Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 695 - Hayden Bowe: What It Takes To Run A 7-Figure Online Coaching Busines

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

Hayden Bowe is a successful weightlifter and powerlifter and Co Owner of The Hybrid Performance Method with his wife, Stefi Cohen. He has a long list of accomplishments to his name including a Silver Medal at the WPC World Championship in Porto, Portugal (2015) a Gold Medal at Boss of Bosses 3 (2016), and currently holds the USPA Florida State open squat record (raw w/wraps) in the 82.5KG weight class. Follow Hayden on IG: https://www.instagram.com/hayden.bowe/ Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/ Code POWERPROJET for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://verticaldiet.com/ Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% off your first order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

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It's been a while, Hybrid, Hayden, Hayden and Bo. Hayden and Bo. I know, I was thinking, when was the last time we saw you? It's been a long time. Maybe at the, would it have been as far back as the Meathead Millionaire Summit? I think so. Well, the world went dark after that. Yeah, wow.

Something bad happened. Was that after the seminar thingy that we did at ST? Yeah, that would have been after. Okay, damn. So it's been a while then, yeah. Yeah, crazy. I think back then, I don't think Steph was even boxing yet. Wow, is that right yeah that's

crazy her her powerlifting career feels like uh like another lifetime to me now it's wild but uh it's been super cool to to be there for the whole boxing journey too what's going on with your training um it's been so hit or miss because i was training for uh the hybrid showdown because i want to you know i want to do our own meet and there's nothing better than controlling all the factors you can within your own facility your lifts past even when they're not good and you know you don't have to lock anything out you don't have to swap below parallel i'll just fire people if they get reds there you go i did that for years yeah so uh i yeah i was training for that and then um steffi had a fight in dubai and the whole team went there and when i was trying to come back from dubai to miami uh i didn't realize that the

layover i had taken on the way there was uh it was through the uk and that was a country that if you went there it restricted canadians from reering Canada, or sorry, the US for 14 days. Whoa. So, and that's just because of the... I always forget that you're an evil Canadian. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to keep my distance. You're like the nicest people, though.

I know. I'm totally kidding. Okay, I'm just saying. nicest people though i know i'm totally kidding okay i'm just saying so i uh it's because i guess any land border that you don't need a passport to cross like there's a bunch of them in europe obviously uh they considered it more risky for spreading covid so anyways i had to stay out of the country for the remainder of the 14 days i think i had like six left or something. Uh, and my only options were like Turkey, uh, a couple other random spots I wasn't really interested in,

or I could go home to Canada. So I didn't, um, I didn't like tell my parents I was coming or anything. I just took a flight, went straight there, uh, and showed up on their doorstep at like midnight.

And I hadn't seen my parents because of all the COVID stuff for like two years. You're like, I'm moving here. Like, the fuck you are. Well, they didn't know that yet. So, you know, it was really nice. I saw them. I had a trip. I stayed for the remainder of like the six days or whatever I had.

And then when I was heading back to the airport, I'm checking for my passport and I can't find it anywhere. So I turned the place upside down. My parents did like five times. I checked all the vehicles. I tracked down the cab driver that took me from the airport. He checked his car, went to the lost and found at the airport, like retraced the whole way I walked that couldn't find it. Um, so that began the process of getting not just my passport back, which isn't very hard. You can just go on, you know, you can just book a flight and then say, oh, I have a flight in two days. I need it rush.

And they'll do it. But the visa took five months to get an appointment. So you were away from your wife for five months? Five months away from everybody, business, everything. And I applied for the expedited processing and they told me, sorry, you don't qualify. I'm like, well, who does qualify at this point?

Because my whole life is in Miami and that's not enough to get me back home. So that was a long way of saying I was prepping for the meet, wasn't able to go back because of all those shenanigans. And then I was just kind of like, maybe I'll just try to not beat myself up for a little while. prepping for the meet wasn't able to go back because of of all those shenanigans and then i was just kind of like maybe i'll just try to not beat myself up for a little while um so i took

training like a little bit lighter um and then just recently i started doing our new powerlifting program which is uh in our app the hybrid strength coach app which is a project we've been working on for uh you know the last two years or so. And I've been loving that. I don't know what it's like. My wife is really not on social. She's kind of on social media.

She's more of a voyeur than anything. She doesn't post anything. She doesn't know how to do a selfie. What's it like being married to the most famous female powerlifter of all time and somebody that has such a huge following on instagram yeah and just social media in general i mean it's always uh it's always been interesting i think the only times it ever affected me was when something affected her so you know she she comes across really tough you guys all know her well you know she's thick-skinned but uh in the

beginning when she was first getting a lot of attention uh you know you know how it works with women in the fitness industry there's some good some perverted and some that are just like just rude uh those comments would get to her a lot and there's times where uh you know that she'd cry you know it really would bother her uh some of the things people would say because people are ruthless you know like they fucked up they are like they'll say something completely are ruthless, you know, like they fucked up. They are like, well they'll say something completely unrelated to what you're trying to convey to. And that, that can be really hurtful. You're just trying to, she might post a video about, you know,

her doing a deadlift and somebody might say you look like a man or some bullshit like that. Right. Yeah. Or, or they, you know, she does a lot of informational content, you know, and people will intentionally misinterpret things she's saying to make a clickbaity post. You know, one that was kind of recent is, you know, this one didn't upset her. This is, she now is like tough at this point, you know, obviously. She's kind of over the hump, right? She's over the other side a little bit, right?

Yeah. So I mean, to go back to your point, it affected me in that I would get pissed off and I'd be in the comments battling all these people and her following just got too big that i was like god i can't do this this is going to be a full-time job if i'm just going to be defending every negative comment but just recently she had one with uh greg duchette oh and uh he uh he he basically intentionally what he does you know he intentionally misinterpreted what she was saying made a whole video kind of like dissecting it but then we just had fun with it we'd like we're like okay well clock's ticking while like this video is still relevant and we

got back into the studio at hybrid and have her do like just pump out a uh uh like a rebuttal to it that was really really good and you know she most people get pissed off and say a bunch of crazy shit but she kept it respectful she threw some jabs in there obviously because you know that's that's the game but uh you know it was like really well done and she does more of that kind of stuff now so it's turned into from something that was just like really negative to something that she can now use that's like helpful now she's making content out of it and stuff so that's pretty cool well and twisting her words around and using it using them against her she is a doctor right yeah yeah a doctor physical therapy right and so that probably pissed her off pretty good she probably like

yeah yeah because it was about the topic she's super familiar really well so yeah definitely but um like i don't think it i mean it obviously it was annoying you know but it's also his shtick right like it's kind of like if weird al rips your song you can't get mad at him it's kind of like oh cool i'm getting recognized sort of thing kind of yeah yeah because he he made stuff about like our podcast but then like we couldn't wait to have him on. It's cool that she was able to, I don't want to say negative, but she turned a negative into a positive really fast. Most people just kind of go crawl in a corner and hide. So I think just the years of kind of building that skin has really helped. Sure, and I think just in general, if you look you know, as the pie grows, everybody's piece grows. It's like, it doesn't really matter what people are saying. If it's bringing eyeballs to you and then you can control the narrative or say

whatever it is that you want to say, then it's always just beneficial to you. So it's been amazing for me. The first time I met you guys, and I think maybe the first time I hosted you guys at my gym, I don't think you had your gym yet. I don't think you had your gym. I met you guys and I think maybe the first time I hosted you guys at my gym I don't think you had your gym yet I don't think you had your gym I think you I think the hybrid training was like brand new I think you guys were just getting into it and you were really quiet and reserved and we had you on the show and you could barely talk and uh I just remember like Steffi was like oh well he does the programming and he's kind of behind all this. And I was just thinking, this is really cool. And it was at a time before there was so many online coaches and so many like now hybrid is known and recognized as a premier brand in that space.

So it's been really cool for me to watch the growth that you guys had and to see the growth of your gym and all the different things you guys are doing. Yeah, I appreciate that. I mean, it's been definitely a wild ride. And I don't know that I could attribute it to any one thing. But the landscape now, like you said, there's so many more people offering similar things. I think it's really hard nowadays. Timing was really in our favor back then, too. We obviously had great influences.

We were able to be around you a lot. We were able to be around a lot of people we respected and, you know, made a big effort to always be in front of as many people's eyeballs and cameras as possible. And I think that helped. But now it's like social media is, you know, other TikTok is growing. And if you're on TikTok, like, like you are, you know, that's a place where you can grow a following fast, but it's hard now. If you're starting a business now

and you don't have a following already, it's tough when people ask me for advice. On that side of things, I'm like, I don't know, start 20 years ago? And you also had a 22-time world champion record holder or broken record holder.

That helps a lot uh for sure but what i always thought was really interesting was that um the growth of the program uh was you know it was always on an upward trajectory but it was doing that before steffia even broke a world record which was kind of cool uh because it meant people were enjoying the content that we were putting out. And for her speaking about things, I think what caught her the most recognition was a combination of all those things. She was a great power lifter, but there's a lot of great power lifters out there that you're going to top out at like 100,000 followers if you're just a power lifter. For her, she had the educational background.

She's like, I don't know, she does everything. Jacked. She was aesthetic. She had the educational background she's like i don't know she does everything she's jacked she's jacked she was aesthetic she had the background she could lift well uh you know she she is opinionated so she says a lot of stuff that gets people going uh you know she's into fashion she does all these things that are you know i think that add to it so i think that was actually actually something that she got unfairly sort of like labeled as, Oh, she's,

she gets all this attention because she's attractive and she's good at powerlifting. It's like, nobody cares about these other girls cause they just don't look like her. And it's like that. It couldn't be farther from the truth because she's got all those other things that I just mentioned. And that's the real thing.

It's like, how many times can you put out, this is me squatting, this is me benching, this is me deadlifting, before people are like, okay, we get it. Your max has been your max for the last five years. It's like, I can just go watch any one of your videos and know what your entire page is. So I think the approach that she took,

and that anyone, I would say, should take, is to just have more diversity than just being the person that squats or whatever. When it comes to the app that you said you guys just developed, you said you guys have been developing it for two years. It's probably just not a normal app. Like why did you expand to making an app because your online programs and templates and everything that you guys were doing was doing so well? What was the process of making a hybrid app? It's always, for starters, way more complex than you think. We had initially built a web app.

That was back when the first times we were coming around the gym. It was something that we thought at the time, because we weren't experienced in software development, that you could just build it and then it exists. And once you've paid for it, it's done and it runs forever. Right. That's how we kind of thought of it. But very quickly did that become outdated and people were offering services that were competitive and had better features and all this stuff. Like AIs and algorithms algorithms literally like chat yeah just

better functionality i think a lot of people get caught up trying to make things overly complex because they think that's what people want but really what people want is to be able to receive their things in a way that's efficient uh they want things to work uh they you don't want it to be buggy yeah um and we focused on all that um it took two years we hired an entire team of software developers they all uh we have two facilities in miami one is the gym and one is our hq so all the software developers work out of our our headquarters there so all they're doing full-time is working on the app thinking about the app you know seeing what people are asking for seeing what features we should add, you know, all that stuff. And it also was really just a matter

of us trying to look at like everything that we were doing under the hybrid umbrella and looking at the things that, how we were spending our time and resources and what that was returning for us, you know, when we realized really quickly things like okay we're spending 50 of our time on apparel but apparel makes 10 of our revenue you know so it's like why are we why is our media team getting backlogged doing all this stuff when we could be pushing them to training that's making 80 of it you know so it became clear to us that you know while we still do all those other things and like doing them the main focus is the the training business and that's where we put

everything in that's why we built the app and now i think our app is the highest rated app like in its class on the app store wow it's got uh the most amount of reviews as well so direction is a really hard thing to uh kind of point people in uh as like a leader and like a visionary uh you're just like hey let's fucking go this way and you're just like you see the mountain over there like that's where we're going like we're going over but you have to be like super specific when it comes to uh getting to any destination you know if you're off by just a little tick and you're in something for the long run, you're going to be way the fuck off.

You're going to end up in Florida instead of ending up in New York. It's a tough thing. Even with a name like Hybrid, I remember when you guys were starting versus the way that things are right now. You guys really struck with a great name, a great term

to have a hybrid athlete because when you started, that wasn't cool. It was, you were a power lifter, you were a bodybuilder, you were a crossfitter or you were a weightlifter. You weren't messing around with all of them except for you and Steph were messing with all of them because she's flexible and mobile and strong in a lot of different positions. And so are you with your cleans and snatches and stuff like that so how did you guys like is that a trend that you kind of picked up on early or is that that was just your own interest probably your own self-interest right yeah it was mostly i had actually switched um to powerlifting originally because i was getting injured in weightlifting. I was able to clean and jerk a really high percentage of my max squat. I could clean and jerk 185 kilos, and I could only front squat 190 kilos. So it's like every time I'm doing clean and jerk, which is every single day,

I'm just beating the crap out of myself because I'm essentially forcing myself to do max front squats all the time so i started getting knee issues from that and i was like you know maybe i'll just step back from that for a little bit um and just focus on getting stronger and i did i put like 100 kilos on my squat in you know like a year and a half period just running small ob junior 100 what 100 kilos oh my god yeah just running you know because i had and a half period just running small of junior 100 what 100 kilos oh my god yeah just running you know because i had never focused on it before either so like it was just it was something it was novel it was just high frequency squatting basically yeah it was basically small of junior on repeat for like a year and a half and that's squatting three times a week four four

four uh yeah and fairly high volume so um i was was, I mean, I was sore all the time, but I wasn't in pain the same way that I was in pain when I was weightlifting. And then once I had that strength surplus, I went back to weightlifting after not doing it at all. And it was like, you know, hitting PRs and everything felt good and I had no more knee issues and all that stuff. So I kind of realized that the way that we train in weightlifting in North America is a little bit backwards because if you look at Russia or China or any of these countries, you know, sure they have help with PEDs and stuff like that that some North American lifters don't, but, um, they have these huge strength surpluses guys who are

75 kilos or squatting 300 kilos, you know, and so they're able to clean and jerk 205 kilos and do it a lot, you know, um, where that's not really the case, uh, here we have way less of an emphasis on the strength part of weightlifting, even though it is a strength sport. I think that the way it should be thought of and the way that Steffi and I realized that we thought made the most sense was that you treat the strength portions of Olympic weightlifting the same way a football player would. The skill of football, you learn the field doing practicing those skills right you don't use football you don't like throw a bunch of weights all over your body and play football to get stronger right so for weightlifting we thought the same thing let's try to push this way of using it as the accessory strength for strength and then you get better at clean and jerk and

snatch by doing clean and jerk and snatch so um instead of battling it out to try to get like you know one kilo pr and snatch by snatching every day you can put 50 kilos on your squat and get a 10 kilo pr on your snatch so um we were we were both uh well i started doing both olympic weightlifting and powerlifting kind of this hybrid approach sort of thing. Um, and I was doing a powerlifting block and Steffi was in school. Uh, and weightlifting is so mentally taxing as a sport. Like it's a game of like timing and speed and precision and all these things where, you know, in powerlifting, it's not easy by any means, but it's a sport where if you feel like shit, you can still go up and down, you know? So, um, she was like, all right, I don't really want to worry about weightlifting.

You know, school's tough. I'm up all night, like studying. I'm like, why don't you do a pile of can block with me? First time we go in the gym, she pulls 315 pounds in sumo deadlift. I'm like trying to teach her, you know, my mechanics are all not good in sumo. I just don't have a good body for it and whatever. So she does it. I'm like, uh, yeah, like that looks better than how I do it. It's the first time she's ever tried it.

So, um, it was really clear she had an aptitude for it. And then she enjoyed training that way. She was doing Olympic weightlifting less. So she was doing it like once or twice a week, but powerlifting all the time. Um, and then people were just asking us about it to get back to your point or your question. Um, people were asking us about it all the time. And then people were just asking us about it to get back to your point or your question. People were asking us about it all the time. Like, how do you do Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting at the same time? Like, so we were doing competitions in both and we did a super total meet when it was actually kind of cool. It was at a local gym called CrossFit Seoul and we had both won the super total competition

and there's both powerlifters and weightlifters in it. So it's kind of like a cool little proof of concept for us. What does super total mean? Like what movements are in the competition? It's basically you do a full weightlifting meeting, they do a full power lift. So it is absolutely brutal. Um,

and they took, so they took, uh, they were still using Wilkes predominantly at the time. So they took your Wilkes and they added it with weightlifting's equivalent, which is Sinclair. And they, whoever had the highest number at the time so they took your Wilkes and they added it with weight lifting's equivalent which is Sinclair and they whoever had the highest number at the end won and we both won so that was really cool and um yeah we just got asked about it a lot and at a certain point we're like everyone wants to know you know how we're doing this why don't we

just show them and charge them for it and that that's how it started. It was super organic. It was just what we were doing, and we built from there. Yeah, there's so few people that actually will compete in powerlifting. There's so few people that actually compete in Olympic lifting, and even the people that do compete in those sports. I think there's a lot of Olympic lifters that would love to have a good bench press, and there's a lot of powerlifters that would love to have a good bench press. And there's a lot of power lifters that would love to have some good overhead pressing power. And so you kind of see these hybrids

all over the place all the time. It's just that no one was really thinking about it, I think, quite the way you guys were. Yeah, and we were also challenging some of the norms around specifically the weightlifting community. Like, for some reason, everyone had it in their head that if you bench press, it's going to mess up your snatch and your jerk. Like, like you do a few reps of bench press

and you're not gonna be able to put your hands over your head anymore. Like that's literally how it's thought of in the weightlifting community. But if you go back again to those Eastern countries or Asian countries, they're doing bench press. Like my, my weightlifting coach, uh, when I started out, you would show me videos of him benching over 200 kilos, like 440 pounds. Yeah, close. 507 bench. Yeah. Smash it.

Exactly. So it's like, you know, I don't know why it got twisted over here. You know, obviously if you're specializing in bench press and you don't do any snatch and clean and jerk, you know, you're going to run into some mobility issues. But, I mean, nobody's ever recommended doing that to get better at snatching clean and jerk. So it's sort of a straw man argument that people put up for it. And, yeah, so it was a bit of that, you know, kind of making people think a little bit about the way that we just took training in that sport for granted.

And both of our roots were in Olympic weightlifting at the time. And, yeah, it just grew from there. We built up that software that I was telling you about, the original one. And we wanted like 10 to 15 beta testers to test out that app, that web app, and give us feedback. And we offered it for like really cheap. And then we got like 400 people applying for it. So we're like, oh, there really, there really is something here, you know? And then it just grew.

We had 400, a thousand that just kept growing from there. Is there a nutrition aspect to that? Yeah, there is. Um, we have one-on-one nutrition coaching, hybrid nutrition. Um, our, uh, training director is Francesco Catalano. He's awesome. He's in charge of all the continuing education on that side. You know, Chesco, maybe the only guy who lifts deadlifts slower than me.

But yeah, he's great. We have a team of coaches. So if you sign up on that, we're actually in the process of trying to decide where we want to take that part of the business. The service itself is great, but it is on a web-based app. So we're thinking of what the next step is there, probably do something similar to what we've done with the training side. I was just going to say just a quick comment. Like I remember the first time I met you guys, it was probably the time that you, that Mark was just mentioning. But like, I remember we just spent like a day doing photos and then like you guys brought your

own camera and like, I was then you guys brought your own camera. And I was teaching you guys how to use it. That was a fun time. But it was crazy to see you guys then. And then you have your own media team. And then you have all... You guys exploded since then. So it's been cool to see that progress as well.

But what was it like scaling and having a team all of a sudden? Because I didn't know if you had a team back then. But it just seems like you didn't have as much as you guys do now, at least. Yeah, I mean, it was tough. There was a lot of growing pains. You know, we started off, you know, just basically a couple of kids running this program and trying to figure it out on the way.

And we hired a lot of people just based off of friendships and proximity and people who are convenient. And the bigger we got, the more we needed to hire talent hired a lot of people just based off of friendships and proximity and people who are convenient and the bigger we got the more we needed to hire talent over uh you know just convenience so there was definitely some growing pains there you know we had basically turned over almost our whole staff because of it you know and but we were in a position where we could afford to go out and hire really good people. Like our CMO is Candice Hudspeth.

I don't know if you know her, but she's been in the industry for a long time. Yeah, she was with Bodybuilding.com, right? I've known her for a long time. Yeah, she was with Bodybuilding.com, and then she was with OPEX. Yeah, that's where I remember her from. Yeah, now she's with us. That's incredible that you have her. She's awesome.

She's very business. She's our team mom her she's awesome yeah she she's she's our team mom i said i say yeah when i hired her i hired my own boss so it's she makes everybody's life so easy well it's great she's like she's in it right like because she's probably in there lifting with you guys from time to time too yeah she's awesome and she i think she's good at lifting and crossfit and she's kind of like she really likes to be involved in and on the same like wavelength in all ways so you know she took up boxing when stephy took up boxing too she knows she's been she's been doing that too a lot of her videos on instagram you'll see her or her doing that now i bet years ago you wouldn't have thought that you would be able to hire

somebody like that because i'd imagine that she's not inexpensive she's very experienced and knows what she's doing yeah no i it didn't even occur to me that that was an option to do when we started. That's so cool. I mean, Steffi and I did everything. But looking back at it, you would probably, even if the money was a little bit of a leap, viewing it the way that you're able to see it now, you probably would have made the leap to pay somebody. Yeah, I mean, I would tell anyone as soon as you can do those things. Investing in...

Sometimes you got to do it yourself. Yeah, for sure. And we did for a long time, you know, I would sign off all, it was just me and Steffi. I'd sign off the hybrid team from team hybrid,

but it was just me. You know, I was the guy running the apparel while Steffi was in school to the, the post office and shipping it out and like doing the customer service. And Steffi made all the content, like, you know, filmed it herself and like doing the customer service and stephy made all the content like you know filmed it herself and all that stuff so yeah it's been it's been really cool and it's been cool to see i mean i think the the product uh we put out in the marketing we put out just speaks for itself and and what a difference it makes to invest in in talented talented people. How about, um, you know,

you mentioned that you hired some people that were convenient and people that were friends. If somebody is trying to start something and they don't have the money to hire somebody like you just mentioned, would you suggest that they hire those type, like people that they know, like, does that is, what are the things that you need to look for if you don't necessarily have the funds, but you, you know, you want to meet, you need to look for if you don't necessarily have the funds but you you know you want to meet you need some people for the job it's tough i think you i think more i love uh what jaco says in extreme ownership like it's always your fault right if if you're going to take ownership of this the situation and you know you hire somebody and they don't work out like you messed up in some way right you either hired the wrong person or you didn't set expectations correctly. We made yourself too available or

whatever it is. And I think that's, that was part of our growing pains was we made ourselves extremely accessible. Someone could walk into my office and be like, Hey, I'd like a raise. And we're now I'm in a meeting, you know? And at a certain point we had too many people who just had full access and were totally comfortable just making demands and, you know, treating us like any friend treats somebody. You know, if I'm your friend and I've got a problem, I'm going to come save you straight up. But sometimes that's not the best way to run a business. So I think to go back to your question, I think setting expectations right away. You know, we also at the beginning, we did lots of things on handshake agreements. We're like, no, never doing that again.

You know, we're in the hard way there, you know, and just being tough. Like, I think it's like if somebody wants to work for you, then they have to understand that if you're talking about business you're their boss first you know and you have to i i for a long time really didn't like any sort of like workplace confrontation so you know i let things slide that i shouldn't because i didn't want to be tough with my with my friends or you know whatever people who are going to be around all the time um and you know we just we learned from that. You have to be really clear up front, I think would be the key factor. And to say, hey, this is, you know, a one to three year thing. Maybe I'll transition into hiring, but understand you could be replaced because you're not professional in this field. Like, do you agree?

You know, you can ask your friend, like, do you agree? And they're like, yeah, I'm just some schlep who's looking for to gain some extra dough, you know? Well, and some people are great and they grow with the business and they learn the skills right like there there are some people who are uh like for example uh our training director his name's uh simon chang uh really great lifter uh you know uh i think before he was with us he was uh an accountant and now uh like he didn't know anything to do with the job really we initially hired him as a nutrition coach and then he was just one of those people that always wanted to do more and learn more and all that stuff uh and then when we launched the app we with our first

um software development experience we realized we were kind of just like at the mercy of whoever wrote the software right because at any point if it was our whole business they could have just been like well now it costs double luckily they never did that right like or you know they they had they had full control and access they're basically gatekeepers right so simon taught himself how to code and now is the kind of one of the bridges between those software developers and the programming that you actually see come out on the app. We have another guy who did that as well. He's by education is a chiropractor. His name is Ian Kaplan.

And now he's the strongest software developer on our team. Better than the guys who are the like the actual software developers i hope they don't get mad at me if they hear me say that but that's what they say they say that he is is like leaps and bounds above he's just like a rain man type brain power project family how's it going i want to talk to you guys about within you hydration specifically they have this is the way which is an amazing protein that tastes really good there's a fasting gum but the hydration is very interesting because there's no other electrolyte supplement like it out on the market has 60 milligrams of magnesium 320 potassium a thousand milligrams of sodium but it also has 500 milligrams of aminos essential amino acids and then two

milligrams of zinc two amazing flavors blueberry lemon and a salted caramel that's you andrew that is me. So guys, you know how important electrolytes are. They help you perform better. You don't get cramps during workouts and mean with the diets you need good electrolytes. So Andrew, how can they check it out?

Yes, that's over at Mark Bell slingshot.com and at checkout enter promo code power project 10 to save 10% off your entire order links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. When you made the transition from friends and people in your circle to professionals, did you lose friends? For sure.

I mean, that's a risk that you're gonna have to take if you're gonna hire friends too. I think you need to be aware of that because everybody can say that they're gonna be professional and they're gonna not let business affect friendship. But, I mean, it does. It's just part of the game, right?

Yeah, it does. So I think, you know, that's something you should be conscious of, that that's a risk you're taking any time you bring somebody into a business. You know, a lot of times if the business relationship ends, so does the friendship. And you can still be cordial and stuff, obviously. But, you know, people don't like to get fired that's like on the list of traumatic things it's like death of a loved one getting fired you know so being the person that carries out that act on someone has a lot of weight yeah go ahead i was just gonna ask so like scaling with this many people i believe it's kind of impossible to have like a personal training like service, but is like apps and web apps kind of like the only way you see people moving forward are going to be able to like care for so many athletes? Yeah.

I mean, I think it's also a matter of what your goal is, right? You can have a really high touch service where you're dealing one-on-one with people and you're charging a lot of money for that, but we just took the opposite approach where we wanted to not charge very much. Our service is only $40 a month and you get access to all these things. We try to really over-deliver on it.

And for something like that, we have thousands of people. I think there's 20-something thousand people on the app, and there's no way we could service them. We can't hire. What can someone deal with 20 people at a time? We're not going to hire all the coaches to each coach 20 people individually. But we do a really good job, I think, of providing as close to a one-on-one coaching experience as you can

like we have um when you open up your app to your your workout for the day if it's the powerlifting each different program has a different coach so if it's the powerlifting program you open it up stephy she's explaining why like the video of her telling you why you're doing what you're doing giving you a few tips on all the different exercises, talking about what the intention of this part of the training cycle is. We have a Discord community, so if you need coaching beyond that, you click through the app, it takes you to Discord, and all of our coaches are in there. So we have 20 group Discord moderators that just all they do all day is go through there. We have doc moderators. So if you get injured, you have qualified professionals assess like the chiros, PTs, you know, helping you through that.

And then we have specialty coaches for each program that are answering. Actually, from now, I'm leaving from this podcast to go watch one of them who's competing at the arnold and weightlifting right after this what's uh overhead look like on a business like this like do you have a lot of overhead or is it like after is it only after like the money's produced that there's like overhead because then you have to pay back some of the coaches um no i mean the software development team is our biggest expense, for sure. And that's something that I would, I would caution anyone going into the business of software development. I mean, I think almost every business now is in some way a tech business. So it's really hard to

avoid being involved in some way, you're either going to pay someone outside to do it for you, or you're going to bring it in house, we brought it in-house because we wanted control um but it's a really long process and it's not just something that you build and leave the the full-time job for a number of people sitting there just working on this thing all day making sure it just runs properly making sure like changing all the features like making it every click on the entire thing has to work all the time yeah and it's it's a really big big project it's not like you know i don't know it is in some ways like like building a house right there's a lot of maintenance fees that come come along with that so uh you know if you think you're just going to build your house and then

sit there and never spend another penny on it for the rest of your life you're dreaming it's the same way with with software development um but then outside of that i mean we have overhead in other areas but it's more by choice like we have the facility that that hq that we have has our podcast studio has our youtube studio has our warehouse and print shop has, like I said, software development team. We have a little lounge. We have a little swing that sits up on top from the ceiling that you can sit in. It's like a big couch thing. It's got a kitchen.

It's got everything. We just try to make it a place where people want to work. So it's kind of like a little fitness Google-esque environment that's cool stephanie and i have offices there and and then the gym is obviously overhead as well yeah i was just like with the uh cleaning people next door we got to make sure we're close to the mic so that way i can edit it later so thank you um i was wondering too in terms of the like company culture do you guys put an uh like do you care if the people that work with you are people that also care about fitness or do they just need to be good for the job

um i think in some positions it matters and some not so much but i think in in general people having an interest in it in some capacity is important because you want people to enjoy what they're doing you know if you're not in some way passionate about fitness, then are you going to care to sit there and build this app that's helping people with their fitness? Is it fulfilling for you? Is it something that you're going to be interested in doing long term? If you're hiring people that aren't interested in fitness, we generally try not to just because I think you're going to have

a higher rate of turnover. There's people trying to do something that's software development related. If you're talking about the software team or the DevShot dev team, if they really love food, maybe they're going to go work for a company like Uber Eats or something, something that they find more interesting or fulfilling. With all the success that you guys have had already, what's pushing you to get even more people on the app

and just kind of keep pushing forward? Just, I mean, continuing to grow just allows us to do more projects that we're interested in. You know, I know like for Steffi, for example, she's writing a program now called the Hybrid Athlete Program that's going to be geared towards

traditional sports athletes and combat athletes a program now called the hybrid athlete program that's going to be geared towards traditional sports athletes and combat athletes since that's something that she's into now so you know the it just allows us to branch out and do more things like that she's into fashion so she wants to do more on the apparel side with with that in the future and just the more revenue we make the more things you can kind of throw her hat in the ring and try, you know, in a smart way. Like I said, we learned before to focus on the things that makes us the most. But, you know, it's just it's money is opportunity. And that's kind of what we're after more than anything.

Does her doing boxing, does that like are you interested in doing other things, too, athletically? Because, I mean, you did Olympic weightlifting, you did powerlifting. Are you going to try anything, too um i don't think so i think i'm gonna stick to just i mean when i finish my powerlifting career i always said i'd do it till i'm 30 and i'm 29 so i'm getting close so i'll have to make that decision soon whether i'm gonna stay true to my word on that or not but um for steffi i think it's a bit different because she literally just conquers like anything that she does so it's like she played soccer and she was on the national team she's like okay i went to the highest level in that and she did weightlifting same sort of deal

powerlifting breaks 25 world records you know uh now she's in boxing so for her she's often moving to the next thing because she needs the next thing you know it gets repetitive for her to go into a powerlifting competition and break her own records every single meet you know um for me like i'm still i'm still i haven't done that in powerlifting i'm still pursuing getting stronger and and being the best powerlifter that i can be for myself you know um and i'm not somebody who's going to break world records, but I think that that's, uh, something that makes my journey relatable as well to people, you know, you can be strong, you can continue to make progress.

And I think a lot of times in powerlifting, it's discouraging because it's like, if you don't break a world record, no one gives a shit, right? Like you, you'll'll see some guy if the world record's 900 pounds and someone does 899 they're like bomb you know but uh i i like to sort of change the narrative as much as i can there's a lot of amazing people out out there lifting a ton uh of weight and if you look down that open power lifting list and there's 50 000 people on that list if you're even you know in the top 10 000 like you're a strong motherfucker you know i bet you just don't credit get credit for it the same way that you do in basketball or like these other sports where there is not really world records the same way right in team sports people can be good at different things and you can get recognition and there's many teams

and people have favorites based on personality and stuff. And powerlifting lacks that a bit. In other sports, it's kind of easy to see that something is similar. Like someone does a layup, another person does a layup. They both scored two points. And, okay, maybe one guy jumped better or made it look fancier, made it look nicer. But they both did a layup.

And when it comes to lifting, we don't really think about it in those terms. But the guy or girl that lifts 315 is getting a very, and then that's like near a maximum for them. They're getting a very same neurological stimulus through their whole body as someone that deadlifts like 800 pounds at the max. Yeah, for sure. And I think that powerlifting actually gets a bad rap for, you know, some will say powerlifting is easy because you only do squat bench and deadlift. But I actually think the simplicity of the sport makes it more difficult because it's equally easy for everyone who participates, right? Like everyone is only squat benching and deadlifting. It's not like you get the special easy lift and everyone else has to do the hard one, right?

There's only one thing that's being tested and that's strength. You can't rely on some of the things you do in traditional sports. Like if you play hockey and you're a bad stick handler, well, maybe you're really fast and you have a good shot, you know? And that's just not the same in powerlifting. I think, um, you have to really become this like master of the mundane and of these little different things, um, sleep and nutrition and all these things to get more out of it. And, um, yeah, I guess that's kind of like my goal to show is that you can still do that if you're not a world record holder.

What about, uh, writing a book? I honestly have thought about doing that. Um, but man, it is, it's a, it's a big job. It's a big job. Maybe in the future when, uh, I have a little bit more time, when I can step away and not feel irresponsible in doing so. You just have a lot of good stuff in that brain. I think it would be really cool to see it out in writing.

What was that experience like for Steffi? Which? Because didn't she write it? Oh, yeah, she did. I think it was really good. She co-wrote that with, uh, Ian Kaplan, the guy that I was just telling you about who is the chiropractor by trade. So there he used some of his, his chiropractic knowledge. Um, and, but now he's a software guy for us, but,

um, yeah, she liked it a lot. Um, it was something that she was able to, uh, speak to, not just based on her knowledge through, uh, physical therapy, but also, uh, through her own experiences, because that's what really could cause her to step away from powerlifting. And the end was, um, her, her back was bothering her. It was true. She was in pain for like the last two years of her career, just pushing through it, doing meets. I remember one us.s open uh for example um we were about to leave to get on the plane and she reached down to like put a sock in or on or something and like i just heard screaming from the other room and i ran in she's lying on the bed she could barely move and that same that same couple days we get on a plane, we fly, and she goes and breaks world records. What was the back issue?

It was never really accurately diagnosed. Everyone she went to would tell her something different. We saw everyone. We went to Canada, saw Stu McGill. We saw specialists in Miami. She talked to a lot of people online who were really well-regarded professionals and it wasn't something that anyone could really pinpoint,

but she was in extreme pain, like anytime she was lifting and a lot of times when she wasn't lifting. So, um, rehabbing that and getting herself back healthy was a process that was extremely empowering for her. And I think that's why that book was important there because, uh, you know, she got to share all of that, you know, she really went through it and used her own knowledge and all these bits and pieces of things that people told her, whether right or wrong, you know, sort of shaped, uh, you know, the way she thought about the injury. And she talks a lot about the biopsychosocial model of it, where, you know, just the way you think about the injury, She talks a lot about the biopsychosocial model of it,

where just the way you think about the injury affects your ability to heal and to be injury-free and all these things like that. She did a lot of great interviews with Thor. Thor had a back injury with Matt Frazier, who had broken his back. He had spondy and other people. So there's really good insight in that book just based on her knowledge and also just hearing what other people went through and their ability to recover and get back to sport.

That book is called Back in Motion, by the way, for anyone who wants to read it. I know Andrew's had a lot of back issues, and I know Encima's tweaked his back a few times. I used to tweak my back a lot. And I know Encima's tweaked his back a few times. I used to tweak my back a lot. I remember, like, just sometimes, like, yeah, putting on a sock or just something, you know, something you're doing around the house.

And I remember, like, that awful kind of feeling of, like, wait a second, what was that? There was some sort of do-donk, like some sort of extra noise in there that shouldn't have happened. Or it felt like a noise. Like, it seemed like you heard a noise. But I don't even know if there's like a loud click or whatever but i remember doing that many many times in lifting and uh more so even outside the gym and you're like oh i hope that's just something that hurts for just a couple days i hope that's not like because sometimes you're really fucked and you can barely stand up and like this might be two or three months worth of this shit yeah no have the door um for sure and i think especially with like power lifters or you're so specialized in going up and down um that when you're doing these other things you know like when you're

you're doing these movements that you're not super trained in it's that's where you get hurt like you said it's like you're reaching for something up on the shelf that weighs two pounds and you're like oh my shoulder it's like that you can go in the gym and bench 500 pounds or 400 pounds or whatever so um yeah i think that's i think that's also maybe a problem with powerlifters like maybe we should do some stuff uh outside of squat bench and deadlift that makes us a little more resilient and in real life especially like in her case when she's traveling like when you're traveling you got to try to figure out a way to move more but you might be uh just not in position to where you feel like you can move around but even on the plane you got to figure out solutions right yeah i love what uh stan

efforting does he just gets up every hour no matter how long the flight just annoys everybody big giant self up and down the aisle. He's wide as shit. So he must just be just knocking everybody's arms. He doesn't miss though. Right. He doesn't miss a meal. He doesn't miss that part hour. He probably has his phone timer on and everything.

That's dude. He's, he's incredible. Yeah. Super regimented. As far as your, the, what you mentioned,

you were talking earlier as far as how hybrid came to be. Is it closer? addy um so what i want to know is what do you think i mean obviously powerlifters can just go download the hybrid program so they can become better but you know andrew was reading this book recently and i read it a while ago called range um i don't know if you've ever read it if you haven't it's fucking dope but it talks a lot about like um there's a tennis player what's his name roger federer and a lot of like top level athletes part of the reason why they were able to become so great is because they had such a generalization in terms of childhood of doing different sports and different types of movements that allowed

them to dominate at the top yeah maybe that's why stuffy's so great but um what do you think lifters powerlifters can be adding into what they do so that they can become better athletes? Yeah, I think that concept in general is super important because powerlifting, especially on the untested side, there's no real season. It's like if you want to do a powerlifting meet in a month, you can do one. If you want to do it in two months, three. If you want to do it every month month you can do one if you want to do it in two months three if you want to do it every month you can do it right so it's really left up to the individual coach or athlete if you don't have a coach to set up your own season and people are not often really good at doing that you see people who are just in constant preps all the time and their bodies

get worn down and i know stephy was for a really long time and you know and we talked about where that led her so through those experiences we learned that you need an off season for sure there should be a large portion of your year where you're not trying to get stronger necessarily and where you're doing uh where you have a more robust sort of uh menu of of workouts that you're doing you know so we started doing things that were like conditioning and more bodybuilding and, you know, the things that yoke, strongman stuff, yoke carries, you know, all that kind of stuff.

So that when you do go back into a prep, you're better prepared. You can move slightly the wrong way and not wreck your back or, you know. Are you able to coach her or does that not work out well for you guys? Um, well, she's doing a lot less of the strength stuff now. So,

um, was that time period tough when you were coaching her and she was getting world records and stuff or, um, no, we always kinda, kinda meshed well there. Um,

you know, we both had pretty good knowledge of training. We've both been doing it for a long time. It was more like the coaching experience we had with each other was more like asking opinions. I wouldn't write her program, but she would ask me, do you think I should squat heavy today? And I'd say, well, what did you do yesterday? What did you do the day before what you know how heavy did you go then how

do you feel you know and we kind of just work together to to to make decisions you know for each other's training um and then actually at a certain point though she did take over coaching for me like i just fully did everything she told me to do. Cause I'm stubborn. I like lifting heavy and I was doing it all the time, you know, you and I've had many discussions about this. Yeah.

So I would just, you know, I, everybody who's ever seen me lift, sees the grinders that I put myself through. Um, what do we get to point? They're unbelievable.

They're epic because you're like, damn, that was an awesome single. And then, Oh, he's going again. It's like, Oh,

he went up 30. Damn. He went, but no, like he went, Oh, he went for a double. I was like,

Oh, hold on. He, he's going for a triple. It's like, Holy shit, dude. Yeah.

So, I mean, I was doing, I was doing that a lot, right? Cause that, I mean, that's the nature of a peaking cycle that gets heavier,

the farther you get through it. So, you know, I'm doing grinders in week two you know by the time i'm getting to week 12 it's pretty unbearable you know uh and i got to a point where i just had to be real with myself and say i'm i'm not i am not capable of doing my own programming because i'll just do this all the time. So it took some humility from me to let the little 120-pound chick take over my training.

But obviously she knows what she's talking about. And in that time period where she was coaching me, I had the best meets I ever had. It was the first time I squatted 700 pounds, which was something that I thought I was never going to do. It was under Steffi's coaching um first time benching over 400 in competition was the same thing um yeah pretty much all of my competition prs that i hold have currently were you know from working with her so um yeah i was i was never you know she's a little more feisty than I am.

So I was fine. Yeah, a little bit. So she has her moments where she gets frustrated. I think it was never with anything, you know, any way that I coached her. But my challenge coaching her was always like, you know, keeping her kind of even keeled. She'd miss. She's the type of lifter where she's having a bad training session, she's taking her belt off and whipping it across the gym.

She would get heated like that. Start cursing in Spanish? She's really, really competitive. She's her biggest critic, really tough on herself. So it was sort of just me almost trying to be like a sports psychologist just with no training. And she eventually did end up getting a sports psychologist just with no training and she eventually did end up getting a sports psychologist and helped her a ton so yeah we always we always meshed pretty well with living together lifting together running a business together managing all

these people together you know managing this team of uh athletes that are on the hybrid app and everything. Does that ever, I mean, that's got to get difficult at times. I mean, yeah and no. We just, like, we operate in such completely different capacities within the business that... You don't really overstep each other. Yeah, no one's ever stepping on the other person's toes or, you know, giving opinions and things that aren't their area. It's like, she probably doesn't even know what I do all day long. You know, she's just, she just knows it's, it works, you know? So, uh, and, and same, you know, I,

I don't have the desire to, to do the things that she's doing. You know, I know for a lot of people, you get two type A people in there. They both want to be the center of attention and they both want to, you know, be in front of the screen and they get jealous and, you know, all that stuff. Luckily, that was just something that never, never was an issue together. So it was just, yeah, it was just a good, we got lucky. We didn't know we were going to start a business together when we, when we started dating like seven years ago, but our six years coming up so i guess it would have been six years ago um but yeah it just it worked do you guys have any hard rules where it's like hey we're in the house now we cannot talk about the business no uh well only the one thing where i finally was like, hey, you can't do that anymore, was she gets ideas. She's like Kramer.

She gets these wild ideas, and some of them are not good. But she has so many, she hits home runs every once in a while. But she gets these ideas at all hours. She'd wake me up in the middle of the night. It'd be like 3 in the morning. I just had this idea. I'd be like, I guess I'm starting my day wake me up in the middle of the night it'd be like three in the morning she'd i just had this idea i'd be like i guess i'm starting my day now you know at three in the morning so eventually i was like all right maybe write it on a notepad we'll talk about it in the morning or something but no that was really the only the only thing and that only happened a few

times that's great awesome man what you doing out here at the arnold uh shaking hands kissing babies you know uh we didn't do a booth this year but i wanted us to have some sort of representation out here you know hang out see all these people in the industry that like i haven't seen in you know a while because of covid and all that stuff so you know it was just it was nice to run into you guys today at the booth it It was like, oh no, no shit. There's been no rules the whole time for you guys, right? In Florida? Yeah, man.

Florida's like the wild west. COVID's the myth there. So, and it's been like that for, I think we locked down for two months. And I really think that the reason why it happened the way that it happened in Florida is because people just started saying no immediately. Like they never gave the government the opportunity to really have control. So it was like the, the,

they either had to say the government had to say, okay, actually it's our decision and we're going to open everything up. Or they were just going to look like they had absolutely no control over people because people do whatever the hell they want. You know, this is a sort of on the other side of things but uh you guys are two individuals in an industry that everybody's fit everybody's well known both you guys are well known how'd you guys navigate your relationship like how like because she's really well known so

she's probably getting a lot of weird shit and with you you're probably getting a lot of weird shit too so how do you guys navigate the trust aspect of things within that, if I can ask? I mean, to be honest, Steffi's, I think now because her account's so big, she's just like, I don't know. It's just the frequency at which things come in. She's just not even seeing things anymore. And you just got used to it too. Like, yeah,

I mean, I don't know. I, I never, I never cared much to, to like, I don't know, see what weird requests creepy people were getting there on social media.

Um, so that never, that never was really a factor. with me, I never really, honestly, I just get mostly gay dudes that's trying to buy your underwear i don't know what it is yeah just yeah no sometimes the beard yeah maybe i think but i'm not like i'm not huge i'm like a bear i think the term is an otter yeah yeah oh yeah i'm working my way there still a, uh, I forgot what one of my buddies called me. He's like, no, you're not there yet. It's like, fuck one day. Uh, is it annoying that

in this day and age that you kind of do have to be on social media? Uh, yes and no. I mean, like what we were talking about earlier before we got on the podcast, how my account got hacked and I had such mixed feelings. Like it was stressful because I was like, this is probably not good for business that was so weird but then i was also at the same time sort of like sick yeah maybe i don't have to do this anymore maybe i can just this is my excuse to be like all right everybody else in the business you're doing the social media thing and i'm you know i'm i'm just chilling now, I know there, there's definitely parts about it that I like, you know, like I never would have had probably any of the opportunities that,

that I got in the industry or met all the cool people that I have met, uh, if it wasn't for social media. So I am super grateful for it. I think it gets a bad rap and it's like anything. It's like, it's guns aren't evil. It's the way people use guns.

Right. It's the same thing with social media. It's way more positive than it is negative you know you come to a show like this you run into people that have had good experiences yeah from something that you posted yeah and it's also i i think like social media gives you the ability to curate your own experience so if you're having a bad time on social media it's your fault right it's like banging your head against the wall and then being like, oh man, my head hurts all the time. I don't get it.

You know, it's like, well, maybe don't do the thing that's hurting your head, you know? So I think people do that with social media. They're like, oh, I hate it. I go on there and I just see everybody's highlight reels of them traveling and this. I'm like, you just not follow those people, right? There are people who are on there talking about, you know, their struggles with depression and all those things. And if that's the experience you want follow those people so um yeah i mean uh

like i said it's it's a mixed bag for me i try to curate the experience on social media that i like i try to put other things that i'm interested in and you know that's uh in general i i enjoy the process you guys getting ready to run any competitions, or do you have something that you're thinking about competing in soon? We just had in January the fifth annual hybrid showdown, so that was cool. It was by far our best one yet. We put up $60,000 in prize money just from hybrid, like yeah no no sponsors that's 150 more money than it's ever been given out in powerlifting history so that was really cool i think um it was cool

to make a meaningful impact in in a few people's lives like i watched one of the um post we had the interviews we had commentators and we had interviews and stuff with with all the people there and the the girl who won was like i've never seen this much money in my life like this is this is the first time i've ever seen that i'll see this in my bank account this is more than my car's worth you know and that was something that you know well i wasn't necessarily thinking of when we put the meat on you know i was like i just want to help people make like i want to put up a big cash meet and attract good lifters and it helps the sport and that was my thought process but then seeing

how it actually impacted like the individuals is really cool so something we want to continue to do um maybe and with more time if we put up our own money and then also get a lot of sponsors to put up money uh that'll be cool too we'll uh be able to offer even more prize money i would like to be able to give like top 10 at some point a substantial uh you know a pretty substantial amount because right now it's like you know some guys making a great living like john hack just goes to every money meet right comes first and you know he's making good money doing that but that's not the reality for most, as is the case with most sort of like fringe or niche sports. What about trying to crossfit the powerlifting community?

Taking a page from the open and, you know, having like online powerlifting. Yeah, they actually, Olympic weightlifting did that this year. I know Duffin does a little bit of that, yeah. They did not not at a huge scale but uh it was last year i think they had uh online nationals and they had all these like we we hosted a bunch of lifters in our gym um it had to be a usa w gym and you literally you did attempts everybody would switch to the person's screen and you'd see them in their gym and they'd do their attempt all of it online and the next guy would go to his screen. That was really cool. Yeah, I don't know how you'd go about doing that.

Are there hybrid app world records? No, but that's something we're going to put eventually. We had leaderboards on the old software that we had had but then it just becomes like you have to if you have 20 10 programs and right there's thousands of days of programs it's really tough to to monitor and manage because someone will just go in there and put i squatted 10 million pounds right but then you just invite them to your gym yeah but that lift I mean, that lift was great. You should come to our gym and do it again. So,

and so, yeah. Do it against this other guy that lied. We need like a, we have to build like a, some sort of algorithm that weeds out the, the, the outliers that are ridiculous because we did have a lot of that.

You know, you'd see someone's benching 1400 pounds, right? You know, it's like, that's not true. Yeah. Where can people find and find out more about hybrid?

Uh, me on Instagram, mainly just at Hayden dot Bo, uh, hybrid, uh, on Instagram at a hybrid performance method, everything that we do through the business and the different businesses is,

is on there. Um, if you want to go directly to hybrid performance method.com, that's got everything we do on it. Or if you're just interested in the app and the different coaching that we have, um, you can get through it through the main site, but the direct link is hybrid strength coach.com. That's JL Holdsworth, I believe. Yeah. Congratulations on everything. Uh, really appreciate your time today. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thanks for having me, Andrew. Take us on out of here.

Sure thing. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. Sincerely appreciate it. Please like today's episode. Make sure you guys comment something down below. And again, if you guys are on the iTunes, Spotify, or whatever platform you're listening to this on, head over to the YouTube channel and drop us a comment, please. And subscribe if you guys are not subscribed already.

Follow the podcast at MarkBell'sPowerProject on Instagram, at MBPowerProject on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ. And Seema, where are you at? I am Seema Ending on Instagram and YouTube. I am Seema Yin Yang on TikTok and Twitter. And what did you think of the tasty pastry? Oh, that was really good.

Thank you. That was really good. Thank you for that. Yeah, the macros are insane, right? 20 grams of protein down the old hatch, buddy. 180 calories for 20 grams of protein. It tastes incredible. Not bad. There you go. Well there you go well bam dude went right to your triceps i'm at mark smelly bell strength is never a weakness weakness never strength catch you guys later bye