Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 173 Live - Christian Guzman

Episode Date: January 29, 2019

Christian Guzman a bodybuilder, YouTube vlogger, and fitness entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of the fitness apparel brand Alphalete Athletics, the owner and operator of the Alphalete Gym in Houston, Texas, and the founder and owner of 3D energy drinks. Since day one, his priority has been to help people transform themselves. After his rock band disbanded he went on to study health and fitness management, developing his own fitness programs. He later left college to pursue his growing business and by 23, Guzman was estimated to have a net worth of $2 million. Link to sign up for the ST Classic: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/super-training-classic-2019-tickets-53251741392 ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Find the Podcast on all platforms: ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4YQE02jPOboQrltVoAD8bp ➢Listen on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject  FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

check my check hello anybody home not yet do you hear you yep i can hear me i can hear you yep check check you sound handsome all right mark did you know that he did not bring his girlfriend yeah i know i was actually uh i had smoky broke the news to me last night and i was like kind of why i invited unin. Uninvited. Yeah, unfollow. Right. So is she really from the North Pole? She is, yeah.

Family's born and raised there, so every Christmas we've been going and we literally go to Santa Claus' house and there's reindeer and everything. I was going to say, is that her dad? Like, what the hell? Like, I've never known of anybody from the North Pole.

So I'm pretty sure they moved there when the rush happened, right? And they had friends making great money. And so him and Wendy, his wife, just picked up, went to get some money before they had kids and ended up just liking it there and stayed there. Damn, different world. That's crazy, right? Different world. Yeah.

Well, maybe Smokey could get a job up there. Well, he's a South Pole elf because he's angry. Oh, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. I could, I could actually, I can actually see that. That makes sense. All right. Well, we're here today with Christian Guzman and, uh, you know, great to finally have you here. We've, he and I've been in communication for a little bit on getting them here. And, um, I've known Christian for a few years, but, uh, haven't had the opportunity to kick it with him. And today we got a chance to throw down, got a chance to do some bench pressing.

Yes, sir. We did some slingshotting and we also utilized a bamboo bar. We did some two minute pressing with dumbbells. It was a pretty damn good workout. How did that workout today differ from a lot of the things that you've done in the past? I would say it was much longer duration, but it was very good very good i still felt amped up i still felt warmed up and right now i just feel like i feel very fatigued but not it's a different it's a different feeling than when you just you know do a ton of volume and you have an amazing pump and all this stuff

versus just literally like really smoking yourself out and lifting extremely heavy. I'm just kind of like shaky in my arms. Right. Yeah. So it's like someone zapped all your strength. Exactly. Yeah. Came by with a stick and zapped the strength out of you. How do you normally train?

Like what do you normally do in a lot of your training? So really I like to start my workout with a big compound. And that's where I'll spend majority of my time. But after today I realized that I'm not spending that much time on it. If I do a push day, for example, I'll do a bench and maybe spend 25 minutes total. I'm only resting on my working sets maybe two minutes, two and a half if I'm really trying to hit some numbers. Then I'll really speed everything up. I bring my rest time down.

I probably do six to eight movements a day, and I try to be in and out within an hour, maybe, maybe an hour, 15 tops. Right. And you're pretty busy too. I mean, you got an apparel brand and you got this energy drink thing going on. Tell me a little bit about the energy drink. So the energy drink started about two years ago, about a year and a half ago. Um, got a little bit of a rocky start. We dealt with this lawsuit, blah, blah,

blah, got it sorted, learned a lot of lessons. And now this year we've really been picking up momentum and we're just trying to get into every, we want to be on every street corner in the world. And, uh,

we're already in the UK, uh, in a lot of spots in the UK. We're in seven 11 in Chicago and Denver. Uh, and now we're just trying to GNC is picking us up in March. We're just really, really focused on blowing that up. Did the lawsuit kind of scare the crap out of you?

You were like, wait, what? No, it pissed me off. And that's where I made a mistake. I was like, oh, yeah, let's go at it. Let's go at it. And then my stubborn head just, I spent way too much money. And at the end of it, it was just a big learning lesson to sometimes just have to accept and move on. And just, I hate saying,

take the easier way out, but at some point it's just not worth it to continue fighting. I heard a good quote the other day. I really like quotes. I get very attached to them. You saw me writing one on the, on the board up there. Uh, I thought you planned that. So when I walked in, like literally as I'm walking in, I was like, he definitely saw me writing his motivational quote. Right. When I walk in, I'm like, that had to be a coincidence. Uh, so the quote, it goes, uh, you know, be open to anything and be attached to nothing. And I really liked that quote a lot.

And, um, when you're not so attached to stuff and if you can kind of think about how do I remove the emotion of this, you know, somebody just said somebody, you know, comes up to you and they kind of said something rude and, and maybe it caught you off guard and you weren't expecting it. Um, how do you kind of like deflate that a little bit or, or you're in conversation with somebody and, um, you know, they're, uh, they're, they're talking about business and, and they propose something to you. And in your head, the first thing that your first reaction is like, well, that's stupid. No, no, no, no. We're not doing that. We would never do that. And these are all like, these are all very normal things.

Being negative is normal. It's not effective, but it's normal. And so when you start to think about how it's not effective, then you can say, okay, well, it does me absolutely no good. And it doesn't do the other person any good for me to be hurtful or harmful towards what they're saying. It doesn't do me any good. It doesn't help the conversation move forward. It doesn't help my business. It doesn't make any sense for me to fire back with fire right now. So that's what I try to think about when I get in conversations with people, especially about business. I'm trying to think, you know, how does it help? How does it hurt? And if, uh, somebody comes to me with an idea that I don't really like, uh, a lot of times I will deflect rather than like reject. So somebody might say something and I'll say, well, you're not wrong. That's actually a great idea, but I think maybe we should try this. Like in addition to what you said, you know what, even if I, even if I still kind of think I'm not, I'm not afraid to be a straight shooter, but same time, I don't think it makes a lot of sense.

Like, you know, shoot some things down. And like you said, uh, you kind of learned from that, uh, mistake because he got pissed. Yep. Yep. you kind of learned from that mistake because you got pissed. Yep. Yep. There's a lot of stupid words thrown around and,

you know, calling, you know, the calling, whatever. Anyway, let's not talk about it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. We learned. Well, it just gets ugly. Right. And then it gets, you know, it's social media and everything.

And it's like, wow. Okay. A lot of this could have been just avoided if I was just, uh, going on about my day. If I just keep, uh, keep working out, keep training through it. You've been training for a long time, and you've been on YouTube for a long time.

And I think a lot of this started for you even as a teenager. I think you were sharing information on YouTube. Is that right? Yeah, I started YouTube at 19. It was my first year of college, second semester. And at the time, I was obsessed with fitness and obsessed. You know, Matt Ogis fitness and obsessed, you know, Matt Ogis, Greg Blake, Chris Jones, all these guys that were, that were doing it. And they were kind of like the first people putting out information that I had never heard of. You know,

I mean, I would go to the bodybuilding.com and look for workouts and stuff like that, but it was, it was somewhere, you know, YouTube was a platform. You could type in something, you know, biceps on the search bar and, you know, I would watch hours and hours and hours of videos and just try to learn, learn a little bit from everybody and try to kind of soak it all in and go test it. You know, I was just testing everything, all the methods, supersets, drop sets, and, you know, just macros and just seeing what I liked and what worked. And how old are you now? Now I'm 25. So I started six years ago. And, and it, uh, and obviously it's worked really well because you said that you were a very thin, right? Yeah. Uh, so I haven't grown

in height at all since I started working out, but I was about 115, 120 pounds and now I'm about 185, almost 190 right now. That's awesome. I think there's a lot of people that, you know, like we, we talk constantly on this show about weight loss because for a long time, my audience was fat power lifters. Everyone's kind of like wondering, Hey, how do I shed a couple of pounds after a contest or how do I shed some weight? Uh, but in your case, uh, you needed to gain weight and used it through, you know, a lot of these methods are kind of controversial. You know, people talking about like flexible dieting, there's people that love it. And there's other people that say, Hey man, you can't get in shape eating a pop tart. And like,

it just, there's a lot of misconceptions about these things. Uh, but you're someone that utilize these techniques and, and you put on 80 pounds. Yeah. And I think, you know,

just like there's a, a lot of people that need to lose weight. There's also a whole demographic of skinny guys that want to put on muscle and that have problems gaining and that's want to look big and that are naturally skinnier guys you know my ankles my wrists my waist i'm tiny so to put muscle on the frame was a big challenge for me yeah story of my life yeah yeah we were just talking yeah i was i was grilling him before the uh before we went on air like dude okay so what i gotta do and he's like okay you gotta eat all your protein and then right before you go to bed eat some ice cream.

I was like, I don't think Mark's going to agree with that. Well, so for me, you know, just like we talk about counting macros if you're trying to lose weight, if you're a really hard gainer and you don't know how many calories you're having every single day, there's no – you can't build a house if you don't know the measurements, right? So you can't – you have to know your intaking in order to hit your goal. And for me, you know, I have about a gram of protein, say 200 grams of protein a day. I try to keep my fat fairly low. For me, that's under 100, 120 grams.

And then I shoot my carbs up. And so unless I'm hitting that 4,200 calorie mark and to hit 4,200 calories of oatmeal, sweet potato, ground beef and turkey, good luck every day. Like that is very, very difficult to do. So for me yet, when I'm having that many calories, maybe 20% of my intake, something like that will be something like cereal, something that I can just get down without stuffing myself and making me just lethargic and, you know, having to take naps all day. Well, and that person that you're talking about eating, you know, the oatmeal and going that route, that's called a professional bodybuilder. And that's, that's, that is a, that is a way that you can do it. But, but I agree with what you're

saying. And, you know, I, I made a post this morning and it just, I, I make posts regardless of how popular they are. Obviously I know that sometimes when I post with certain people or certain things that I do, I do recognize, oh, okay, this will be, you know, people will be excited about this. Me and Brian Shaw, like people always get pumped about that or me and Ed Cohn or something like that, you know? Uh, but you know, the post I made this morning, I, I, I had a couple of bagels on my way here this morning. Now I don't normally even, I don't normally even eat carbohydrates just because of the type of diet that I follow. Um, however, I think that there's a misconception here that sometimes people think that I'm against carbohydrates, however, I think that there's a misconception here that sometimes people think

that I'm against carbohydrates or sometimes people think I'm against a junk food, but I don't, what I'm against is, uh, people not getting what they want. People not being able to figure out how to put on muscle, people not being able to figure out how to lose body fat. And a lot of the people that I communicate with that have trouble with body fat, they have trouble with control in their diet. Normally the things that they struggle with control wise are kind of highly processed foods. So it's not really just carbohydrates, it's carbohydrates and fat. Usually it's things like donuts and cookies.

And, and those things have a tremendous amount of fat calories as well as carbohydrates. So I say, you know, war on carbs and people think, oh man, he doesn't think you should have carbs. And no, that's not the message because I do think that, you know, rice and sweet potatoes, and I think all those things have a place, but I actually think that, and I've been kind of in search of trying to find a doctor who can come on here and explain some of this, but I actually think that there's some, uh, a little bit of magic behind some, some of these, uh, you know, things that most people think are junk food. I think that maybe because of the things that they do to the body, maybe because they are highly processed, maybe they're doing

things that are negative, but maybe they're doing like a little bit of positive. And I would say a lot of that positive is going to be mental i think just the mental break of hey i can have a few oreos and i just want to clarify you know when i'm dieting and i'm at 2200 calories a day no i'm not going to be fitting in 20 of junk food i'm going to be eating voluminous foods with micronutrients so i can supply my low energy body to keep going i'm not going to be fitting in a pop tart if i'm only allowed 2,200. If I have 200 carbs for the day, you'll never catch me doing that.

Maybe once if I'm really craving something sweet and I'm like, okay, I'll allocate 25 carbs, maybe an ice cream sandwich just to kind of mentally put me at ease and allow me to keep going. But if you are trying to lose weight, you don't want to be fitting in things that really add nothing to, they add nothing to the fuel into your body.

They're not adding value. And I like what you just said there. Well, bulking's a little different though, because you're just, I'm so full all day, you know, I don't, I can't stuff myself like that all day. Right. And, uh, what you just said too, ice cream sandwich, like I, so that's something that I will occasionally buy for my kids. And, and why will i buy them an ice cream sandwich when meanwhile i'm promoting you know that that i try to feed them nutritious foods well i cook for them every morning my wife cooks

for them every night they have pretty good nutrition anyway but an ice cream sandwich is way different than having a big ass thing of ice cream in the fridge. Because if I let them kind of, you know, if I let them party on that, they're going to take out, you know, scoop after scoop after scoop ice cream sandwich is like one serving. So those kinds of tricks are really good. And then if you're counting your macronutrients and you're counting your calories, um, you know, that's where you can start to say, okay, maybe there is some room for packaged foods. There's a lot of things in the grocery store that have a hundred calories. So now maybe you do have an opportunity to mix in some processed foods here and there. Yeah. And just a few base rules

while we're talking about flexible dieting, I'm an advocate of a minimum of two servings of fruit, two servings of veggies a day. I think you should be hitting for males, at least 30 to 40 grams of fiber females, anywhere 15 to 25 grams. And once you hit all those requirements and needs, you're probably, if you're trying to lose weight, you're probably not left with much wiggle room. And so you really just have to try everything out. You have to hit these requirements, sort of see where your intake is at and you kind of learn as you go, you know? Yeah. Two servings of vegetables, two servings of fruit. I mean, when you start to think about some of these things, all that you said was, I want you to add these things.

And so I love that message of addition by subtraction. Now, now I just, I gave you so much work to do. I gave you so much stuff to do because now we got to also try to get in. And there's been a lot of research done on this and maybe you don't need a gram per pound of body weight, but a little less. Yeah, I'm sure. Sure. Sure. It could probably even be like half, but for argument's sake, let's say about roughly a pound, roughly a gram per pound.

Um, I gave you so much shit to do that. You don't have time to mess around with a lot of other junk. Exactly. You know, and it makes, it makes it just that much more simple. And I think, yeah, the, the, the message too, of the, if it fits your macros and flexible dieting, a lot of people like to use the pop tart and they like to use these different things and people get the message confused and they get the message confused when somebody's talking about a ketogenic or low carb diet. Now, if you were to put it into

a little bit different perspective on a low carb diet, somebody might cheat on the weekend or they might cheat. They might have a cheat meal or a cheat day. Cheat day is probably a little extreme, but they might have a cheat meal. Now, in terms of flexible dieting, all they're doing is they're sprinkling in the cheat kind of throughout the week. More sustainable. Yeah. Right.

And it, it could be more sustainable for some people and maybe the other way is more sustainable for others because maybe some people like to be locked into their diet and you like to have these kinds of strict rules, you know, during the weekend, maybe they let go a little bit, uh, on the weekend or however it works for you. But I think, I think in the end, I think we're all fighting and all trying to say the same thing. All we're trying to do is have people be able to gain some control, right? Gain some damn control over your diet.

Cause it's really hard. Yeah. And especially just looking at the general, at the population. I mean, it's crazy that I think a lot of people in the fitness scene in this industry, people that follow you that follow me, they've heard this a million times, shut up about the carbs already. I got it. But the thing is the amount of the, of people in the world that don't know how to lose weight. They don't, they think that, you know, this, this keto is the only way to lose weight or I have to stop eating carbs completely, or I have to do this, or I have to do

that, or I have to buy this lean shake, or I need to do a juice cleanse for three weeks to be able to lose any weight. It's just, there's so much misinformation out there. And all we want to do is provide you options that, that work and that you can try out and that ideally can be sustainable for a long period of time for your life. And I think a lot of people should track what they're doing when it, when it comes to people that have never really done it before. People that they don't know if they're doing, uh, when it, when it comes to people that have never really done it before people that they just, they don't know if they're, they eat way too much. They don't know if they eat way too little. And, uh, you know, there's reference points that you can look up on the internet. We'll tell you, you know, you multiply your body weight times this amount, depending on

how, well, even that is a process. And even that takes time to figure out. And, uh, you know, for yourself, how did you kind of come to these numbers? I'm sure it took you a lot of time to figure out how many calories you needed to gain size, gain weight. Oh, yeah. Constantly. I mean, really at the beginning, tracking a lot and, you know, weighing myself pretty frequently to see what was happening. If I eat X amount, what's happening on the scale over weekly or two weekly, you know, three weeks. Is it going up? Is it going down?

Is it staying the same? Okay, let me add a little bit more. Let me take away some. And so, like I said, it's really trial and error. And I, I'm a huge proponent of weighing yourself too. And, you know, I always say too, though, you know, with that, um, and even with looking at yourself in the mirror and stuff, just never kick a downed opponent, you know? So if you're, if you cheated and you ate like crap and you had some drinks and this and that uh on the weekend there's really not a great there's not a lot of great reasons for you to weigh yourself monday morning like just take a little break from that say i don't really need that i'm not going to sit in front of the mirror and uh you

know be pissed at myself just realize that it's time for you to get back on the plan it's time for you to get to get back into it yeah 100 what are some things that you do time for you to get back on the plan. It's time for you to get back into it. Yeah, 100%. What are some things that you do to try to keep you on track? Are there some different things you try to lock into, or do you try to even, maybe at certain times of the year, maybe you don't even pay attention to your diet? To be honest, right now, I'm starting my diet here in really just two months,

so six weeks even. So I got six more weeks to live my life the way I want to live it. So to be honest, I'm being sure I hit my protein and take a day. I'm being sure I'm eating enough to continue gaining weight. And once I'm here, like around 190 to gain is – I've never been over that in my life, and that's eating anything and everything in front of me. So I'm really just trying to push myself to continue eating and just be sure I can keep gaining the last few months before I start. But this isn't like an onslaught against

like dirty food, right? No, no, no, no, no. And once everything starts, everything changes. And you know, of course, even when I'm bulking, I'm still eating my core food groups, my fruits, my veggies and everything. It's just, I have to really get the calories up. So once everything starts, it's almost just, that's when everything starts cleaning up a lot more, you know, my veggies and everything. It's just, I have to really get the calories up. So once everything starts, it's almost just, that's when everything starts cleaning up a lot more, you know, my 20% of whatever I'm eating goes down. You know, my, my, my volume comes back in. I start, you know, incorporating my cardio and I start dropping weight slowly and losing, you know, anywhere from half a pound to a pound and a half, even towards the beginning of the diet a week. And it's just a process that you have to learn.

One thing that's helped me over the years is just sometimes going through periods of time where I'm just a little bit more active versus being less active. Certain times of year, I might walk a little bit more. I might train a little bit more. I want to say something about Mark. He stands up all day. We've been standing all day.

I sit all day, so my feet are hurting right now. We've done a few interviews and stuff, and're standing, but it's really good. I feel like you're very active and you're up early and you're, you know, you're, we were just talking when you were over there, he goes, yeah, it's pretty hard. The first, you know, he was filming for you and it's pretty hard to keep up with him. It's fast for 18 hours a day. I'm like, yo, I'm about to, I'm about to starve over here, man. So I can definitely see the activity levels really high yeah and i um you know when i first started having some of these guys follow me around with a camera and we're filming like hustlemania and stuff i mean we but part of the reason we don't film hustlemania

anymore is because these guys get killed by it and that's basically just them kind of following me around for the day but uh my wife is the one who pointed out to me like i always want to keep going i always want to keep doing stuff even like you here, we had to have put a little thought behind it. Cause we were like, well, we're coming off the LA fit expo. And I'm like, I don't care. I'm like, this is Christian Guzman. Like we got to make time for him. He's awesome. And, uh, so, and so we made it happen, but my wife is like, Hey, you know, you got to remember, you got your staff too. You know, you might feel fine, but she's like, I don't think they always do. So they got to pay attention to how they're doing too. Thanks, Andy. But yeah, I was talking to him about,

yeah, when I would film Hustlemania and this was back when you were doing pretty strict keto. So you would fast for like 24 hours, sometimes 48 hours. And you know, you know, how hard is it to follow somebody around with a camera? It's like, dude, well shit, when, when he doesn't stop for food, you know, it's tough and you know, he'll, you know, he'll go through tons of coffee. So it's like, hey, you want something? Like, sure, yeah, I'll have some coffee. Next couple hours, you want some more coffee? Like, sure, I'll take it. And then you start getting the coffee shakes, right? And you're just like, dude, when are we going to eat? And he's like, oh, I'm good. I'm fasting right now. Like, I'm going to, I'm going to wither away, man. Like I need some, yeah, yeah. So it's,

it's a lot of hard work trying to keep up with Mark. Hey, you know what I did? I taught these guys how to meal prep. That's what I did. Yeah. Because, uh, we would, you know, travel around. We'd go to like San Jose or San Francisco and I would say, hey, we're going to be gone for 12 hours.

You guys need to pack your stuff. Not because I, I don't want to stop. You know, I want to keep going and try to get, and I don't want to get stuck in traffic. Most bang for your buck. Right. That's right. Yeah. Gotta keep, gotta keep shuffling those feet.

Um, so you also have an apparel brand and you've done a tremendous job building that up. Um, and, uh, a lot of that has come from your success through YouTube and Instagram. Um, where did some of the YouTube stuff start? I know that you said you were fascinated by, uh, fitness. like where did that kind of twinkle in your eye start for fitness? Um, you know, how did your own lifting journey even get started? So growing up, like I said, I was really skinny, really, really tiny. And, uh, for me, I was, you probably would never guess. Cause I am, I'm a YouTuber and I'm in front of the camera, but I was really quiet. I mean,

I didn't talk to anybody. If someone talked to I would I would pray I wouldn't get called on in class um I just wasn't social very to myself I just want to go home and play computer you know a computer game and maybe play some guitar and I just hated speaking you know and so for me once I got into fitness and I got into it because a buddy of mine that i had known i played guitar with he had started like a training camp he went monday wednesday friday and it was a strength and agility camp and he'd already been doing it for a year and a half or two and you know he had a really good six pack and his arms were probably now that i think about it probably 12 and a half 13 inches but to me like he looked he was buff you know massive and i was

like man like i want to look i want to i want to look like that and you had you know girls that like you know text them and stuff man i want that so i signed up for that class and i got hooked monday wednesday friday three o'clock never missed a session i was obsessed with it and uh i think just seeing my body seeing my body change i went from 115 to to, I would probably say 130, 145 just by eating more and working out three times a week. And I was gaining confidence. I was talking a little bit more. And for me, that was really,

that was the turning point in my life, really, to be honest. It really, it's really a fascinating thing that you have the ability to change your body like that. And I think the thing that gets- The first year or two is like, that's when the ability to change your body like that. And I think the thing that gets. First year or two is like, that's when, you know, such a huge change happens. Well, I think that, that, that sometimes some of these things get a little bit lost in the shuffle. Like, um, obviously we can exercise and we can diet and we can lose weight.

Um, but man, can we make some other amazing changes? You just said you started talking more. You just started to have more confidence. Yep. Yep. And I was able to talk to women for the first time because I, because I got that gym, you know,

the gym gave me confidence. My body was building up and I, you know, I felt like I was Mr. Macho over here. And, you know, I thought I was huge in my tank tops back then.

And, you know, those kind of. Of course these chicks are going to dig this. Yeah. They can't ignore these biceps, man. That's right. And, and so, and it kind of goes going to dig this. They can't ignore these biceps, man. That's right.

And so it kind of goes back to just motivation. And I think that a lot of times, you know, I always refer to, you know, a teenage boy having a Lamborghini on his wall, like a poster. What you learn eventually as you get older is that those things aren't actually motivation. But if those things will get you started, if you're thinking the girls are going to be attracted, you get you started with the lifting. If thinking, you know, a Lamborghini, if you, if I buy that Lamborghini, I'm going to be so successful. If that drives you to put in work and get going, who cares?

I don't care what gets you started because eventually if you catch on properly, you're going to learn the discipline and just really enjoying what you do. And that process is what's enjoyable. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, a lot of times you end up with those things, you know, when you have these things that are around that, uh, are kind of subliminal that you're always, for whatever reason, like your mind always kind of gravitates for them towards them.

You have some, uh, nice cars. Do you have a Lamborghini? Uh, I don't right now. No, I actually, I've sold everything. I've kind of went through a little phase, you know, 21, 22, 23, where I needed all of it. You know, I wanted to test it out and I had a lot of fun. Don't regret it at all. But I think now I'm just really focused on the enjoyment of the businesses. I want to be in the office, you know, I want to be with my employees and build a team up and put my efforts there. What do you think gets you the most fired up and excited

about building a business like that? I think it's just, man, for me, I really just enjoy progress. And I think it's not the numbers on the numbers are literally just numbers on an account on a screen. It's like, I really just enjoy seeing the growth. I love when I'm in the gym at some random gym out of town and I see the, my athlete everywhere. And I'm like, this is crazy, man. And when we're at expos and stuff, obviously that's a big population.

But even today, one of your employees said, Hey, my sister had some pants. She had never heard of you. And like, she loves those leggings. I'm like,

hell yeah. That means we're making it. That's where all the hours are spending making products and, and marketing. We're doing all this stuff and getting new athletes. Like it's working. And to me, I just want to see everything grow.

I want to, I want to see 3d in my local grocery store. I want it to happen so bad, you know? So it's just exciting. It fires me up. Just keep walking by it. Like shit. There it is still sitting there. I'm pretty sure my dad actually went to the, it's called H-E-B.

It's a convenience store. He goes, Hey, do you guys have any 3d? Just can I speak to your manager? You really need that drink. It's awesome. You know, just trying to put in a good word um but yeah are your parents uh super supportive yeah they are um i don't know if we touched on it but i actually dropped out of college at 19 uh so back then you know things were a little bit different the support wasn't always like oh yeah let's support whatever you're doing just drop everything and drop your

career and go make videos flexing. Well, and this whole entrepreneur thing and this whole YouTube thing is fairly new, too. So your parents would be like, what are you going to do? Exactly. And so my dad had always been, you know, I was already really pursuing, you know, different streams of revenue when I was ready to kind of drop out and keep going full time. But even though my mom was really, really not wanting it to happen, none of my friends were like, this is not a good idea. Yeah.

Please don't do it. Like, you know, crying on the phone. My friends were like, yeah, it's kind of, you can stay in school and keep doing it part time like you are. But I feel like at the time, you know, 2012, 2013, there was that window where I was ready to go full time. Why do you think your parents were so into you going to college and getting a degree?

I think just not many people in my family have ever graduated. And to get the degree and get a stable job, because I quote that stable job, because I really don't think there's anything stable in this world like that. But that was the path, you know, and it's fine. But, you know, I was in school for health and fitness management, which would eventually allow me to be a PE teacher. But I wanted to build a gym. I wanted to, I told you, I went Monday, Wednesday, Friday to this training camp.

This guy, Mike Pindle, he ran the company and he would have 25 kids in there at one time. We had our strength section, the accessories, and then the agility stuff. It was just a rotation. So fun being in that class. I wanted to do that. I wanted to have a gym. I want to be a trainer and train kids in groups and stuff. And I feel like I was already doing what I wanted to get my major in.

I was like, you can't teach me this in a textbook. I'm just going to go. I already have clients. Let's go do it. Right. You know, so. No, that makes that, uh, you know, that, that, that makes a lot of sense where you're, you're finding your way, you know, in, uh, in fitness, you know, kind of, kind of on your own.

Um, I do think a lot of parents are really tied to this idea of college and it kind of baffles my mind, uh, nowadays that people are still so attached to that, like, yeah, you're going to do this and then you're going to idea of college. And it kind of baffles my mind. Uh, nowadays that people are still so attached to that, like, yeah, you're going to do this and then you're going to go to college. And it's like the, the, the, that progression is fine. And it has worked for many people, but it also, it doesn't really make sense to just assume that it's going to be a natural progression. My son, you know, he talks about college and he'll ask questions about it and I'll just tell him flat out. I'm like, you don't need to go to college. You know, you don't have to go to college. I mean, you can, if you want to go to college, I'm in, you know, that's great. I'll support that. But if you don't want to go, uh, that's totally fine too.

Each person's got their own path. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I feel like you're pretty rare though, in that, in that parenting fact, I feel like that's not a normal case. And I get asked all the time by people, Hey, my parents don't support this. Like they're making me do that. And my, my answer to that is always, you're going to have to balance both. And if you're in school chasing your set, whatever degree, right. And if that's gonna make your parents happy and they're the ones supplying that, unless you can supply yourself and you can,

whatever you want to do, unless you're actually already doing it and working on it while you're balancing school. For me, I was in school for a year, really two years until I could have full confidence. I was like, Hey, like I got this, like, let me just, like, I was already making enough money to run with it. And I was still in school, had a great GPA. I was balancing both. I was sleeping less. I might've been not paying attention in class.

I was doing emails in the back, but I made it happen. So I feel like that time has to happen. You have to prove yourself before you can just drop everything. I'm going to drop everything, and I want to start this. No, you can drop something once you've already started. It's already succeeding, and it's already shown you that it has potential. That's a great message. I share that with people often, too, is you can be going after something while while you're doing something else too. I think that's the only way to start.

Because if you just drop everything and start in what world does that make sense? I think some people will listen to some messages that you and I have, and they might think, oh, I need to quit my job or I need to quit school. And it's like, well, no, no, no, don't, don't do that. Keep your job, but maybe you start working on the weekend for yourself. Maybe start working on a business plan or an idea. Wake up two hours earlier, spend an hour and a half in the morning, get ready for work and spend two hours at night. You know, you may have to sacrifice a little bit more of your free time. Maybe you don't watch your Netflix shows at night, but if you're working towards

that, I mean, nowadays you can do really anything online. There's endless, there's so much potential. So just make time for it or else you're going to be stuck at the job forever. When you were going through this transition, how were you making money? My first thing was online coaching. And I got, I was literally answering free, you know, I put my email out for everybody. And so people would email with questions and I would answer everybody, you know, and it was, I was doing hours of just free email advice per day. And my dad, he actually, he was like, why don't you charge for that, son? And I was like, Hmm. Okay. So I ordered, you know, the Stripe thing, you plug in your phone and you can get credit cards.

And so I ordered one of those things. And, um, whenever someone wanted a custom thing, a workout plan, or they wanted some macro helper at the time I was doing meal plans and I would actually give them my contact. They'd call me, run their credit card, be sure it's all good. I get all their stats, all their data. I would send a questionnaire to be on the phone with me. They tell me about themselves and I'd make them a plan. I'd send it 50 bucks, 50 bucks, 50 bucks. And then I started doing 90 day transformations. Those were a few hundred, 219 bucks. And then I started doing 90 day transformations. Those were a few hundred, 219 bucks. I think it was for 90 days. I had my phone number 24, seven response time. And I really just pushed that coaching business a lot.

Do you have some, uh, like kind of, uh, OG customers from way back then that are, I remember those names and I remember the names, uh, for the first few years and it was great. I mean, I was making a lot of money. It was literally no overhead other than my time. And I think, I mean, it's an ideal way to start. Right. People that are listening right now are probably like, man, I want them to help me now. But you probably don't have time for that anymore.

Yeah. So now everything's essentially downloadables. I have a few one-on-one clients, but you can't just go and buy it. Now there's a whole application process. I only take on people that have counted macros. I understand what they've been following. They just need tweaking every week. And I'm not going to, I can't help, I can't answer,

sit at my computer and do that all day. But you do share a lot of free information. I give everything for free. Like I really strongly believe that if you give, if you output everything you can to help people, I think it comes back. I mean, people can go on a YouTube channel and they can follow. I mean,

you'd have vlog after vlog of your food. And yeah. And I also, I mean, I have dedicated videos to exactly how to set your macros, exactly when to make changes. Exactly. I mean,

there's everything you just have to look. Right. And just looking, it seems like people make it sound like it's so hard, but just Google something, you know, Google things. If you have a question or type it in on it's so hard, but just Google something, you know, Google things. If you have a question or type it in on YouTube.

Yeah. YouTube is, is an amazing resource. When it comes to finding your macros, how does some, like, where does somebody start? There's a, so really I break it down. And the first question is what are, what's your goal? What, what kind of body fat range are you? Are you fairly lean? Are you maybe over 20%?

Are you over 30%? Obviously, people that have more body fat need less, but they don't need a gram per pound of body weight. They may be having.6. Not to get too technical, but less protein. Then I typically have people multiply their—there's a formula and all this stuff to get your fat. It's all literally typing Christian Yuzman, how to count your macros. And I break everything down super simple and it gives you a starting point and starting points don't always work out. So sometimes, you know, and I say in that video, if you weigh yourself, you know, three times a week,

you're not losing weight over one, two weeks, you're going to make this change. You're going to subtract a little bit of those carbs, subtract a little bit of fat the next week. If you have to, then go back to the carbs, your protein the same. And it's very like step by step. You just have to be willing to try it out. You know, when, when somebody's, you know, selecting their macros and the body fat percentage thing makes a lot of sense. Um, and even if it's still like just some guesswork, it's totally fine, but you can

almost assume that if somebody is heavier, they probably are, uh, moving a little bit less. That's probably kind of how they got in that position in the first place. And so that makes sense that they would potentially need less, you know, caloric intake. The hard part is, is to figure out ways of, uh, controlling, um, hunger and, uh, hunger and

cravings. You know, you have any, uh, tips for people on how, how to kind of. Water. A you have any, uh, tips for people on how, how to kind of water a lot of number. If I were to break stupid, simple water, voluminous food, veggies, AKA, and number three would be volume water. And I'd really just say, um, if you're having cravings, have some fruit for me, some watermelon or some, you know, some, maybe some pine, some, strawberries are super low calorie for the volume that you get.

Oh man, like a box of strawberries will make me just not want any more sugar, you know, and it's little changes like that. Instead of going to a bag of sour candy with, you know, 150 grams of carbs for a bag of Skittles, you're, you're having 50 grams or 40 grams of carbs from a big box of strawberries. You know, something that I've learned kind of recently, and a lot of this happened through my bodybuilding show, but, um, it's kind of this idea of like, if you don't have good practices and you don't stay on top of good practices, bad ones will seep in. And so if you can kind of think about, let's say you're 300 pounds and you're like, man, I've tried everything. I just can't figure out how to make things work.

Some of these changes, some of these small changes that you're recommending are huge. These are really good first step. Don't drink your calories. Don't drink your calories. My dad lost 30 pounds. Yeah. He was, it's crazy to think because we're in the fitness world. That happens with a lot of men, especially.

He was having about 12 to 14 root beers a day. How many? What's that? 500 grams of carbs. And dinner would be three, four. During midday, it'd be all day. And just by cutting that out. And I think he limited it to maybe two a day.

And then now he just drinks water. No calories from liquid. Switch your carbs. Just be sure you're having something with whole wheat, with fiber, with micronutrients that slow digesting. Just that's going to fill you up more. It's going to provide more for your body. Just increasing your protein.

Honestly, protein is very satiating. It makes you not as hungry as opposed to straight carbs. So increase protein. Bring down your fat. Bring down your carbs a bit. Be sure you're having whole grain. Be sure you're drinking more water. I mean, your fat, bring down your carbs a bit. Be sure you're having whole grain, be sure you're drinking more water. You should, I mean, I drink over a gallon of water a day and it just keeps you feeling good.

Pay attention, pay attention to triggers. You know, what's something that were you like, you reached in the fridge, you had something that was kind of borderline on your diet. And then the next thing you know, you're, you know, I have one more knee deep, knee deep in the ice cream. The last one I would say is don't eat just because you think you should be eating. So if you wake up, I wake up, I'm not hungry, man. And even if you are, maybe just have a, have a protein shake, then keep going. Like try, I think fasting is a whole nother topic, which is really, really great. But if don't just eat a big breakfast, cause you think it's the most important meal a day. If you can push and maybe have a lunch and or have a big dinner, find out what your body needs. Some people may want a big breakfast and then maybe they don't get hungry

till dinner. Maybe they like to snack all day and have a big dinner. It's okay to have different eating meal frequency to me is a lot lower on the priority list as opposed to overall caloric intake and, and the quality of your, of your, of your calories. I think it's, uh, really important for people to schedule their food, you know? So like he's saying, don't just eat. Cause you're like, ah, you know, I have to eat now. It is good to get on the plan. It's good to get a routine going. And so I always say that I, I do believe that most people have a general idea of where they

are each day. I know there's the person out there who's like, I don't know. You know, I got a crazy schedule. I understand. But even with your crazy schedule, you still know when you bring your kids to school, you still know, you know, when you get home from work normally. Right. You know, some of these things. So write out a schedule of when approximately you're going to eat.

And just like you said, if you're not hungry, maybe you don't have to eat. Now, if you're going to eat. And just like you said, if you're not hungry, maybe you don't have to eat. Now, if you're trying to gain some size. Then it's opposite. Yeah. Then you, then your normal impulse, uh, you might have to change, but you know, just, there's simple things that you can do to kind of replace the bad habits with good ones. There's, there's yogurt, there's cottage cheese. There's, there's a lot of options and you can pick out foods that you like. It doesn't have to be something that I say or recommend. Uh, but when you're counting calories and when you're trying to figure out ways of, of reducing the amount of food that you're eating and the amount of overall calories that you're

having, it's, you're going to have to really pay attention to the things that you're eating, pay attention to the things that, that set you off. You know, did you have that slice of cake, you know, at someone's birthday and it, and it threw you into a tailspin because there's nothing we can all agree. We can say, yeah, there's absolutely nothing wrong with having a piece of cake, you know, have two or three. It's fine. Unless it, unless it triggers you. And to me, it's, it's a little bit hard for me to relate right now, but just like the trigger, I post show oh that's exactly you know once you do a comment you'd really deplete yourself for a long time yeah if you have something you just need to have more of it you know and it right now i'm obviously like in total opposites

on the opposite side of the spectrum so yeah exactly it's just you have to you just have to really learn triggers and you have to learn how can how can i do better to prevent them no one's going to eliminate them completely no one's perfect and if you do mess up, just get right back on, on track. And just take your time getting used to the food. Like you might do a diet for a few weeks and you might not actually really lose weight, but you may have made better decisions. You may have started to eat better food and maybe you're overeating on a couple foods that aren't, they don't really truly fit in. I know, um, you know, I've been on diets before where I'm like, I'll have like popcorn because popcorn doesn't have a lot of, you know, doesn't have a lot of calories in it,

but you know, you can still make a mistake with some of these foods that you think are safe and you can still overdo it and they can still trigger you, you know, to go in the wrong direction, but just take your time. Like just get used to the food. Um, be, be excited that you made better choices for a while and the weight loss will come. Yeah. I do think, you know, kind of like you were saying, if for example, a keto diet, and if you give someone a basic rule, don't have carbs, you can have as much peanut butter and nuts and you can just have a lot of oils. And guess what? If you're eating like literally boxes of nuts a day, cause you think they're okay. And just a ton of fat and

butters and things like that. Yeah. Maybe you're not having carbs. If you're having thousands of calories per day with in fat. And so it's really just, you have to eventually find the way and you realize that just cause something is good, a good food versus a bad food, it, you can still can't have unlimited amounts of it. Right. No, I mean, you can overdo it. And there's been times where I've been on a keto style diet where I've like gained weight, you know, cause I've just, like you said, I'm just eating, eating too much. Um, it's, you know, also too, I think it's a good idea to kind of think about like, what are some things that are kind of natural? You know, what, what are some things that are kind of natural?

You know, what, what are some things that naturally occur? Why is it a bad idea to, to drink a lot of calories? You know, and, and one reason is that, uh, when you take something like a fruit, take like an orange or a pineapple or some of these things, um, let's take an apple, for example, an apple has, uh, it has a kind of cofactors that help you deal with the sugar that's in it. It's like perfectly designed for you to consume. It has fiber in it. It's got vitamins, has minerals, and it has nutrients in it. And it has things that will allow it to digest in a certain way. It'll take longer to digest an apple as opposed to, uh, what apple juice could do to you. An apple juice could be five apples, 10 apples, you know, blend it up and it loses some of the fiber components to it.

And it's primarily, you know, all sugar. Now, you know, when it comes to sugar, what do you think are the problems with sugar? So if you're an active, for me, again, I'm, I'm on this opposite side of the spectrum. If I'm a very active, I'm sweating a ton. I mean, I am working out six days a week. I'm super active. So for me, I'm not one to really count a ton of my sugar, but it's also because I'm conscious of my foods. I've been doing this for a long time.

I'm not having just Pop-Tarts for breakfast every morning and then just having 500 grams of sugar a day. But at the same time, I'm not too worried about it. Almost like with sodium, I'm not too worried about my sugar and my sodium because I know what I'm intaking. And I think for a lot of people that are not active, sugar is... The thing is, you have natural, you have fruit, and you have veggies and things,

but then you have your processed stuff. And so I think really just cleaning everything up and get active. You just get active. And that should be step one so I think really just cleaning everything up and yeah, get active as number, you just get active and that's like, that should be step one. I think that's a good start. And the sugar, you know, that the, the part of the thing with the sugar, in my opinion, is that just the, it can lead to cravings and it could lead to just a lot of excess calories. And that's, I think that's what gets lost sometimes is like, look, we're still talking

about the same thing. We're still talking about you're, you're over consuming. I'm not a huge proponent of meticulously counting calories and I got my kind of reasons for it. But the main thing is if it works for you and it's effective for you, then forget what I just said. And don't worry about it. Continue to write things down one of the reasons why i'm not a huge fan of of uh counting calories is i think that to the general public to the general population it's just hard to get them it's hard to get them to follow things that aren't black and white so if you have time to explain macros to them you got times to follow through with a message like you have on your

youtube channel then that's great. And a lot of people can absorb that. Once you, the thing about that, once you count macros for say three, four weeks, get the hang of it, I don't have to count macros. The only time I'll count is maybe on the last few weeks of a competition prep, where I really have to fine tune, but I can get shredded as hell without counting anything. But it's because I've done it before. And I understand I can look at it. That's what I agree it's because I've done it before and I understand.

I can look at a plate of food. That's what I agree with. You look at a plate of food, you know, that's about 30, 40 grams of protein, maybe 50 carbs and about 20 grams. But you have to, I'm a believer where you have to, you have to actually do it and track it to be able to understand. So if you just spend, dedicate three weeks, four weeks to tracking for a few, for five days a week, right? And once you get the hang of it, then you can understand so much better and you don't have to do it forever. I don't track my macros every day. I don't track my macros every day.

If I'm dieting, I track it in the final stages where it's, and that's not the general pot, like the public. I mean, when you're that lean and tweaking just to get that last bit of a bleak, I mean, that's a very small percent of people. So I just think it's important to understand. That's a very small percent of people. So I just think it's important to understand. We just have to dumb it down to be on the base, the base, stupid, simple, and find a way to get that message across, which I was just saying today.

I don't think anyone has really hit the general population with a way that's simple. All you hear on, you hear juice cleanse, you hear keto, and you hear all these magical things on the, on the radio stations and the, what is it? Freezing your fat and all this stuff. And it's just, someone just needs to get the message out in a way for people to understand the general public to understand. Yeah. I mean, there's kind of this idea of like, if you do what you've always done, you'll be what you've always been.

Right. And so when you think about it in those terms, like that's pretty simple to consume, that's pretty easy to understand. Like I was eating this and I didn't look the way that I wanted. So now maybe I should like pay more attention. Maybe I should write things down. Maybe I should look up some YouTube videos. Maybe I should read a book or however you want to consume the information, but educate yourself on it, learn about it. And that's why you end up hearing a lot of people saying, uh, you know, a lot of diets are effective. A lot of them do work.

Um, what's sustainable. What's something that you can do for myself. I've always loved a low carb diet. A lot of people don't love it. And then I can't do it. Yeah. Well, so then why, why would you even bother? Why put yourself through all the stress of like, you know,

that's not what you enjoy. You know, that's not what you enjoy you know that's not what you like and maybe it just doesn't even go along with like general lifestyle or like who knows different reasons why but uh i like fasting and keto and fasting to me they feel like they go together pretty naturally it's like they go together pretty good and so that's that's what i do and i feel good and i think the problem is sometimes I feel so good. Maybe when I share the message, people just think that I'm all in on that. And I don't respect, uh, other forms of dieting, but I've been trying to say all along, a lot of these other methods are

really effective. Yeah. I just want, I just hope people that know that you can do keto and you can get shredded as hell. You can, you can get fit. You can have like, I don't, I don't ever drop my carbs under two 60 to 70. And I sketch red. I get to a single digit body fat. You can have, like, I don't, I don't ever drop my carbs under 260, 270. And I sketch shred, I get to a single digit body fat. You know, there's, you don't have to cut anything specifically out. You just have to find out how to make that work and how to make that fit and what approach is going to work for you. I've never talked this much about fitness stuff. I'm usually just all busy, you know, it's, it's, it's nice. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I like asking you about this kind of stuff because this is where everything came from.

Yeah. A hundred percent. You know, and that's the same. My story is the same. Everything came from, everything came from lifting. You know, you know, a ton about, uh, nutrition, you know, a ton about training. You know, I'm going to take a sip of this full

sugar Gatorade. I'm killing Mark's soul right here. Yeah. Dude, you're going to die. What you got over there, Andrew? It looks like you're brewing some questions up yeah no i was just reading like some comments on like your channel and then of course our channel but just one very simple basic one is um i'll just roll it into this have you ever messed with

the keto diet when it comes to trying to actually build like body mass no the simple answer is no i haven't and no real reason other than I really like carbs. I love, like pasta is my favorite food. If I were to have one food forever, it'd be pasta. I love rice. I like the texture of pasta. I can eat a box in the city. It's 1,600 calories in seven servings.

Right. No problem. I just love carbs. And so, you know, I'm addicted. Here's kind of the missing component of that sometimes is that, and I know for like right now, you're not like real crazy specific with your diet, but when he's having the carbohydrates, he's not pouring a ton of like butter on it and a ton of cheese and a ton of other stuff. Correct.

I mean, right now. Yeah. Right. Right. But I'm saying like under normal circumstances. Under normal, if I'm actually dieting, actually, it's crazy. I actually don't like to have pasta because I eat too much of it. So that's right.

I change. I really do change my carb sources. Instead, I'm having oatmeal. I'm having potatoes, things that fill me up a lot more. But when I'm gaining, I kind of switch to the white rice. I switch to pasta to where I can just eat a ton of it and put those and put the weight on. That's so huge that you just said that because that's that's what most people are facing is they uh just switch yeah try to eat a cup and a half of oatmeal see how you feel and that's only 450 calories versus you know three servings of pasta

with butter and oil like you're over a thousand and that's not going to fill you up like a cup and a half of oatmeal would that's hard do you think the gluten thing is kind of overblown or it's yep i do i i'm a big i believe that as well now if you're if you're sensitive to these things and you've had problems and then again go off the basis of your experiences and don't listen to us on this but uh i don't i don't i think there's a lot of people that like i don't notice any repercussions of having any sort i think that a lot of people want to find something to blame in the sort of sense where oh i i'm not let me it must be that gluten it has to it's inflammation exactly it's i think a lot of people just need to under to really just if you dedicate an hour a day for a month to learn

fitness to learn nutrition and just base you know base knowledge it's you don't even need that much time but that'll change your life forever and i just yeah i don't i'm not a huge gluten kind of guy yeah well the reason why i brought it up because it just seems like everybody like they'll stumble upon the like a ketogenic diet when they really are just doing like a keto ish diet but they're kind of looking for a cheat code right because they don't want to lose mass but they want to drop fat but they you know they don't really know how to do it so they're like oh the ketogenic diet i think mark does it so he's a big guy i think it's possible right so like there there is no real way to gain size and drop weight right unless you're a beginner in my opinion if you're

first year training maybe like a little bit in the second year training and you've never you know you've never hit a higher amount of protein i do think it's possible a lot of the new gains right it's it is possible to strip body fat and actually gain muscle and your whole physique changes but again if mark or i were to try that right now that's not gonna happen that's really just for beginners yeah yeah it's for beginners and then you know when you when you embrace uh some of the rules of bodybuilding and you embrace a bodybuilding style diet which kind of ends up you know if it fits your macros and flexible dieting sometimes for people that use that for bodybuilding they end up doing kind of more of a standard bodybuilding diet, which is a low fat, higher carbohydrate diet. Now, in my opinion,

that is the best way to get as tight and as lean as possible. And the whole key performance as well, I think. Yeah. Well, the, see the performance side of it is huge. The way that you perform in the gym is huge. And that part of it is undersold. And if you're on a ketogenic diet, your, your performance in the gym, most of the time for most people is going to, is going to drop. You know, I've noticed something a little bit different with what I'm doing now, cause I'm not really keto. I, I haven't even checked to see if I'm, you know, producing X amount of ketones or whatever. But, um, what I do now is, you know, I'm, I'm eating more meat and I occasionally will throw in some carbs here and there and I feel awesome and that my

performance is good. However, if there was more carbs in the picture, I would probably perform better. If I wanted to keep my body fat low, I would bring the carbs up higher and I would actually bring the fat down lower. It's just, I don't choose to eat that way all the time. And my, even with my clients, I was training a bunch out the way I like to train carbs is going to help performance directly. And for me, if I can keep, I want to keep my carbs as high as possible. I'm dieting down. I want to keep my strength as high as possible. And essentially you need to train heavy when you're trying to lose weight to give your, give your muscle reason to stay, cause it to stay, cause like push your body to stay as strong as it can while losing body fat. And if you don't do that, if you just switch to, I'm going to do 30 reps and exercise, I'm going to, I'm just going to cut my carbs.

Guess what? You're going to, I actually have tried actually very low carb, like my first few years. Flat is hell. You're not going to get a pot. You're going to feel just weak. And I just remember feeling so weak and flat and carbs, sodium, it all has an effect on your pump, on your performance, on, on, on, on how you feel. And so I really highly, at least from my experience, recommend keeping your carbs as high as you can while losing weight. And you'll be shocked. You might think 200 carbs on that's so much but i can 92 of my clients will lose weight between 180 to 200 everyone's so scared that they're carb

tolerant they may have to do a few sessions of cardio a week but yeah people are not as sensitive to things as you as you assume it's just you never actually track to understand how much you're actually intaking well they they've taken in the carbs with the fat, you know, and they just, they're not paying. I mean, how quickly can you get, uh, you know, your fat calories in? Oh, so easy. A steak that's got butter on it. You're done.

Three eggs for breakfast with some butter, and then maybe have a oatmeal, peanut butter. Boom. You're at 35, 40 grams right there. It's so, it's so quick. Yeah. It's so fast. So just, you just have to, and it goes back to, like I said, you have to learn what is in certain foods. I, that's why

I really think you need a track or you need to at least watch some videos and on every meal, like when I'm dieting, I'll literally show my meal. This is the macros on the screen and it kind of puts it in people's head. Okay. That's higher protein. It's egg whites. There's, it's pretty low fat. Oh, there's only a little bit of peanut butter on there. It's yeah. So, and even if you have like a, let's say, let's say for breakfast, you had, uh, you know, a couple eggs, a couple, a couple, uh, egg whites in there too, to kind of balance it out.

Uh, and then at lunch you have like a salad, you know, chicken salad, but it's got ranch dressing or, uh, and now, you know, you just, you just consumed like 45 grams of fat and you had no idea. Yep. You just didn't even, it just something that you wouldn't think of. You're like, I'm having a salad. Like salads are great and they can be great, but not like that. That free Italian dressing is my favorite. There you go.

Yeah. You got it. You got to make it, make a decision on, yeah, which we got to make a decision on what lane you're going to go in is, is basically what we're trying to say. If you're going to go kind of on that lower, uh, carb, uh,

venture, then you got to pay attention to the carbs. And if you're going to go, uh, in a direction of, um, you know, uh,

having higher amounts of carbohydrates and you're going to have to cut back on the fat. Yeah. I think my only quote, I don't have a, I feel like I've been sounding, they have a problem with, with low carbon.

I don't, I don't have a problem with keto. I think the only problem I have is that for the average person, if, if they're at a birthday party and there's a, if they're on keto and they see a stack of cookies there, or if they see a bag of chips and they just want to have a little, if they want to have a little bit, cause they haven't had carbs in so long, they just crave, they can't control. I think by mentally saying, okay, you're cutting your carbs. It's going to, it makes you want some carbs, right? And it, but then again, it makes you feel so bad when you do. And it makes you feel like you messed up and you, and you're, then you spiral downwards. And so I think the reason I'm such a carb advocate is because I

think that it's sustainable. And I think that if you learn how to diet with carbs, you can have a, you can throw in a cookie at a birthday party, especially if you're not being that, if you're maybe not doing a show or anything like that, you can learn how to fit things in and not have to give up your social life. You want to have a glass of wine or two, you can, you learn about there's seven calories in a gram of alcohol. You can figure out, okay, one shot of tequila is roughly going to be a hundred grams of calories. That's how I'll try. And you just, you have to learn it first. And then it's just easy to kind of understand and have a better picture. I went to eat with Jay Cutler and, uh, you know, he ate, he ate fairly clean. He got like salmon. Um, he ordered, I think salmon and rice.

And he just said, you know, no butter, no oil. Um, and they were like, oh, what? And he, he just said, oh yeah, you know, I eat a particular way. And he explained it oil um and they were like oh what and he he just said oh yeah you know i eat a particular way and he explained it to them and they're like okay sir sounds great and uh but then um the bread came out and uh the and then he ordered a soda he ordered a coke you know and he had he had a he had a piece of bread i mean he's retired you know first of all he's retired but i think that's a good example of he he made decision on one end and said, I don't want the extra calories this way. I'm going to have a little bit of this. Yeah, I don't need these extra calories over here, but I want these extra calories over here.

And so he made a decision. That is all that we're trying to pre-trade. Exactly. See, I would just lose so much weight if I did that. It's really, for skinny guys, I think for really skinny guys with fast metabolisms that you, you have to, if you're not gaining weight, eating normal, what's going to make you think you can gain weight eating super, super clean and saying no to, you know, olive oil. And so like a lot of times you need that, you're going to

need that amount of food to gain. Right. Well, and there's so many people that, uh, there's so many people that are kind of stuck in this way of they, uh, they want to be bigger, but they don't want to gain fat. You are going to have to, you're going to have to gain a little bit of fat. Now, of course you can control, you can, you have these dirty bulks where people cheat everything inside. But then if you actually do lean bulk, you know, you're, you're still not going to look like you did on a show day, but you're going to feel good. You're going to maybe have a few hundred calories over your maintenance level, which you, to find your maintenance level, you just kind of have to, you have to experiment. You have to figure it out, whatever that level is, and maybe bump it up 250 calories.

Face might get a little chubbier and some stuff like that, but you'll just have to deal with it for a little bit. You're never going to be as shredded. You'll never be as lean as you are as if you were depleting yourself for 12 weeks. You're not going to look like that if you're in a lean bulk. You can keep your abs. You can keep definition and everything and look great. How'd you feel about today's bench press? You hit a 360-pound bench today and it was pretty damn clean, I might add. Yeah, thank you. I felt really good. I felt strong. A lot of adrenaline. I think it was the ammonia. Oh, yeah. He lot of adrenaline. I think it was the, uh, the ammonia. Oh yeah. Yeah. He did it,

uh, first time. Snorted. Yeah, he did pretty good. He handled it. Well, it only went up one nostril.

So, Ooh, yeah. Yeah. Straight to the dome. Yeah. Yeah. That stuff,

that stuff really wakes you up. It's like, Holy shit, man. But you know, it's, it's, it's just part of the culture,

you know, it's part of like kind of what we do here at super training. We like to crank up the music. We like to get that intensity and, um, help so much. Yeah. When, when you're training, do you have headphones on? You listen to music? Like what do you, how do you get motivated?

It really depends on like right now I'm, I'm really, I have Alberto Nunez doing my, my own workout program. And it's a lot more, uh, you know, I have one set where I'm going RP nine, but a lot of the times I'm doing so much volume and so many sets and, you know, more accessory movements to bring up my weak points. And, you know, I think that at times when I'm going for a PR, you know, the environment's so important, but normally when I'm working out at home right now, cause my goal is strictly to gain as much as I can on my weak points, my lats, my delts, my legs, you know, a lot of it is I have to get in the zone and just be able to not just give it 100% on one set and then kind of burn myself out.

I have to space out my energy for the whole hour I'm in the gym and to try to get the most out of every set I can. Why do you have a coach? So I just kind of... You know a lot. I mean, we've been talking for a long time already about nutrition. I still do my macros on my own. I did have some help from Jeff Nippard and Alberto last year on my peak week, uh, about two weeks out from my show,

but my training program, I own a gym and I go into there, I get distracted and it's hard to, it's hard to be really focused and, you know, say hi to everyone who's visiting from out of town and, and follow it. You know, I get in my habit. I'll do the workouts. I know I do the reps. I can do the weights. I know it's easy for me to get lost. And so I wanted to go ahead and give Alberto the reins. I really, he's probably the smartest guy I know. And I said, Hey, I want you to look at my physique. Whatever, what, tell me what you think my weak points are. He asked me what my, what I thought they were. I didn't even want to tell him. I said, what do you think my, I sent him a video. So he told me lats, lateral delts. He didn't even say legs, which I was shy, but I was like, okay. So he, I asked him, I want you to give me a program. I'm hitting lats four times a week

right now. I'm doing a ton of shoulder work more than I've ever done, but it's so different. And I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't think that it would benefit me over the next few months. No, it's great. It's great to kind of put it in somebody else's hands. And a lot of times when I'm, you know, training for a contest or doing something, I'll just, you know, I'll just text somebody and say, hey, pick something for me today, you know, just let me know. And I've had other people, I've had guys like Matt Winning

and a few others help me with programming. And yeah, obviously I know a lot about powerlifting, but it's nice to just kind of say hey like you know what do you think i should do when it comes to uh you know getting this uh massive following that you got over the years you know what do you think are some key components to to that um you know through youtube but how many i mean how many followers you got on youtube i think i'm right under 900k on YouTube. Starting to approach that milli.

Trying, but it's very consistent. There's not really many spikes or anything. I think that really goes down to slow crawl. I've been slow crawling for years. At the end, I just really enjoy it. I think that if I were to give any key tips, it would just be to...

People can tell, viewers can tell if you're just trying to make a buck or if you're just trying to make a living off of what you're doing. And I think it's just important to just remember why you're making videos and remember to remember your message. Be yourself. Don't try to turn a personality on that you that isn't actually you. That'll be exhausting. Don't don't try to just, you know, talk about about relevant drama going just do you man be in your own lane um and i think just by doing that and trying to get better every single year um and just having expectations for yourself and making it a challenge to get better every year i think that's one that's something i think a lot

of people kind of like how old were you when you first started the channel uh 19 yeah um have you had any uh failures in business yeah uh actually the first time i opened up a gym i got a ton of equipment i got a it was a 1500 square foot spot and 600 of that was office so i had my little office in there i had uh you know my merchandise in there cg fitness is before alfleet and everything. And I thought it'd be a good idea to open a membership gym. And at the time I didn't hire any employees. So, you know, I would get there at 7am. I made some flyers and we had, you know, 20, 25 memberships paying. I was charging like 15 bucks a month and I was there all day, all night, every morning. And it just, it ended up failing because I couldn't commit to being there. I was killing myself, you know, to, to make what, 500 bucks a month. And with that gym and I was still

doing YouTube and it was kind of like my filming studio. It was a lot of fun, but I ended up putting a lock box outside for the members and then don't give the code out, but you know, you can come work out when you want, just be sure you pay me at the end of the month. And of course you trust people with that kind of power and people are stealing shirts. are bringing all their friends for free not paying day passes if i'm you know it just became a take advantage of this scenario kind of thing so i shut it down and i just use it as my office and filming studio and then uh i kept the so that was the only business that was that's the main thing that failed right i wanted to have a gym so bad and it just didn't work out. So went private for about a year and a half after that. And just kept kind of like you, kind of like you have here, it was just

the distribution. It was the gym. It was the office all under one roof. And then eventually I was like, you know what? I'm ready to give the gym again. I'm ready to try it again. And then 2016, January 1st, we went public. And ever since it's been doing really well. That's cool. Because we, we, we hired people for it. We said, well, we actually focus as a business on it. Yeah. You, you learn from those mistakes. I think a lot of people do that with a business. A lot of people do that in the fitness industry in general, they start something and, uh,

they just are starting it cause they're excited and cause they're passionate, which is not a mistake. That's actually a good thing, but, uh, there should always be some intent of, uh, trying to figure out how you're going to like pay the bills. Yeah. How are you going to, how are you going to actually make some dough? So how'd you transition into, you know, having a YouTube channel into having this apparel brand? So I started with 50 tank tops, you know, this was about two and a half, three years into doing my channel. Um, there was some comments like, Hey, you know, love to buy a shirt or something.

And I was like, really? Okay, let me go. So I went and I printed some American Apparel tank tops. And they sold out in like three minutes when I put them up. Wow. And I was like, oh, wow, that was a nice little chunk. That was a good margin. It's exciting too.

Yeah, it was awesome. So I packed them up and then I ordered a few more you know did 100 and then i tried some hoodies and then that line sort of started growing it was cg fitness you know my name on the shirt i had a little logo and you know it did really well and then i got you know i i was like man what if i do like a brand you know what if i actually go and make high quality stuff and you know store some fabrics and if i you, you know, create a brand, not a name, because really who wants to, well, who wants to wear Christian Guzman on their chest, you know, and go out and like, no, you want to have a brand that you can really stand behind. And, uh, came up with the word Alphalete, which is alpha athlete combined into one boom Alphalete, uh, back in

college, buddy Garrett, uh, we were just sitting in the dorm and, you know, watching bigger, stronger, faster, watching pumping iron. All of a sudden we were obsessed. I was like, man, that sounds cool. And I had a Husky at the time. So it kind of, you know, it was a Nala. So Husky, Alpha, you know, the whole vibe kind of happened and went ahead and ran with it. And as soon as we launched that, it was just, you know, 20 times bigger than any launch I had ever had for my name. And that's when the company just started. That's super cool. you know, 20 times bigger than any launch I had ever had for my name. Wow.

And that's when the company just started. That's, that's super cool. How did, how do you deal with, um, how do you deal with like competition? You know, it's really easy to kind of like look at the competition and kind of get suckered into maybe doing what they're doing or to even sometimes be jealous. You see somebody, something, somebody else is doing like, how do you, how do you deal with that? I think everyone feels that to some extent, and it's hard not to compare yourself to other

people or your business, other businesses or sizing them up. Right. And it's not, it's good to have some competitive vibes in you, I think. But at the end of the day, if you, if you're copying what someone's doing, then they did it first. They're always going to be doing it first. If you're just trying to sample the new Nike stuff that comes out, guess what? They already did it first they're always going to be doing it first if you're just caught if you're just trying to sample the new nike stuff that comes out guess what they already did it right you're you're behind so i think you really have to just find something that's not being done and for for us it was finding and creating clothes that were you know i was so into i would go to zara and h&m and i'd buy these elongated tees that were you know really, really, I was paying 30 bucks, 28 bucks for one, and they would rip after washes or the tags would be holes in them

because they were just really cheap material. You like the way they look, the way they fit. Yeah, the style was pretty cool. So I was like, man, what if we make, you know, some sleek shirts? What if we, you know, have small waist and guys that work out typically have a broader chest? What if we taper the measurements in, make them a little bit longer because shirts were always really short on me?

And what if we, you know, bring the arms up? What if we make them a little bit longer because shirts were always really short on me. And what if we bring the arms up? What if we make them a little shorter and we do some raw cuts and we put minimal branding? I hate wearing big logos everywhere. So we put a little tag on the back and you kind of develop your style. You know what I mean? Right. And I think that's what ended up making the brand. Our scoop necks are a bestseller for men.

We source our own fabrics and we try to make really compressive leggings for women that hold everything in and make make them feel confident in the gym how are you able to like navigate some of this like this stuff's hard you know i must must have taken a long time right yeah a lot of time and we're still on it you know we're still trying to become the best we can be and just not you know try to just focus on what we're doing and how we can improve year after year. Just keep poking around. Just keep asking questions and keep trying to learn. And again,

just like how you try to make your channel better and your videos better. We try to make the clothes better every time we launch something. We actually, we don't ever launch the same exact thing twice. There's always a tweet. There's always an adjustment. There's always a V2. We're always improving something. And I think that also creates the hype to where, hey, things are going to sell out.

There's going to be products that sell out in five minutes. Guess what? It's not coming back. Right. So you have to be ready. People are like, oh, man. Oh, they get so mad, man. It's finding a balance of allowing some products to sell out while also keeping a core amount of inventory for, say, 60 to 90 days or having, you know, just black joggers always.

You do need a little bit of that core branding because when people go to the site, you don't always want them to be pissed that something's sold out. So yeah, you need a little bit of stuff, right? A little bit, but at the same time, I think there's a, there's a variable in there. That's just excitement. Right. You know what I mean? How hands-on are you with like the designs and.

A hundred percent. Yeah. Oh yeah. Me and the designer work hand in hand and you know it's my baby always will be well one question that we get like fairly often from somebody like you it's like and you started when you were young with the youtube channel but like what's some advice that you would give like say 19 year old self you know like uh maybe some i don't know some roadblocks to avoid or would you even bother?

I never want to change it. You know, obviously everything got me to where I am, but I think if I could give myself one piece of advice, it would be, I was talking to Mark earlier. I was like, man, like, I feel like the, I wish I would have gotten someone to help me out a little bit earlier. That was strong where I'm weak. So for me'm such a jumper i just jump into things i'll commit and i'll order the units before you know hey we don't have the final sample but it'll be fine to probably okay let's get on it let's do it where i should have waited and or maybe i should have i should have done more more research on the back end on the trademarking on the on the cop you're on all this Where it's, you know, now we're getting all these, just so many small pain in the asses where it could have been covered

if I would have been better at the structure and the backend, you know, years ago. And even with, you know, things like taxes and filtering holding companies and this, and we're filtering through here and funneling through salaries and all these little things that could have saved hundreds of thousands,

millions of dollars, you know? And I wish I would have known that earlier. Yeah. And then, um, another good question. I forgot who asked it, so I apologize, but, um, like in today's society or like the business and, you know, and everywhere, um, you kind of almost have to have like a social presence. Um, you know, you have your YouTube channel, you now have your Instagram. Um, if somebody doesn't have a gigantic following, what's the best way to network with other people? And you're trying, if you say you want to start a brand and you don't have a following, yeah, essentially find people that have a following and find a way to budget, to be able to, even if you have a bad-ass product, if you just get addresses, a ton of these people would love to, if it's a great product or unique

or creative, then they'll want to use it. You know, if, when I got sent a slingshot for the first time, I wasn't getting paid to do that. I got a cool slingshot. I was like, I got a new toy for the gym. I was going to show it off and try it out, you know, and it's organic things like that, where you have to come up with a product that people would want to use anyway. Just like with, with energy drinks, right? We, we have a list of like a hundred people we send them to a month Just like with energy drinks, right? We have a list of like a hundred people we send them to a month and we don't get, we don't pay anyone or we don't, you know, require anything. We just want to send it.

And, you know, it just so happens we get posted on a story a few times because they're drinking it midday and it's just organic promotion like that. So you need to find a way to find a way to reach people that can get it out to other people. And then on a, on a creative side of things, because I'm a photographer, that's how I got here. What do you look for with somebody, whether it be like in marketing or like design or even like film and video and stuff like that? Like what's something that, you know, again, like a no-namer like me who wants to reach out to someone like you,

like what's the, you know, maybe a couple of steps to try to get it like, uh, you know, the, whatever the degrees of separation that try to kind of minimize the, um, the hoops you got to jump through to get to someone like you. Well, I think a big thing for us is if, if we're, I check out fleet every day, my whole team does run the page. We're on the tag photos. We're on, you know, not DMS are so flooded now, but if you're a quality photographer taking photos of people in Alfleet or whatever, that's the best we're going to see it. And it'll stand out if it's a good photo and it's a, if it's well lit and it's got really nice editing, it's going to stand out.

I mean, Hey, who took that? And I think honestly, like we've started a lot of relationships because of that. And I think a lot of times just, for example, flying out to an event that, you know, you're going to be around maybe filming a video and recording stuff just sending it for free to the team or hey alphate i made this video for you guys or if you want to get if you want to work with mark you you come to one of the seminars you film a really cool thing don't even talk about anything just send it hey i made this for you uh some really cool content some some some things you can maybe use on your social and that's how you build a relationship. You just go direct and you do more.

You're going to have to work for free sometimes. And I think that just giving a lot and that's how you're going to get noticed. Yeah, what you said is exactly how I got here. I took pictures at a seminar and gave Mark my card and that was it. That's all you got to do. If you're really talented and businesses need like, businesses need

content, they need help. And entrepreneurs are going to be so excited and pumped about that, you know, so that, that is take initiative and that's, that's life, right? Take initiative and get out there, put yourself in the right spot, make sure you're in the right spot at the right time. It seems like you're, it seems like you're like insanely thoughtful about every single detail of your business. Um, you know, all the way to like the way that your website looks, uh, your clothing

has a certain look, your, um, uh, Instagram has a certain look. I mean, everything seems to have this, this look at it. It's kind of, uh, it kind of goes back to what you said in the beginning about not wanting to have a giant logo across your chest. And almost all the messages that I'm seeing through your website, through your, through the Instagram of your apparel brand, I'm seeing it. It has this real clean kind of sleek look. Are you, are you involved in every single aspect? Yeah. Every product that comes out i mean i'm in

so it's i really enjoy it you know and i think it's kind of back to that czar h&m it's like we want to provide a product that looks good but is enhanced the materials are well shit on those you know fast fashion brands right and we'll sell it for the same price 20 bucks and you're going to get a shirt that's going to last 10 times longer. It's not going to shrink and make holes. It's going to last you. And I think if you can create a better product in your competition, that's actually better and don't just copy it and sell it for a fair price.

I think that's how you build a reputation. These joggers would be selling for a hundred plus dollars anywhere else. And if Nike, they'd be 150 bucks, but, and we pay a lot lot for them we don't have a margin that's super super crazy or anything like that but we want people to get the best product for the best price right and you're you're making things that look good and uh people can can exercise in them which is another huge part and you know i think before guys like you came along i think that a lot of people just and i know you saw a lot of women's apparel too, but I think that in general, the thought was like, well, dudes don't really care. Guys don't really care. Like a guy doesn't care about his shorts, like being super tight and like hugging his love handles.

Like, no, no, no, no. Guys care about that just as much as chicks do. We don't want to feel fat or look fat or look unflattering when we're working out. If you look good in the gym, that's a place you're going to, you're looking to improve yourself and you want to feel fat or look fat or look unflattering when we're working out good in the gym where that's a place you're going to you're looking to improve yourself and you want to gain confidence if you look good that's a whole that's just another i'm excited when i get new gym clothes you know and i'm maybe i'm just that type and that's not everybody but i'll get you know i'd be excited to go work out and i'd be pumped for my workout you know it helps me with that it helps confidence and if you feel like you're wearing a taper do you feel like your arms like i wore

the shirt today because my arms look big in the shirt. Cause the sleeves are kind of short. You know, like, yeah, I want to look Jack for this video. It motivated, it just,

it's a little, it's a little bit, but it goes a long way. It's a kind of like the dressing room at, uh, you know, some places like Lululemon and stuff. I mean,

people love to look good. The lighting in there is perfect. And you, you, you were like, fuck, I everywhere, everything I've put on looks good.

This is pretty, pretty good, you know? And it gets you you excited it actually makes you kind of like buy into the product right and so these are huge uh yeah that lulu discount right you got the you have the program that's right yeah like 25 off yeah i need i need it you know because i i got lots of lulu stuff yeah got that lulu lemon yeah um no no dude that yeah i i we were talking about lulu the other day because i don't own any lululemon anything and then uh terrell he tried some on and he's just like i get it i'm like i don't get it he's like you have to wear it i'm like all right maybe i'll give it a shot that's what we want to do with outfit at a better price right yeah and i mean the

comments are everyone's talking about your about your apparel right now. They're talking about the joggers being like the best joggers on the market. And I was just telling them how you were showing us earlier. You took them off and you threw them right at our face. I'll make it so everybody can understand. And maybe not everybody will still understand because they might not have made the switch. But it's a difference between cotton underwear and what Under Armour did with underwear. And then now everybody else makes that kind of same kind of underwear.

But man, like at the end of a long day, like those, those cotton underwear, they like grew like four sizes and they're uncomfortable and they're kind of hot and they're this and that. They bunch up. They bunch up and everything else. You can say the Calvin Klein, but my first pair of Calvin Klein underwear, I saw, you know, I saw Greg Plitt wearing them. I was like, I'm going to buy some Calvin, it was $30 pair of underwear.

But you know what? When you, you're like, I get it. Right. And now I swear, I wear Alphie underwear every single day and they're better. And it's, you want to create a better product and you want to sell at a better price and you just feel, you feel good, you know, dressing well, you feel just more, you keep your chest a little bit higher when you're walking around. It's actually, it's really, it's a really interesting thing to watch the progression

of all these companies. Cause you know, now that I'm actually kind of thinking about it and, uh, it all kind of almost started with Under Armour, but Under Armour, they, they messed up. They kind of missed, they missed their window because Under Armour, uh, made fitted stuff, which was, uh, you know, it was stuff that you wore under your football uniform, but that was like too fitted. That was like too tight. And like, yeah, it was compression.

And anybody could, uh, you know, anybody that was, uh, even, even in, even if you were in really good shape, it was hard to look good in those things because they were too tight. But they were the ones with the moisture wicking. They were the ones with the, you know, the, the, the technology where it wouldn't smell and all this stuff. And they kind of like really, uh, blazed a trail, but then, you know, Lululemon came along and some of the other companies came along. And now you're starting to see more and more companies kind of enter this market. How do you stay ahead? I think you stay ahead just by, again, just continually trying to make your product better. And I also think being transparent with your customers.

Any change we make to, like, our legging, for example, or the legging that's all hyped up. And we've been through, we've been selling that legging for years. But it just now gained traction because every single time we've made small And we've been through, we've been selling that legging for years, but it just now gained traction because every single time we've made small changes. We get feedback, we change. Feedback, we change. We make it better and better and better. And I think just letting people know

what you're changing, why you're changing it, try it on a bunch of people so before customers buy, they can see, oh, here's seven different body types. I'm going to relate to this girl. Let me see. Let me make sure. You got to give them confidence,

especially buying online, just by giving as much as you can all the info you can all the details you can possibly think of to make someone feel comfortable and to want to set their alarms to get them at 10 a.m you know you sometimes uh you sometimes like kind of scratch your head and kind of wonder like how did i get in this spot because you're you're sitting there and you're talking about like camel toe and uh i'm an expert armpit armpit armpit stains and you know like you're sitting there talking about all this weird shit every day you sometimes like man what what has my life become here what am i doing yeah but camel toe expert and i'm yeah i mean we've yeah trust knuckle yeah so i he's got to explore all of it yeah gotta see a lot yeah i mean it's but then you you just have to you have to take it in like for example we have to change the shape

we have to bring it slightly you know a quarter inch forward we're actually putting double the fabric on that area right where you know you make it longer down the leg so it actually doesn't hike up as much you change the front inseam so you don't have as you don't have a pull up front there's so much to think about and you have to just get out there and make a product. And then you learn to make them better. And we don't have perfect products. We're making them better each one time. A lot of times the adjustment might be opposite of what you think too.

Like you'd get some clothes adjusted one way. And we've done that with some of the products that we've created where we're like, oh, no, that didn't. Okay, that worked the opposite of the way that we thought it was going to work. I thought you were talking about like reducing the camel toe, actually drop sales, but you add more camel toe and then all of a sudden now the guys are just buying them left and right for their ticks. Yeah, like, oh wow, okay. I thought they said, you know, they're taking customer feedback.

Okay, now all of a sudden these things are more see-through. Yeah, exactly. Like, whoops. A good example, we actually, this was maybe a year ago we uh we changed our shape of the we call it modesty panel you know the the that panel down there and we had this kind of oval shape and it was good it could have been better so what is lulu doing you know like they have the best it's the best female legging everyone raves about them so they have a triangle shape. So we're going to do this triangle. We're going to try a triangle shape. We did it and it ended up hiking everything up.

That was our work. It was so much camel toe on our specific product that it just, it ruined everything. It was such a huge step backwards. So it's like, just because someone else is doing something doesn't mean you need to do it also, you know, because everything's so different. The camel toe project that changed the world. Yep. That's a, yeah, it's just a, there's so many different things to think about, but it's very obvious that you're super thoughtful with everything that you guys are doing and

congratulations on everything. How do you turn it off? How do you shut down? Yeah. So figuring that one out, but I mean. You're 25. You don't need to shut anything down. Yeah.

I don't want to shut it off yet. No, I just be sure I try to, you know, at night have a few, an hour or two, you know, just be able to have some downtime, put the phone down. Uh, I work a lot during the day. So at the end of the day, my mind's pretty fried. And so at that point where I'm just like, all right, it's time to chill for a bit and just having that reset. You know, I try to take a vacation and spend some time with the girlfriend and leave the phone in the car and just every once in a while, you know,

and be able to get away. You and your girlfriend live together now? Yes. Yeah. And, uh, how has that transition been? It's been great. I mean, so she lived three and a half hours away, so we'd be commuting back and forth. So we get along great. We both work a lot. We both understand. Um, we, we, before this trip, we had been together every day, every night for four or five months straight since she moved in. So, and we don't, we don't argue, you know, it's just real smooth and it, it's great. I don't know. It works really well. How do you deal with, uh, we get so many people talking about depression, anxiety. I ran into a lot of people at the LA Fit Expo who, you know, they said,

you know, listen to this podcast and some of the messages I share, they say it helps. How do you personally deal with it? So for me, anxiety really does come and go. I mean, I get, I'm trying to juggle so much and a lot of times I'll just get so absorbed and I'll just, then you throw YouTube videos on top of it. I don't have any help right now. And so it does become a lot. And I think just taking a step back a lot a lot of times and for me honestly once every few weeks once a month i should go to a spot in my gym where no one can find me and just kind of sit and be alone for a bit and kind of figure out okay where do i need help right now and you know maybe i have to i need to hire this manager i

need to do this or i need to find someone to help with, with, with content over here and just trying to allocate a little more. And, you know. Is that hard for you? A hundred percent. You don't want to like let stuff go. You want it to be a certain way. I like to, I think with Alphie, that's my most, like I need to be hands-on, especially with design and manufacturing movement. And that's the big company that I'm really trying to focus on.

But things like the gym managing, you know, I love getting updates. You know, things like the operations side. Now Derek handles hiring. He brings on the customer service. He handles all that now. You know, and so, and, you know, Becca's all my, the accounts and anything dealing with money. And so I can kind of just get recaps now. And that I'm really trying to,

you know, do the best I can to allocate. Yeah. It can be, it can be difficult, but if you surround yourself with a good team, then you can, you know,

learn to kind of like let, let things go a little bit more. Does your girlfriend, does she ever kind of like stop you and say, Hey, like you probably need a little bit of a break it's actually a little bit of the opposite because she actually she'll go i like to say like at 80 all day so she can be editing and then fall asleep at her computer where i like

it say i go like 100 but i tap out of her youtube channel as well yeah she's on youtube she had 1.7 1.8 million on instagram she's doing you know killing it with her women's apparel line buff bunny so she works a lot and she she kind of balances a little bit more friends and personal time in between the day but for me i like just knock it all out and then i like have my time at night so you know come on save it for the morning let's just hang out a little bit at night and she's getting better at that too so yeah it's what we yeah i mean compared to the average couple i think we're we're working a lot so yeah guys are working 24 7 it sounds like yeah she couldn't come this weekend she had a launch and you know her most successful one and she's it's great that's cool do you guys uh compare you know like hey this is my you know

you guys tease each other like you guys getting a little competition i've been doing it for longer and i've been you know the business is a little bit older so i tell her like compared like you're smashing it you know compared to where we were at and like you're doing so good and she's doing amazing um and yeah yeah we do that's cool and then her she has a her own apparel brand and it's a women's women's only apparel yeah that's cool that's so cool um how'd you guys meet uh Really through mutual friends, social media. I was single at the time and it found out that she was recently single. I had known of her and, you know, we'd been to events. You're like, wait, what?

Yeah. I was like, yo, gonna put in a word real quick. Yeah. I slide the guy to ignore it a few times on the DMs. It finally weaseled my way in. Right. Then it's been history since. That's awesome.

You're going to compete coming up. Yes. I think I'm going to compete. I am going to compete coming up. Yes, I think I'm going to compete. I am going to compete mid to late June. The Summer Shredding Classic, which is a bodybuilding show I'm hosting, is on the 29th. So I just need to be sure I compete at least a week or two before that so I can fuel up and give the attention, have the energy to put on and host a show. So probably the 15th or the 22nd I'll be competing somewhere. 15th or the 22nd, I'll be competing somewhere. Anything, uh, coming up that you want to tell people about that, uh, you got a launch or, uh, you're going to be at any events where people can

come see you? Uh, right now coming up, I think the biggest thing is just opening up summer shredding. So we opened up summer shredding events.com, which is, uh, we host an online competition transformation challenge every single year. We pick 25 winners to win $2,000 to 50 grand being given away. Uh, we pick males and females. You don't, it's not just based on getting super shredded. We pick just good stories. You know, if you went from 40% body fat down to 30, you know, if you went from, you know, we have a wide array of winners and it's a big challenge every single year. And then we also have a body link show if you want to come compete in person. Awesome. And I think everybody knows where tobuilding show if you want to come compete in person. Awesome.

And I think everybody knows where to find you because you're pretty damn popular, pretty damn big. Anything else, Andrew? Yeah. I mean, I've seen a couple of questions over here, but I mean, just plain and simply, like there's some hard gainers out there, me being one of them. Like what are some like easy steps to follow to get some gains? Number one, just track your calories. Track every day for at least, say, 10, 14 days. And just see what you're intaking on a daily basis.

With that, I would say be sure you're weighing yourself in the morning on an empty stomach. And you'll be able to see, okay, if I'm having 3,800 calories a day, is my weight completely stabilized? Is it kind of increasing just a little bit? If it's increasing just a little bit, that means you're on the right track. Maybe you should stick with that number for another week or two. And if you notice that, that, that your weight's plateauing, I know it's kind of annoying to weigh yourself every morning, but you really have to, to see what's, what's happening. So if you stop, okay, instead of 38, I'm going to go up to 40, 4,100 or maybe 4,000. And then once that stops, I'm going to go 4,200. And I think you just absolutely have to,

you have to know what you're intaking. You have to know what your weight is and you have to see the trends to be able to make adjustments. All right, man. I appreciate it. Thank you. No worries.

All right, man. Awesome having you here. Really appreciate you coming out here to Super Training. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Catch you guys later.