177: Why Commitment Is Your Most Valuable Skill | Shawn Johnson & Andrew East

**Nick Bare** (0:06)
All right, ladies and gentlemen, today on the podcast, we have Shawn Johnson East, Andrew East, and my beautiful wife, Stephanie Bare. I was literally just thinking, and I told you guys, I never expected to be the four of us sitting in this podcast to have a conversation.

**Stephanie Bare** (0:25)
We've always come to you.

**Shawn Johnson East** (0:26)
Yes.

**Stephanie Bare** (0:27)
Yeah.

**Andrew East** (0:28)
It was due time.

**Shawn Johnson East** (0:29)
Yeah.

**Andrew East** (0:30)
It was time.

**Nick Bare** (0:30)
How long are you in town for?

**Andrew East** (0:32)
Six hours.

**Shawn Johnson East** (0:33)
About six hours.

**Nick Bare** (0:34)
Oh, wow.

**Stephanie Bare** (0:34)
They got babies. That's why. I know.

**Shawn Johnson East** (0:36)
We've been gone for three full days. So it's time to go back to our babies.

**Stephanie Bare** (0:41)
Now we get that. I like the three night rule. I feel like after that...

**Shawn Johnson East** (0:45)
It's too long.

**Stephanie Bare** (0:46)
Yeah. It's too much. It's too much.

**Nick Bare** (0:48)
It's a book tour. How's it going?

**Andrew East** (0:52)
Writing the book was a blast. The book tour, I mean, this is fun. This is the best part of it, but like leaving the kids and then doing, you know, other media, like newspaper interviews, it's like, all right, I don't know about this, but writing the book was great.

**Shawn Johnson East** (1:06)
I will say too, I don't know what it is, but like, Andrew and I are very passionate about like helping other people sell beautiful products that we really believe in. And we do a good job at that. When it comes to selling something that we've done, it feels so much harder.
Cause I'm like, yeah, we can't run a book. Like it's, it's fine. We love our book. We poured our heart and soul into it. It took us four years to write.

**Stephanie Bare** (1:27)
I was going to ask, when did you start the process?

**Shawn Johnson East** (1:29)
Four years ago.

**Stephanie Bare** (1:30)
It was four years ago.

**Shawn Johnson East** (1:31)
It's, it's not a fluff piece. Like it took so much time and energy and research and like trying to perfect it. But I think because of that, the book tour is, it makes us sweat. Cause we're like, oh gosh.

**Andrew East** (1:43)
I hope people like it.

**Nick Bare** (1:45)
You guys should be really proud of it. Yeah. I don't say it to pump your tires, but any means like, I'll be honest, when I started reading it, I was like, how do you write a whole book on commitment?

**Shawn Johnson East** (1:58)
I know.

**Nick Bare** (2:00)
And I went into it with that approach. And before I started reading it, I listened to your podcast. You guys did Stef Sentence, I think it was episode like 302, where you talk about the book and the book writing process.
And I love that you shared that you guys brought on someone to help write the book.

**Stephanie Bare** (2:17)
Yeah. That transparency.

**Shawn Johnson East** (2:19)
Oh yeah.

**Stephanie Bare** (2:20)
But a lot of people don't do that though.

**Shawn Johnson East** (2:21)
Oh yeah.

**Andrew East** (2:22)
I mean, there'd be so many misspelled words if it was us writing it, you know? Like nobody wants that.

**Nick Bare** (2:27)
But as I dove into it, it is very well written and the content is really impressive.

**Stephanie Bare** (2:36)
The format is awesome.

**Nick Bare** (2:39)
There's some like gold nuggets in there. Like as I was reading, it took me a long time to read through it because I kept making all of these notes.
I literally just sent this one to the team today, the brand team, because part of our mission at BPN is we say we are for the committed. Oftentimes, you can think of, in the sense of sports nutrition and athletics for the committed being a race or a competition. At the beginning of the year, we shifted our narrative to commitment has no finish lines.
I pulled this piece from the book and I share it with the brand team, because what we're trying to do is make commitment, I don't say more approachable, but more broadly accepted outside of just these fitness preps. And you guys said, real commitment is about creating an ecosystem that makes the right choices irresistible. It's about designing your life so the path of least resistance leads toward the thing that matter most. I thought of a spot on that showcases how commitment can be applied to everyone. And I'm in the season of life, we're in the season of life where it requires focus and intentionality and saying no to a lot of things. And that is just one of the ingredients of commitment as you talk about.