Mark Bell's Power Project - 10 Minute Walk Talk with Mark Bell - Being "Lucky"

Episode Date: May 11, 2018

Before Mark Leaves for England, he wanted to leave us with some quick thoughts. Re-Watch the Live Stream here: https://youtu.be/jh-l0reVong ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

We're live on Facebook. I threw it up on here anyway. Guys, if you want to hear the best possible quality, you want to be able to hear it the best way and see it the best way, the best way to do that is to go on powerproject.live, but you're more than welcome to stay tuned right here on Facebook. We're going to make these available on Facebook Live as well. We're doing all kinds of things over here. Me and my boy, Andrew, we're working really hard to make sure the podcast can happen anywhere. It can happen everywhere. It can happen at any moment and it can be in any form. It could be 10 minutes. It could be two hours. It could be three hours. It could be with four

people. It could be by myself. Um, well, I'm traveling to England, uh, tomorrow. Today's May 8th. I'm traveling to England tomorrow, May 9th. And as I'm traveling the globe, I will probably end up finding somebody that's worth podcasting with as I'm traveling. So I'll probably just record something on my phone even. So we're just trying to do it every and any way and know that my boy Andrew Zargoza over here has been working his face off. I've been working his face off. I've been working my face off. We're trying to make sure that we bring you the best possible, highest quality content that we can.

Absolutely. And we are live right now on the YouTubes. Oh, my God. We're so live. So live. Yesterday, we went up and saw Jacob Jabber, the owner, CEO of Phil's Coffee. And that was a great experience. It was just cool to, it's cool to rub elbows with some of these people, man.

There's some, there's some great people. There's so many great people to get to. And you don't know how great they are until you get to them. Because then once you have that interaction, you learn so much more about them. And Jacob, uh, being the owner of Phil's coffee, he was just very frank. He was very upfront. I found that to be great because some of these people, man, they walk around and fucking stick up their ass, you know? And they're like, uh, oh man, the beginning was so tough for me.

And you're like, come on, dude. I asked Jacob, I said, hey, what would you be doing if your dad didn't do coffee? He's like, I don't know, man. He's like, I don't know. My dad started out with a coffee business and I took it over. And he obviously pushed it to a whole nother level that his dad never saw. it to a whole nother level that his dad never, never saw. But, uh, similar to Gary Vee's story where Gary Vee's dad was already running a business that was doing really well.

And he pushed it that much further. Now that doesn't discredit anything that you do. It doesn't, it doesn't mean, you know, my dad throughout my life has made good money. Um, we weren't, we weren't rich, but we were never without. Um, I would actually just say that we, I guess we were rich in a way because I'd never felt like I was without anything. Right. There's plenty of love.

There was plenty of, uh, plenty of food. That's for sure. Cause all of us were fucking fat. Um, and so in that sense, I guess, I guess we did, uh, grow up rich, but it's not like my dad made millions of dollars or anything. And, but regardless of all that, just if you come from a poor background or you come from a wealthy background, none of those things really matter. What matters is that you're kicking ass now and that you're making progress now. And ultimately you have to, you have to grow up and you have to figure out a way to create a lot of your own opportunities.

Yeah. Yeah. I always say like, you know, we lived in a pretty rough part of South Sac. I always said, you know, we kind of grew up in the hood, but we were never ghetto. We never had a lot of money, but we never had to settle. Yeah. And depending on how much you slur that, it actually rhymes. So maybe I'll put that down on the track someday.

Damn, son. You know, if you, if you think, if you think about it, um, you know, uh, the value there's, there's value to everything, you know, um, is there, is there value being Prince Henry? Right. Of course there is like he grew up privileged, right. But it's almost a privilege to grow up poor too. It's almost a privilege to eat shit sandwiches without the bread and understand what that's like to have humility and to just, you get a lot of life value. You hear kids all the time, somebody like a Brock Lesnar.

He's got farm boy strength, like literal farm boy strength. Yeah. He grew up in a town that has like 800 people in it or some shit like that. But he learned the value of hard work. Um, there's a lot of different ways to learn these different values. And for some people, the people that grow up, uh, people that grew up well off, um, doesn't always mean that they're going to become a big pussy. You know, I, uh, talk to my son, Jake, all the time. You know, I, I talked to him a lot and say,

Hey, let's just have you not grow up to be a dick. Like that's all, that's all we're working on. Like we're, our ceiling is our ceiling over here is, uh, is a low, like, I want to make sure you're not a dick. You're respectful of other people. Um, you grew up with everything and anything you want your fingertips but let's not have that be a hindrance let's have that be a positive thing doesn't have to be a negative right things are here when you want it but don't be a pig don't be gluttonous you don't always need all these things and so for him you know when i try to buy him something for his birthday or something's hard to even figure out the hell to get the kid because

he just doesn't care. He didn't give a shit. He's like, I don't care. What's your thoughts when somebody says, Mark Bell, you're lucky? I get lucky. You're wealthy, you're this, you're that, but it's all just because you got lucky. I get lucky a lot because the old lady is still pretty responsive to me, if you know what I'm saying. There you go.

Can I get a hey now? Jessica Smith just shaking her head. Total disapproval. She might leave the room. Very offended. I do feel like I'm lucky. I don't take any offense to that. It can be annoying because it's like, well, I, you know, still had to work for stuff, but, um, I would, I would say this, like, I'm,

you can't pick your parents, you know? And so for me, uh, I was very lucky. I'm very lucky in the sense that I grew up with awesome parents. Um, I never really thought about it a ton before, but when you have a tragedy that hits your family hard, then you think about it more. And we just had my father-in-law just passed away. And I just realized how fucking lucky I was to have him around too. My father-in-law and mother-in-law, they're wonderful people. They care. You know, like it's, we take it for granted that people care. And I think we're in a world nowadays where people are chasing after other people. It kind of reminds me of like being in high school.

This girl likes you, but you like this other girl that you can't, you can't really get, you know, but maybe, maybe that person that likes you, even if it's not even a, um, you know, it's not the opposite sex, even if it's just a friend that happens a lot with friends like, no, I don't really want to be your buddy because you're not in with all the football players. You're not in with a lot of the cool kids. So I'm going to be chasing after these people that don't really want to be my friend. And they're going to, they're going to eventually be my friends if I keep pursuing them. Right. And for me,

I don't, I think that there's not enough value placed on the people that are in our lives that, that care about us. Now when it comes to luck, like, I feel like I just have so many, so many positive things. I can't really worry too much about somebody thinking that I'm lucky. And if somebody thinks I'm lucky because I make it look easy, I think that's also a positive. What I posted today was that amazing picture that you took. Andrew and I went to San Francisco.

We went to some Power Bear meetings yesterday. We went to that Leather Pants convention. Wow. Yeah. I've never seen anything quite like that. That was amazing. Assless chaps everywhere. Well, all chaps are assless, right? Are they?

I didn't know that. Do they make ass chaps? I think all chaps are assless. Well, that's smoky. Look it up. See what kind of list you get put on. All right. It's like, you know, it's like all donuts come with a hole in it, right?

I think all chaps, I don't think they have a butt on them. I don't even know what I would, like, search for. I think assless chaps is just to give you, like, a visual that the person is not wearing any pants underneath it. So it's really pantsless chaps that we're after, that we're talking about. Has everybody got that? Write that down. You guys are learning a lot of things here on the Power Project. It's not really assless chaps.

It's pantsless chaps. Because I don't think chaps by nature have a butt on them. I think they're like outside things that you wear when you ride a horse or something, right? Horse, motorcycle, or dudes. Chapless asses. I don't know. I don't know what the difference is. How did we get here?

Oh, San Francisco. Mm-hmm. Yeah. yeah when we were in san fran uh you know andrew took a cool picture and uh he captured a lot of san francisco because the view that we had was just ridiculous in this apartment that we're in and uh you know i i basically i put up a post this morning and said uh you know dream harder than you work something along those lines. And so for me, I am lucky because I've had the ability to dream from a really young age because my parents provided so much for me that I didn't have to worry about my dad beat my ass. I didn't have to worry about

where my next meal was coming from. Uh, I didn't have to work at 11 years old because there wasn't enough income in that. Like I didn't, I just didn't have these things that you hear about. Um, my mother, you know, for example, my mom grew up very, very poor and she had to work when she was young. She had to, my mother raised, uh, some of the other children that they had because the, her parents weren't around that much and they were alcoholics and there's a lot of shit going on, you know? And I never had

to deal with any of that. I never worry about, uh, oh man, like I don't have lunch today. I don't know how that's going to play out. I don't know. Can I borrow a couple of bucks from a friend or somebody going to have a sandwich that I could snack on? I've never in my life have ever faced any of that. So because of that, I do feel lucky. Now that's all stuff from when I was younger. Things that happen now are, are different. You know, things that happen as, as an adult are different. If you were abused as a child, if you were molested, if you were just had the worst fucking life possible, it doesn't matter. You, at some point you have to become an adult and you have to figure out a way to be a functioning person in society.

Just because I was wronged and just because I had alcoholic parents doesn't mean I can go and I can't beat the shit out of my own kids. That, that makes me the same as the generation before me. Right. Um, I can't, uh, I can't be super angry with people at work. I can't go around with this chip on my shoulder. Um, because I was wronged. It's not everybody else's problem.

And I think that you end up dealing with that a lot in society. You end up dealing like, fuck man, I got to deal with this person's fucking bullshit from when they were 10. I got to deal with this person's daddy issues or mommy issues like now, like this fucking sucks. Like, it's not my fault. Your mom never gave you a fucking hug. Just man up and fucking get over it. You know?

Yeah. It's easy for me to say that because I have been lucky. I have been fortunate. I had those things. So I don't know what it's like to grow up without those things. I also have had parents that have stayed together, you know, divorces are really, is a real crazy kick in the balls, you know? I know some people, uh, my wife, you know, being one of them, she had her dad pass away

when she was 10 and that, you know, obviously had a huge impact on the family. It was really devastating. But I know people that have had their parents get divorced and they act, they are still acting out in weird ways as adults where I've never seen my wife. My wife really, I mean, it's, it's from what I've seen over the years, that whole situation made her always act better. Like she doesn't, I mean, it's, you know, it's my wife. So of course I'm going to, you know, uh, hype her up. Right. But like, I don't really see any flaws in that woman. She's like, it's, it's un-fucking-believable. She's really powerful and really strong. So that moment that you could take as a negative and could lead towards, uh,

you know, drugs, alcohol could lead towards, um, her just being mad, right. She could just be mad at the world and be pissed off all the time. Um,

it's led to kind of quite the opposite. It made her, and it didn't make her soft either. It made her like tough. Yeah. It made her. And also even along that, along those same lines, she recognized, you know what? Uh, life is fragile.

I don't know what it's going to bring me. And so I better fucking take care of myself and I better learn that fast. And so from that moment on, she, um, I think she was already swimming a little bit, but once she, as she started to mature and get a little older, she got heavily into swimming and she recognized, Hey, this swimming thing could be something. This could turn into something. Um, she always made sure she had good grades. Now she was lucky and fortunate not to have someone pass away. She was lucky that her mom is fucking strong as an ox. And her mom

was the one who was recognizing, Hey, you know what? This is more than you just like swimming faster than other kids. This is a, this is a deal. This is a thing. And this could lead to some great opportunity. So a lot of times when, when there's luck or fortune that happens, um, it's not like it's different than what people think. You know, I'll say this. I'll say I've never been lucky. I've never had anybody come up to me and just give me an opportunity ever in my life. People that listen to the show, people that have been following along for a long time, they know all the different things that I've been part of and all the different things that I've done. I've squatted a thousand 80, I benched eight 54. I've been in a, uh, I've

been in the film bigger, stronger, faster. Like I've, I've done some things I've been around, you know, I've been on Joe Rogan. I've been on Tim Ferriss' show. Uh, we've rubbed elbows with a lot of great people over here. I'm an inventor. I got three United States patent and never in my life have I ever had anybody come up to me and actually hand me any opportunity ever, not, not one time. And so that's not me griping about it. I don't fucking care. I don't need any of that shit. Um, and if I want to, I'll, I'll kind of make my own path on some of those things. But the point is, is that in that sense, I haven't been lucky. Sometimes you hear people will say, oh, this happened. But even in those cases, you know, somebody will say, somebody will get a shortened story of like what John Cena has done.

And they'll say, yeah, John Cena was discovered by, and they'll name the WWE agent and scout, um, Bruce Prichard. They'll say, yeah, John Cena was discovered by Bruce Prichard. And they make it seem like John was like working out. He's in the middle of doing a set of curls. And Bruce Prichard came over and said, dude, you're fucking jacked. You're in the WWE. You're coming with me. Well, that's not what, that's, that's not the way that it never played out that way.

The real story. And so people would see like, oh shit, man, John Cena. So he's so lucky. And it's like, no, man, you're, you're missing a lot of the story. Doesn't, things do not work that way. John Cena lived in Massachusetts. He was an aspiring bodybuilder and powerlifter he loved lifting he was fucking jacked he moved to southern california for a summer he was gonna um pursue

some bodybuilding he didn't exactly know how or what or what he was gonna do didn't have a lot of money um i think at the time he just had some manual labor jobs. When he moved to Southern California, he recognized, Hey, if I'm going to be there for a whole summer, I'm going to have to figure out a way to make some money. I'm going to have to figure out a way to have some income. And so he picked up a couple of jobs. And one of them was he worked at a supplement company or supplement store. Um, and he also ended up picking up a job at Gold's Gym Venice. He ended up picking up a job as a bouncer at Sharky's where I met my wife in Hermosa Beach. He ended up picking up a job at a company called Mass Movement.

Now, you could say that he's lucky because his friend that worked at Mass Movement was our warehouse manager, and she kept telling us about her friend John. She's like, you guys are going to love him. Because his friend that worked at Mass Movement was our warehouse manager. And she kept telling us about her friend, John. She's like, you guys are going to love him. He's into working out like you guys. He loves, he loves training hard and he loves doing all these things. You guys are going to get along so great. And she kept talking about him.

She kept talking about how big and jacked he was. And I hear people all the time. People tell me all the time, oh, my friend is jacked. And he's, you know, this guy is, he's big like you are. And they're never like, they're never close. Right. You're always like, why did you compare me to that person? Right. Yeah.

Well, then I saw a picture. She had a picture of herself and John on a beach. And John had this bright, like white Mohawk and he was just jacked out of his fucking mind. And I was like, who the fuck is that guy? She's like, that's my buddy, John. She's like, remember I was telling you he's pretty big. I'm like, pretty big. I'm like, Jesus Christ.

He looks like he's like 250 or 260. She goes, oh yeah. She goes, he's probably at least that. She's like, I don't know. I mean, just completely shredded abs the whole, the whole nine yards. So John Cena, even before anything ever happened he had you know probably i don't know five six seven years of training his ass off just to even be in that shape to even be recognized for really much of anything but when he came

to southern california and we got a job at mass movement me and my brothers were working there and we immediately recognized like this guy is just he's just fucking different you know it's hard to put your finger on it um but there's people that are just people that you meet and they're just different the guy we met yesterday the owner of phil's he's just different you know he doesn't have a celebrity personality you're not like oh man that guy should be on tv necessarily but you just know, he doesn't have a celebrity personality. You're not like, oh man, that guy should be on TV necessarily. But you just know that he's different. He just functions, uh, uh, different. Ron Penna.

Right. Yeah. Motherfucker's just different. Perfect example. Yeah. He, he runs a multi-billion dollar company. Oh, doesn't surprise me. He's way different than everybody else is.

Right. Yeah. Um, and so, you know, when John got the job there and stuff like that, my brother and I, we were like, Hey man, like you gotta, at the time I, I just started wrestling and I was like, man, you gotta come down to UPW. You gotta check this out, man. You gotta wrestle. And he kept talking about bodybuilding and I'm like, dude, bodybuilding is gay.

You're not going to get anywhere, you know, bodybuilding. And he kept showing us his junk and his butthole. And then he got the name Big Gay John, because he kept talking about wanting to bodybuild. And he shaved his entire body every single day. And we're like, man, this guy's fucking weird, right? But he was funny. He was somebody who was obviously very passionate and very into, uh, training and very determined. And so we convinced them to go and check out, uh, wrestling. He didn't want to try wrestling and then just like, fuck it up. He wanted to like make a commitment to it. So that's why it took a minute.

Um, but you know, he went to UPW and within six months he was able to get, he was able to make a big enough splash. I had all the same opportunities. I was in the same exact classes. I had the same exact coaches. Both of us learned from my brother, Mad Dog. Um, we had all the same, same exact opportunities. It was nothing special. There was nothing lucky about john cena getting a wwe contract over anybody else that was there his physique was a big part of it but again that's still a lot of work to build up that physique even after he got the contract though it it took another like eight years eight fucking years it took eight years for him to get on tv and then he wrestled Kurt Angle and anybody who knows that match no that's one of the greatest wrestling matches in the history of

wrestling and neither guy is really known as a uh you know great pro wrestling worker as they say but that was an opportunity that John got and he fucking ran with it there's nothing lucky about it and so right place, right time, you know, some of those things happened. Yeah. He happened to work at mass movement where there was some meathead, uh, professional wrestlers already, um, already there and already there to kind of encourage him. And, um, you know, he was, he was lucky to, to meet my brother and I, he was lucky to be coached by Mad Dog because Mad Dog had so much wrestling experience. It's rare that you start out in the wrestling business learning from somebody that learned from a long time ago.

Like my brother kind of learned the old school way of doing things. And so a lot of those things helped. But I mean, man, the guy was bursting at the seams anyway. So it didn't really matter, uh, that we met him. So something else would have happened and he would have ended up, uh, being famous for something anyway. Yeah. Who knows what it is? And so those are the kinds of, that's the kind of shit that happens.

You know, when people say, oh, this guy's lucky or that guy's lucky. happens you know when people say oh this guy's lucky or that guy's lucky it's like yeah um some of it's lucky but their preparation met up really well with the opportunities that they had yeah yeah because during the last podcast i said i was one of the lucky ones and as soon as i said i'm like fuck dude i hate when people tell me that i all your you got lucky it's like no i yeah i did get lucky and i shook your hand and you were in need of a photographer. But people don't know that the second that that happened, I ran to every CrossFit gym that I could like within, you know, my, my neighborhood, I guess I'll say until somebody said yes. So that way I can show you that I can take pictures of people inside of a gym. And then that led to doing a lot of free work for you. And that led to a full-time job.

Right. Well, and there's also so much more to it than just that. There's you, however many years ago, probably 10 years ago, kind of investigating and looking at fitness in general. Like, hmm, I should probably exercise or I should probably, you know, I should, yeah, this is kind of cool. I should get into some of this. There's so much more. There's the entire history of most of your life that makes up you ending up in that specific spot. Oh, tons.

You being with the woman that you're with now, you having the kid that you have now, you living in the area that you're in now. Right. You pursuing interest in diet, in now, uh, you pursuing interest in diet, in exercise, all those things, anything that went towards any of that, every dollar, every penny, every minute, every hour that went towards some of that led you to, to be here. Right. And then it leads to other things and you kind of hear, I do think there are people that like every once in a while, somebody will just, uh, somebody will just look a certain way or have something special about them.

And they'll, somebody will just fucking scoop them up and say, Hey, you know, you're going to be in a movie. But even that it's like, it's still, you still needed to have that certain look. You still need to be in that area at that time. Like maybe it just means that, um, you know, somebody got spotted by a producer and, uh, they were, they were in the gym at six o'clock in the morning. Well, being in the gym at six o'clock in the morning is not luck, right? It's a decision that you made to get your ass there at that time and to put in some hard work for the day and end up turning into something. Sometimes it just turns into something so big that nobody knows what else to fucking

call it other than just be like, oh my God, that's really lucky. Yeah. We got to get you out of here. But where are you going to be in the next couple of weeks? I'm going to be in England and I'm going to be in France. Damn. Mm-hmm. to be in england and i'm going to be in france damn i'm gonna explore some french fries and i'm gonna explore some french toast there you go french rolls i don't think i will actually i don't know

i'm actually really nervous i'm like what am i gonna do about my diet i'm such a pussy you'll be fine the fuck is happening yeah so while mark's gone we're gonna be catching up on some of the previous episodes that we have backlogged. I'm going to try to time it just right. So when you get back, we'll get

ready to shoot from the hip again, shoot live, but I'm sure we'll do something remotely. We'll do something. Yeah. We'll figure out

something. Yeah. Guys, that was our podcast. We talked a lot about luck today. If you liked it, tell us that you

liked it. If you thought it sucked, tell us that it sucked. If you have any comments and there's anything in particular that you want to hear or see from us, let us know. Make sure you subscribe to powerproject.live and make sure you're checking us out on iTunes. Leave us comments. Tell us how awesome we are. Give us ratings.

Send us dick pics and whatever else. I don't know if you could, you probably can't do that on iTunes, but. You can do it on Instagram. Andrew's power project. Yeah. Andrew's Andrew's cell phone. Just blow that up with, with eggplant emojis.

There you go. Strength is never weakness. Weakness never strength. Peace.