Digital Social Hour - Hard Work and Dedication: The Secrets to Zion Clark's Success | Digital Social Hour #16

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

Welcome to the Digital Social Hour Podcast, where this week we are joined by two incredible guests, Zion and Craig. These two have an amazing story to tell and impart profound life lessons that will inspire you to reach your full potential. Zion shares his journey as a fighter, wrestling champion, and member of Team Body Shop. He talks about his first fight and shares insights on how to throw the perfect punch in MMA. Craig shares his experience with entrepreneurship, building a brand, and prioritizing authenticity over everything else. In this episode, we also discuss embarrassing treadmill experiences and the importance of motivation and hard work. Zion reveals how he once hunkered down for three months straight to improve his wrestling skills and how this commitment led him to success despite being in danger of getting stuck in his hometown. Craig shares how he and Zion met and built an authentic and impactful brand that prioritizes a cohesive dynamic of friendship and mentorship. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/digitalsocialhour/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the digital social hour guys. I'm here with my co-host Charlie as well as our guest today Zion and Craig. How we doing today today good man uh good to be in vegas this is my third time here so okay yeah how do you like it so far uh every time i feel like my mind's blown so something new new people hell yeah new experiences you ready for the game oh yeah it's gonna be a fun time i'm excited i want to see someone get dunked on so i know honestly watching floyd dunk on somebody if he could dunk would be awesome but i don't know about that yeah i know but there's a lot of ifs a lot of ifs if he could there's a awesome. I don't know about that. Yeah, I know. There's a lot of ifs. A lot of ifs.

If he could dunk. There's a lot of NFL players, so I'm sure some of them will be dominant. I expect it to be a semi-rough game. Yeah. Because I've seen football players play basketball. Oh, yeah. Last year I got roughed up by some of those football guys. Yeah.

Yeah. I got tackled. It was interesting. So I see you dominating all these sports. Have you played basketball before i'll shoot the ball around a little bit but i will not play a game okay you know that's not my sport i don't have the hand-eye coordination for that okay so you're doing fighting you've done wrestling you've done track and field where's your focus out right now right now my focus is on

fighting on fighting uh just uh you know i'm still focused on track and field i'm about to start up my training and everything here soon for the spring. But aside from that, like right now, fighting is the main focus. I just finished my first pro fight. I saw. So, yeah, I'm 1-0 for right now. So I'm going to see what the next options are. Working on getting healthy right now.

So just making sure that when it's time to go, I'm ready to go. Hell, yeah. I'm a former track and field runner myself. I saw you set the world record in the 20 meters. What was it like training for that? Man, it was just kind of like going to the gym every day. I'm naturally fast. Okay.

You know, so just like hitting the treadmill. I was working with Craig and our boy Mata on the treadmill with more hand speed turnover. Right. Because it wasn't that I couldn't get my hands moving fast enough, but the flip is like, look at the flick of the wrist. It's literally like I'm flicking my wrist on the ground so I can pick up that speed so it's more fluid.

So I had to work on that a lot, man. You know how many times I got busted on the treadmill? Oh, man. I put it up to like how fast were we going? Like, nine miles an hour or something like that? Jeez. It was like nine miles an hour on the treadmill. Because you got to sprint on it.

Yeah. Yeah, I've fallen off once. I think that wasn't fun. I have some bad treadmill experiences. None we're going to talk about here. But definitely. It's in the air. You got to now.

Well, so sometimes you get on your phone because you're trying to multitask. You forget you're doing something. How do you forget you're walking? I don't know. happened you were probably running i was running and uh you get sidetracked work gets you know important and then all of a sudden it just happens before you know it going down were you in a public place or were oh yeah okay so people saw it oh good laughs all around okay did you leave or did you i you know what i picked myself up and i kept going and i fought the embarrassment and i got through it okay so i kept going wow i know the embarrassment and I got through it. Okay. So I kept going. Wow.

I know some people when that happens, they just got out of the entire area. I probably would have left. I would have played it off and then called someone and walked out of there. But see, that's like, you know, we all get, we all get knocked down. We all have to, you know, keep going. Your motivation for a lot of people, you inspire a lot of people. Who motivates you? Who inspires you?

Man, you know, I just have my family to really push me i didn't have really any idol idols or anything like that growing up so like i just have my people around me like point me in the right direction so support system yeah that's like that's my motivation knowing that they set me up for this like opportunities i have to really tap into who i'm supposed to be, man, it's like my motivation is the fact that I get to wake up every day. I do cool shit. Very cool. That's beautiful. So I know you started in wrestling, right?

And I read online you didn't win for three years straight? More like all the way up until I was a junior in high school. Wow. So what was that like on your mental, not being able to win those? You know, I was able to block it out after a while. Okay. You know, at first it kind of sucked, you know, but, you know, I don't know.

I was like, I made friends. I made friends on the wrestling, like in the wrestling community. A lot of those guys, we've known each other since we were little kids. So like those like outside wrestling, like those were my friends. Got it. So whether I won or not, I got to be with the boys. That's cool. All the time. And I saw by your senior senior year you were one of the best in the state of ohio which is one of the best states in wrestling so was that all just attributed to work ethic yeah you know you just had i just uh my the summer after my junior year um i just kind of hunkered down like i didn I didn't hang out with my friends

not one time that summer. Wow. And I just wrestled, like, twice a day, every day, for three months straight, Monday through Sunday. I would find somebody at open time, me and my boy that lived across the street. He was a wrestler for one of my rival schools. Got it.

And we would wrestle with each other, like, all day. Because, like, he's like me. Right now, he's in college, and he's ranked, like, sixth in the country right now. Wow. At 141 pounds. Like, he's like me right now he's in college and uh he's ranked like six in the country right now wow at 141 pounds like he's doing really well now so he's like he has that same type of mentality that i had to just like hunker down and like really get good at our craft uh so with that being said i went out my first match and i won 15 to 0 by tech by tech and then i was pretty much undefeated until about halfway through my season

you know like it was just the turnover of just being really committed you know i was i would come home and sleep on the steps i wouldn't make it to the shower wow you know i wake up the next morning then take a shower and wake up on the steps my mom's like what you got going on today and by the way my mom's thing was you couldn't I could not be at the house doing nothing. Either I got a job or I had to go train. So with that being said, I didn't want a job. So I went and trained. And so with all that work I put in,

I even wrestled tournaments over the summer, including all that. And I lost still. I didn't win until that first match of my senior year i didn't even know if i was gonna win but like i had worked like i had work put a lot of work in and i'd like seen like different like levels of progress but every time it was a live match i always lost so that with that first match i out the way i felt pretty good about myself right yeah yeah it's hard to replicate the actual match when you're training. Yeah. Yeah.

But, yeah, since then, like, high school, like, that's what did it for me, you know? Right. It's just, like, I don't, like, again, I didn't have a motivator. I just got tired of getting my ass kicked. I feel that. Yeah. I was going to ask, what made you flip that switch? You know, I was getting towards the end of high school.

My boys were getting offers to go wrestle wrestling college, and I wasn't. I was kind of butt hurt about that, honestly. I'm going to be stuck in our hometown. You guys are all wrestling college, trying to make it to nationals and stuff. I was just going to be sitting there, not doing nothing. That's what kind of pushed me a bit. I cut off a lot of people i like cut off

a lot cut out a lot of things i was doing and just like focused directly on the sport and nothing else one more question about wrestling and then i want to dive into the business side of things and how you two met yeah uh what was it like training with jordan burrows because that's the goat right there dude he's strong as strong as fuck let me put that simply uh but he's he's one of the best you know and being able to get counsel from him being able to speak to him i would say semi regularly you know just be in contact and knowing like i have his support and you know just being in contact with the man he's the greatest wrestler on the planet. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, you can't compare, you can't really compare anybody else's skill

as comparable to his, except for maybe one or two people. Yeah. What would you recommend to people looking to get a mentor or guidance from someone that good in their field? How did you, how were you able to get that?

I was in college, and I got, Team USA invited me to the watch party for the national championships. No, it was not the national championships. It was for a big tournament, maybe the Midlands Open, I think. But it was just a watch party team USA. I met every single team USA member there.

I had to drink tequila, network, you know what I mean? Just hung out. It was really just kind of like a hangout. Right, just putting yourself in the right place at the right time. Got it. I'm in college, so it was cool. Yeah, that's huge. That's how I came in contact with a lot of people.

That's awesome. And also one of my close friends, Lauren Louise, she grew up in Massillon just like me. She is currently on the women's U.S. wrestling team. So she's always been like a savage. That's also another way I have it. Knowing the U.S. team. I knew a lot of women's team and people from the team. One, I've wrestled some of these guys in college.

Two, it's, I don't know, it's just a small world. The MMA world in general is a lot like it's there's a lot of big people but the the community is a lot smaller than you think right awesome so let's dive into the business side how did you two meet we you want to we uh we first met through my best friend backstage with the ellen degenero show at the time owned a supplement company and uh we come across Zion about a week before on social media my best friend was like making excuses to not work out and um next minute he's on doing box jumps on his hands and like he his mentality shifted right away he went straight away from being

you know like I'm not working out today to like having the best workout of his life from coming across the impact zion had on him during that and um like man we need to get this guy involved in our brand and community um our tagline for the brand was be real be you so it's promoting authenticity in a fake world of supplements and fitness where there's a lot of you know there's no transparency uh you know i'm sure you you know how like just the world sells a lot of fake things which aren't real yeah so like how do we bring authenticity to this and then a week later my best friends at the time i was managing jason momoa he was his trainer and also helped co-manage him he uh he calls me freaking out he's like zion's backstage zion's backstage like you know super excited he was like it was crazy because a week before we see him on social a week later he's there you know hanging with him and uh zion's freaking out because aquaman's there and then you know i was a kid

i was kind of geek i just watched the movie so it was like five years ago yeah it was cool okay i was like fresh in college like i was like yeah i was like 19 20. yeah so super young um you know my best friends uh ends up coming over for dinner that night to have dinner with us at uh with his mom as well and his his best friend and uh that's what all headed off and and got him involved as a huge part of the brand of the you know authenticity of what we're trying to do in community building and then it was my first startup i ran so as i saw an exit out of it it was like okay supplements are very saturated you need a decent amount of money to really make an impact in the space we didn't raise enough money we had an incredible brand vision we had celebrities endorsing it for free because it's such a powerful community i was like okay what's

the next step and through all the understanding of brand building i learned from supplements i was like okay there's an exit out of this i'm going to apply these concepts to the zion brand because it's the same conceptually brand building is the same thing it's like approaching zion as his own entity right so it was like and then it was just problem solving from there like how do i figure things out but always allow him to be himself where it was like and then it was just problem solving from there like how do i figure things out but always allow him to be himself where it's like we'll never endorse something he doesn't care about we'll never do something he doesn't care about because he stays authentic to himself and so do i and that's important to us in the world of business and opportunity it's not just

taking anything you can get it's like how do you stay true to yourself while building something great and and building a legacy and it takes longer to do it the right way but i think there's a lot more power in doing it your way and doing it the right way it's like you know paving a way of saying like it's very easy to like look at dollar signs or look at a quick rich scheme or like you know anyone everyone and the bigger you get i'm sure you know realize it too but like the more people want to be a part of what you're doing and not for the right reasons right it's like all money yeah it's like following money or seeing what they think your version of success is and it's like staying true to yourself in a world that you know it tries to like mold you

or tell what you can and can't do it's powerful and there's a lot of power in that so essentially i was like how do we build this together as like camaraderie friendship we live together in la it's a lot deeper than just saying we do business together it's like this is a cohesive dynamic of of friendship you know mentorship i'm 10 years older than him so whatever experience life experience i have i can pass on to him right i don't know it all by any means i have a problem solver i moved here from new zealand at 19 with two grand to my name and Whatever life experience I have, I can pass on to him. I don't know it all by any means. I'm a problem solver. I moved here from New Zealand at 19 with two grand to my name and an opportunity to play basketball.

So I've had a problem solved through life myself. And all I want to do is share those gifts with the world and other people and through my experiences. And now it's cool to just see the momentum we can have of doing things our way and then continue to grow and scale and build and the impact it has on humanity. Because that's where the legacy piece comes in to, you know, help run some of the social. So to see the message of people dealing with anxiety, depression, suicidal, just lost their legs and reach out and be like, man, you've changed my life. Just coming across your story or just the words you share.

That's the purpose and why and meaning. And that is bigger than the quote unquote, like cool things we get to do. It's the impact you have and that footprint you leave on the world. So, but, you know, it's a cool combination of both. Like we get to do some fun stuff together. We travel. We get to see the world, experience life, meet people such as yourselves. Like that's what life's about to me is the experiences we get to create.

What impact do you all want to have on the world? Because you both touched on this a few times, and I'm interested. More than money and wins and career and whatever, what lasting effect do you want to leave with people when you walk out of the room? Well, I just leave people with just a thought you know i'm never going to tell you how to think and i'm never going to tell you how things should be i can give you my idea of what i think it could be i would love that you know what i mean like like the way or how people could just be more cohesive and be more just aware of their surroundings and be more attentive to the things that they want to do

and the things that they want to accomplish. So when I leave a room, whether I say a lot of words, whether I don't say much of anything, I try to have the effect of, okay, well, this guy obviously just feels free and feels like he's not held down by anything, and he's working hard towards what he wants. What's the difference between me doing it and you doing it? Nothing.

You know what I mean? That's the question. If I can do this, what's the difference between me doing it and you doing it? There's not. It's just a mindset. It's a mindset switch. I like that. Craig?

To me, it's just, yeah, it's the positive impact we can have through action. So a lot of people say what they can do, but it's what will you do. And I'm a very action-oriented person. I like to lead through action in what I do. I'll never preach something that I don't practice. And for me, it's using my lifestyle and, you know, the older I get, I stay disciplined in what I love to do. And I want to use that. There's a fine line between

impressing and inspiring. And my goal is to always inspire people through my actions and show people you can do what you set your mind to like through discipline and sacrifice and hard work you can achieve what you want in life but most importantly is find your own version of success and happiness don't chase what someone else thinks is their version of success right because it means so many different things to different people like what i want in life is very different could be very different to what you want. So find what truly makes you happy and, you know, achieve to reach that. Don't look at what is glamorized on TV or what other people think is, you know, successful, quote unquote, financial success, whatever it is. Find what you truly want and then go after that and use your imagination, you know, keep the kid inside of you to like aspire to continue like, yeah, just find what you want.

And I think that's the way I try to like lead my life through action is to just, is to hopefully like inspire people along the way of the journey of what we're doing. Don't look at an end goal because it's experiences. It's the journey that makes the the fun of it you know sitting here in a room right now this is the experience we get to create doing this and i think life is collecting experiences it's you know that's where wisdom comes from for me is those experiences that you can uh you can gather absolutely both of you guys seem so driven and have great work ethic um where do you think that came from?

Because I'm from the East Coast, so it's a more fast-paced environment. And I noticed when I moved out here, people are way more just laid back, I guess. I mean, wrestling did that for me in Ohio. You know, Ohio is one of the number one states to produce wrestlers over the last 10 years. Ohio, Pennsylvania. Right. So just growing up in that just yeah you you had to work hard or they didn't want you in the room i agree i think you

know it's like it was kind of drilled into my drilled into my body and my whole being just when things start to get really hard that's when i start to thrive you know so as with that being said all the stuff that me and craig together, we might run into bumps or something. We figure it out. And we figure it out. We process it. And then we push through it. And we just keep it going.

But being set, doing it, it's a lot harder than saying it. But I feel comfortable enough to say that hard work excites me. Because I don't want to just walk into something easy. I even told him, for my fight, I was like know i don't want to just walk into something easy you know i even told him like for my fight i was like i don't want an easy opponent you know but you know at the end of the day you get what you get but you know with just work like having that work ethic for me at rest definitely wrestling yeah i definitely agree where sports can really shape your mindset yeah and like the like wrestling is the oldest sport like on the planet. Oh wow. Dating back like thousands of years.

I didn't know that. It's like mentioned twice in the Bible. Wow. Yeah. Like it's old, like the sport's old. Interesting. There's statues in ancient Greece

of them hitting moves that you still see Olympians hit today. You know, like it goes deep like that. Wrestling is the oldest sport and it's the hardest thing to do. And people, it doesn't look like it is, like it goes deep like that. Wrestling is the oldest sport and it's the hardest thing to do. And people, it doesn't look like it is, but it is. Have you ever tried to throw a grown man that's trying to throw you?

No. Yeah, it's hard. Can't say I have. So like, you know, like to be able to overcome adversity in those moments like that where you know sometimes potential injury could mean you broke your neck and you never walk again you know that's a that's a that's a thing we risk going into elite wrestling going into elite fighting so have that type of work ethic to if you can if you can overcome adversity in that and not get beat up and stand victorious over your opponent the rest of life should be fucking easy wow it's powerful i would say for me it's um you talk about sports the discipline

and work ethic dealing with life of wins and losses you have to deal with all of that and uh sports a huge part of that the other part for me is like anything I have in life, I've had to earn. I've never been given anything other than two loving parents, which were incredible. That's the most incredible support system you can have. But beyond that, any, you know, I moved here at 19 to pursue basketball because I was like, I want to, you know, I watched He Got Game and Love and Basketball and all these movies and TV. I was like, I want to experience this college life of pursuing my sport and what I was most passionate about at the time. So I was like, if I was to make that reality, I have to do it myself. So that discipline of work ethic to say, all right, I'll figure it out. I'll problem solve.

But stay disciplined because, you know, and i always say you appreciate things that you earn right like you always have a different sense of value behind something that you've earned as opposed to being given um so for me personally yes sports but also just the mentality of always going after and striving for things that i can truly appreciate through earning them through the struggle and being told i'm not good enough and this and that, but sticking with it, staying disciplined. I love that.

Most people that obviously are fighting professionally, it was a very drastic lifestyle change from whatever they had previously. I mean, you were already wrestling, so it probably wasn't as drastic for you. Oh, it was more of a, like I was kind of able to ease into it.

Okay. So what's been like the biggest difference since you're now a professional fighter? I mean, you get punched in the face. Well, that part. But as far as out of the ring or octagon, what is it? Your dietary habits, training, what's the biggest difference now? The training is definitely leveled up now. My coach takes me way more serious, which I'm not going to lie to you.

The last five years of me training, I don't think he always did. Really? And I don't think he thought I was ready, which I can see why. You know, and, you know, this last year, like, he told me, like, six months ago, he said, do you want to fight? I looked at him like he was lying to me, you know, because he kept telling me no, and I stopped asking, but I kept training, you know. So he finally asked me no and I stopped asking but I kept training,

you know, so, he finally asked me if I wanted to fight, I got hype. Dude, I punched the floor as hard as I could, like,

I was hype. Hopefully your hand was okay. Oh, I didn't care. You know what I mean? Like, like, that,

like, that's, that for me is just, I don't know, I don't know how to explain it. It was finally taken seriously. Yeah, like, it was just, I was, I don't know how to explain it it was finally taken seriously yeah like it was just

I was every word that I said was taken seriously even my teammates like my boy AJ he started laying into me then and he's been laying into me

ever since like my boy AJ is one of the world's top featherweights like on the planet in Bellator and he just beat

the number one guy in japan like knocked him out that's cool you know just a couple weeks ago so like it's um like having people like that like putting pressure on now that like they know you're taking it serious because like i'm a martial artist i could tell if you're not putting your back into some shit. You know what I mean? I can feel it. I can tell. So I could tell they were being more serious. Everything was getting more vicious.

Everything was like, now if I mess up now, I might get hurt at practice, but coach believes I have the ability to handle myself. So now things are ramping up, and that's where I've really started to progress towards this fight. when this fight happened i had a pretty decent performance that's incredible so you trained for five years you said before yeah yeah so because like i wanted to fight right away and he told me no so five years i told him i told him i'd stick around and i stuck around i'm a team body shop member yeah wow his his coach is one of the pioneers of the sport of mma yeah antonio mckee okay trained like chuck ledell rampage jackson cyborg he goes way back to the origin of the sport so like he's a

legend in it yeah yeah you're in good hands there yeah so i i was annoyed when he told me no but i kept listening to him so i think out of respect you can't you can't disrespect somebody. I think it shows someone's commitment to a whole other level when they're told no, no, no, and they still keep showing up every day. Oh, I'm ignorant. If you tell me no, I'm going to keep coming back. Like, for real. Especially if it's something that I really want. You keep telling me no, I will keep coming back until I achieve my goal.

Let's get Sean in the gym. We're going to start the training. Yeah, dude, you can spar with me let's go i'll try it you know i've never done boxing never done fighting but i'm open to it i feel like i would have been it's a good thing to practice just for like self-defense yeah yeah even like the confidence too just gives you like you know i started boxing about four years ago i'm the same humble person that i am but knowing you have the ability to fuck somebody up if you needed to it's a good feeling that's a different like i'll never change who i am as a person i'll never say look at me or walk into a room i need to be seen but deep down you know 99 of people don't know how to fight because it's a sport being able to throw a punch successfully there's an art to it just

like any it's like playing you're playing basketball against somebody that's never played in their life you're going to school them you're going to cross them out make them look silly so it's the same way of fighting what's the correct way to throw a punch just keep your hands loose at least for mma boxing is different because you got big gloves but for mma everything is you never want to fight with your hands completely closed everything oh really so they? It's always just a twist. Oh, I thought you closed your fist. Say I throw a punch. It just...

At the end of it, you close it. Yeah, right at the very end, you want to close it. Got it. Because that creates fluidity, and then as you turn, you... So you can actually access more speed with your hand open. Wow. And then close it right at the moment of impact. Wow, did you know that, Charlie?

Yeah, I mean, not for MMA, it's different. For boxing, obviously, you already have heavy gloves on, so you're keeping a little bit more tight, but definitely loose,

but you can't really, you're limited in what you can do in boxing. And plus, when I'm reaching, when I'm throwing a punch, I could just change my mind halfway through, grab your leg.

You know what I mean? I love that. So, that's why, it's just fluidity. Fluidity. Yeah, I've been doing it wrong. So that's why. It's just fluidity. Fluidity. Yeah, I've been doing it wrong my whole life. Interesting. Got to just throw some more punches at people, I guess.

All right. Well, that was great. Any closing thoughts on where people can find you guys on social media? You can find me and you can find Craig on my page because he's my manager. Find me at BigZ97 on all platforms and check out my book, Zion and Match, coming out April 11th. Work with what you got.

Work with all you got. And I've messed that up. I have two books out and I said the other book. Check out my book, Work With What You Got, by me and Candlewick James Hirsch, April 11th.

All retailers. All right. There you have it, guys. Thank you for tuning in to the Digital Social Hour. I'll see you next week. This is an ad by BetterHelp. What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better, even when it's impossible to take time for them. Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you

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