s it. Those are the only two things you don’t need to promote anything else that will

 

Brett Bartholomew  1:25:07  

Well, dude, I appreciate you and everybody else. Thanks for listening as always, Brett Bartholomew from the art of coaching podcast with my friend Johnjay Van Es. I’ll see you next time.