Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 185 - Developing a Higher Standard

Episode Date: February 23, 2019

We took a trip down memory lane and got some more insight on who The Natty Professor is. He and Mark Bell talked about their upbringing and how both their parents set them up for success by setting a high standard and showing them with support. ➢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 Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thenattyprofessor/  Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

how much is like a pack of 10 of those? How much does it cost? Yeah. I'm not sure yet. Not sure yet. Not sure yet. We're talking about Mind Bullet. We're going to have some Mind Bullet released pretty soon,

but I don't even know. I don't even know what we're charging for that stuff yet. Yeah. Yeah. We're piecing together the plan as we go. And I got ideas for a few other kind of products based around it, but let me know when it hits you. I'm waiting. I'm paying attention, man. Just keel over. But let me know when it hits you. I'm waiting.

I'm paying attention, man. Just keel over. We'll know that it's not good. I just faint while we're talking. It's natural, so you can still remain the Maddie. It says all natural on the package. We're going to be good. We're good.

Comes from a plant. An eggplant. I don't know. Test just testosterone is pretty natural right yeah we all have it i knew it yeah i always hear people talk about like i'm not on anything i just take testosterone or i'm on trt or whatever and skinny me over here is like well well hey hold on you know a lot of a lot of people will say that they're like not on anything when they're just not on much like that's a lot of a lot of my friends are like i'm not really on anything it's like the uh the calorie thing right like if it's under a

certain amount they can say it's zero yeah so that's i guess it's the same thing yeah you know i can't even like you can't even when people are on TRT, it's like some, some of those guys, um, they don't, they don't produce a lot of testosterone naturally anyway. Like, and that's just a quality of life deal, you know? So you can't, you can't, it, it, it makes it difficult if like somebody wants to do one of those natural bodybuilding shows, right? Yeah. But they have to be on TRT so they can at least produce a normal amount of testosterone.

And now they're not natural. It's just kind of like, that's a rough, that's not cool. Do you think sometimes people make too big a deal about like, like I hear people all the time talk about like wrecking their metabolism from like working too hard, you know,

exercising too hard and like not eating enough. Do you think that's like an overblown thing or do you think that's like a real, I think it's a real concern. I think that's a real concern that can happen. Um, I actually, there, there's, there's someone that I'm working with right now. He does jujitsu and lifting. Um, and he does that almost every single day.

And when he started working with me, like he was not eating much food and he was trying to drop weight. So looking at like, he's like 190, he was eating 190 grams of carbs and 50 grams of fat a day. And he's doing all this activity and he's not dropping. And you got to think about it. Well, the only way to go if you want to drop more weight is down, right? So what's going on is he's doing so much work. And since he's not eating a lot of food, his metabolism is slowed down to hold him there. The only way for him to actually start losing body fat at a consistent pace, option one is to lower the food, which you don't have much to work with because you're going to slow down again and then you're going to lower it again or increase your food.

You're going to trend up a little bit in terms of weight, get like speed up your metabolism. And then slowly, actually, as you increase your food, you'll probably start to trend down again. A lot of people, that's what happens because they'll drop the scale, stop a little bit, they'll drop their macros and then they'll, they'll just keep that going. Um, and that's a day that's exercise more, eat less exercise, more, eat less over and over. And it's like, there's gotta be an end.

Yeah. You know, there's a lot of things like, you know, diet breaks, bring your, your macros back up for a short period of time. And I mean, you oddly enough, you might actually start dropping more when you do that. It's, it's, it's odd, but yeah, it's a trap that people fall into. Have you sometimes just told people flat out, Hey man, you know what, for this next week, just don't even worry about it.

Yeah. No, especially when, uh, they have like a lot of anxiety when, when individuals, especially like women. It's hard for them though. Right. When you say, Hey, don't worry about it. It's like easy for you to say, Natty Professor, you're in really good shape. Yeah.

No, like, I mean, there were points where like, I'll just say, hey, you know, have a glass of wine or something. Enjoy like a meal today or tomorrow. Don't worry about tracking it. Just because when some individuals get stressed, that stress will cause increase of cortisol. And then they'll end up holding on to a lot of water and that'll mask their weight loss. So sometimes people just need to de-stress and be a little bit less anxious. It's, yeah, it's a little bit backwards sometimes and it doesn't seem like it makes sense, but you got to sometimes go in the other direction to keep dropping.

I just, over the last couple of days, just decided because, uh, you know, when you, when you try, when you try for something and you don't get the goal that you want, you think, okay, well, I'll just, I'll switch things up a little bit. You know, I wanted to bench that 500 pounds and it didn't work out. So I'm thinking, okay, what are some things I can do? And I was like, well, maybe throughout my whole training, maybe I can just, I don't want to weigh too much outside of the weight class. Cause I don't want to have to do too extreme of a cut. However, going into the last meet, I was like losing weight and then I cut weight. I was like already losing weight, already getting leaner. And then I happened to do the meet and then I dropped, you know, 15 pounds or whatever. And so this time around, I was like,

well, what would it look like if I just consistently stayed heavier? And if I got, if I just dumped the fasting and, and, uh, tried to eat a little bit more or just fast a little bit less. And so that's what I've been playing with. And oddly enough, my weight is kind of the same, but I'm a little bit more full and I'm feeling a little bit better. And why am I feeling better? I'm feeling better mainly because it's just a switch from what I was doing before. I felt great with fasting.

It was working really well. But some of these things, sometimes they'll have a life. They'll have a period of time where a life, you know, they'll have a period of time where they'll work for a while and you feel it out and you see how you feel from it. And then you start to make judgment calls from there. I know you're enjoying fasting a lot, or maybe not enjoying it, might not be the right word, but you're fasting often and you like it a lot. But I'd imagine at some point you'll probably be like, you know what? I'm still going to utilize fasting. I'm still going to utilize it here and there, but maybe I'm going to ditch, uh, especially if you don't get

the result you want in a jujitsu tournament. Now you're going to think, okay, maybe that's not the reason why I didn't do as well as I wanted to, but maybe it's part of it. And maybe I should look into, uh, going back to eating six meals a day. Maybe I should just take a break from it. Try something else. Right. Yeah. What I've found is like there, there was a period where I was like fasting literally every single day. Um, and that's those, that, that period I found, like I was getting too lean, like I was losing a lot of body fat and that lack of body fat was affecting my performance. So I feel so sorry for you. Right. Andrew. Yeah. It sounds like, yeah, it sounds like a really bad, yeah, no big problem to have. Um, but what I do is like on the... Too ripped, bro.

On the days that I would lift and do jujitsu, those days I stopped fasting on those days. So instead I would make sure to obviously have a very big meal the night before. And then I'd eat during that day. I'd eat before, I'd eat before training, at least before weightlifting. And then I'd lift, go to jujitsu. Um, and then that would be it. So that's like maybe three days out of the week that like, I'm not fasting all day long, but I still utilize fasting on the days that I only do jujitsu just because again, like I still feel much better when I do that. Um, just overall clarity, focus on things I got to do. I just feel better. So I don't, I don't think I'm ever really going to drop the fasting deal. And even like, for example, if I was going to do a tournament, um, and I did a tournament before where I fasted during the day,

but I absolutely made sure that the day before the tournament, I didn't fast because I wanted to eat as much as I could. And then on that day, I just had coffee and water and I, my performance was great. Wasn't tired. It was clear. Um, I think that's something I'm definitely going to do, but I'm just not going going to make sure that I have enough food in me. There's a lot of really, really good coaches out there that have suggested that their players, you know, if they're going to eat at all, that it's like, you know, four hours before a game, you know, it's, it's several hours. And I think, I think a lot of that makes sense. You know, you're going to do a power lifting meat or you're going to do something and, uh, maybe you're just really nervous about like,

you know, maybe it's new for you. Maybe you haven't done it before. And so maybe it makes sense. You had to eat the night before and the day of, you know, maybe just if you're going to eat anything, eat a little bit. And then also, you know, additionally, you know, people at power lifting meats are eating all

kinds of crazy things. Yeah. Uh, you might want to, you know, people at powerlifting meets are eating all kinds of crazy things. Yeah. Uh, you might want to, you know, be careful of that. Like, cause you don't want your stomach to, you don't want your stomach to bother you. You don't want to be like all slowed down and stuff. And so you should eat stuff that's pretty normal to you. You shouldn't really go too far outside of that. If, if Skittles are kind of normal for you, then, then maybe have at it and you're used to them.

But if they're not, then it's not a great day to like start to all of a sudden mix in candy. And it's the mental side of it too. You know, like a lot of people feel that if they don't eat before they work out, they physically, they feel like they're weaker. Um, and we, we, I think we touched on this yesterday a little bit, but that can play a big role in the way you perform. If you don't feel like you're going to perform well, because you didn't eat, you're not going to perform well, you know, if you already feel that way. But it took me a little bit of, I guess, just messing with not eating before training to understand that, oh, wow, I can actually perform at a very high level. It's just actually in my head.

So you got to test it out, you know. Just really got to test it out and see what works for you. How do you feel about people, you know, just kind of saying that you're lucky that you have, you know, good genetics. You're like what? Six, one, six, two. And you're like two 55 to 50.

Yeah. I mean, you're pretty, you're pretty jacked motherfucker, right? Like how do you feel about that? I mean, you didn't choose your parents, uh, but they both happen to be they're both nigerian correct yeah yeah and you you have clearly you have good genetics uh do you feel that you have like amazing genetics and that you were just kind of gifted this body or do you feel you know you halfway earned it or earned it all the way or what are your thoughts on that you know um so it used to really piss me off and when i when i to hear that, like when I started getting on social media and started posting things up, um, and then people would like, you know, they would say things

about like, ah, you know, you're probably not Natty or you, this and that. It would initially piss me off. Cause I was like, okay, now I did put a lot of work into what I do. I've been training for a long time. I did try and learn as much as I could about this. And yes, I have good genetics, but that doesn't mean I don't work hard for what I do what was the uh there was like a hashtag wasn't there like it was uh not bbc but it was like some bbc genetics is that what it was well bbc genetics is uh we'll go down that road just a little bit but uh bbc is as you know big black hot genetics um and it's like a lot of people use that i thought it was big black coffee yeah no i want a lot of people use that term. I thought it was big black coffee. No. I was like, oh, I want a sip of that.

Hey, now. No. You would hear that term a lot in like the bodybuilding community because, okay, I mean, let's just be real. The bodybuilding community, because, okay, I mean, let's just be real. A lot of the times when you go to a lot of these, not just natural bodybuilding shows, but a lot of these NPC bodybuilding shows, you will see a lot of really jacked black guys on stage. There tends to be a certain physique when it comes to the elite African-American or African athlete that you see it. You see it on a basketball court. On the NFL fields. NFL field.

Yeah. A lot of them are, I mean, there's a lot of white dudes that are in good shape and they're, you know, uh, throwing down as well, but they're not, they're not usually like the guys that are like shredded. Yeah. There are, there are some, but usually, right. Usually it's African-American. Yeah.

Or it's, you know, it's, it's LeBron James in junior high and you're just like, what the heck is going on here? What is up with LeBron James? He looks like a grown man. Exactly. Yeah. I've said before on this podcast that our up with LeBron James? He looks like a grown man. Exactly, yeah. I've said before on this podcast that our version of LeBron James

is Larry Bird. Just goes to show you how screwed up. Now, what a great athlete Larry Bird was, but it's a different kind of athlete, right? Yeah, it is.

So, like, the whole BBC genetics thing, there was a time a few years ago where I was just like it really annoyed me because i'm like okay yeah this this black person has great genetics but you're kind of just like you're saying ah he won the show because he has those bbc genetics and you know at the end of the day when it does come to progression in terms of athletics or sport

or i mean school with individuals who have really high iqs and for some reason they they seem to pick up on things much faster than other people we don't look at that like that when it comes to sport when we look at it when it comes to sport it's like everyone believes that they should be able to achieve the elite of the elite and if they can't achieve that then it's because the elite of the elite they're they're cheating or doing something that that's in sport but when it comes to things in terms of like academia or someone who's extremely gifted at playing the piano, they can, for some reason at five years old, they heard something on the screen. They had a keyboard and they played it. It's a savant.

Like seriously. Gets praised right away. Exactly. But they have an innate talent for something, which then they work hard at and they become amazing at it. And I was lucky enough when I started weight training when I was 13, I got really, really big, really, really fast. And all the content that I put forward on YouTube, yes, I know that I look the way I look. But at the same time, I put the content forward with the intention of helping people get to their best potential. I put the content forward with the intention of helping people get to their best potential.

I've never said if you take a supplement or if you do this or that, you can look like me or you can be as strong as me. But if you do things in this certain way, hopefully it'll help you to achieve the level that is going to be best for you. And you'd be surprised at where you can get, even if it doesn't look like me. You know what I mean? So it's like in this realm of physical sports, people don't think about that. Automatically when they see somebody who is an outlier and they have innate talents for that, it's because of something else. It's not because they were talented and they also worked hard. I think it's very hard for, I mean, it's very hard for anybody when they look at any type of sport to be like, they see something and someone doing something great.

And obviously they want to achieve that, but maybe that's just like not where you have the most talent. It's hard to talk about and it's hard to hear. Like I look at basketball players and I know I'm not going to be a professional basketball player no matter how much I try. I may be gifted athletically, but there's just certain things on the court that they do that I wouldn't have any capacity to do. You know? No matter how much I want it. Yeah, those guys are amazing. Unbelievable. One of my favorite

quotes from the older Jim, the previous location, was Dan. He said, uh, if that guy's natty, then I'm skinny. That is a good quote. Yeah. Yeah. Dan's not very skinny but yeah like when it comes to that like i sent you a picture of uh that one guy akune derrick akune oh yeah akune matata is his name on instagram and um derrick he's like my genetic twin he's also nigerian

um he's 240 he's jack. He is disgustingly strong. Like, if you look at his numbers, I think he's squatting 680-something, benching 440-something, deadlifting in the mid-7s at this point. How would I spell his last name? A-K-U-N-N-E. There you go. Akune Matata, right? He's also just some Nigerian black, jacked black dude, right? Russ Swole. You know who Russ Swole is?ata right he's also just some nigerian black jack black dude right russ

swole you know who russ yeah yeah he's unbelievable also it's just and he competes at like 180 pounds or something yeah and he like he like people get you know send him that all the time but i think he was he he was lucky enough not to put natty in his username which i think was my downfall from the start i shouldn't have done that ifall from the start. I shouldn't have done that. I didn't realize, but yeah, I shouldn't have done that. Yeah. You know, there's a, you've heard people talk about this a lot. You know, you don't get to pick your parents, you know, and I, you know, I, I feel like, um, you know, genetic, yeah, that guy's in great shape, you know, from, from a genetic standpoint. Um, I feel like I, I got pretty good genetics, but at the same time, you know, my dad's like five, two, you know, or five, three, if he's, you know, on a, on a tall day for him.

Um, and, uh, I took pretty well to lifting though. You know, when I was young, I, I got, I got strong pretty fast. Uh, I was always able to gain weight and there's some people that, you know, they exercise, exercise, exercise, and they can't seem to either get lean or gain muscle. They can't really seem to do either one, even when they, even when they try hard. Yeah. Uh, you got other athletes, uh, like Omar Isaf, you know, who's, uh, who's been talking about being a natural athlete for a long time, who also has a YouTube channel, which is really highly successful. And he obviously doesn't look the way that you look. He obviously isn't nearly as nearly as big.

And so, I mean, it's just people are going to have different genetics are going to have different starting points in their life. But where I think I really, uh, excelled was the fact that it, I don't even know if I call it excelled where I really benefited, I should say, is that both of my parents were present, you know, both of my parents were there for everything for me and they were always so supportive of me. So I, I feel so spoiled in my life. I feel like, um, you know, people are always so, uh, excited and like, man, you worked your ass off. And I, and I have worked hard. I have put in a great effort to, to, to do a lot of these things, but I also feel like I shouldn't really be that credited because, uh, I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth and I'm not talking

about like wealth. I'm not talking about, uh, that I came from, you know, some, uh, uh, family in England that was, uh, Kings or Queens or anything like that but uh i was really really lucky my parents were there for everything they were supportive of everything they supported me whether i told them that i wanted to be a pro wrestler or professional football player yeah uh it just didn't matter what it was and i had both of them there to like nurture me and to i had my dad there to show me how to throw a baseball and to catch a football. And I had my mom there, you know, to, uh, kiss my boo-boos when I fell down and I was babied.

I was the baby of the family. I was baby of the entire family, not just my own, uh, immediate family, not just with my brothers, but also of the entire family, which is, we have a huge family and I was the baby of the family for like nine years until, uh, you know, another, another, uh, burst of kids kind of came along, but, you know, I got, I got just the Royal treatment all the time. And, uh, everyone was always paying attention to like what I was doing. And, um, I, you know, my childhood was, was really good. So that is something that really has helped me, uh, to excel that, that allowed me to kind of push into all these different things. Your upbringing was quite different, right?

Yeah. Now, the funny thing is, like you said, you were spoiled, right? But when I think about it, I feel like I was kind of spoiled too. Because even though, yeah, I grew up and it was mainly myself, my mom, my sister, and my grandma. My dad, they divorced a month after I was born. My sister's older, by the way, for you guys, just so you guys know. And I stopped seeing him in terms of visitation when I was like 13. And that was out of my choice.

I'll talk about that a little bit. But the thing I think, when I look back on it and think about, like, my childhood is that even though my mom had my sister and I, and she was working all the time, she found a way when I was, I think, six, because I used to play the piano. That was something that I excelled at as a kid. She found a way to put me in American River College to take like piano and music theory classes. So I was like this young kid in a class of college students. And then from there, she found a way to like have me obviously do extracurriculars in terms of sports. I was taking math classes. So it put me ahead in my math because I was taking like college level math classes as a kid when they allowed that program.

They stopped that program. But since I was already there, their grandfather would be in. So I was already way ahead. But she she did all of that, had me play sports and had me do all these things. She put me in situations where like at church, she helped me to be able to have a good relationship with my pastor. And he was like a father figure. My soccer coach from like 13 to 18 gave me a lot of great advice. So he was another individual who had like an impact on my outlook. And even though my dad wasn't there, when I look back at it, I find that I was actually very, very, very lucky with the way that she raised me. You know, some individuals don't have either parent. Some individuals have one parent, right? And that parent isn't really able to do all of that stuff for that kid, right? So I think I was very fortunate to have someone like have my mom who was able to put me in all these situations, have me play all these different sports, which would allow me to just be who I am now. So like, what I think too, is that when I stopped having visitation with my dad, that was

when I was 13. Like I mentioned, that was out of choice. And, um, he was an interesting dude. He was also, he was an engineer. Uh, but he, you know how like some parents have like the good cop, bad cop, one parents, the nice one, you know, they're, they're always like spoiling their kids and the other parents, the disciplinarian and the kids don't tend to like them that much. Well, my mom was the disciplinarian, right? And she had me doing all this stuff. And my dad, whenever I'd visit him, he'd have the PlayStation at his house and he'd be the fun parent. But he'd always like, you know, talk crap about my mom.

I got tired of that when I was 13 and I ended up telling him one day, I was like, you know, keep doing this. I'm not going to come see you anymore. And he didn't think I was serious. Kept doing it. Next weekend, I talked to my mom, told her, and he came to the house to pick me up. And I was like, I'm not coming. Like, I'm just not going to come. So we ended up going to mediation and that individual was trying to convince me to, you

know, continue seeing him. And I was like, just no. So I didn't see him literally then until like way later in life. But I look at that situation and I honestly think I was really lucky in a sense because like a parent can have a good influence on a child and a parent can also have a bad influence on a child, you know? And I look at the way he was at that point, uh, some of the things that he was doing. And if that was part of my upbringing until I became an adult now, I think I'd be a very different person in a negative way, you know? So again, it's like,

I don't know what it's like to have like a father in the house, right? But I do know what it's like to have a parent that pours everything that they can into their child because she's never taken a vacation, you know, which is a crazy thing. Like, you know, she's never taken a vacation. She's worked hard. She's had two kids. Whenever she'd get off work, she'd pick us up from school, take me to soccer practice, take my sister somewhere else. It was just like, it was just this merry-go-round and I don't even, I don't know how she did it. It seems like your mom developed a higher standard for you, regardless of the situation,

right? Like she just, you know, she was like, this is what you're going to do. It's kind of going to be the way that it is. Did she, uh, was she supportive of you, uh, not seeing your dad? Was she like kind of okay with it? Or she was like, no, you got to, this is your dad. Like you got to go see him. She wasn't.

She was also trying to fight or trying to convince me that this isn't you know okay for me to do but it actually did come to whether i was going to step into the car or not you know it really came down to my decision and my decision at that point was like just no i don't like at that point i knew this is really not good i don't like hearing him say these things i can't take it because it was going on for years so that's why again they had to go to a mediator because even the mediator was trying to convince me. Right. And they couldn't.

So from that point on, it was just like, it was done, you know? It's a tough thing as a parent because you're always trying to do the best thing for your kid and you're always trying to present them with opportunities. And sometimes your kid will be like, no, I don't want to eat what you made for dinner. And you're like, well, this is all we're having, you know, like you need to eat. And my kids will do that kind of still make those decisions. And, uh, you know, big decision like this one, you're like, man, like, uh, yeah, I don't, you can't really grow up without a dad.

Like, what are you doing? Like, you gotta, you gotta go see your pops, you know? Yeah. But it sounded like your mom was smart and, uh sounds like she was uh you know putting you into situations where there's older people around so you ended up with multiple uh mentors yeah what did your did your mom end up being around for like i know you played a lot of soccer and stuff was she able to get to some of those uh games and things like that games she went to all the games like that she figured that out that's the thing like even when super I got to meet this lady.

No, even when we'd have tournaments out in San Jose, things like Surf Cup, which, yeah, I think it's pretty far. When you have your own kids, you're just going to be like, mom, how in the world? Yeah. You're not going to ever understand. You're going to cry every day thinking about it. You're going to be like,, like what's going on here? How did you figure this out?

Because I can't even figure out how to get myself to jujitsu practice now that I got a kid, right? Like that's going to be the way that you're going to be thinking about it probably in the future. Yeah, no, like exactly. Like it's when I think about it, it's just I don't get how she did it all because like she still took very good care of herself. She didn't have bad habits.

We're Christian, and she prays all the time. And she's just like, it really never made much sense to me on how she managed to do that for two kids on her own. It's a strong thing, too, for somebody to have faith. Maybe all the situations aren't always great, but they still have it. And you're like, that's a, that's a, you know, I think it's a good message for kids. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And you know, the thing is though, it's like the one thing that or multiple things that she did is first off, she, she never spoke badly about my dad. She always wanted me to have love for him. And I do actually, like, I don't resent him or hate him or anything. We still have contact through like WhatsApp. He's in Nigeria right now, but we still, we still message every now and then I don't hate

the dude. And I think it's because she didn't hate him. You know, if she did, I would, you know, cause like she, she had, she had total reason to have hate for him. Um, but she didn't. And that, that helps me because like, I look at my life and there've been a lot of negative situations that I've had with people, but there's no one that I really, truly hate. You know what I mean? I've really never had, no matter if like there was just bad blood, there's no one that I hate, you know, because it's just, she never really had that or she never did that. She never shown an example of really hating anybody you know even if they wronged her it wronged her in a pretty bad way and there's been a there's been a lot

of situations where i look at i'm just like how can you not have just met and not even my dad but how can you not have massive disdain for this individual it's just it's just the way she operates you know anything that happens to her like she she sees the card she's given and she just goes with it that's i think that's one thing that she's she's taught me really well is like it doesn't matter if like you know someone has more advantages than you or somebody uh or there's somebody has more opportunity you work with what you got and you you make things happen and then she's she's done that you think the situation made you grow up faster because like uh uh, with my wife, um, her dad

passed when she was 10 and, uh, you know, I, it was, you know, it's a shitty thing to have happen, but, but it also made her kind of like realize, you know, the world's tough, you know, and, and, uh, you can't really rely on anybody else. And she's like, I better just, you know, take matters in my own hands. My mom's got four kids and, and I just, you know, take matters in my own hands. My mom's got four kids and, and I better, you know, be responsible for myself and help be responsible for my brothers and sisters. And, um, you know, she ended up getting a scholarship, uh, for swimming and stuff like that because, you know, she knew like, mom's not going to be able to like, you

know, figure all this out completely on her own. I better start to take care of myself. Did it, did it help you grow up a little faster in some sense? I think so. Or your mama's boy. No, I think I'm, I think at the end of the day, I think I'm always going to be like a mama's boy. I'm always, I'm always going to love her. She's always going to have a big place in my life, my heart. But, um, I think that in just terms of like, I guess, I don't know, the way I look at situations, it's just, I never really, I never really blame, like, that's one thing. I don't complain. And, because she doesn't complain. Like, that's one thing that I think is a big deal.

Is that anything that she ever actually specifically taught you or just what you saw? What I saw and what she taught me. Like bad things happen and I just tend to look in and see what I did wrong here. I try to. At least in as many situations as I can. I just make it a point just not to complain about things. Even if things are going really, really, really bad, don't complain about it. Figure something out.

Don't blame other people for those situations. Truthfully, just look at yourself and see what you can do. I think that's one of the things that I've been able to keep and do for as long as possible. I think it's just because I saw that from her. I never saw her complain about things, and I've never saw her blame anybody for anything that's ever happened to her. Um, any situation that's negative, she's, she's grown from it and she, and she talks about it in a way that, okay, I learned from this. I've grown from it. I've been, and what can I do next? That's how she looks at everything. it's never oh why did this happen to me oh my gosh this is so horrible how could they it's never it's she doesn't talk like that she doesn't act like that i think just because like that was what was around me so much i tend not to do that same thing is your uh girlfriend similar to her in any

way um i think she's in in ways yes Because they both tend to be very set in their ways. Not, not, not even set in their ways. No, no, no, no.

We just have a professor fired. I think, no, not set in their ways. Sleeping on the couch. Your phone's getting all kinds of texts right now. They have, no,

they have their beliefs and it's the word I'm looking for is convictions, right? My girlfriend, if she believes something and she wants something, she's going to be convicted and it's going to be very, very difficult to change her mind. I like that about her. I really love that I can't just sway her, you know, with like, it's a strong, strong trait to have.

Yeah, it is. Cause a lot of people, a lot of people can be easily influenced, you know, easily influenced by the people around them, easily influenced by, uh,

what other people say. And it takes a lot to change her mind on something. And I, I like that. I respect that. I don't think I wouldn't be with her if she didn't have strong convictions. And if it was very easy for me to just like influence her and change her mind about things. I like that about her.

I'm very stubborn myself too. So yeah, they're very, very similar in, in, in that sense. And I think that that's, that's one of the reasons why we are together. So yeah, that's, that's pretty cool. Is she, um, you know, your mom sounds like she's very strong and, uh, maybe perhaps independent as well as your girlfriend that way also, or is she different when it comes to that so she's she's the middle child but she's always right now she's doing nursing um and she is very independent she she has very very small circle of people um she doesn't like just she can be friendly and make

friends with a lot of people, but she, like me, to be perfectly honest, I'm a very reserved individual. You know, I have, I have a small circle of, of people and, uh,

that's the way she is too. So your question was, what was your question? Uh, is she like independent? Like in any, is she, I guess,

uh, maybe this is an offensive term, but is she like girly or like overly like needy uh i mean i mean everyone's gonna be that way you know in relationship to some extent male or female uh but like you know does is she able just to like you know be off on her own she's totally fine and she's not really worried about like what you're up to type of thing or yeah no she's so so yes in that sense yes she is but at the same time it's like she's good at communicating things to me so if i'm falling short on something like to be calls you out no she does she calls me out on my bs and she's this is another thing i like about it that i i totally forgot she's

extremely straightforward like even if even if it could be offensive she'll she'll say it straight up and if if you get offended you get offended you deal with it right i've never dealt with somebody like that before who who's so absolutely straightforward that it could be like oh but you're kind of right you know so um yeah like if if she feels that i'm not doing something right for myself or for her she'll she'll be straightforward about it she'll tell me about it and i really appreciate that that straightforwardness because i mean guys can probably relate sometimes you don't know what your lady's thinking and you're like like, what's wrong? Nothing. Well,

are you, wait, are you sure you don't seem okay? Nah, I'm good. Like I don't have to deal with that or I really have to deal with that. If there's something wrong, I should be like,

okay, this is what's wrong. Bam. I'm like, oh dang. Okay. Like, man, I wasn't expecting it to be such a long list,

but, but, but that, that's good. It makes things easier because okay now i know what i gotta work on you know i know what i gotta fix so i like that because there's there's it's not this you know this uh passive aggressive combative type deal it's like okay now this is what this is what i think you're doing wrong if you don't agree you don't agree but

you probably should agree sounds like it sounds like she's a pretty driven then as well, because my wife is, sounds a little similar to her where, um, my wife gets obsessed about stuff to the point where it's like, this thing has to be done and it has to happen right now. Like it could be, it could be just folding laundry, but she's like crazy about it. Like, this is what's going on and it's happening now. I don't care if the house is on fire. Like she, she just has these certain things that like, if it doesn't happen that day, it doesn't get done that day.

It like almost drives her crazy. Yeah. Uh, I don't, I don't think I like, I don't, yeah, I don't deal with that that much.

Not really. She, she's, she's not like that, but, uh, she is very, um, like I mentioned, she's very straightforward. I believe that's her biggest trait. She's very straightforward. How'd you guys meet? So there's a, no, it's very 2015, you know, very new age. But so I frequent the Starbucks that she works at.

And I get work done. Stalker alert. No, I wasn't stalking. Yeah, I was not stalking. Trust me. I'm very, I don't find pride in the way I went about this. But I do get work done at like different coffee shops. And when I was, when I ended up being single i saw her there right and i was like huh okay cool you know like hey now looks like yeah she's she's a beautiful woman

you know i'd like to get to know her so this is how i went about it i'm not not proud of this but um there's a guy that works there right uh and i forgot his. But what I did is when she wasn't there, I was like, hey, so there's this really cute girl that works here. Do you know if she's single or not? Right? And that was because it's because of that fear of rejection. You don't want to go up and talk to a girl and find out she's single. I just wish I talked to her instead. But this is the answer you gave me verbatim. She kind of is, she kind of isn't. And I was like, what does that, what does that mean? She kind of is, she kind of isn't. So I left, I was like, okay, I guess she's not. She'd be like, do you think I could beat up the other guy?

Yeah. So, so I left, right. And I continued getting work done there, but this same guy goes to her and says, Hey, this dude is asking about asking about you right he didn't tell her what he told me just said this dude was asking about you she was single by the way um so for the next few weeks she was there waiting for me to approach her because she thinks that i think that she's single but i didn't do that i instead of guys just trying to like protect her a little bit or something like that i guess i think he was the reason why she's kind enough. Yeah, because he had her eye on her the whole time. Who wants to know, man?

No, seriously. She's kind of with me, but she doesn't know it. So me thinking that she was with somebody, I didn't want to seem inviting. So I kept my RBF on and I was just like, you know, I got my coffee. I'm like, Oh, thank you. And I was very serious. So she was like, you asked about me and you're not even going to talk to me again. I think she's not single, but she thinks I'm interested in her and she thinks I know. So yeah. So one day I get my coffee and she ends up saying, Oh, she's like, Oh, what's your name? Like, Oh, it's Seema. So I tell her my name. Um, I wake up the next morning,

I have a follow from her Instagram. I look, I see she's single. I'm like, I slid in the DMs and it's, it's literally, I slid in the DMs immediately. See,

all I had to do was know she's single though. But again, I wish that at that time, you know, I just talked to her straight up instead and everything would have been much smoother. The story wouldn't be as embarrassing. Did you get some free coffee after that? Uh, yeah, I get free coffee there every now and then.

But yeah, just, just guys lesson there. Just talk to the girl. You get rejected, you get rejected, but just talk to the girl. It's too hard. It's very difficult, man. It's too tough, man. It's very difficult. Yeah. But luckily too tough, man. It's very difficult. Yeah.

But luckily for me, my wife approached me. Otherwise it would have never happened. I would have never said anything. Really? Yeah. No, I'm not about to talk to no girl. It's impossible. Makes you way too nervous.

You're going to screw it up, right? Yeah. You're going to mess it up somehow. Yeah. Do you think your mom just kind of basically just taught you the basics of life like, just, you know, life's about the choices that you make. And, you know, when you make these choices, there's no reason to like bitch and complain about them. You gotta, you know, you make these, you make the choice to be mad and upset, then go ahead. And that's, that's your decision.

You make the decision to do something useful. Then, then that's what you, that's what you did. Right. Yeah, definitely. And I, you know, uh, whenever I think about like, I, I, like you said, I feel like I'm extremely fortunate in terms of my upbringing and I'm like, I have it so good. Um, even though it was only, it was just her because like, she didn't have a very easy upbringing. Um, she has multiple sisters, and they've all been able to go from Nigeria to the United States,

and they all do fairly well for themselves. But over there in Nigeria, it's very difficult for a woman, first off, to be taken seriously and to get an education. Even her dad, he wasn't a fan of all she wanted to do in terms of, you know, becoming an engineer, et cetera. She had to go through a lot to get to where she was.

Um, so just seeing like our, uh, women in, in Nigeria, they like more domestic, are they more like at home? It's, that's how people want it to be. Okay. It's like, it's, it's still very backwards there. And like the stuff you hear about here where like, you know, sometimes men do things to in the workplace. That is normal over there.

Like you have a male boss. It's a normal for him to like, like grab your butt or something. It's normal for him to grab your butt. It's normal for him to be like, I'm moving to Nigeria. I was going to say, what are we doing here? No, I'm kidding. By the way, everybody's kidding guys. Yeah.

Everyone's way too jacked and big over there. We'd look terrible. That's true. But like, like, like it's, it's, it, especially since over there, you will rarely ever see, you will not see women in high places. So for them to move up a lot of men, like it's just normal for them to take advantage of them like that. And like, it's just normal for them to take advantage of them like that. She's always fought against that. And she's had to deal with things like that.

And just understanding how rough she had it truly. No matter what happens to me, I just know how extremely fortunate I am with all the things that she had to go through and her sisters. Going from there to coming here, being successful here, having children here. It's not easy at all. So I'm just fortunate to be in America, to have been born here, to have the opportunities of working and building a business and all of that. I have it so good that it's very difficult to complain about anything because there's just a disgusting amount of opportunity. Disgusting amount of opportunity. I could do anything. Like anything that I really want to do.

I, if I actually want to do it, I can somehow make it happen. And that's not how it is for, for majority of people, you know? So that's why I think it's, it's very hard. I find it difficult. And if I ever do find myself in a mind state of like feeling off or down, I'm just like, I try to just realize how grateful i should be just being where i am you know even if i'm not where i want to be right now where i am is very good even though i don't want to settle with it it's still heading there sometimes sometimes when somebody has a single parent sometimes a single parent is uh you mentioned your mom being like a

disciplinarian uh and sometimes when people have a single parent, sometimes that single parent, uh, has to be like tough and they, they gotta be a little short with you and, and they gotta like, cause you know, you got other siblings and, uh, just shit needs to get done. House needs to be clean. She's got to go to work. Um, is she a real loving as well on top of everything else? Like, is she, you know, going to give you a hug and tell you she's proud of you? Or, you know, when you were young, was it hard for her to like really figure out how to make time for that along with everything else? Like, did she have to like, or did she avoid sugarcoating things?

She did avoid sugarcoating things. But that's also because I was a ruckus of a kid, yo. Uh-oh. Yeah, I had a lot of energy, which is probably one of the reasons why she had me play sports, like all the sports, baseball, soccer, basketball. I played all the sports. But I was also like, in school, I was like a class clown. I always did stupid crap. And she-

She get in trouble a bunch in school? Yeah, a bit. Uh, especially in my earlier years. Like how old? Like 10? Yeah. So third grade, St. Joseph's.

Kid gives me the middle finger. I turn his finger back. I kind of, you know, I got in, I got in big trouble for that. Um. You can't even do that in jujitsu, bro. You can't do that in jujitsu. Uh.

No small joint manipulation or you're out of the tournament. Yeah. And yeah, he flipped me off and I turned his finger back. He deserved it. He had it coming. He had it coming. What an asshole. Yeah.

Fourth grade, I kicked a ball into the kindergarten window while they were napping and the window broke and they all screamed and ran out of the classroom. I had to pick weeds for the rest of the semester. Yeah. I was like, it's not like I did those things. Was that on purpose though? Or was it just like you kicked it really hard towards? I kicked it at the window with the intention of hitting the window, not breaking the window. And I broke the window. So she had to pay for that. And I picked weeds for the rest of the semester. Like that was like my recess. I'd pick weeds. Um, so I, I gotten a lot of, I just did a lot of stupid things just cause they were stupid. Like not because like I was trying to fight people. Just, just, I just did stupid stuff. Um, and I think when I was younger, there was less, uh, there was always, obviously there was

always love, but there wasn't any sugarcoating and all that type of stuff. There was, there was less, uh, there was always, obviously there was always love, but there wasn't any sugarcoating and all that type of stuff. There was, there was none of that. Um, and there still was never none of that, but like, as I got older and as I matured and as I kind of realized, I think there was like a switch in my freshman, a sophomore year of high school or something. I don't know what happened, but I just like went from effing around too much to just being a little bit more mature with the way I acted. Uh, that that's when, you know, I, I, I saw more, more warm cause there was an, an, I think that, okay, this is going to sound bad, but kids can definitely

do things to make their parents dislike them. I don't think my mom ever disliked me, right? I don't think she did, but she was definitely not fond of many of the things I would do, you know? Yeah, kids can definitely cause friction. Yes. Things like something as simple as not doing their homework or not cleaning their room, not wanting to take a shower. It's like, man, at the end of the day, this really starts to turn into something. Like, I got to tell you to take a shower every day and you're 11, you're 12.

Like, can we get, can we get past this? Can you brush your teeth? You know, can you, you know, just, just, I mean, these are some simple requests, right? Yeah, exactly. You know, you, you're a parent. Um, I definitely think I did a lot of things to cause a lot of friction, but when I stopped doing those things that causes a lot of friction, I don't know where that switch was. There is more of the smiling, you know, all of it, you know, uh, and yeah. And, and so, yeah, I think that's kind of where I feel my house is

now. Like I feel like in general, I mean, there's still occasional, you know, Hey, just do your homework. And my son lies about it or something like that. Right. But for the most part, I mean, there's still occasional, you know, Hey, just do your homework and my son lies about it or something like that. Right. But for the most part, I mean, it's like, we're all pretty happy, you know, and we're all sitting down, we're all eating together. Uh, we'll kind of like make jokes. Some days are better than others. And, you know, some days, you know, feel like we're, uh, you know, on cloud nine, other days are a little bit more gloomy, but, uh, you know, it feels really good. Everyone's maturing.

Quinn is 11. Uh, Jake is 15 and everyone's like, at least it, at least it appears everyone's kind of like heading in the right direction. Yeah. My wife and I get stressed, uh, from, you know, work, family situations, various things, but all of that's pretty smooth too. So it's, we're in a pretty good, we're in a pretty good place. But when the kids were younger, like, man, like sometimes the days really,

really get the better of you. And you're like, man, I got my ass kicked today. I don't know what happened. And I remember, uh, Jerry Seinfeld, uh, said that, um, having children is like, he's like, you want to know what it's like to have kids? He goes, go put your blender on, you go, go put it on high speed and throw as much shit in there as you can and keep the lid off. He's like, that's what it's like to have kids he goes go put your blender on you go put it on high speed and throw as much shit in there as you can and keep the lid off he's like that's what it's like to have children he's like shit's just flying all over the place you got no control over nothing he's like that's pretty much every every day in my life yeah man no like i definitely look back

at some of the things i did as a kid i'm just like what was going through my mind to just cause me to do those a good thing is that your son's going to give it right back to you. Oh no, seriously. Like, seriously. You get it back tenfold. Yeah. I, I, I don't understand. I really don't.

Like it's, it's crazy. I mean, what, what's some of the, have you ever done just like, or do you remember doing just stupid stuff as a kid? Like just ridiculous things that you don't know why. Yeah. So here's a great example. And this is a totally embarrassing story, but I, you know, I was, um, I was always like a little bit too old to like end up in these

situations, you know, like when you're like two or three years too old to like be hysterically crying over something or like that kind of stuff. It was always just, I think it was cause I was the baby of the family. So I always just thought I was a baby. I guess I, maybe I was. Um, but I don't remember how old I was, but I think I probably was like 10 or 11. Just, you know, old enough to like know better. Uh, we had a, we had a dog and like, I was just playing with the dog and it was before church. And like, my mom had me like, you know, she wanted me to put on like a, not a suit, but she wanted me to put on something nice and I'm outside like playing. And of course, like I, you know, I'm me to put on like a, not a suit, but she wanted me to put on something nice. And I'm outside like playing.

And of course, like I, you know, I'm going to get dirty. Right. But I'm just messing around with the dog. And then I'm messing around with our hose and I'm like spraying around and I'm like spraying near the dog and around the dog and dogs running back and forth and chasing the water and everything. And then I like realized that the dog is like he's chasing the water and when i'm going in like a circle with the water the dog's chasing after it and so i do that like around this tree and then the dog starts running around the tree but the dog's now running around me and the the uh the you know cord to the the hose the hose is now wrapping around and the dog wraps me around the tree.

And I end up like with tons of like dirt and shit all over me. My mom's like, what are you doing? You know, I got like tons of trouble for just, and so I did a bunch of stupid stuff like that. I, another situation where, uh, my friends and I were playing football. We like broke a window because we were, you know, throwing the football, throwing this, uh, ball around back and forth. And I just looked mad at my friend. So I went to chuck it at him. football we like broke a window because we were you know throwing the football throwing this uh ball around back and forth and i just looked mad at my friend so i went to chuck it at him he moved

out of the way and broke our like you know garage window or whatever and my dad was like my dad flipped out and then there's the other story that which andrew has heard before of uh me and my brothers were like wrestling me and my brother chris we were like wrestling around and um my brother pushed me and i hit into the wall and i got a kind of a big butt so my big ass hits the wall and makes a big ass dent in the wall and it was kind of like low so i'm like oh maybe no one will notice it but the sheet rock is clearly you know know, dented inward. I mean, anyone would notice that. Yeah. But it was also, it was like up our stairs. So it was like eye level when you turn the corner, you know, my dad comes home from work and me and my brother are playing Tecmo Bowl and we're having this fierce battle in there.

And my dad comes up the stairs from work and he goes, what in the hell is this? And like my heart just dropped down into my fucking stomach i'm like oh no every once in a while because my dad was always working so hard at that time and you know we got a house full of three boys every once in a while he just loses shit which is hard for people to understand now because he's like the nicest guy in the world but he was a dad and like we all fall victim to that sometimes, right? Loser cool. So then he comes in our room and he goes, you want to break my shit? He's like, I'm going to break your shit.

He grabs a Nintendo and we still have the remote, the controllers in our hand. He like ripped it away from us. He opens up the window and just chucks it out. We like look out the window and see the Nintendo on the ground. And we're like, oh my God, it's in like a million pieces. Like what the hell? Was that like the most shocking thing that had ever happened to you guys at that point? Of course. Devastating.

Oh man. It was the most devastating thing ever. Turned pale and everything like, oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. We were like, we were like, holy shit. And then he just walked out of the room. He didn't say anything.

were like they're like holy shit and then he just walked out of the room he didn't say anything and then me and my brother were like you know it was like so like over the top that we were like trying not to laugh yeah because it was kind of funny like that was like kind of hilarious really uh but at the same time we're trying to figure out like how do we salvage the nintendo like there's got to be a way to like there's got to be a way to get it back and then we're thinking oh man the garbage trucks come tomorrow morning. And then we're like, okay, well let's go like clean it up, but we'll like leave it on the top and then we'll grab it before, you know, we'll grab it for the garbage trucks come. And then, uh, people would come over our house and they'll, they would be like, dude, what in the fuck happened to Nintendo? We're like, it's a really long story.

That thing still worked? Oh, man. Yeah, it still worked. It still worked. It had like no top to it. You could see all the computer chips in it and everything. It was crazy looking. But we had our own custom Nintendo.

Yeah, one of one. That's amazing. Let me ask you. Okay. So this is probably. You guys, did you guys get spanked or no? Yeah. Absolutely.

Okay, cool. Cool. Just because like a lot of people, I mean, I don't know if I'll necessarily spank my kids, but I look back. It's not really easy to do actually. It's kind of hard. Yeah. No, like I got spanked and I have no resentment towards it because I know what I was.

Right. And she never found pleasure in it, but there's this, there's an interesting thing within like the African community. It's like everybody can spank each other's kids. So my boy, I grew up with this guy, Brian Malaya. He's the guy who I do the other thing, the other podcast with. There was a day when I went to his house, and we were running around. We broke something, the three, his brother,

myself and I. So there's this, there's this punishment that his mother, his mom would do to us. We'd get down on our knees, we'd put our hands above our head and she had phone books, right? So she had a lot of phone books and she kept them for this reason. We'd be on our knees, put our hands on our head and she'd put a phone book down and we'd have to stay there and if our hands came down and then she'd put another phone book on and then we'd like be there for like

20-25 minutes dude she's the reason why you're so jacked it was the funniest thing we're like auntie why'd you do that to us

she's like you gotta learn somehow but that was she'd just torture you it wasn't torture it sounds bad but it was like honestly looking back on it like we all just laugh at that because she's like she's the she's the nicest lady you'll see her and she's just smiling and you you'd never think that this is like it's like some military shit that she did to us it was crazy you know it is it is crazy when you have kids so

like they can they can make you kind of nuts you know sometimes they can and if there's two or three of them and they're young you know it can really make you kind of uh kind of loony tune sometimes young dumb boys yeah yeah i i've spanked my kids a little bit but you know when they're really young it doesn't really take much you can almost swat on the butt and cry and then they kind of get the association of like yeah i can't run out in the butt and cry. And then they kind of get the association of like, yeah, I can't run out in the road. You know,

like it was mainly for safety stuff, you know, like stuff like that. Like, yeah, the road, you know, the road and things,

things of that nature. But with my son, it was actually really weird. It never really, it didn't never, didn't really work with him for some, I don't know why. There's certain things work on certain kids pretty well,

but he just didn't, he never responded to it, you know? And he, he never, he never has responded well either to like yelling at him. Like he can't yell at him. Um, it never worked and it, it's just never has never worked to like shout with him. He's more of like a reasoning person. So you sit down and you explain something to him and you talk to him like he's, you know, 25 rather than talk to him like he's 10, you know, and for some reason that's always worked really well. My daughter yell at her one time, it just destroys her and she doesn't want

to get yelled at again. Um, now it's different though, because she's a real B and so I can't, I can't really, I can't really, I can't really yell at her anymore because then she'll get quiet and she won't talk to me for like three days. It's the worst. Yeah. One thing that I like was shocked at, you know, I, I met Jasmine when she was four years old, but you know, over time we've gotten really close, but it, it's just amazing how much power your kids actually do have over you. You know, that, you know, when he was saying like, she just won't talk to Mark, it's like, how much power your kids actually do have over you. You know, that, you know, what he was saying,

like, she just won't talk to Mark. It's like, Hey, what the heck? You want to go hang out or something? She ignores you or something. It's like,

Oh my gosh, that's the, it's the worst. Or if you do, you know, you have to like discipline or something. And it's like, you say like, Hey,

like whatever this is going to happen now. And if they start crying, ah, I was just kidding, man. Like, it's not that ah, I was just kidding, man. Like, it's not that serious. It's really,

really hard. Yeah. It puts you in a, it puts you in a rough, it puts you in a rough spot. Yeah. Normally when I've gotten mad at my kids, I'm normally not actually mad.

Even a couple of times where they've, where I realized, like I recognize the situation and said, okay, you gotta act really mad because you need to show them that this is serious. They can't, you know, they can't throw a toy and hit another kid in the head. You got to tell them flat out that this is totally unacceptable. Yeah.

And so I can leave that situation and be totally, I'm not attached to it all. And then so five minutes later I can say, hey, you want to go outside and play basketball? And they'll be like. Right. Yeah. Yeah. There's been times. we're looking at you with that stink face yeah we'll have to discipline jasmine but then like the second she leaves the room we just start cracking up at whatever it was you know it's yeah you're like oh we can't show her that we're laughing because we have to be serious but in inside we're just like dude that was awesome or like whatever it was oh my gosh i just I just remembered. Uh oh.

No. I remembered where that little, I remember what like when I stopped messing around actually. And it wasn't because of spanking. When I was in eighth grade, I was messing around a lot in class and my teacher told my mom, I think I told you this. And then she came to the class that next day. But when she dropped me at school, she then started to follow me. I was like, oh, you, you, you can go, you can leave. But she just continued to follow me through, uh,

my first class, my second class pulled up a chair and she sat right next to me all day long. She followed me to lunch. She followed me to my last periods and we went home together. And from that day, like, I think that that was when I stopped messing around because I knew that she pulled that again on me if I ever, uh, if I ever did that. And that was the most embarrassing day of my life. I just remembered that for some reason. Yeah. That was, uh, that was it for me. That's great. That is awesome. I'm trying to explain to my son, like, you know, there doesn't have to be any friction in life. If you just, you know, like not only do what you're supposed to do, but, you know, be yourself and then some, and then, and no one will ever really have anything. Um, well, no, not that they'll never say anything and you have A's and B's when the report card comes, there's really nothing to talk about other than to say, Hey, that's, it's outstanding.

You should be proud of yourself. It's great. Yeah. That's, you know, you're, you're put, you're putting in the work. That's, that's awesome. And take them for ice cream or something. Right. I mean, there's not a lot to, uh, to discuss. And I'm trying to teach him that,

like the more stuff that you show us that you can handle on your own, uh, you know, next year when he starts driving, um, you know, he'll have a longer leash. Right.

But he, but he's not going to really have, maybe he won't even hardly have a leash if, uh, if he continues to show that he can't handle responsibility, you know, so you turn over some responsibility and, um, it's not any different than sometimes dealing with, uh, employees or, uh, even in coaching people sometimes say, okay, well now I want you to cut back a little bit on your calories. And then they show that they had a really hard time with it and uh much like uh being like a

coach for a football team i mean when a quarterback starts in their first year they don't give them the whole playbook right they give them a little bit of responsibility and as they prove themselves like oh shit okay well this guy really knows what he's doing they start giving you more and more plays you got more and more options you can open up the playbook and you you have more options to put up more points on the scoreboard so i'm trying to you know trying to deliver that message to them and it's hard because when you're being like being being between the ages of like 13 and 19 while some of it is really cool it also really kind of sucks you're just in a weird spot because how do you really prove yourself at those ages you know like what are some things you can do to to prove yourself all you can do is like

try to do stuff to like make your parents happy which like who really cares about doing that like you just don't you don't really care that much about that you're you're trying to be like yourself you know and so it's a weird spot to be in it's a weird age yeah it is really odd yeah i remember um it's it's it within uh our community like doing stuff like i do is uh not it's not looked upon um proudly right and then like it the african community like one of like nigerians when they come to the u.s it's it's very you go to school, you get your degree, you get a job. If you're not like that, you're not successful. And the one thing that I think is really great about my mom is because, yeah, she she like I had the goal of going to the medical field.

She had the idea that I was going to be doing that, too. And when I switched, all she did was make sure that I, I knew what I was getting myself into and that I, I had like a plan. And from there she was, she was being really supportive of me. I think that's, that's one thing, because when I look at other people, like I don't know any other parent from that type of upbringing and background that would actually be supportive of their kid. Like she was supportive of me. Um, and I'm really thankful to her for that because like, if she wasn't, uh, and if she was really just like, if she, if she was really pouring down on me to go back and you got to go back to school, get, get all this, then I think, uh, I don't know if I would have been able to have the

power to pull through because she was that lifeline for me. You know, if, if she doesn't support something I'm doing, it makes it very difficult for me to continue to want to do that because I know she's a smart woman, you know, um, and I do want to make her proud. So yeah, I think that continuous support from her is something that, uh, something that's continued to push me. Yeah. Do you think, um, do you think she was kind of like forward in her thinking? Uh, and, uh, you know, maybe she was breaking out of, uh, some, some, some, uh, traditions,

right? Like, cause I mean, that's gotta be hard to do when it's a cultural thing. Yeah. That's gotta be a tough thing to do for her. I mean, for her to do that, I wonder almost like what made her, what made her, what allowed her to do that. Maybe she was just so busy. She couldn't like, yeah, she was just so busy she couldn't like

yeah she couldn't hold she couldn't like hold you down to one thing maybe i don't know she wanted me to give her or she wanted me to explain to her what it was that i wanted to do what i was trying to do tell her my plan pretty much because uh if that plan didn't sound sound then it would make no sense for me to attempt this right um. I think that was the big thing. Once I told her like, okay, this is what I plan to do. These are other people that are like doing this type of things and having great success. If I can emulate this and follow this, then I can get here and further. And when I was able to show her that, then it made a little bit more sense.

And she was still like, you know what though? Like you still want something to fall back on. You want a degree to fall back on. She still had that. But at the same time, she was still like, if you can if you believe that you can do this and that other people are doing it, too, then you can make it happen. And I think another thing, though, to think about is just that she came from Nigeria. You know, if you're an immigrant coming into this country and you want to have success, a lot of immigrants know like they they go to college they get a degree and they just work i think immigrants have that uh they just have this work mentality that i mean i

don't know anybody other than other like immigrants like her and other people here that i can say that they just like work and work and work they don't stop working like it's it's just i think just seeing that um it's just it's crazy to me you know it's not crazy but it's just like it's it's more so i guess something i aspire to you know because like i i can't say that uh like i can't not work hard when i've seen someone work that hard for their whole life. You, you mentioned your mom wanting to know about like a plan. Um, is she like money oriented at all? Was she like, and when you were explaining maybe some of the stuff that you wanted to do, uh, you know, I want to get into, you know, coaching people and training people.

Was she like, okay, well, what kind of life is that going to provide? Like, do you, do you know how much money you're going to be able to kind of bring in with some of this? And what are some examples of what other people are doing? Are those some of the things that kind of came up? She wanted me to think, yeah, she had me think about all of that type of stuff. I mean, when I first started. What a great conversation to have with somebody.

I think you're really, really fortunate. I think most people don't ever really go down that road at all, even if they're thinking about college. Um, and even if they're thinking about like a career, I don't think they're always thinking about like, like, what does that career actually look like? Who are some people in the field, uh, that are actually, you know, going through with some of these things. Now, sometimes you might think that if you're thinking about being a lawyer or a doctor, some of these kind of higher, higher end things, right?

Um, but when you're thinking about maybe other professions or careers, like a graphic designer, photographer, or whatever it might be, it would be really smart, especially nowadays with social media, you can just kind of contact people and say, Hey, you know, I'm curious, you know, you do freelance photography. Uh, you know, what do you, what do you charge? You know, what, or what did you charge when you first started? I'm kind of curious. I want to get into this. I want to be a trainer. So she, she kind of went over a lot of that with you, huh? Yeah. And even when I was like, when I, so when I was going the college path and I was like, okay, I do want to go into medicine. Um, and we were talking about majors and stuff. She was just like, she was looking at some of

these majors and like, she was making me think of, okay, well, if you did do this major, how much would you make? I mean, really, what would be the job that you'd be going to after you get this major and continue on? Like she would, she would make me think about those things. When I left college and I was just like, okay, I need, I need to figure out what I want to do when I figured out I didn't want to go into medicine. And I just started working at a gym.

I was like, I think maybe I want to be a personal trainer. She's like, do you know how much these trainers make? Okay, what are their hours? And then she was like, think about it. Well, you know, if you have kids, what's it going to be like? She asked me that question, and that got me thinking. That was one of those things in the back of my head, like, I do want to have kids, but if I'm at this gym all day long, oh God, that's going to be a bad life. And then

that's one of those things that started getting me trying to figure out other options. And then when I saw how people were able to work with all these people around the world, I'm like, okay, well, I can figure out something here. And then she was like, well, how are you going to manage your time? You know, how many clients do you think you can actually take on and still give them a good amount of service because you can't work with hundreds of people can you uh so then she like i was thinking about that too you know so she she would she would let's just say she made critical thinking a big deal in terms of figuring out what i wanted to do there was no oh i kind of want to do this or i kind of want to do this it's it's like okay if if you want to that, you got to figure out a path.

You need to figure out exactly what steps you're going to take to try and get there. She's, I mean, she's an engineer. She's a civil engineer. All her work is very step by step by step, you know, to get towards. And that's the way she thinks. And that's the way she's trying to get me to think about literally everything that I do. Set up a pathway. Or if you don't know exactly how it's going to look, then find somebody that's, that's that I do set up a pathway or if you don't know

exactly how it's going to look then find somebody that's that's done it and set up the path that way have some goals so she thinks that way that's why I think that way and then nowadays are you pretty uh oriented towards that pretty organized towards uh having uh plans and, uh, plans and having, uh, you know, immediate goals, long-term goals, things to kind of, uh, you know, scratch off as, as you go along. Yeah. There's short-term goals. There's long three to five-year goals that I have for myself that I want to try and achieve or that I'm going to achieve. I need to change that purvage, but like I do set shorter term goals because like, as I have these things, I need to be able to orient myself towards those, but those are all to help me get towards these longer-term goals that I have for myself.

And that's helped me out a lot because that clarity gives me also more focus. If I wasn't able to be, I guess, clear in terms of what I'm trying to do, clear in the intent that I have, I think it'd be very difficult to even bring, bring about the motivation to go about these things. You know, there, there, there have been times that, I mean, that I've been, that I was stagnant and that I was kind of, uh, I didn't really focus on my goals and I was kind of okay where I was. And those weren't good times. Those like thinking back to that, it's like, yeah, I didn't have any long-term goals set for myself. I was comfortable in cruising where I was, but I had to reorient myself, set up short, medium, and long-term goals for myself.

Think about these things every night before I go to bed. Every morning when I wake up, I can see them. And that is what is helping me currently to continue moving in that direction. These are things you have physically written down? Yeah. Yeah. Like I have a notebook. We talked about.

Your girlfriend think you're weird? She thinks some of the stuff that I do is a little bit odd. Like I have a. I think women are way different when it comes to this kind of stuff. I think dudes really get behind motivation and quotes and stuff like that. We get all hyped up and not that women don't, not that they can't, but I've never seen my wife like even refer to a quote before. She just doesn't,

when it comes to like motivation, she has so much internal motivation. She doesn't give a shit about anything really that's going to hype you up, you know? Yeah, that's the same. That's the same with my girlfriend. She's just the same way. She doesn't do some of the things that I do

and she doesn't like have those habits, but she still ends up like going towards the things that she wants to do. They she doesn't like, like have those habits, but she still ends up like going towards what the things that she wants to do. They're just better than us. That's plain and simple. No,

I will not admit that on air because she'll save that little clip and whenever I say something, you know, she'll probably replay it. So I won't admit that, but she's pretty damn great.

But yeah, I have a notebook that's separate from like the, my scheduling thing that I write, like how my day went, my thoughts on everything. And I just, I just rewrite those things that I want to go towards because like, I found that like, I mean, it's, I found that like the more that you think about those things,

like, it sounds weird, but I think your subconscious kind of just orients you towards taking actions, right? To get there, you know? Like, even when you're not thinking about it, you're doing small things here and there that are going to be able to help you to get there, you know? I truly believe that. So that's why I make sure that it's the last thing I think about before, you know, I turn in and head to bed. And it just makes things or it helps me take and make the right steps. I saw a 60 minutes, uh, clip on, they had, uh, it was talking about like dream sequencing and,

and what the dreams mean. And, and, and, uh, there was this one case where these dreams can be like implanted, uh, if they happen at a cert, if you're, if there's like a suggested word, uh, at a certain time, uh, in accordance to like when you fell asleep, you can kind of like have a dream that, that happens kind of according to, you know, and so if you think back to like when you're a kid, you think like you hear like, maybe there's some other adults in your house, your mom, or maybe they have some company over. And if you ever heard them like kind of having conversation and then you fall asleep and as you're falling asleep, you end up dreaming about, you know, what they were talking about. Right. Like that happens a lot.

But I can't really recall whether it was a piece of technology, but they really think that you can kind of implant these dreams into your subconscious and that you'll partly remember some of it. I just think it's a pretty wild thing, but you can gravitate towards those things. You can orient a lot of your goals. You can put a lot of things towards whatever that is. And obviously like, you know, everyone's going to like pick to like be wealthy or something like that, but it doesn't necessarily just work that way. It's more like, I think the terms are more general. You know, you're thinking about like happiness and it might like give you some suggestions towards some things that might make you happy. And you could, you could kind of tailor of tailor it towards you know whatever you feel is going to give you happiness whether it's to meet somebody else or whatever those things are but how cool is that no and that that's exact

that's happened multiple times before my tournaments because like before like a jiu-jitsu tournament or like competition i'll i'll like think about that a lot the night before that's like what i think about i think about it and then i'll like think about that a lot the night before that's like what i think about i think about it and then i've dreamt about it i've remembered dreaming about it and most recently um because i'm whole i'm new to this whole podcasting thing right i don't want to look like a i don't want to look dumb but the charity wit in the interview that we did with her i was i was really nervous the night before like i was like thinking i was like god i gotta i gotta figure out you know how to be able to you know help out here so i was like thinking, I was like, God, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta figure out, you know, how to be able to, you know, help out here. So I was thinking about it. I was writing my notebook

about it. I was just thinking about it so much. I dreamt multiple times with about multiple things about you, me and her here. I dreamt about it. I remember we dreamt about it multiple times before that, that night. And I woke up, I was like, that's going to be good. So like that, that's a very, very real thing. You know what I mean? Like you have a job interview the next day or you have a big presentation you need to do at work. Like, yeah, work on it. Like, don't just figure you're going to dream about it, but work on it and like write a lot about it the night before.

Think about it a lot the night before. I just dream about it. Like that, that's happened to me a lot. And especially with that interview, I was like, dang, that's, that's dope. You ever, uh,

you ever like not think of a situation and then you get to the situation. It's way different than you expected. And you're overwhelmed. You ever have that happen before? Like I've had that happen to me. Uh, it's happened like in pro wrestling has happened in a bunch of different situations where I'm almost like shocked when i

get there that i didn't think of this i'm like why didn't i think of this so when i'm gonna do a power lifting meet i try to set it up in my head of like what is it first of all like what is some of tomorrow gonna look like what's that day gonna look like um you know um and then also be accepting of the fact that it might look a little different than what you thought. But even just like visualizing like the kilo plates, like there's going to be like Eliko kilo plates. There's going to be this kind of bench press is going to be there. There'll be this kind of, like, I know my parents are going to be there and I know some of my friends are going to be there. And I know who's going to like lift off and I can kind of like almost walk myself through the day and i can kind of envision it so it really it doesn't ensure that you're going to kick everybody's ass but it really pulls a lot of

that anxiety down and you're like oh i wonder what this jujitsu tournament's going to look like and you're like okay first of all i'm going to walk in it's probably going to be very tense because it's probably pretty quiet when you first walk in and no one's warmed up, no one's done a match yet. And so the same thing as a powerlifting meet, no one's done a squat yet. Everybody's like, you know, mad dog and each other and everyone's walking around like a tough guy. Once we get the, through the first flight and a couple of people have done some squats,

the anxiety comes way down. Everyone's a lot less nervous. People aren't getting hurt. People are hitting PRS and now we're in a much positive environment, but you can walk yourself through all this stuff before you go out and actually do it. Yeah. I do that all the time now. Like literally, you know, anything that's going to be happening, I do my best to try

and envision it to the best of my ability, even though it's not going to be exact. And that helps a lot to make sure that when I get to that situation, I'm not anxious about it. It's huge. And whenever I have like told Andrew, whenever I when I get to that situation, I'm not anxious about it. It's huge. And whenever I have like told Andrew, whenever I have people doing powerlifting meets, I tell them, figure out what those loads look like. Envision it. Envision every single aspect of every single attempt. When you're benching, envision the unrack.

Envision the press. Envision of the rack. When you're deadlifting, make sure that when you're visualizing all of this, that you wait for the down command. Remember that because that's going to happen on that day. Don't be surprised, like visualize this stuff so that on the day you're not surprised about things that might happen. Like, of course, other things will happen that you didn't visualize. I'm not saying you're going to visualize everything, but personally, I've found that it does help with like levels of anxiety and feelings of not being prepared.

That's way down. Yeah, it definitely helped me at the ST Classic. You know, all I had to go off of was just my memory of last year's ST Classic. So I put myself there at that event. But one thing I also did because, you know, I knew I was going to be super nervous. I was going to be anxious. But I also knew I had really good home field advantage. So I knew I was going to see a lot of familiar faces.

So I imagined everyone being super supportive and I don't know if there's anything behind it, but I truly believe that you open yourself up to receiving that, you know? So in my head, I, I knew that was going to happen. And when I got there, sure enough, it did. Now, obviously no one's going to be a dick and be like, Hey, Andrew, you're going to, I mean, except for Smokey, he's the the only negative guy but everyone else was super positive yeah um yeah i just i just feel like you you kind of what what you create in your mind you put it out there you're gonna receive it you know it's almost like you open up those receptors for whatever that positive vibe is and you know like i said you open yourself up

and you you get what you put out there yeah you can kind of go to your first day of school and and think uh hey man you know everyone's probably going to notice this giant zit that's on my forehead or you can be like you know what everyone's going to be sweating these sick shoes that i'm wearing and the first comment you get like when you show up at school hey those are nice where'd you get those right and it's just it's your interpretation of how these things are going to work out and you were so biased towards it like oh fuck i knew that was going to happen you know i knew that someone's going to make fun of my giant sit that's on my forehead yeah you already kind of said it to yourself and now you're just kind of waiting for it to happen yeah something that's helped me a lot was, um, is just developing a routine.

So whether it's public speaking or whether it's, uh, uh, whether it's a powerlifting meet, everything around me will probably be fairly different and it will be pretty new. And I don't know what microphone I'm going to get. I don't know if they're going to want me to speak with a megaphone, which I've had to do before. That was kind of weird i was at the arnold classic last year for a bodybuilding.com thing the sweatiest building ever gym i should say yeah it ended up working out great that was such a positive experience but i i know that all these things are gonna be different but i know

that i'll be the same and i know that i have like a routine and I can settle down into my routine. I know that when it comes to talking about powerlifting, I can do a good job of that. I can talk about squat, bench, and deadlift, uh, a lot. And I have a lot of different stories and a lot of different things to reference when it comes to those things. And so I won't have any shortage of, uh, material. And I also know like, you know, when it comes to a powerlifting meet, I have a certain way that I bench press. I got a certain setup that I do. I got a certain way that I deadlift a certain way that I squat. And so for a lot of you guys and girls out there,

you can, you can think of the same thing. Like you go through these routines often and, um, you can really rely on that heavily when you get into these situations that are going to be super nerve wracking. You know, that when you go to these jujitsu tournaments, there are going to be some people that are really, really good at what they do. They're going to be studying and practicing this stuff, uh, as much as you are. And on top of that, they might've just been doing it longer. Maybe they have some really high level coaches and, uh, they got high level people to practice with. And man, it's like, uh, they got high level people to practice with.

And man, it's like, yeah, you can give yourself a lot of anxiety about it, but you can think, you know what? I really, I put together the best training in my life. I put everything I had into it. And, uh, I'm going to do, um, I'm going to do a lot of that, a lot of what I normally do. And I feel comfortable with that. And it's, uh, I'm going to be the same, but a lot of the conditions are going to do a lot of what I normally do, and I feel comfortable with that.

And I'm going to be the same, but a lot of the conditions are going to be different. And I'm going to test that out against everybody. Yeah. Mentally, it's pretty huge. I was thinking about this earlier in terms of why it is that I was drawn to jiu-jitsu so much. Because it's not just because for me it's a cool martial art um i mean you've noticed in here like whenever i i lift even when i was doing much heavier loads in the past i always try and do it super calm and controlled like that's the big thing that i try to do when i like have my lifts i try to make sure that i can control this lift

um and that i don't stress myself out too much. Even when I'm pulling heavy loads, I don't feel stressed when I do it. And with jiu-jitsu, the whole goal of the martial art is first off to immobilize and disable your opponent and control your opponent. You know what I mean? You have to control their body. You have to control what they're doing

and you have to make them submit. You have to have control. And whenever I roll, I try to be able to control my opponents while also being as calm as I possibly can. So I think, like, with that, that's also, like, that drives into what I try to do with, like, everything that I'm doing in terms of life right now. I'm trying to achieve as much control of my life as I can moving forward in terms of, like, how much money I'm making, all of this type of stuff, I want to have as much control as possible.

I think that's what it comes down to, oddly enough, for me. Because I've seen situations with my family, my mom especially, I've seen situations where she hasn't been in control. And those are really difficult situations to see. So I think everything that I've done, oddly enough, has come back to that idea of having absolute control of everything. And again, it's not control of other people. I'm not trying to control other people, but I'm trying to control all the situations that I get myself into,

all the situations that I put myself in. I'm trying to have absolute control of those, and that's planning everything out. That's visualizing all these things. That even comes down to the exact that I put myself in. I'm trying to have absolute control of those. And that's planning everything out. That's visualizing all these things. That even comes down to the exact sport I chose because that sport, jujitsu, and people say this all the time, it sounds cheesy, but jujitsu is a reflection of what I want to achieve in life.

I'm getting better at being able to control my opponents. I'm getting able to keep myself calm while in these very stressful situations. That's the same thing I want to do outside of there too. Yeah. Control is a huge thing. And that's why it's important to have discipline with all things in your life. Try to develop more discipline because it is important to spend a lot of time being in control and spend less time being out of control. A lot of times being out of control, I mean, it can cause all kinds of things. It depends on how out of control we really get.

Right. Um, but being out of control can really set you behind. And, uh, that's something like that. I've always, I'm almost more in fear of like being behind than I am obsessed with like being ahead. You know, I'm like, I'm like, I don't want that for myself. Cause that's going to set me behind. I don't mind having a drink or two, but I don't want three or four. Cause that's going to set me behind one or two. I can manage that fine. I'll

wake up just fine tomorrow. Not going to be a big deal. Uh, maybe I'll be a little bit sleepier and, uh, I'll be, I'll be about it. And maybe I'll just, uh, you know, be more outgoing for the night or something rather than sit in the corner and be an I'll be about it. And maybe I'll just, uh, you know, be more outgoing for the night or something rather than sit in a corner and be an asshole like I normally am. Uh, but you know, those are some things that you, you really want to try to think about. You know, some people will say like, oh, like, why would I be on a diet? Like I'm, I'm not a fat or I'm not trying to gain weight or I'm not trying to lose weight. Well, it's like not really about that.

It's about trying to have a discipline in your life, trying to have control of the foods that you're eating. You want to try to be as healthy as you can be, because that's going to help you make better decisions throughout the day. That's going to help you with your sleep. It's going to help you with recovery and so on. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong. I like alcohol. I have no problem with alcohol, but I don't get drunk. And that's because I don't like not being in control of my senses. Like I don't like stumbling around and stuff like that. It's, it's, it's, it's, I don't, I don't like that. So I think that goes into all the habits that I've picked up. It's a big reason why we like fasting, you know, like I don't think there's really ever been a situation, you know, even though I've managed to stay in shape that I've felt in

control of like food and my hunger and my appetite. I've always felt that my hunger was in control of my actions. When I'm hungry, I'm going to eat. And you're going to be, or you're going to be mad. I'm going to be mad, right? Your hunger can control you, right? I mean, that's pretty crazy, right? That your hunger can really make you so antsy or angry or whatever. But like at this point now, that's another aspect of my life that I think I have actual control over. Hunger doesn't bother me anymore, you know? And it's good to be able to have, yeah, have control over that. Dude, take a shot for how many times you've said the word control. That might be a good drinking game.

That'd be a good game, a good drinking game for the past 10 minutes. Yeah. When it comes to fasting, you know, there's, uh, including myself, but there's a lot of people that are looking for like, uh, like, you know, biohacking or like, you know, mind hacking or just life hacking and whatnot. And for me, fasting has been that, you know, it, it saves me a ton of time. Um, I get a lot more, uh, like, uh, tasks done because I'm not worried about like the next time I'm going to eat and i don't stop to eat because you know once once i'm in a good flow state and if i get out of there it takes me

a while to get back and that's that's you know that's everybody you know it takes a good amount of time to get back into the groove and so when i don't have to worry about that man it's it's a dude it's it saves a lot of time for sure like it just, it helps get a lot of productivity done. And unfortunately when people try to do biohacking and whatnot, yeah, they'll talk about supplements and stuff, but nobody talks about like food or not food with fasting. Yeah. I think it gets ignored. What you just said is perfect because that's really the truth of it is that it takes everybody a long time to get back on track. And so why, you know, why get too far away from that track?

You know, why not either just, I mean, that's why we brought in so many people that are so crazy about all this. Like you, you talk to like a Jay Cutler or someone like that. And it's like, you know, the guy's going to think about every single thing that he puts into his body. You know, he's going to think about like when we went to eat with him, he, he had a, he had a Coke, right? Now that's a little unconventional. He's, you know, former, not only pro bodybuilder, but an all-time great. And he's in amazing shape, but he figures sugar is not going to really do me no harm

because of what he ordered. Otherwise was very healthy. He got salmon. He asked him to not cook it in oil. He got vegetables. And it's like not cook it in oil. He got vegetables. And it's like, that doesn't cost him anything that doesn't throw him off track at all. It helps keep him on his plan. And that's, that's what we try to preach here at this podcast is, you know, all three of us have been off track before, and we all are going to get off track

again, but we know how important it is to try to stay on point the best that we possibly can, because what Andrew just pointed out is it can take you a really long time. One cheat day, one cheat day can throw you off for weeks. Not, not just because, not just because you had a higher calorie count for that day. That's not what I'm talking about. If you only spent one day cheating, then you're probably going to be totally fine. But usually, uh, if you did on a Sunday, Monday is going to be tough. Tuesday is going to be tough. Maybe Wednesday, you're already like kind of weak in the knees a little bit with your, uh, with your willpower.

And next thing you know, you're kind of cheating again. And you're like, well, you know, it's, uh, it's the 20th and I'll just get back on track next month. And now you're off track. And you know, I'll, I'll, I've found recently and it's not even recently, but I've noticed that it's always the simplest things are the things that everyone or people just tend not to go towards. Like Andrew said, what supplement is it that I can take that's going to help me with this, rather than maybe just like, first off, okay, yeah, we've talked about fasting,

but how much sleep are you getting a night? Because if you don't get enough sleep, and then that compounds upon itself, your decision-making during the day is also much weaker. You know, if you've had five hours of sleep for two days, you're going to be more inclined to, you know, just eat this quick food because you really, your, your decision-making is impaired because of lack of sleep.

So fix your sleep and you might find that dieting is so much easier and you don't have a problem with it. No, but how much creatine do I take? Right. You know, like seriously, that's why like. No man, tell me. Just tell me what they don't want me to know yeah you know that's what i want to know it's it's so crazy to me like that you know you won't get much sleep

you're not drinking a lot of water and you want to try and diet and do all this but the two simplest things that could help you get to where you want to be you're just simply so adverse to you because you want to stay up and do something, or you're just not willing to do the, those, the simplest stuff. It's,

I don't know. I'm really excited about something. I, you just made me think of it. So, you know, we're talking about sleep and we're talking about these small changes that you can make.

And I'm really excited to announce that we have, uh, the oxygen advantage guy. Thank you so much for pointing him out. He will be on our podcast. It will just be through Skype since he's out in Ireland. And I do hope that at some point we get him here to super training gym as well. But man,

I started watching a lot of stuff of his last night and man, is it, is it, it's just unbelievable. The information this guy has about breathing in and out of your nose, how it, is it, it's just unbelievable. The information this guy has about breathing in and out of your nose, how important it is versus, you know, breathing in and out of your mouth and, and, you know, not that breathing in and out of your mouth is necessarily bad. He explains it all and we'll dive into it in depth with him. And, uh, I'm really, really excited about that podcast.

He has a lot of great information on the internet, but's it's hard to ingest you know it's hard to swallow so i think that it'd be great for us to sit down and figure out you know how do we get this message out maybe we should break that podcast up into uh some little small chunks for people so they can watch five minutes at a time and and uh and figure out this oxygen advantage but basically the gist of it is is that when you're breathing in and out of your mouth excessively, which a lot of us do when we sleep, because we tend to really relax the jaw, we'll end up snoring. And when you're snoring, you end up losing a lot of hydration. And then in addition to that, your percentage of oxygen to CO2 gets to be altered quite a bit. of oxygen to CO2 gets to be altered quite a bit.

And, uh, the basics of it are breathing in and out of your nose, uh, helps you get more nitric oxide. And actually, um, I saw like a clip that he had the other day of saying, you know, what does having your mouth shut in Viagra have in common? And it's nitric oxide. And oddly enough, I've every morning for the last few weeks, everything's been all good when I'm, when I'm waking up, just like I was 18 years old again. So it's, uh, it's having a huge impact in my household. Let's just say that. Yeah. Uh, taping of the mouth has been great, man. Uh, Mark hooked it up with the box of the

mouth tape and I don't know if it's because of the fasting also, but not the boner thing. But I've been getting like a... Tape up that butthole while you're at it. Right. I would kind of towards the end of the day, I'd get home and I'd feel really guilty because I'd get home and I'd be yawning. And, you know, I'm like, all right. Yeah, I just gave so much energy to work. And now it's time to be home with the family.

And it's like, here I am, like the slowest one. Got nothing. Just like, come on, man. That has definitely changed. That's great. And I didn't, again, like, I don't know if it's because of the mouth tape or the fasting, but I started both at basically the same time. Probably a combo. Yeah, it could be.

And dude, it's, yeah, I didn't i i didn't get it just like fasting i still don't really understand it but they're both working so i'm stoked that's what matters yeah i don't snore anymore i don't snore anymore either yeah way more endurance when i do jiu-jitsu because i'm breathing through my mouth i notice and i notice when other people like other people are rolling and they get tired and they start doing this, I can notice how it affects them. I'm just like, wow, if people can just pick up this simple concept,

it could really improve athletic performance and cardio and all of that. So I'm so happy you guys are going to get them on one of the, well, it's all three of us, buddy. Um, you know, one of the tests he has you do,

it's actually really hard, but he also teaches you how to clear your nose, which is really nice. Cause a lot of times your nose is you know you got a little bit of snot and stuff in there always that hasn't happened to me in forever by the way yeah it has happened to me in a long time real quick before i forget so when i first started every single night like my nose is stuffy like it just is and i kind of have like a slight panic attack not panic attack but i'm like dude i'm not gonna get through this and then i relax and then i'm fine still stuffy nose but then i wake up in the morning and my

nose is totally clear yeah and that never happens so i'm like well maybe my body's like oh no this is our only source of oxygen so we got to clear this up but is there like is there actual like yeah so there's something that you can do you You know, you're best off looking it up on YouTube so that you get the full picture. But basically what he has you do is he has you breathe in and out of your nose holding one nostril. You'll do that maybe two or three times. And then you pinch your nose and you just hold your breath for a little bit. And then you start to breathe normal again out of that one nostril. You're not trying to like really make it really brutal for you to breathe or anything it's not rockets everywhere yeah you're just like cutting off the airflow for just just a little bit

and then uh you do the other side as well and it almost immediately helps clear up your nasal passages and then in addition to that um this isn't really necessarily to clear up your nasal passages. And then in addition to that, um, this isn't really necessarily clear out your nose, but this is to give you a score. And I think from what I remember, this is called a bore score. It's bolt. Yeah. Yeah. It stands for something I can't remember.

But anyway, uh, he's got these scores and you can kind of, you can see like what kind of, uh, endurance you have almost and what kind of athlete you are. And, uh, you want to work your way towards being able to do this comfortably for like over 30 seconds. He says 45 seconds is really optimal. 40 seconds is really optimal. And I did very, very poorly at this. And what you do is you breathe in and out of your nose a couple of times and you, you

breathe out of your nose. Um, just normally you're not trying to exert all your air at all. You're just, just a normal breath in normal breath out of your nose just normally. You're not trying to exert all your air at all. You're just a normal breath in, normal breath out of your nose, and then you hold your nose for about, you hold your nose for as long as you can, as long as, not as long as you can, but as long as, as soon as you feel the first real serious urge towards getting more oxygen,

you then start to breathe in and out of your nose again. That'll help clear your nasal passages as well, but it'll give you a score. So if you made it for 13 seconds, that's your score. And the objective is to get towards 30 seconds, 40 seconds. Uh, did you try that? The first time I did it, I was so pissed because I was like, I was getting mad. I was like going to hyperventilate. I was like, I'm going to, I'm going to be able to, you know, be better at this and i get a world record i'm like no he says not to hold your breath you know like you're not really trying to like fight it you know yeah like i think the first time i ever did it and honestly i thought my endurance when my endurance during

rolling was good i thought i had good cardiovascular like whatever i think i got my scores like 15 it's like what no what? No retest 15 retest. I was pissed. I'm like, I'm not doing this anymore. And he said, you're supposed to get 40 seconds. I'm like, am I this bad? I think most recently I did it two weeks ago. It was a 28. So I'm getting close to that 40. Right. Um, but it's, it's, it's, it's so huge. The difference that this makes, because like I used to, every time before I'd go to sleep, I'd always have, like, a stuffy nose, right? And I'd be like, oh, this kind of sucks. I'd just go to sleep.

I wouldn't think much of it. But, like, that hasn't happened to me in a long, long time that I've had any type of even symptoms of a stuffy nose. I'm sleeping so well with, like, it and just breathing through my nose. It just makes such a big difference. And I also wonder now, like, I mean, how is this going to affect me in terms of potentially getting sick? Cause a lot of people get sick because they breathe in their mouth and they don't have anything to block those. Like you have, you have nasal hairs for a reason, right? You don't have that in your mouth. Right. So I wonder how, like how this is going to fare in terms of like me getting sick and all smaller things like that too but just quality of life is just so much better no it's unbelievable and he talked a

lot about you know people uh of uh different um different ethnicities i believe it was uh indians that he was saying they would often uh like close baby's lips like if a baby or a kid had their mouth open they would walk over the baby and like just squish their lips. Like if a baby or a kid had their mouth open, they would walk over to the baby and like, just squish their lips together. And, uh, he said, oftentimes those people didn't, didn't get, uh, didn't get sick as much. Now that wasn't like something they scientifically tested, but it's just, uh, some evidence that they had, um, from like reports and stuff like that, but just, yeah, it's wildly interesting and I'm super excited to get him on the podcast. Additionally, we hired two more people today for Slingshot. We hired some engineers and I now have like some people to bounce ideas off of specifically, you know, for products and all the

people that have worked here have given me ideas here and there on stuff, but these are guys that they do that for a profession. And so to have that, like, I mean, even today they showed me like designs of like five or six different things. And in their presentation they did the other day, uh, they showed, showed us like 20 different things. And I'm like, Oh my, this is so weird. I've never had any of this. I never even thought about any of this stuff. And, uh, they were like, you know, where, where'd all this stuff come from? You don't have a team. I'm like, it just came, came, it came from me, you know, came from me trying to just figure shit out.

So, uh, it'll be really, really cool to have, uh, some, some new people to bounce stuff off of. And, uh, you know, what a cool and interesting story it is too. These are the guys that originally they won the slinger mobile years ago, the white, uh, you know, what a cool and interesting story it is too. These are the guys that originally they won the slinger mobile years ago, the white, uh, slinger mobile, um,

that we had ran a contest and these guys ended up, uh, making a video and ended up doing a really good job. And so they, uh, want it. They live out in Ohio and, now they're part of team slingshot and,

we're going to continue to dominate and continue to take over and continue to make it very clear that we have the best products in the world. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.