Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 254 Live - Our Previous Work Experience Before ST

Episode Date: September 25, 2019

Today wer're telling you all about where we used to work before making it to The STrongest Gym in the West. Mark Bell talks about his job moving gym equipment with John Cena, Nsima Inyang recalls working at Abercrombie and Fitch as a greeter, and Andrew Zaragoza lists out a handful of jobs he hated and dealing with passive aggressive co-workers daily. We also give you tips on leaving your job for you passion and leave you with some book recommendations and which motivational speakers to listen to. Subscribe to the Podcast on all platforms: ➢https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Visit our sponsors: ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Perfect Keto: http://perfectketo.com/powerproject Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 15% off your order! ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots 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 Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/  Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #SARMageddon #MarkBell

If you guys ever heard of Gorilla Glue. Yeah, of course. I'll tell you about that later. I had a bad mess up with that when I was younger. Okay, so real quick. You know like the Gorilla Glue when like it comes in a little package thing and you got to like, you know, you got to open it up. So I couldn't open it. That's a bad idea to have it in individual packets.

Yeah. So I couldn't open it with my like my hands. So instead I just, okay, mine. I was like, I was somewhere between the ages 13 and 16. Anyway, so I put it towards my mouth and I start biting it. I didn't realize how hard I was actually squeezing it too though. So as I was biting it, it comes out and then it like, yeah, it opens, but it slurps into my mouth. And then I just have this hot gorilla glue just going through through my mouth i'm just like oh right and then i like i i tried to get it out but i couldn't get it out

so i had to go to the hospital and they had to put this like solution in my mouth and have me like stay there oh my god it was so hot and i was like am i gonna die because i like i had gorilla glue you know actually sounds amazing Like a movie or something. It was hot, like spicy hot? It was hot, like temperature hot. Because Gorilla Glue is like really, really strong glue. So there's stuff in it that chemically hot. Yeah.

So, oh God, that was the scariest thing. That was so bad. So scary. It's not designed to be in your mouth. Yeah, it's definitely not designed for that. So, fair warning. Don't open Gorilla Glue with your mouth. Yeah, it's definitely not designed for that. Oh my God. So, fair warning. Don't open Gorilla Glyph with your mouth. What are you, a savage? Some people tell me that. Savagery. And just bite,

ripping right into it. Yeah, well, you know what is designed to be in your mouth? Some steak. Yes. Some of that Piedmontese beef. Yeah. I had some today. Cooked up a ribeye. And last night. Nice. I'm out of all the ribeye. That was quick. No, I need more. I love the ribeyes. I need the regular ribeyes. And last night. Nice. I'm out of all the ribeye. That was quick. No, I need more.

I love the ribeyes. I need the regular ribeye. It's got more fat. The center cut is good, but it's lean. Yeah. No, like even though the Piedmontese, like all of their steaks do have minimal fat, like that ribeye still has a good amount. So it's dope.

And it tastes so good. Yeah. I just texted my fiance. She's laid some out. So I'm going to cook some when I get home. Not in the air fryer, though. I did an AB comparison, and it's got nothing on the smoker. Okay, I'll keep doing the air fryer.

I'm not saying it's terrible, but if you have the time. I didn't have the time, so I did cook it in the air fryer. It's really good. didn't have the time so i did cook it in the air fryer and sema do you really good do you think that because you use the air fryer fryer you have an unfair advantage over everyone else in what way physique wise physique wise i think that's part of the reason see i think that's like one of my hats andrew gotta get air fryer well i do have one it's just i prefer if i have the time i'll use a smoker for sure you want to look to look like this, you got to use an air fryer. Dang it.

You guys suck. Go over to airfryer.org. Yeah, for reals. Okay, well, if you don't need an air fryer and you have one. You need some meat. You just need meat. And you can do that by heading over to piedmontese.com. That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com.

Enter promo code POWERPROJECT. That'll get you 25% off your entire order, including free two-day shipping on orders of $99 and above. I like this Perfect Keto Nootropic. We did some, we hit some up yesterday during the podcast with my bro. That was yesterday, right? That was yesterday. Yeah, I'm just losing my mind over here. It's not good for memory retention.

Apparently not. Makes you forget where you're're at which might be a good thing well we do work a lot so it's pretty easy to forget that we yeah we crush so much stuff and you know just in such a short time yeah i saw smoky yesterday and uh he was on his way out the door i was like oh where are you going he's like oh i'm going to enjoy the rest of the day with my friends i'm gonna go ride my motorcycle and we're going on a ride. And he's like, what are you up to? So I'm just going back to work. And he was like, oh, man. Yeah.

See, that's when you got to hit them with that stuff we're about to get into. But you just hit them with, oh, so we're not going to work hard anymore? We don't do that here anymore? Okay, cool. I just want to know so that way I can write in my notes. And then when somebody asks me later, I can tell them you said that we're no longer working hard. So we're going to start working more towards being average. Exactly.

That's the vibe I'm getting. Yeah. But that's the way you speak to me all the time. Somebody has to. Shit. Yeah, we got to bring you down a notch. But you know what really kind of makes me mad about this Perfect Keto stuff? You guys have always finished the cinnamon bun flavor

before I get to get one. Y'all realize I haven't had a single one after my very first bar. We stack it together and we put peanut butter in the middle and we laugh about it. We just sit here and laugh and see who's not going to have any of this.

And we just kick back. You can't get this. That's my favorite flavor and you guys always eat it so to be fair i've only had two and so it's mark it's me well tell me no it was so one of the it was funny so we we had a bunch of these laid out uh joey was taking pictures for like instagram and stuff you know it comes in a box of i don't even know how much let's just say that 12 or something yeah i was. I was going to say, there's 12. She took pictures of it.

By the time she stood up, there was like four left. But nobody, like, I didn't take any. Like, nobody had taken, like, they just disappeared. We don't know what happened. I have no idea. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, instead of, you know, waiting for a free for a, for a freebie, anybody can head over to

perfect keto.com slash power project, enter promo code power project for 15% off these dope cinnamon. What are they? Cinnamon, cinnamon roll, cinnamon roll flavored, perfect keto bars. Um, I, I'm pretty sure I did an AB comparison again, and I think Mark is right. The chocolate chip cookie dough one is better. Really? I think so. I think I have the confidence

to say. It's kind of like over time type of thing you know. It's like you gotta give them all some time. Yeah. Okay well let me get some time with the cinnamon. If I could just get one you know maybe I could figure it out. In order for me to have a taste test and a comparison I need to have one of each.

Oh, man. Oh, my gosh. Poor guy. Getting crushed. Yeah, it's okay. So we had a question come in from a fan. I'll look up what his name is in a second. But basically, he wanted to know what I did before Slingshot and what I did before Super Training.

uh what i did before slingshot and what i did before super training but i figure we might as well let everybody know what we all did uh before we all kind of got together here on this podcast we've talked a little bit in the past about you know some of these things um andrew why don't we kick it over to you for a minute and have you kind of talk about um some of the different uh jobs and stuff that you had years ago. And this message came in from Tommy Gunn, 1999. Tommy Gunn, like the name. I joke around because I am a little bit older than some of the employees here, but I'm like, dude, I've literally worked everywhere.

You name it, I've had a really bad job and a bad experience at that place. I mean, it started when I was a paperboy, right? And then from there, it just went on really bad job and a bad experience at that place. Um, I mean, it started when I was like a paper boy. Right. And then from there it just went on to bad job to worst job, but I'll just start out with one of the highlights. And I mentioned it a second ago about like, uh, the passive aggressiveness that I had to deal with at my most recent job. Uh, I, uh, I feel bad. I can't call her out by name now. For some reason, I just got like a guilty conscience. I said I was going to, but I'm not going to now, but basically like what you are. Yeah. You do know who you are, but like whenever, uh, like some certain task wouldn't get done a

certain way, she would either email you or like instant message you or just walk right up to you and say, Oh, we're, we're no longer, you know, doing that type of that document type anymore. It's like, oh, wait, what do you mean? Oh, well, it shows here that you did this document type instead of that one. So are we, we're just, we're no longer doing that then, right? Okay. It was like, well, no, I just, I made a mistake. No, no, no, it's fine.

It's fine. I just want to make sure that if we're no longer doing that, I'll write it down. And so that way, when the manager comes and asks me, I'll tell him that you said we're no longer doing that, I'll write it down. And so that way when the manager comes and asks me, I'll tell him that you said we're no longer doing that. It's like, no, I messed up, man. Like, shit, why is this so hard for you to understand? Like, I was being lazy. Like, this job sucks and you know it.

And so it was, yeah, it was terrible. I mean, I've had crappy boss after crappy boss. I worked at a shitty gas station where the manager took weekends off despite people begging for the weekends off. And his response was, well, I make the schedule and that's just the way it is. this company because of yours like you're so lenient with us right yeah uh i will name this guy his name was ed uh this guy was one of the biggest dickheads on the planet there was nothing i could do that would uh basically like i i drove a truck around for like eight hours a day from woodland to sacramento to tracy livermore and just everywhere all around down back Sacramento. And any type of accident or mistake that would happen, such as getting a rock chip on my windshield, it was my fault.

I was tailgating. No, I'm not tailgating. Oh, you're driving too fast. I'm not driving too fast. Dude, I have to be at certain places at certain times. It's not my fault if, you know. In California, they're working on the freeways all the time. So it was a lose-lose situation.

And then my most recent job, one day I stood up and I looked around and I'm like, wow, all the managers, all the people that have been here the longest, all the people with the most seniority and most success in this company, they're all out of shape. They're all glued, they're chained to their desk and they're all unhealthy. And it's just like, man, I, who, if that's what it takes, you know, to be successful in this company, I don't know if that's something I want to do. And so that, that was one of the, uh, the eye opening things that happened at my last job where I'm like, okay, something has to change because this shit ain't working. Yeah, it's hard to be in those toxic environments like that. Luckily for me, I never really experienced stuff like that. I've never really been in a,

the most office-y thing I've ever done was work here at Slingshot. I've never really had real jobs. I've had unconventional jobs for many many years and I actually I actually remember telling my brother like a long time ago I was like I got two rules and I was like

never show up on time and never have a real job and those two things they go well they go well together because if you don't have a real job you don't have to really show up on time but he always thought that was kind of funny, but that's just, I just never had interest in like having a real job. And some of that, some of that stems from, you know, having bad experiences in school. And I just didn't think I was smart enough to do certain things. So I didn't

think I would be able to like work a register or something just because I just, I had a block in my mind. I certainly could figure one out. But at that point I had a block in my mind. I certainly could figure one out. Uh, but at that point I had a block in my mind that, that I wasn't going to be able to like learn some of those things. So I was scared. So I never, I never, because I was scared, I never even tried. My parents are, you know, super loving and super supportive maybe to, uh, like their detriment, you know, that maybe, maybe a little too much. They should have probably gave me a little kick in the pants, maybe a little bit more, but I wouldn't change any of that. I appreciate that they were always super supportive. But yeah, like I had like bouncing jobs. I had a job as a personal trainer. And when I was, when I was a kid, when I was like in high school, I had a job, I worked at Marshall's

for like about two weeks, but they scheduled me on a day that I had a football game and I asked them not to schedule me on a day I had a football game. And so I just like, didn't show up for work. And then my dad was pretty mad at me. He's like, that's, he's like, you can, you can call in and tell him you're never coming in again, but you can't like just not show up. It's like, it doesn't work that way, you know? And so that was, that was like the most corporate thing I've ever done, I guess would be like work for Marshalls. And then,

you know, working, working at like, I worked for a company called mass movement. That's where I ended up meeting John Cena. Like we moved fitness equipment around. And yeah, like mainly like bouncing jobs,

working at Sharky's. That's where I ended up meeting my wife. Like a lot of cool things came from these, uh, weird jobs. I never really had to deal with trying to think if that's accurate. Yeah. I never had to deal with like a crazy boss or never had to deal with, uh, anybody yelling or screaming at me, but I would like to think that I wouldn't tolerate it. Like, uh, that's not the way I was.

Uh, I wasn't brought up to like take stuff like that. Like my parents taught me, like, that's not, you know, no one should ever talk down. You should never talk down to anybody, you know? And then no one has the right to do that to you either, you know? And so I would imagine I wouldn't tolerate it, but I've also never been subjected to it. So I don't know. Yeah. And you, you said you were a trainer to before. Right. So would you consider like that would you consider yourself an entrepreneur in that too. Right. You know I don't I don't know. I I think even to this day I'm kind of I'm still like unconventional because I invented a product. And so like an inventor is, an inventor sometimes can be an entrepreneur. But to be honest, I don't think I've figured out the entrepreneur stuff nearly as well as I want to yet. I think there's still so much more for me to learn.

Inventing stuff is maybe like a gift and a skill, maybe coming together at the right time. And so I'd say I'm kind of more on that side than anything more on kind of a creative side um than on like because a real entrepreneur in my opinion what they would be able to do is they'd be able to scale a bunch of different businesses they'd be able to come in and go okay we do one two three boom this one's off off and running obviously it's way more complicated than that but they can kind of flip a switch on these different companies and they could help out a food prep company uh They could help out, you know, someone who has an app. They could help out someone who sells fishing hooks. They could help out someone that sells just about

anything. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Like I think in terms of like my first job experience or I guess working for companies, my first ever job right out of high school was Abercrombie and Fitch where, uh, I worked in the store and then I also did some of that, uh, shirtless holiday dude things. Right. Um, I think that job was actually, it was pretty cool because it got me used to having to talk to people. I'm, I'm a very, very shy human being. Uh, I'm very introverted by nature. A lot of people wouldn't necessarily know that initially, but I like that has always been an issue for me actually speaking to people. So I think that job was one of those things that like, because I had

to speak to so many people so often just standing at the door saying, Hey, how's it going? Hey, how's it going? Hey, how's it going? Did you have to wear all the cologne and stuff? Yeah, it's where fierce that was this, that was, yes all the cologne and stuff? Yeah, it's word fierce. That was this. That was, yes. The cologne's name was fierce. And it's still embedded deep within my psyche, that scent. What's interesting about that right there is the fact that it's almost more awkward if you don't say anything. Right?

So, like, if you're just there, I mean, you kind of get a vibe from each person on how much they want to be talked to, right? Yeah. a vibe from each person on on how much they want to be talked to right yeah and once you work there for a little while you can kind of get understanding i guess of like who needs help and who really just doesn't they're just praying that you don't say anything to them sometimes too and you can get a sense of it but it is almost more awkward when that person in the store like never really says much to you i mean just greeting you i think is like part of the job right yeah it that was part of the job when you're like at the front but i I like, even though I didn't like that job, it, I did learn a lot from there in terms of like just being able to talk to somebody without being scared to talk to somebody. Yeah. Because

like real talk, I used to be like, if I didn't have to talk to you, I just wouldn't talk to you. Like that's just it. If I didn't know you, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say hello or I wouldn't smile. I would just kind of keep to myself. So that job, even though it was Abercrombie and Fitch, was really beneficial for that. And I'm happy I had that. The second job I had right after that, oh, was at 24 Hour Fitness. I worked in membership sales. So I would sell training and I would sell memberships. Would you just take your shirt off and be like, yep?

Nah, I didn't do any of that. People wondered why I wasn sell memberships. Would you just take your shirt off and be like, yep. Nah, I didn't do any of that. People wondered why I wasn't training people. But like, I mean, other than that, like that was also pretty cool because I think that's where I started actually reading books on like, I guess, how to communicate better. And I think what worked really well for me in terms of like that job and then also dealing with the passive aggressiveness you were talking about was a book called how to win friends and influence people i think that was like the first self-development book i've ever read and literally because of that book like whenever i was whenever i had to deal with that passive aggressiveness from a boss i'd literally just confront it right there even like if i was at fault because there was a few times i was late and one of my bosses i'm not going to name him um but he would always be very just passive about him like hey man like

i'm really sorry i was late today i understand that you're not happy about that i'm going to do my best not to let it happen again because typically he did that to everybody but nobody would respond like they just like put their heads down and be like sorry you know but like i we i spoke to him very respectfully since he was my boss but i let him know like hey i'm working on this i'm sorry blah blah blah and that that really helped those types of situations but i think i really didn't like having to answer to somebody in that way um so that's why like i mean after that i would try to i mean i moved on to being a personal trainer in a private gym.

Um, and that was nice for sure. And then I moved on to the online thing, but I never, I never liked having, I guess, an authority figure to have to answer to in that way. You know what I mean? It's not that I can't handle that, but I just don't like it. I don't know. It sucks. And I think that's honestly like part of why i work so hard with my photography

because yeah like you know eight to five i did have somebody always you know looking over and eventually i would work remotely but when you work remotely the only way for them to track how much productivity you're doing is literally count how many clicks per minute how many documents you you you know cleared out per hour or whatever it was so there's always some someone there lurking and then once i clocked out of work and i was doing my own thing with my photography it was so empowering to know like oh shit if i work my ass off right here like one nobody's going to be judging me well except for you know potential clients but it was all up to me and And if I wanted to see a change,

I would just go make that change in the workforce. If you wanted to see change, I mean, you know, take a number like in that it was the medical outfield. I call it cause it was just a medical records. Uh, nobody wants to ruffle any feathers. Things are protocols are set in place and nobody wants to change them because that's just the way things are. So the fact that I could make a change, like even just to my own website, like it was like, okay,

this is, this is what I need to be doing because this feels right. Yeah. So I think it was kind of like the Ron Pena situation. Like I hate, you know, he, I hate being bossed around so much that I was willing to work two jobs just

so that way I can do my own thing. Well, even right now though, like even though like you were here working at Slingshot, you're working for Mark. But because you like what you do, aren't you probably working harder right now than you did at any of your other jobs? Wait. Yeah. One hundred percent. Yeah. No, there's like people freak out when I'm working on the weekend, working after work. freak out when i'm working on the weekend working after work and i'm like oh no i get the uh the you know the statement of like oh wow they're making you work on a sunday like like no i i get to do what i love to do today yes i'm i'm ecstatic that i get to do this so it's way different and yeah i do i work yeah work capacity is insane these days. Testosterone helps. You know, what we try to do in this company, and it's impossible to do it all the way through,

but you try to give people a lot of things they like to do. You know, I've even sat down with people sometimes and say, what do you like to do? And they'll say, I like A, I like B, and I like C. I'm like, okay, what do you not like to do? And they'll say, I don't like, you know, D and E and F. And I'll say, I can get rid of E and F for you, but you still got to do, you know? So like, you know, a little give and take, I can, I can help offload something to someone else. Maybe they, maybe they like doing something. Maybe somebody likes being more organized and making a spreadsheet.

And maybe somebody is like, like, dude,, I'm just never going to make a spreadsheet. Like, okay. Hopefully we can just work around it. You don't want to have to work around everything all the time, but if it's small things, it's going to be a small thing. It's not going to be a big deal. And if people are excited about what they are doing every day, one of my goals for this place is to try to make the place so large, you know, make the place so big that you're trying to make the world that people are, quote unquote, living in so large that they don't want to leave it. They don't want to go outside of it. So, you know, we that's why we try to put some food in the break room you know we're going

to get a shower here soon like just little things like just try to you know and try to yeah gang shower of course i mean yeah it's gonna be the one the one like shower in the middle that has like multiple like uh what do they call that faucet whatever heads around the circle so we can it's gonna be one singular waterfall coming down even better how do you guys feel about um the have you ever worked for free for some time because like you wanted to be able to have an opportunity to do something like what's actually absolutely i've done it several times for photography, but I did it here. Um, when I had an opportunity, like after I talked to Mark at the seminar, uh, if anybody hasn't heard that story,

I met Mark at a seminar at the previous, uh, super training location, uh, gave him my card and we connected. But, uh, yeah, I, I came in and I just wanted every, any opportunity I could to shoot here, I would do it. I had never once asked for money. It wasn't until later that we did discuss that. But no, I worked for free for, I don't know, like a month and a half, two months. And I just figured the worst case scenario is I would have a stronger portfolio. But best case, this.

But no, I 100 100 work for free yeah i feel like a lot of people are willing to do that but you know like when i first started getting involved here a long time ago i knew i wanted to do more with you guys i just didn't know what i was gonna i could do right um i think the first expo i came out to was San Jose, but I think I was, I talked to Smokey at the time and he was like, yeah, we're going to San Jose. If you want to come, you can come. So I just drove down and just figured out what I could help with. Like I didn't ask for pay or anything. I just knew I wanted to see if I could be, you know, of service. And I think like my, the sales background I had worked out and that helped out with that. But then, you know, obviously we started doing more and more stuff. And it's funny because like when when you first asked if I like asked me to start doing the podcast thing, that was awesome. And I was gung ho about that. But there's some people that I told about that. They're like, oh, how much you getting paid? I was like, nothing. I'm just going to go do this. Like, what? Why are you going to do that and not get paid because it's a fucking great opportunity like don't let them walk all over you right you deserve blah blah yeah how many hours a

week is it yeah right i get that all the time like yeah and i feel like if there's really if there's a situation where you can like work with somebody or work and do something and you're not necessarily getting paid at that moment like just try and maybe take that opportunity a lot of people aren't willing to just grind that out without any pay for a while you know i guess everybody's situation is different because like yeah i had something else that i was doing that was bringing me income right um but i feel like that's that's a big thing to be able to like do what you want to do in some situations i think a lot of people uh are like i don't know how to do in some situations. I think a lot of people are like, I don't know how to do that because I got to pay bills, you know? And like, if you go back, you know, years and years ago, there was

like, well, there's still, they still exist, but there was a lot of multi-level marketing things years ago. And what they would do, they'd have these seminars and they would kind of prey on people that were dreamers and they would, they would get you so excited. And so they got me. Yeah. So they get you so excited and so obsessed with this message you so excited and they got me yeah so they get you so excited and so obsessed with this message but yeah they got me too some of them some of the messages is like uh and i'm a believer like i'm a dreamer myself so like i fall in that category but i i'm just i would never fall for it because i i know it's too good to be true but at the same time i understand what they're trying to preach um like like uh it's kind of weird because it's too good to be true, but at the same time, I understand what they're trying to preach.

Like, like it's kind of weird because it's you're trying to figure out, like, how am I going to actually make money? Like, when is that going to when is that going to come? But it's like, well, you have to believe. And then it's like, well, if you have a bad attitude, then you're going to stay broke. You know, and I do I do definitely believe in a lot of that stuff. I think that there's some merit to it. But a lot of people are just trying to figure out how do I get past like just being broke and then they want to try to pick up like a nine to five. And it's like, hold on a second.

You're on the right path, but also realize potentially that if you have two jobs, your one job might be costing you a lot more than you're actually thinking because you might not be able to actually think about anything other than just working and sleeping all the time. So like I said yesterday, sometimes people are thinking about how they can't afford something. And I sometimes would think almost the opposite. You can't afford not to do it. Sometimes you can't afford not to go to a seminar. Sometimes you can't afford not to do something for free. So you might think in your head, it doesn't make any sense. I can't afford not to go to a seminar sometimes you can't afford not to do something for free so you might think in your head it doesn't make any sense i can't do something for

free because i don't have any freaking money and it's like you can't afford not to do that because the opportunity might be too great you might be rubbing elbows with someone real powerful that might set you off in the right direction yeah you like there's something you said there multi-mark well yeah that i'll talk about that. That MLM thing, that... It just reminds me of, you guys remember the scene on Pain and Gain when he's at the seminar? And he's like, hey, you muscles in the front, are you a doer or are you a donter or whatever? He's like, I'm a doer! And he gets all hyped up and I'm like, damn, I've seen that happen in real life.

Yeah, dude. Okay, so as far as the making some sacrifices part because i want to talk about that that and then the mlm thing when i left 24 to become a personal trainer like i knew that like i needed to i didn't have any clients at that time so i feel like there's a lot of there's a lot of times where it's good just to make a dive or like just like quit all and figure out what you're trying to do but you got to have a plan for that you know what i mean um at 24 so what i did for like six months is like i knew i wanted to be a personal trainer and i knew like i want to do this somehow but i don't want to do it for 24 i want to do it at a private gym so

somehow to get clients so i would i was selling the hell out of memberships already i was really good at that i was still selling training but anybody that like I was talking to and taking around the floor that like, you know, we were vibing a bit. I'm like, Hey, you know, just keep this between me and you, but I'm going to start training people soon. I train people right now already. You know, if you want to do this with me later, just I'll give you my number. We'll talk later. And I stacked up a bunch of clients before I left. And, uh, once I left, I already had a bunch of clients set up for personal training at this private gym. Um, if my old manager's listening, I apologize, but like, that's like,

I had a plan because I feel like a lot of times, like, you know, you'll want to go do something. You'll just like quit at all. Right. But then you don't have any idea of what you're actually doing now. So that's super necessary. Um, yeah, I think it's safe to say that's it's close to what i did to uh you know to do photography full-time um i i've i didn't think about a backup plan but i'm like okay i'm taking a huge pay cut by coming to super training like initially it was a huge pay cut from my previous job uh but it was still something so it wasn't like i was like totally quitting everything because i you know whatever like i had something yeah it wasn't enough but it was something and i just knew that like even if it

didn't work out i had such a huge like i didn't have a huge client list at that time but i had something also there too you know so it wasn't like I just quit one day and said hey all right cool I'm a photographer now who wants to hire me and have nothing to show for it like I to get hired here like I showed Mark that I could do it by uh working for free for a CrossFit gym I took a bunch of pictures there and I showed Mark like hey I can do this in the fitness realm too and that you know I showed him and he liked what he saw and that was that and dude yeah Like I just remembered this when I first started working with people online, my first 10 people that I worked with were individuals that I was like,

Hey, I'm not going to charge you anything because I needed to figure out if I could actually do this remotely with people. You know, I didn't know if I could, I knew I could train people. I didn't know if I could actually set something up where they could be successful without me there so like my first 10 clients I didn't charge anything but I was just like work with me for like three six months let's see if we can do this let's see if you can do this on your own and then after that then I could then I finally got the confidence to like be like okay I can start actually doing this you know charging people for this because I'm okay there's still things I need to work on but I I'm kind of decent. So it's that sometimes you just got to do shit and do it free. Yeah. Yeah. I've done a lot of stuff, not even just for free, but at my own cost, you know,

like you said, going down to the, uh, the fit expo, you know, going to the San Jose fit expo. And I've done a lot of things like that, you know, to seminars um going to powerlifting meets um you know just just kind of trying to figure out a way to like rub elbows with the right people you know i always just i always sought out the best when i was uh when i wanted to box i learned from kevin rooney who trained mike tyson when i wanted to learn how to jujitsu to do jujitsu i didn't go for very long but i went to the Gracie Jujitsu Academy in Torrance, California. Like I always tried to gravitate towards the best when I wanted to be a power lifter. I went to Louie Simmons when I wanted to be a pro wrestler. I went to

their main wrestling camp that they have in Louisville, Kentucky. I always tried to strive for how do I figure this out? And I didn't really have money to do any of those things. I just was like, I'm just going to go and just do it. And everyone was always like, how? I'm like, I don't know. I'm not sure, but I'm going to try to, I'm going to try to figure it out. I'll get some crap job. I'll drive some crap car and other areas of my life will be sacrificed because I don't really care about those other areas for right now. I'm going to drive a car that might barely get me there. I'm going to barely get there with the amount of money that I have in my pocket. And once I'm there, I'm going to try to learn and absorb as much as I can

and just try to help people as much as I can. Once people see that you're willing to help, they're usually willing to help you. And like when I went to Westside Barbell and went to Columbus, Ohio, Louie Simmons, every time we had breakfast, every time we had lunch, every time we went out to eat, he always, you know, he'd always buy every single time. He would never let you take the bill from him. He just, he's like,

no, no, no. You know, he's like, I can afford it. It's not a big deal. I'll just, and he did it every time. But part of the reason why he did that is because you, it was a kind of a two-way street. Like you were lifting for him and you were, uh, you know, becoming stronger and you're helping other people in the gym get stronger. And then I was always like, Hey, how can I, like, I don't feel like I'm pitching in that good. Like I'm not squatting a thousand pounds. I'm not like some of these other lifters that you have. Can I clean up? Can I move equipment? Can I do whatever? And sometimes he'd say no. And sometimes he'd say yes. And so, you know, figure out a way you can provide value, figure out a way you can be useful, but you're going to have to eat a lot of shit sandwiches for a while. That's just going to be,

uh, the way that it's, it's gotta be. And I've done just tons of stuff for free, even working for like elitefts.com. I, I, if you go back and you look at elite and you can go back to like 2004, you know, before the internet ever even started. You go back like 2004 and you'll see I was writing on there under the name Jackass. And that was just some random thing that Dave Tate came up to me in the gym and he was like, hey, do you want to do this? I was never like, oh, my God, well, that's going to take some time. And, you know, that's going to be, you know, 18 bucks an hour or whatever. I was never thinking about money uh, money by any means, but that consumed a lot of my time because I got so into it from that point. I, because,

because of, because of the nature of, of my like character online, I got a lot of questions about my training. Cause I would write this, these wild workouts, half of them were true and half of them were fake. I would type in that I was doing like burpees and all kinds of crazy, crazy workouts. Half of them were true and half of them were fake. I would type in that I was doing like burpees and all kinds of crazy, crazy workouts. And people were like, what? But people started to become interested because I started to get a better physique and I started posting pictures and videos and stuff. And I was one of the few people that was posting a lot of videos online. And so like when the questions started coming in, I got hyped up. I was fired up. I was like, this is great. I tried to answer every single question that ever came through, whether it was like just a comment or an email or it didn't matter how

someone got ahold of me. I tried to answer everything all the time. That stuff was all free. And that's stuff I still try to, I try. I really do. I really try. I give people my number all the time. People text me. I've given my number out on social media before and got text bombed for a few days and yeah answered as many questions as i could there i still am going through uh you know dms all the time trying to answer those but those early days of doing stuff with elite was you know kind of like my early like learning into how important that really was because then you have now you have attention and attention is like the ultimate asset and you can do whatever you want with attention from there.

You can, you can figure out, you know, you're going to sell an ebook or, you know, it's not always trying to sell something to somebody, but you have the opportunity to, you know, I want to, I want to get your thoughts on this because I think I was, I was, I was asked this before and I honestly didn't even know how to answer it. How an individual who doesn't even know what it is they want to do or what it is they have like a like a passion for or a passion about learning about. How do you figure that out? You know, because like at the end of the day, you'll just end up getting a job because you have to make some money. But you don't even know what kind of work you can do that can provide value that you can make money with. How would someone figure that out if they don't, if they don't know it?

You know, I think we were lucky enough to stumble into fitness right when we were younger, but do you, do you got something about that? I was just going to say, uh, work working for free because if, if you do take a job or, uh, you think you might like photography and, you know, you try to work at like a portrait studio that like you know it's like uh you know people just it's a commercial thing right you go to the mall you get your portraits done yeah you know you you might hate it but if you were to say like hey andrew i think i like photography can i come like help you out at one of your shoots and volunteer and like work for free yeah because i'm not sure i think i might like it and so that way

if like somebody does follow me around like dude this sucks they can just walk away and they don't feel like you know obligated to stay there because because they are making a check now yeah you know because then you kind of get stuck so yeah once you start making just enough to almost pay your bills then you're like i can't leave here dude know, the fact that you say that there was, um, while I was working at Abercrombie, I was at Sac State and I was at Sac State for like biomedical sciences. I wanted to be a doctor. But during that time, I also volunteered at the UC Davis ER here in Sacramento. And I spent, that's the UC Davis ER is what caused me to leave school because I talked to a bunch of docs and there were quite a few who liked what they did.

But the ones that were that didn't like what they did. First off, they were making a lot of money. And the main thing was they didn't necessarily have the they said that they felt stuck because first off, they were making a lot of money. They didn't feel that they could actually leave. You know what I mean? They I guess they were happy with how much they were making, but they weren't enjoying their life, but they, they just couldn't do it now. They're too, they felt they were too old and they couldn't get out of it. And since I was like young already, I'm still young, but since I was like, like there, I was like, shoot,

it's cool what they're doing here, but I really don't love this. I don't know what it is I want to do right now. Like at that point, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I left school. I started working at a gym as a membership salesman, trying to figure out what it was I like to do. But that thing, you know, I wonder too, like if an individual is older, right? So we're, we're, we're talking about, okay, you don't know what you want to do. You got to work in a bunch of things to figure that out. But a lot of people that are older and they're making good money and they don't like it, like, I wonder how you can, what you can do in those types of situations. Yeah, let me back up for just a second, you know, and let's talk about college, you know, like my most hated thing. Think about, just think about this from a logical perspective.

You know, there's a would you rather game, right? This is a very simple one. There's not as much pressure in this would you rather scenario. Okay. Thank goodness. Would you rather go to school for four years, party, maybe meet some girls, maybe have some cool friends, right? Probably get drunk a bunch, probably have a lot of great times, a lot of great memories, but also have a huge bill, of great times, a lot of great memories, but also have a huge bill, right? Or would you rather, option number two, would you rather go and pursue something that you think you have an interest in for free? Doesn't cost you anything except for your time. At the end of two years, you will probably be somewhat of a, I don't want to say material expert, but

you'll be expert enough to like go off and do your own thing. So like, well, which way would you rather have it where you're, you know, maybe you're not connected to as many friends, maybe you're not connected to as many people, but you're also not 150 or $200,000 in the hole or whatever the hell college even costs. I don't even know what it is anymore, but it's astronomical, right? It's crazy. You could spend that time more wisely. I mean, look, look at how accessible someone like Gary Vee is.

If you're persistent enough and you're crazy enough and you tried to meet him at different coffee shops and shit, you could probably end up working for him. You know what I mean? That's happened a lot. He's actually hired a lot of people.

He's had a lot of weird, crazy shit like that happen. Yeah. Or even myself. Like, who knows? You don't know what's possible or who you can work with. There used to be seven degrees of separation. Now there's only one because there's just a blockage of whether you're able to crack through on someone on the Internet. And so my advice would be, you know, try to pursue something that you like. you know, try to pursue something that you like. And if you don't know what you like, I would just take a big, big old deep breath and try not to worry about it too much. Easy for me to say. Right. But I never knew what I was going to do. Like I talk about making the world a better

place to live, but it wasn't like, it wasn't like I was born and I was like, I'm here to make the world a better place to live. Like that was a message that was developed over many, many years. It took a really long time. I didn't really know anything of what I was going to do until I was like 35. So it's like, I don't know, seven years ago. Like that's not that long ago. And I still don't have it. I'm still trying to figure it out.

I actually ask myself nearly daily, what is it that I like to do? What feels good to me? And right now, what feels good to me is like paying people back, helping people out. Like that feels right. That feels about the best. You know, seeing like a, seeing paperwork that shows that like our sales are up, our sales are down. It doesn't do anything to me one way or the other. I'm just like, okay, well, we'll just adjust this and that'll adjust that and that'll just be the way it goes, right?

I almost don't feel like I don't have all that much control over that. There's kind of just comes and goes and yeah, we gotta be creative and we gotta try hard, but I feel like I put all the effort I can into all that stuff as it is. And it makes me feel better to randomly buy coffee for the person that's behind me at the, at the coffee shop. You know what I mean? Like it's weird.

Just hold the door open for somebody. Just say hi to somebody. Just all these little corny things. They are corny. I recognize that, but they feel a lot better. And, and they're, you know, they say the best things in life are free. And I am a strong believer in that. Yeah, that honestly, that's something I wish I like understood before I went into and started like started college. Because like I I mean, I was fairly sure in what I wanted to do then. Right. But at the same time, it's if I just had a better understanding of what it was like to work in a hospital. if I just had a better understanding of what it was like to work in a hospital, you know, if you're in high school right now and you have the chance to, cause I know like you can even volunteer at the, like in the ER or something in high school too. But if you have the chance to go to that dream job you have in your mind and just shadow for like, just shadow volunteer,

just work in that environment for free, you know, doing what you can, um, to see that environment, do that. Because like, if you, I know so many people that I went to school with, like at this point that are, that have that job that they, they wanted or they went to school for, and I absolutely hate it because they didn't get any experience beforehand. They were just thinking about the money that was going to be able to be made if they got that specific job. Got a lot of homies like that. And that is, that is a massive regret because you've already put in all this money in school. I was, I mean, I am in some debt in terms of school, but at least I didn't, I didn't go all the way. Right. But because they didn't understand exactly what they were getting into, there's just all of this regret and fear of doing something else it's like

it's that's tough yeah they're i feel like there definitely should be something in place like uh i don't know what it's like when you go to like an actual like big university but let's just pretend you go in and you talk to somebody and you're like i want to be a doctor that's my whatever that major is you can see i tell how much i know. Uh, yeah, I want to be eye doctor. Okay. Uh, you have to go to, you know, 40 hours work experience in order to take this major, whatever it is. I think that should be a part of it. Cause I have tons of friends like back in the day when we were drifting and working on cars, we all had a lot of fun. So naturally a bunch of them were like, I'm going to go to UTI. I'm going to do this for the rest of my life none of them

graduated and actually did that as their career yeah a lot of them tried it and like man this sucks like this is not as fun you know what too is it was probably so hard and that's why it seemed as recommendation of like trying to mirror somebody is probably uh maybe more wise because like going to one of those tech schools probably really would blow your mind probably like oh my god I didn't know that much went into you know making this kind of car or you know there's it's probably really overwhelming and then to go from like being a dude that like is a drifter who's probably kind of unorganized you typically kind of do stuff when you want to do it with your buddies when they want to do it so it's like on your own watch and a lot of those things yeah that's probably probably feels good

it's probably a lot of fun and exciting but then when you have to do it every day and it's like part of a more organized plan it can be really tough i think a lot of people that listen to this probably are interested in like trying to figure out how to do something from a fitness perspective. And a great way to do it is again, back to what you just said is like, you can probably, maybe you can't get a hold of like Kelly Sturette. Um, but super training gym is free. We have people come in here all the time. We have people that intern, um, we've had a guy that interned for a while. Now he's working full time with us josh setledge uh there's there's you know there's a lot of people that are doing things like that maybe you can't get a hold of you know the best guy or the best girl that's in your in your field to be able to kind of mirror them but

find somebody local that you think that you can uh mirror somebody that you can kind of follow and have them be an example you're going to be shocked also too at how different the actual business is versus how you actually think it works out in your head. You might think that somebody makes money this way and then you go to them and you kind of find out, oh no, they don't actually make any money from anybody in person. They do it all online or vice versa. Like everyone's a little different. They might work with professional athletes for free because of the look of it and because of what it does and you might think oh man i want to work with professional athletes and i had some of that thought in my head i was like i want to work with like fighters and professional athletes and stuff and whenever i had the

opportunity to honestly the financial side of it never really made any sense it never made sense for me to like uh so it's complicated but normally the way that a lot of those um a lot of professional athletes work is usually getting paid through like an agent or an agency um i've had many friends work with uh high level athletes like that like uh charles glass charles glass would get paid by an agency to work with a with a group of uh kids that were coming from college to the NFL. And he would try to bulk these kids up for a six few i'm not saying you can't do it you certainly can but it's so few and far between and to try to get the reputation like charles glass has been around for a long time to try to get the reputation is really really hard so maybe you end up landing on something that looks a little different but maybe you work with kids

but maybe you do something more affordable like you might be thinking i'm gonna do high end i'm gonna do you know college level and pro level And then you kind of come to find out like, man, that would be really, that would be really hard. It's not like the pro guys don't have money for it. It's just that it just gets to be a little awkward. Once there's like a payment, then you have to be like kind of a full-time strength coach and you got to really be at their like beck and call. I remember one of my friends used to train Kobe Bryant and that's all he trained and Kobe Bryant paid him to not go with anybody else. So my friend was getting paid like X amount to train Kobe Bryant and then he got paid

almost the same amount, maybe actually even a little bit more just to not train anybody else. Wow. But it's like how, you know, you're going to land that client. Like it's going to be really, really tough and it's going to be way different than you expect. I guess that's my main point. You get into fitness, it's going to be way, you might have a girl that just wants to power lift. She might outwork anybody you've ever met in your life. Yeah. As opposed to the professional athlete who really maybe doesn't really care about lifting. Right. Sometimes they don't care.

Sometimes these guys are really, really talented men and women that, you know, these professional athletes sometimes are just awesome at what they do. And the last thing on their mind is to go and, you know, do a bunch of lunges and squats. Yeah. You know, I think Jordan Syatt, when he was training Gary Vee, that was the same situation. Like you travel around with Gary and do all that stuff. And he wasn't training anybody else for like two years. He was only training Gary. That's wild. Same with Michael Jordan's trainer, Tim Grover,

who also coached or trained Kobe and Dwayne Wade. But Michael Jordan was like, I don't pay you to train me. I pay you not to train anybody else. When you got that kind of, when you got that kind of dough, of dough, you can pay them to train you and not to do it for anybody else too. But also, again, that was another opportunity thing too for him was he wanted to figure out a way how to break into professional sports. And he did whatever he could to train anybody. And he just happened to reach out nonstop to Michael Jordan and he finally answered him. It's pretty crazy, but yeah. I would also try to just, you know, get your mind wrapped around, like,

let's say that you're not that passionate about, like, you don't like watching football and you don't really care about UFC and you don't, you're not interested in lifting. Like you're not interested in like that many things. Um, I would just try to figure out like, what's, what's something palatable for you to like actually work with like what's a way for you to make money maybe maybe you can come up with an invention or idea maybe you can think of you know I'm still always thinking of stuff that's just kind of the way that I work I'm always trying to think of things to you know make things a little easier or I mean a slingshot that's what it does it makes like benching easier for anyone with a

hurt shoulder or elbow so that helps solve a problem try to think about the different problems you run into every day maybe you you know i don't know burn your hand on your coffee cup every day and you're like man it'd be great if they made these more insulated or whatever the hell the case is and and you're the guy that made those little sleeves on the uh on all the coffee cups that are in the world right there's you know right? There's money to be made and there's success to be had and success is not owned by anyone. Bill Gates has a lot of success. A lot of people have a lot of success,

but they're not like holding it all. And there's more money to be made out there through all different kinds of things. And there's some of the different jobs I've had. I remember just being like almost confused that there was so much money around like moving equipment, you know, in Los Angeles into some of these, you know, multi-million dollar homes. I was like, what does this guy do? And what does that guy do? And what did I do? I asked questions. I started asking, probably wasn't very professional of me, you know, looking back at it,

but I'm like, Hey, like I got a question. Like I was usually talking to like of me you know looking back at it but i'm like hey like i got a question like i was usually talking to like a you know someone who's like watching the house because these people are just these giant mansions right and i'd say you know what does the guy do that you know lives here and there would be a different story every single time but i remember one guy made uh blinds and shades yeah i'm like you can own a house like that off of and i'm like well everyone has blinds and shades like holy fuck you know like that's fascinating right it blows your mind you're like oh my god i never even what about somebody that like does something with like glass or carpets or i mean every everywhere you go there's fucking carpet there's always a ground

right there's always stuff on the ground right and there's always glass in every building so if you start to you know light fixtures i mean you just the list of shit goes on and on what about even the um the like decor like the stuff that's in like an like an in-and-out burger or the stuff that's at um mcdonald's or the stuff that's at McDonald's or the stuff that's at Burger King. Chipotle. Chipotle. Or you ever go to a restaurant that has like a country western theme and it has like, you know, it's got a cowboy on. Like those these things are all that those all come from some big ass company that like figured some of those things out.

But they started small probably years ago with a passion for that type of thing and it just kept going with it and now they outfit like every applebee's or whatever the hell it is texas roadhouse yeah you know i like everybody has a different route to this and you know like ron pena for example he i think they started off in uh the tech thing and they were talking about how you know it was for money. It was for no other reason than money, but there wasn't like a love for that. So then they moved to something that they actually had a real interest in a love for. So I mean, yeah, it's great. I wonder if, you know, it's ideally with what you do and like your, your work, you want to be able to like,

like what you do that makes you money, but does that always need to be the case you know no it definitely doesn't have to especially when it comes to like you know there's a lot of people that are super happy with doing like various forms of art you know making music uh painting uh poetry like writing like people some people are some people are so happy with doing that they'll just live in their car and they and we'll probably look at that and be like i don't i don't really get that but that person's happy that person's pumped like cole robinson actually yeah you know i think he mentioned that like he lives a very very simple life right now too um but like he just really enjoys helping these people i don't think he even charges some of the people he helps he just really enjoys that yeah um yeah we um we came across somebody who was a uh i won't say who it was

who they were coaching where it was just just because but uh they were their jujitsu coach and we looked outside and it's like man does that guy live in his car and i like dude i think he does but man he's so happy like that's how much he loves jujitsu that he's willing to we don't know for sure but like yeah like okay so i'm looking how much he loves jujitsu that he's willing to we don't know for sure but like yeah like okay so i'm looking at it like man jujitsu looks hard yeah like this guy's willing to give up everything just so that way he can do it every day so yeah sometimes money isn't isn't as important as we think it is yeah it is nice to have a skill set that you can feel good about though too yeah you know so like that's where

that's where you can feel like self-worth and purpose but it doesn't necessarily have to be rewarded with finances it might help if it's rewarded with finances because maybe finances are like a false sense of uh of purpose in a way because they provide so much convenience for you and then people confuse the convenience with value and it's like i have a lot of friends that make a lot of money and they're you know they're they're very very unhappy like they would probably have rather not ever made that amount of money they would be happier if they never if they never learned if they never learned learned uh even how to well

because it's like it's not satisfying to them at some point you know that at some point they um it's it's because they probably never something is probably broken inside of them somewhere and they're probably striving for something that they're never really going to find and that happens a lot with a lot of successful people that happens a lot with a lot of successful people. That happens a lot with a lot of people that are striving to be the best basketball player ever, the best baseball player ever. And they think when I get to this, I'm going to be the shit. And like, everyone's going to bow down to that and I'm going to feel good. It's like, no, you're going to feel the same way that you feel right now because you're kind of, you're kind of fucked up. Like you're not, you're not happy with yourself at the moment.

So just because you got to a different destination, you know, I know, I know I've had a lot of friends over the years that try to move, you know, they try to move around from one spot to another, from one city, one country or one state to another. And it's like, that never really works. The problems continue to follow them it's like well the problems are they're actually in the mirror you know there's there's things in inside that probably could use some fixing uh before you go and try to travel or before you go and try to like make money to fill in that gap uh that you might have yeah you know you um you mentioned like having a skill set making sure you have a skill set one of the things I think it's like obvious about why people will take like, you know, you go to school when you're a kid, go to high school and you're going to go to college.

Why? So you can learn something, you know, so you can learn the skill set needed for a specific job. But I do think that it is difficult for a lot of people to wrap their head around learning something for themselves outside of the education system like andrew i mean in terms of photography you just you did all that what did you do online courses how did you learn how to do what you do so it was a lot of youtube university and a website called creative live creative life i did so much study on creative live that i i almost like i would not want to admit where I got a lot of my skills from, but yeah, that's where it was. It was all online stuff. It's a company I worked for, by the way. Yep. I remember seeing you with Tim Ferriss. I actually, yeah, that's...

What is CreativeLive? CreativeLive is like an online, I guess, like teaching course, you can say, right? And they teach all kinds of different things. Yeah. Skillshare and that type of stuff. Yeah. So that's, it's where skillshare got like their i don't want to say they stole it but like that's kind of like what the whole idea is but except it would be i don't know is skillshare live or is it uh it's it's not live but they like yeah a lot of people who have different you know skills in terms of videography or a bunch of different things make

their own courses they got it so what creative live was it's like uh okay a photography course uh like if you have a question you can like go in the chat room ask it and then they'll go over it yeah yeah if only there was a way that they can do that with like a podcast oh wait yeah there's kind of an old saying that says uh you should work harder on yourself than you do your job. And I think that that is something that will allow you to be able to move and go anywhere. I don't mean like move to a different state or anything, but like move from one company to another. It's like as an employer, I almost hate saying that to my own employees because I never want to lose anybody that's here because we have such great people that work here. But that is the truth. You should work harder on yourself than you work on your job.

And that way you have a skill set that can be brought anywhere. Yeah. And I mean, that was even one of the tough things for me when I initially started just trying to learn all those things on my own, creating my own curriculum, figuring out the sources that I need to learn. Because I think when I started learning about all of this, there wasn't um, I guess there wasn't online courses or whatever to learn stuff. And I think now it's, it's even better because there's almost an online course or obviously there's YouTube. You can get all that stuff for free, but there are a lot of dedicated online courses that are just ridiculously cheap that can teach you a lot of the things you want to do. So yeah. Yeah. I mean, literally anything like you want to be a

we joked around about this the other day but like being an instagram influencer is now a job title right and there are courses on that there's so many courses on that so like literally anything you want to search for online or do you want to become you can find it online um we did have a question mark uh a question comma mark not a question mark anybody nobody okay uh it's from a dude manual and he was just asking because he just like you he doesn't read books he barely read his first one not too long ago um he's just wondering if you guys had any good book recommendations on the topic that we've been talking about today. Well, the first one I mentioned, how to win friends and influence people.

Honestly, I think it's like, it's just a book that everyone should read. Um, I know that, uh, I know that a lot of people, like when they hear about these self development books, they, they give them a lot of flack cause they're like, why are you going to, you know, do stuff like, or read stuff like that. But I think it's really beneficial, especially for someone like me who is just socially not the best. That helped me out a lot in those types of situations. That's good. There's so many. I can pull my phone out.

Yeah, check them out. The Stephen Pressfield, The War of Art. Oh, boy. Oh, I love that one. I'm so happy you mentioned that. I just got it like two months ago. i love that one i'm so happy you mentioned that actually really i just i just got it like two months ago i love that one yeah uh in regards to anything we're talking about today that book will light a fire under your ass it is so good um i got it based off of a joe rogan recommendation uh for especially for creative um photography uh you're a writer painter whatever it is an amazing

book um that book i cannot recommend anymore it's it's uh yeah it's too good to not read yeah mindset by carol dweck that was i think i first heard of that from um bill you yeah tom bill you um i think it's a it's a really good book like if you're if you're younger too for for anybody because it's just it's one of those books that i mean I think it's a, it's a really good book. Like if you're, if you're younger too, for, for anybody, because it's just, it's one of those books that, I mean, you should, it's hard for people to understand that if you really do have like the mindset of a growth mindset to do something, to learn about something, you can do that. But there's a lot of limiting factors in terms of like just non-belief that you can actually do it or non-belief that you can take the time to learn about it. I think that's a great book in terms of just shifting the way you think about things or

being willing to. I think one big thing too, and like, I mean, this is something I got stuck on a long time ago is like, I mean, you can read a lot of these books and have a lot of these books, but there's also the big thing about just like acting on it. Some people are just action takers and they've never read a single self-development book and they're extremely successful. And then there's some people that have a massive library of these books, but they're not really doing much because like they read it. They have a raw, raw feeling and they don't take action on any of it. And that was I was like that was something that was a problem with me in the past, too. I've read a lot of those books, but on certain things, I just wouldn't take action because I was really scared, you know.

And there's still something in the back of my head that I think about when it comes to that, too. But that's the biggest thing, you know, taking action on a lot of the things that you read from them. My brother reads a lot and I don't. My brother will come and tell me something. He'd be like, hey, it's like I read this the other day and I thought like it was so cool. He's like, you're already doing that. And he does it a lot. I mean, I know it probably sounds arrogant, but like I've just I don't read.

So I just I am kind of more of just I just think of stuff and I mean, I know it probably sounds arrogant, but like, I've just, I don't read. So I just, I am kind of more of just, I just think of stuff and I just go and do it. But there have been a lot of huge influences on my life. And obviously my, my dad is a huge one. And my dad is like a, he's someone who just tinkers around with stuff,

you know, like he wouldn't be able to sit here and have this a Starbucks cup sitting here on this podcast. He would be messing with the whole time. He'd like rearrange the top. And then he's just like big into like shapes and messing with stuff all the time. So even just like little things like that,

just observing things like I can't, you know, like last time my wife and I went on vacation, like even just like in Tahoe, we went to New York City a while back, a couple of things. She can't get down the street with me because Cause like I, I, I'm like a puppy, you know, like a puppy will stop and smell all the grass and flowers and everything.

Like I'm terrible like that. I just, I look at designs, I stand there and I just like, I'm probably drooling, you know, I'm just like looking at the stuff, you know, like I probably need a crash helmet or something, but I just am fascinated by a lot of different things. And so I think, you know, stuff like that has helped me learn over the years, but I'm also just very like, uh, auditory. So I like listening to stuff. I don't even listen to audio books. I don't, I have a weird thing about, uh, like hearing other people's story. I'd rather like be working

on like writing my own as weird as that sounds. But some people that have had a big influence, I just wrote a few of them down. Jim Rohn is amazing. R-O-H-N, Jim Rohn. Check him out. He's on, he's on YouTube. There's tons and tons of videos on him. He's old school. Some of his talks are from like Herbalife. So he's part of the multi-level marketing stuff. But a lot of what he says has a ton of value and it's something that really clicked with me and worked well. Ed Milet is a genius. If you're not listening to stuff from Ed Milet, he has a lot of great information that's out there for free. Andy Frisella is just unbelievable. He has a podcast.

He literally just teaches you about how to make money like all the time. That's all he really ever talks about. His podcast is very digestible because a lot of times it's like 15, 20 minutes long. Sometimes it's fairly short. And Ed Milet, too, on that same point, he has one that's specifically on how to like grow a business from the start. And he talks a lot about leadership and stuff, something I shared with the whole team here at Slingshot. Hopefully we can attach the video to the link for this podcast, but unbelievable. It'll blow your mind. You're like, holy shit. He talks about just how anything that's

ever been well executed has a good leader. And he talks about how to be a good leader and traits that you're looking for in a good leader and traits you're looking for in developing a good business. And another person I like a lot, who's, you know, probably a huge turnoff to a lot of people because he's so brash and over the top is Grant Cardone. Grant Cardone is phenomenal. He's got a lot of great information. He even has a book that's free, teaches about how to make money. He says a lot of unconventional things, but he says a lot of things that I, that I feel connected to. Those of you that are like thinking about buying a home or looking into some, I mean,

he's a great resource to listen to for stuff like that. Cause he's like, you know, why would you, why would you, his whole thing is like, why would you ever pay for something that's not going to pay you back? And that might be the same way you would want to look at college.

College could pay you back. You could have a certain thing that you could do where college could very easily pay you back and then some, I guess, right? That's what they used to hang over everybody's head, but they can't do it anymore because college maybe doesn't have the same impact as it used to because a lot of people are still getting ahead without ever having those college payments. But those are all just some people to look at and to consider in your quest. And like all first off, I think, well, Jim Rohn doesn't, but he has a lot of content, but all those other guys, they have podcasts. Right. And what I think is like super important is just, you know, taking a taking a look at all your inputs, where you where's your

input of information coming from? You know, a lot of people in your life telling you that you can't do something? Are you taking in a lot of negative type of information, which has you have the belief that you can't? Because I feel like if, if you start having these inputs of positivity and, and like just, you know, giving you direction on the things you want to do, it'll, it'll help you be able to take action on these more. Like, I'm very careful about not allowing, like first off those types of people like around me or in my life in general, but I'm very careful about the things I pay attention to, the things I watch, um, because that can affect the way that I think about certain things. It's huge. Yeah. I like, uh, yeah. Cause I was hanging out with my nephews over the weekend

and, you know, paddle boarding and stuff. And, uh, the youngest one is now old enough to kind of know like YouTube and all this stuff and then my sister was like oh yeah your uncle andrew he's on youtube no no no no i know right yeah there's definitely that part but she's like what really like well what what is his like what does he do for work like oh he just he takes pictures he does video he does youtube. He talks into a microphone and his eyes just kept getting bigger and bigger. And he's just like, what? So like, I love like, well, I love seeing that, but I also love like crushing my neighbor when he like, he's like, he works in the fields.

He's like a hard laborer and he's like, oh, what do you do? And I'm like, I'm a photographer. And he like, um, like, you know, kind of like the studio setup, like in the mall or something. Like now, like I, I take kind of like the studio setup like in the mall or something yeah like no like i i take pictures of like fat dudes and stuff and stuff like that he just like and and you get paid for that yeah yeah dude you get paid very well it's so it is really cool like putting that that type of vibe out in the world you know to be like yeah i do what i absolutely love to do and yes i do make money doing it which is you know, to be like, yeah, I do what I absolutely love to do. And yes, I do make money doing it,

which is, you know, so it's just a different mindset for people to like take in as opposed to, ah, yeah, I worked this, you know, Monday through Friday thing.

I can't wait for the weekend. Right. Am I right? Go Niners. Hey, Uncle Andrew, where can I get some MK six, seven,

seven? Tony huge said I should start when I'm 16. You're like, no, no, you shouldn't start the MK six, seven, seven. It's going to make you too hungry. Yeah. Yeah. What you need is some Austrian and you'll be just fine. You know what though? Like a post I saw today, um, I think someone was posted this on Facebook and it just made me laugh a little bit. Um,

because you know, like you, you, you, you don't take like your photographer, right. But you don't do it in the most conventional photography way. And what most people would think photographer is. It's like when, uh, I think the post was like talking about, uh, models. Right. And someone asked this girl, Oh, uh, you're, you're a model. She's like, yeah, yeah. Uh, where you model Instagram. Oh. Uh, and then I think he said, uh, Oh yeah, I'm a, I'm're a model she's like yeah yeah uh where you model instagram oh uh and then i think he said uh oh yeah i'm a i'm a marine she's like what in counter-strike right but this is this is the thing though like we're in such a different age that no that ig models are making fucking money yeah so like i don't hate on ig models if you you're making what, a hundred, 200, 300 K a year,

just by going on Instagram and posting some pretty pictures, I can knock your hustle. You're making money and you're probably enjoying your life too. So like a lot of people are hating on that because to be honest, they kind of wish they could do some type of shit like that too. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right.

Oh, I'm a model on Instagram. Oh, I thought you were a real model. Uh, well, I mean, she's making more than most real models. Yeah. So, you'm a model on Instagram. Oh, I thought you were a real model. Well, I mean, she's making more than most real models.

So, you know, you got to come to terms with stuff like that. Yeah, real models are forced to do a lot of drugs and they don't get paid much. Yeah. And we got to realize like there's so many unconventional ways of doing things now. The conventional ways of doing a bunch of things, training people, modeling, et cetera. It's all changing gaming. Oh shit. Yeah.

Twitch. Like, I looked into it last night cause I was playing Celeste and, uh, I was like, I was trying to get, you know, Stephanie's attention.

I'm like, baby, you gotta check this out. Look how crazy this level is real quick. And she like, she supported me a little, like, you know,

she tried to be into it yeah and i'm like i wish i was streaming and then she's like well why don't you i'm like i don't know so i looked into what it would take for me to stream from a switch and it's a little bit more involved than a ps4 but yeah yeah that would be that'd be pretty fun to do too yeah i think you know people will they get caught up on stuff because maybe they had to do something a different way. That's not the way I came into this. So you got to pay your dues. And if you're going to make money in being a powerlifter, the only way to make it is on the platform.

And it's like, well, no, there's a lot of other options now. And I think it's easy to point the finger at the younger crowd and say you have it easier. But actually 20 years ago in the fitness industry, the people that got paid, they got paid through sponsorships, got paid a lot more. They made a lot. They made a crazy amount of money, upfront money, you know, or not even upfront but guaranteed money rather than now now, at least it's a split off between like, it's an affiliate program. You get paid in accordance to what your sales look like, which is, which is fair, right? It's like you sold this amount of stuff, you get this amount of money. Years ago, I knew a lot of people that were getting, you know, 70,000, 100,000, $150,000

from, you know, muscle tech and some of these other companies. And that is really rare nowadays. Maybe like an Eddie Hall can reach that status or something. But other than that, other than some, I mean, he's kind of like him and Shaw and some of these guys are at the complete top of the fitness industry, at the complete top of the strongman audience. fitness industry at the complete top of the strongman audience. I watched the show Shark Tank quite a bit. And I've noticed that like, even on that show, a lot of times the sharks themselves, they kind of hate on the entrepreneurs that are on there sometimes. And they, and they talk about themselves, which is, it's, it's not an easy thing to do to like, not, you know, try, try, you know, try going several sentences without saying I,

and you're going to find how hard it actually is. Like if you were to come in here and tell me something like, if like, oh man, you know, I tweaked this, then I would be like, oh, and I, like, I'm immediately talking about myself rather than, you know, attending to like what you're saying. Right. I immediately flipping it back to myself. That's we all are guilty of that. But on that show shark tank, it's almost like they want the recognition for how hard they worked. And so here's the entrepreneur on there, all happy, all fired up. They've been doing something for three, four years and they grew this company, you know, really big. And, you know, Kevin O'Leary or whoever's on the show will be like, that's not the way it worked for me. You know, I didn't take any money from my company the first

five years. And I, it's like, dude, shut up. That's, that's the way it worked for me you know i didn't take any money from my company the first five years and i it's like dude shut up that's that's the way it was for you yeah things are different now there's the internet there's so many other things going on that might allow someone to have an accelerated uh process and maybe if it's like the books they read or maybe it's the knowledge or maybe it's a combination of like the people that they met or where they've been you know so you can't hate on it and when it comes to like the social media stuff man it's a combination of like the people that they met or where they've been, you know, so you can't hate on it. And when it comes to like the social media stuff, man, it's just, just scroll past it if you don't like it and, or just put your hands together and be like, that's pretty cool. Yeah.

That's a job well done. It really, when it comes to the being like in any industry, it really just helps raise the bar for everybody else. I think, I think it's, I think it's helpful. I don't think it, like I said, there's not, you know, um, other people on Instagram aren't hogging up all the success and hogging up all the likes. It's not like there's a short, like there's not a shortage, not a certain amount of likes that are out there. Yeah. Like Instagram isn't like, okay, we're only giving out 4 billion likes today. And then when they push on Mark Bell's stuff for today, like

it's not going to result in a like you know yeah it doesn't work that way stop hating andrew i'm trying but in sema just too jacked oh i'm sorry it's okay i'm gonna be i'll feel better when you eat that cookie that's to your left i tried to tear down his biceps and triceps the other day i heard about this i still feel it that's great i still feel it right now like going like this trying to stretch out my arms like do you feel it right now still yeah it's still kind of tight okay especially like the back of my arm like my triceps like near my shoulder too yeah we did a uh a back workout uh me griffey soaper and uh josh kimp and, we just annihilated our lats. And like, like four days later, Josh comes in and he's like, Hey man, like, are your lats sore? I'm like, dude,

I haven't been able to move. Like it's been bad. So we, we got after it. It was pretty good. Let me just mention how proud I am of Josh Kim. He's doing a, he's, he's been doing Muay Thai for a while now. I just, I'm just so happy for him and then chris griffin's gonna be starting jujitsu oh shit yeah he's real bendy yeah oh chris he'll be good at it yeah he's real yeah he's really flexible proud of you guys yeah i'm hoping that uh so nico's back so i'm gonna see if i can get him to coach me with striking while he's here he's good he's good at that be good to have him back in the gym yeah yeah he said he's gonna be in uh team training and then he's here. He's good. He's good at that. Be good to have him back in the gym. Yeah. Yeah. He said he's going to be in a team training and then he's going to try to make it Monday,

Wednesday, Friday mornings. He's getting married soon also, by the way. Oh my God. Yeah. He's been engaged to like 60 or 90 days away. Damn.

That ain't bad. Pretty cool. Um, and SEMA, how many video games have you bought in the last 24 hours i don't know why are we even speaking about that how about we just change the subject to something else we're not going to see him anymore are we no i'm doing my best not to get addicted so what's happened off of the peer pressure of andrew zaragoza and chris griffin here at the office

they pressured me into this it wasn't in my own volition or choice. I bought a Nintendo Switch. Okay. Then bought a few games. One, two, three, maybe four. I haven't been able to play them that much, but you know, it is what it is. I literally never pressured him once. He's going to get the red light set up.

He's going to be on there all the time. Every single day you've been texting me and saying, bias switch by switch by switch you're off the podcast by switch you're off the podcast so i finally did it you know that's just outright it's what you did inaccurate it's gonna come in his thumbs are gonna be all bandaged up he's not gonna be able to do jujitsu dude we should start a twitch stream in here so that way it's work so it's work yeah oh what do you think mark why not you should buy one too dude we could play we could play worms we could play mario kart we could i like mario kart you like mario kart yeah see and that see here's another thing why the switch is so dope we were i think we had a layover something happened mark and i are in the airport and i'm

like hey check this out. Pull the switch apart. We were playing Mario Kart for like, I don't know. I love Mario Kart. He's pretty good, too. It's badass. You got the red turtle shell. People are done. Oh, dude.

People are done with that red turtle shell. That'll cause some issues for sure. I might have to buy that, too. No, I'm not going to. I'm going to save my money you need you need a party game yeah i do need a party game anyway let's yeah my i can't let myself get addicted like i was in the past so anyway i think the question was you know what did we do before uh super training so hopefully we got to most of that. Um, I was basically a bum. I was just trying to figure out what I was going to do with myself. And, um, I was a stay at home dad. I had some side bouncing jobs. I had a side job here, a side job there, always tried to work

hard, always tried to do the right thing. And, you know, eventually things, uh, things worked out for me, things worked out the way that they worked out. Um, but like real wealth and success and some of those things, they actually came like right around the same time I made super training gym free. So like I made super training gym free before I really could or should have. And so like, there's a little lesson wrapped in that. I think, you know, you want to try to, uh, give out as much as you possibly can and you'll get a lot back. Sometimes it's hard to understand that maybe when you don't have the finances behind you. Um, but, uh, things, things can work out for you. Just try to do the right thing for as long as you can.

Keep working hard, keep, keep being persistent with it, keep thinking. And if something's not working and keep working on it anyway, um, keep trying to try different things. You know, I, we had a magazine for a long time. We had power magazine for a long time and it's like some things you got to let go of. Some things are not going to be as prosperous as you thought, or they're not going to, uh, maybe provide the amount of money that you might think. And so it's like some things you got to try them and then you got to be realistic about it. It's great to have dreams. I got a lot of dreams.

Luckily for me, my wife is, she brings the realness into the relationship and she'll, you know, she's kind of sometimes the fun hammer for me. But someone's got to level you back down to reality. So I'm lucky that I have someone that can do that for me that can kind of put things in perspective and say, Hey, you know, I don't really think that's a good idea. Something that's helped me over the last couple of years is to think, am I going to be doing that in the next four or five years? That's something that's really helped a lot. So when I start to think about, you know, we have a new project that we're, we're going to start working on, uh, here tomorrow actually. And as we start to dive into some of that, that's the question is like,

is this going to be something I'm going to be doing the next four years, next five years, next 10 years? And those are kind of hard questions. Those are tough questions to really, uh, to really answer, but you got to try to be truthful and honest with yourself about it. I'm looking into like making some supplements and stuff like that too. Kind of same thing on that front. Like, am I going to be excited about these amino acids, you know, five years from now? And I have been excited about them for the last 15 or 20 years. So probably like, I'm probably not going to, you know, change that much. Yeah. And kind of just kind of in, in finishing everything out, you know, I was also I should point out that I was fortunate enough to where my wife was working. So we didn't need like a big boom of income.

You know, I was making like some supplemental income, but she was making money. I was dealing with the kids and then our roles eventually reversed when Slingshot started to grow. when Slingshot started to grow and when I started to put more time and more resources into that, like once that invention kind of came along, then the tables kind of flipped and we can get more into that on another podcast some other time. But like I had a lot of frustrating times. They weren't bad times by any means, but I lived most of the things that a lot of you guys are living now. I had shitty cars. I had cars break down on me many, many times. I've slept in my car before. I drove long hours to go to seminars. Kind of most of the things that a lot of you guys and girls have experienced, like I've

done probably some of those things already. And I'm actually, you know, I'm thankful that those things happen because they've led me to all the things that I'm currently doing. So if you're feeling worn out from the whole process, do your best to stick with it. I want to, I'm actually curious about something that you mentioned. I know that Andy, she, you have a lot of ideas and stuff, but she doesn't just smash it, right? She'll, she with you on certain things. She usually just smashes it. She usually just smashes it, okay. Well, sorry.

But with all the things that you had when you were coming up and figuring things out, did you have a lot of people telling you or in your life telling you, oh, you probably can't do that, you probably shouldn't do that at all? Like, did you have a lot of that? Or were most of the people in your life, like your parents, Andy seemed pretty positive. Were they mostly like that? Let's see when it, when it came to the gym, people were pretty negative. They didn't understand that part of it.

The gym was like, the gym was really raw. You know, it was, it was legitimately just a bunch of big dudes taking taking steroids lifting some heavy fucking weight and like listening to heavy metal you know like and and rap music you know where they curse every other word so it's like no one knew like what's that for you know what's that about like what is and and i always thought it was cool i was like i don't know what it's about but it's cool like this like people will like this i got a document i got to film it and stuff and so from a gym yeah, no one really knew what that was about. My wife understood because she had swimming. So she kind of identified with, okay, well, that's like his thing. Like I like to swim, he likes to lift. So she kind of recognized that that was important,

almost more so for my mental health. But we also knew that for us, we were never, we weren't trying to really turn the actual gym, um, into a, into a business. We weren't like, oh, we're going to have, you know, a gym over here with 40 members and a gym over there with 40 men. We weren't really trying to do that. We didn't think it really made any sense. Um, and you know, from a financial standpoint, it didn't sound like it made any sense. So it didn't seem like there was any room to really do anything with an actual gym. My dad never really understood it either but i think it's like just generation gap you know maybe he just didn't know and then he didn't understand power lifting very much yeah um the only people that were enthusiastic about it were like the fans you know the super

training people that were the fans of super training that saw the big benches and big squats and big deadlifts and they got excited about it when it came to the actual slingshot i think everyone was supportive of it because probably it's more like uh this guy doesn't have a whole lot else going on and like, he's excited about this. So bucket, let's get behind them. I don't know if anyone thought like, this is going to like be the, be a thing that changes his life forever and changes the entire family's life

forever. And then how could you, you know, how could you possibly see that? I knew it. Like I, I, when I made it,

I knew I, it was dead set on the fact that this is, this is like, this is a lottery ticket. I need to figure out how to cash it in and I better do it quickly. Yeah. Um, I mean, I didn't know, no, but I, I knew well enough that I, I like had, you know, something I needed to do something with right away. Um, my wife was pretty, pretty excited about it and pretty into it. And then the fact that like from a margin perspective, like everything just, you know, worked out. Like I didn't make, uh, I didn't make an electronic, you know, you make some sort of like new watch or new whatever, and it gets ripped off in other countries and you're, you're, you only have a couple of years to like make all that shit work. I don't even know how that stuff works but it's far more complicated and then plus i had a product that you can ship really easily and so that worked out i mean some of that i mean

i didn't you know i didn't uh i didn't choose for any of that to happen that way it just it just happened and the slingshot even like um being um, being good for pushups. Like I, I didn't know, I didn't know it was going to be good for pushups. Like when I first got it, I was like, oh, I'll try a pushup with it too. And boom, it worked for pushups and it worked for dips. And I was like, oh, cool. Yeah. So yeah, I don't think, um, there was not shop it outside of like my family because like your family they're not going to really they're not going to be that mean to like shut you down you know tell you hey man stupid right i had friends that were pretty close to me that were successful that flat out just said i think that's dumb i don't think that's going to do anything like i don't understand my friend martin who was just here, he started a successful business. He started a app called Cameo, which is where you can kind of hire celebrities to say happy birthday or give you some inspirational words or whatever. He's doing great with that.

But he said today how he loves telling that story of me talking to him about the slings. And then my brother saying, Hey, it might be a good investment opportunity for you. Uh, because my brother, you know, this slingshot thing, my brother thinks it's really going to hit big. And it was like kind of just getting momentum. It's just starting out. And my friend was like, nah, he's like, I don't see, you know, how that's going to really like turn into anything. So he are still friends and I don't, you know, whatever. He's entitled to his opinion, right? But it ended up working out. You know, that's like, first off, it seems that you had a lot of like belief in what you were doing.

But you didn't have like a lot of people telling you, no, that's a bad idea. That's a bad idea. You had a few, but not a lot. And maybe even when you heard that, you didn't put too much weight in their opinion. Well, when it counted, I had more people telling me not to do it. So when I went to actually try to make it, that's where the resistance started to really come in. Because I went to some other companies that are still in existence, and they were like, we don't see how that is useful. They're like, why wouldn't people just buy a bench shirt?

And I'm like, why don't people buy bench shirts now? they're expensive and they they hurt and they're weird they make you look weird in the gym you know and so i was like no i i i think i created something that's you know different and because i got told it was a bad idea so many times um i i eventually just stopped it just the the idea died for a little while wow and it sat around for you know it sat around for a little like a period of time okay and then i was just like uh i was just super frustrated and i was like driving home one day and i was just i don't know i was just like not happy with myself and i was actually like emotional and i was like my brother died and stuff too so it was like you know combination of things settling in i was like, my brother died and stuff too. So it was like, you know, combination of things settling in. And I was like, you know what, man, like life's short, like just, just take

it, just try it. Just like, you know, take a stab at it, take a shot at it. And so that's when I started to really, you know, the next day I, you know, kind of cut to like a Rocky montage. I really tried to figure out a way to push forward into it. And you know, in this question, you know, of like, what did you do before slingshot and before super training? What I did is go to Starbucks every day, all the way to the point where my nieces and nephews thought that I worked at Starbucks. My wife would go to Fitness 19 and right next to Fitness 19 in Woodland, there's a Starbucks. And I would go into that Starbucks while my wife and sister-in-law would work out.

And when I would go into Starbucks, my sister-in-law had her kids with her too. And they were like, all right, Uncle Mark, have fun working at Starbucks. Because they thought I like worked in it because I would tell them I'm going in there and I'm going to work. Starbucks because they thought I like worked in it. Cause I would tell them I'm going in there and I'm going to work. And I would just like mess around on my iPad and mess around on my phone. Um, trying to find like manufacturers I could make, you know, make this product that I was, that was in my head and trying to communicate with different companies and different people. And, um, uh, it's really, it's hard, hard to explain. Like a lot of what I do is like, I really just end up wasting a lot of time. It sounds ridiculous, but it's really it's hard hard to explain like a lot of what i do is like i really just end up

wasting a lot of time it sounds ridiculous but it's part of the creative process is just to uh you know burn the most valuable thing that there is and that's time like it just it takes it takes a long time to come up with real valuable ideas and i just refer to as dicking around because i always like that saying trying to keep that saying alive but i do a lot of dicking around because I always like that saying, trying to keep that saying alive. But I do a lot of dicking around and it's stuff, I mean, even just like walking or listening to music. A lot of those things help bring some of the creative process out because I have to like make up work for myself because I do like, I work for myself, but also work for the company. I work for Slingshot and I have like deliverables, you know, I have things that I need to deliver to Slingshot in order for it to grow and have,

you know, the proper growth that it needs to go through. I still have to deliver stuff here. So I still, you know, I'd rather, rather than saying like, you know, that Andrew works for me, I like saying like when I introduce him, if we're somewhere I'll say, Oh, this is Andrew. He's our podcast engineer. He works with slingshot. He works with me at slingshot. Like I've specifically tried to say that because I like that mindset better. Um, you know, I, I won't, I work for this company just as much as anybody else does, if not more so. Yeah. Yeah. The thing I was trying to get out of that and I think I pretty much did is like it. It's hard when you you're trying to do something and you have like for me when I left school, my mom didn't know I left school for like a year. She didn't know. She didn't know for a year because in my culture, that's an automatic fail. Automatic. It doesn't matter if you're doing anything like, you know, it doesn't matter if you have a job or whatever.

It doesn't matter what you moved on to. It doesn't matter what you moved on to. Once you're not in school, if you haven't gotten a degree and it's partially because of being an immigrant, if you haven't gotten a degree, oh, you're failing. You're a failure. So I didn't let any of my family know. My mom didn't know for like a year. And when she found out, she was at least happy that I was working and moving towards something. But when the rest of my family found out, everyone was like, people were sending my mom messages saying, hey, like uncles were saying, hey, I need to talk to Nsema. We have to have a talk. You need to tell him what he needs to do. Even like when I like when I first saw my dad after years and he asked me that he's like, you're not in school. Well, what are you doing with your life? And he

lectured me after like 11 years on how I was failing because I wasn't in school. And like I had all of this around me. And I think it was just I was just lucky that she knew that I could work hard because like, if, if I didn't have that, I don't know if I would have been able to just continue to deal with all of these other voices around me saying, you're making a big mistake with your life. You know what I mean? That's tough. Um, and even like when I left 24 hour fitness to, to, to train people, my manager there, when I asked him about it, I told him I'm thinking about doing this. He's like, you don't work hard enough for that. That like made me want to quit even more and do that. When I first want to start jujitsu,

there's a, there's an individual that, um, was that, was that helpful at all? Or was that straight negative? You think that was helpful? That was helpful because I thought he was telling so maybe at the time, maybe he was giving you the truth i think i i believe he was giving me the truth because he knew how much value i wait i put upon his like opinion because he was a really hard-working person he was great with people which is one of the reasons why like i i i tried to get a lot of information from him and stuff and he knew i would put a lot of weight on that opinion i don't know if he did that to trick me or something like that but after i heard that that, I was like, okay, let's, I'm gonna get out of here. I'm gonna prove your ass wrong. And that helped a lot. Um, and, uh, yeah, like I feel like there's, there needs to

be a balance of having people around you that do believe in you, um, that, that aren't trying to immediately shoot you down. Because if I didn't have that one person who was my mom at the time, I don't think I could have continued on with all the crap that happened. And you had that in your life. You had people that were telling you you could and believed in you. You also had some people that didn't. But you didn't, I guess, put all the weight into their opinions. Yeah, it's like at some point I did and I kind of stopped for a little bit.

But then I picked it back up but you're right like if I didn't have people to lean on I wonder too like if that guy that you're talking about if he you know if if you were working for me like in a gym setting like that my thought process would be like this kid's like he's different than everybody else that works here like you don't you don't look the same as everybody else you know you're you got a certain physique and you got a certain way about you i i would probably like almost want to push you out the door you know and i would want to push you because i would feel that it's like almost worthless for you to like waste your time

at like a 24-hour fitness in a. You know, so I almost wonder if he like did it more out of care than anything else. I wonder though, because like it, with the way that it's set up, it's like his job is dependent upon how his salespeople do. Right. And I was really good at selling. So if you're like, maybe you just didn't want to lose someone who was good at selling and have to retrain somebody else, you know don't know but that really like made made me really want to get out of there and do well could have also been some sort of jealousy like if you were doing really well you know he could have been like even though he it's just it's in his best interest to keep you around he may have been like just starting to get like envious in a way sabotage you yes um what about your uh you know i guess maybe uh other than your dad

do you think some of the other family members just legitimately cared or maybe they cared a lot about your mom and they like wanted to you know they wanted to kind of surround your mom and like because your mom thinks like you should go to school so like and i realize you mentioned that's a cultural thing too, but maybe everybody wanted to like, almost in a way they're talking to your mom. It's like a way to show support to your mother. Um, yeah, they, they did. And I think one of the big reasons wasn't like, yeah, it was because it was cultural,

but you know, I'm her only son. There's weight, especially on the son of, in, in, in African culture, there's weight on like how your son is doing. You know what I mean? And they just like, they didn't want. I've seen Coming to America. Like to be real, like, yeah, there's a lot of weight in that, but they didn't, they really just didn't want me to fail. That's, that's pretty much it. I think they really did care, but they really probably thought I was heading down a bad route or a dark route and I wasn't going to end up doing

anything in life. That's, that's it. And even honestly, even recently, this is the, even recently, like now that I've been able to build a business around what I do and I'm doing well with it recently, she had some friends over and that one of her, like, this was like one of the best friends. They don't understand what you this was like one of the best friends. They don't understand what you do and stuff either. Right. Yeah. But even after I explained it, it didn't matter how much I explained it. This woman was like, you need to go back to school. I was like, but you need to go back to school.

You need at least at least you have the degree. You know, like it's there's so much important put upon that within the culture that it's hard for a lot of people again you mentioned generational gap it's hard for people to see past that you know what i mean so i think i'm just lucky though that i had her because she was there and she was defending what i was doing you know that that that was so great because she was born like she came up with with the same teaching same culture everything but she still backed up what I do. And she's a doctor or something, right? Engineer,

civil engineer, civil engineer. Yeah. So like she works on bridges and all that type of stuff. Um, so what you got over there, Andrew, I was thinking,

see when he has to go back to school. Oh man, I really might now since you said it, you've made me buy a switch. You have a lot of influence. You do anything. Yes, you did. Stop lying. But yeah, get that degree. Yeah. made me buy a switch. You have a lot of influence. I didn't even make you do anything. Yes, you did. Stop lying.

But yeah. Get that degree. Yeah. Try to get a scholarship. I mean, I feel like it's really important. You can't have a bunch of yes men around you. You can't have a bunch of people that are just like, yeah, do that. Do that.

You can't have yes men. You got to have people that really care about you. But you also can't have people that want to just strike down all the shit you want to do that's slightly unconventional you can't have that either or you just can't put much weight into their opinions andrew i just sent you a picture let me know if you got it yep i got it seven sema's butt no just kidding uh that's my son's new car that's my son's new wheels can you put it up on the screen yeah i gotta email it to myself but what's funny is i don't even know why but i was i was thinking about cars the other day and i was thinking i was thinking i was like jake's probably gonna get like an old jeep or something so i wasn't too far off

yeah yeah i want to see this i'm gonna email it to myself yeah pretty cool it's like uh some truck that like he and my dad checked out and um yeah it's i don't know how the hell he's gonna drive it because it doesn't have like power steering or anything and he liked it yeah my wife was saying that my dad trying to drive it's really funny because my dad's feet like don't like they barely hit the pedals you know my dad's super short yeah and my wife is like it took your dad like all of his strength to like turn the wheel because it doesn't have power steering in it that's a hell of a workout you know turning that turning that wheel he's about to build some mad forearms yeah but once you get it rolling it's not too bad on the uh steering but yeah like trying to uh parallel yeah parallel park yeah over yeah come out of a parking space

or something there you go whoa that's sick wow that's that's yeah it looks pretty cool whoa dope yeah flipped around that was weird i've never seen although that does look like a hard vehicle to drive yeah we don't know how safe it's gonna be but we figured you know he'll he'll uh take out a couple take out a couple people here and there you know the the brakes are gonna be terrible on it yeah but if he were to hit anything, whatever it is, it's gone. Yeah. He probably wouldn't even feel it. Yeah.

Wow. That's amazing. He kind of drives, you know, like he's a teenager, you know. So he already kind of has that like kind of heavy foot, you know. And my wife's car, like, man, you just tap the brakes, and that thing's, like, stopping. It's like, burp, you know? Yeah. So in this thing, good thing is with a heavy foot,

like, he'll have to push on the brakes pretty hard to get the thing to slow down the right way. Yeah, it's got the old drum brakes. Yeah, you might want to upgrade that. Weighs a couple million pounds, too, probably. Well, yeah, you guys will probably get some good brakes put in there and all that type of stuff to make sure it's safe. Yeah. I imagine that's what, like, that that's a quarter ton i'm bad with old trucks

but that's a that's a thicky there what year is that i don't know i don't know like i don't know what him and my dad are drumming up i think it's probably like 70 something or are they gonna like fix it up together or something is that the plan yeah yeah that's that's some of the plan yeah okay cool see what the hell happens with it that'd be sick and like a jet black that's what jake wants to do he wants yeah he wants to make it all black smart man that's what he was saying he's got plans for it already even though he doesn't he doesn't even know he has it yet oh wow oh he'll find out later today sick nice okay yeah way to go jake that's for a first car that's pretty sick it is not bad right mine was an 87 bronco too oh sick so it was a box mine was cool though 2000 corolla

i was too big for that thing every time i satinated dip down damn you remember that i don't know if you ever saw it but i was driving that to the old gym anyway it was kind of leaning a little bit alright strength is never weakness weakness is never strength catch y'all later thank you so much